When pears get cold…

I am famous for sitting down in a bookstore or library copying recipes out of magazines and never buying the magazine. It’s surprising I have never been kicked out. Because of this habit, for the past couple of years my cookbook has been adorned by little scrap papers and newspaper cut-outs with recipes on it that I want to try.

One of them I found scribbled in millimeter font at the bottom of a note advertising a new blood pressure medication. I can’t remember where I got the piece of paper, and neither can I remember where I got the recipe. But last night, with three pears on the verge of going bad, I was paging through those notes and decided to give the pears some blankets and lay one of the mystery recipes to rest once and for all.

Pears in a Blanket

• 2 ripe pears
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tbsp shortening
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 tbsp molasses

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Cut the shortening into the flour, then add salt, water, and molasses, and form a smooth dough. If the dough is too sticky, add more flour. If you seem to have a lot of dough for the pears, cut up more pears.
Cut the pears into 8 wedges each, sprinkling them with cinnamon and nutmeg and placing them in a pyrex baking dish. 
Roll out the dough as thin as you can and cut into 16 strips (or however many pear slices you end up with). Wrap each pear with a strip of dough.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, or brush with shortening if desired.

Bake the pears for 25 minutes. Mine took much longer but our oven is off. The thinner you roll the dough, the faster they will bake.

Despite my family’s advice to eat these with cheese, I say they should be eaten with non-dairy vanilla icecream.

Scone Prone

I have made them before, and I had to make them again. So simple, yet so good! I based the recipe on one from VegWeb, as usual. I made only a few adjustments, which the recipe takes very well.

Scones

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup plain soy yogurt
• 1/4 cup water (or more if needed)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
For the flavors:
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup shredded coconut
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds + 1 tbsp sugar
• 2-3 tbsp dried cranberries

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a bowl. Cut the shortening in until the mixture crumbles. Mix the soy yogurt, water, and vanilla extract in a separate bowl and add to the first bowl. If it is too thick to stir (it should be a little on the thick side), add a bit of water.

Break the dough into 5 equal parts. Mix each part with one of the flavors listed above. Shape each flavored dough into two little triangles on a cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes at 450°F.

Zero Waste – Tissues

It’s tough googling something like this (yes, I just made Google a verb. I’m not the first one).

Over the past couple of months (or maybe years) I’ve gradually cut down certain sources of my personal waste. Some of the choices are tougher than others. I now shop mostly at the local Food Co-op, filling my re-used glass jars with foods from the bulk section of the store, writing down the tear weight and PLUs. It’s not convenient but it does have immediate advantages beyond the fact that I just saved almost all the packaging waste of the product. I am not tempted by fancy boxes and wrappers telling me to buy the latest fad because it will make my life better. I buy only as much as I need. And I pay a lot less. Also, my food has never gone bad because all my containers are air-tight.

Now, I wasn’t going to talk about bulk food and re-using containers. What I really wanted to talk about was tissues, as in the Kleenex-kind. Every once in a while I will stumble upon something that fills up my garbage bin quicker than all other items and I start wondering if there are alternatives. Tissues, … oh so convenient and clean and safe and comforting and white. I never used to blow my nose, I just picked it. Now that I’m not 4 years old anymore, I don’t feel it’s socially acceptable for me to forgo the transfer agent altogether and use my fingers. Though what to do?

Cloth tissues? Do I do my laundry often enough to not blow my nose into 2 months of dried snot? Too much information?

Sometimes there are no easy answers.

Dill is good!

Unique Dill Salad

• 3 medium potatoes (cooked)
• 2 tofu hotdogs (sliced)
• 1/4 cup veganaise (approx.)
• 2 tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 tsp dried dill (or fresh if you can)
• dash cayenne pepper

Dice potatoes. Stir dill, cayenne, and vinegar into mayonaise in a bowl. Add potatoes and tofu hotdogs and stir to combine. Enjoy!

If you also want it to have salad temperature, cool the potatoes down before using or use leftover ones from the fridge.

Palatschinken

Despite the German word “Schinken” in its name, this has nothing to do with ham. Palatschinken is the Austrian name for crepes (though if you’re in Europe most people will tell you crepes are something else. I just refer to them as that to distinguish between flat pancakes and the American puffy pancakes).
I modified (= veganized) this recipe from a couple of crepe recipes on the web and assembled everything the way I remember my family doing it. It could probably do with a little less water next time I try it.

Palatschinken

• 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cornmeal
• 2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer whisked into 3 tbsp water
• 1 cup soymilk
• 1/4 cup water (or less, use sparkling water if you have it)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp canola oil (and more for frying)
For Kaiserschmarrn you also need:
• 1/4 cup raisins
• Powdered sugar

Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and cornmeal in a large bowl. Stir in the whisked egg replacer, adding soymilk in 1/4 cup increments until you get a smooth batter. Add water, canola oil, and vanilla extract and stir well. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes on your counter or in your fridge.

Heat a lightly oiled pan on medium-high heat. Add a ladle full of batter and turn the pan to spread it evenly. When you can’t see any moist spots anymore and the rim of the crepe is crisp, turn the crepe over (either by flipping the pan over onto a plate, using a spatula, or doing the skillful pan-flip).

If you are making Kaiserschmarrn, tear/cut the pancake into shreds with your spatula when one side is almost done, add some raisins, and finish frying until it turns a dark golden brown. Kaiserscharrn is served with powdered sugar.

It is helpful to keep a plate in a pre-warmed oven, so that you can stack the crepes on it to keep them warm until serving.
I usually eat these with cinnamon sugar in the center and apple sauce on the side. They are also good with chocolate syrup and banana slices, agave syrup, jam, preserves, soy yogurt, or whole fruit.

Coconut Bread

I got this recipe from VegWeb. It looked similar to the banana bread recipe I make so I was confident it would turn out well. And it did indeed!

Luscious Coconut Bread

• 1 cup lightly toasted coconut shreds (unsweetened, unsulphured)
• 2 cups white unbleached flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup soymilk
• 1 1/2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer whisked into 2 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 2 tbsp apple sauce (I used apple-strawberry sauce)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp liquid egg replacer (optional, I used Wonderslim brand)

Anything muffin-like such as this is easy to prepare. Mix all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. Mix all the wet ingredients well in another bowl (sugar counts as a wet ingredient). Dump the wet into the dry and stir until just combined while making sure not to over-stir it.
Pour the mass into a small oiled loaf pan and sprinkle with coconut.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Check for done-ness with a long toothpick. Prick deep into the middle, if there is gooey wet dough stuck to the toothpick, it’s not done yet, if it comes out relatively clean, it’s done.