I got the recipe off VegWeb and slightly modified it because I had no cranberries and no cashews. They are a gift for my biscotti-loving dad who lives in Germany.

I made bread! I didn’t exactly follow a recipe but just used what I had and my limited knowledge of making pizza dough. I leaned the amounts of flour, water, and yeast on recipes on VegWeb, and used the baking time, temperature, and technique from a bread baking book my mom gave me.

Multigrain Bread

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups white unbleached flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup rolled oats (+ 1 Tbsp for sprinkling on top)
• 1 Tbsp poppy seeds
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 tsp dry active yeast
• sprinkle of oil
• about 2 Tbsp agave nectar (reserve about 1 tsp for glaze)

Stir the yeast and agave into the warm water and leave to rest while you combine all the flours, oats, seeds, and salt in a large bowl. When the yeast has been sitting for 10 minutes, stir it into the flour and form a dough. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes on a floured surface with flour-dusted hands until the dough is smooth and springy.

Form into a ball and leave, covered, in a lightly oiled bowl at room temperature to rise until about double in size. Depending on the ambient temperature this might take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 8 hours (if you leave it in the fridge for example).

Punch down dough with kuckles and knead lightly before shaping into desired shape (braid anyone?). Place on lightly oiled baking sheet and leave to rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425° F and place a baking sheet or other container with water inside the oven to increase humidity (will make for a crispier crust). Mix a few drops of water with a bit of agave and brush the loaf with this liquid. Sprinkle some rolled oats on the loaf. Place in the oven and reduce the temperature to 375°-400° F (depending on your oven). Check back after 30 minutes. You can turn off the heat a little bit before the bread is done, the residual heat can finish the loaf. Test if the loaf is done by taking it out of the oven, holding it in a dish towel and tapping the bottom with your knuckles. It should be firm and dry, but not burnt.

I have never made my own pizza. I’m always scared of working with yeast, thinking it won’t rise or something else will go wrong. I’m proven wrong every time.

Balsamic Tomato Pizza

• One pizza dough recipe from “Garden of Vegan” (I used whole wheat flour)
• 1 large tomato
• 3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp marjoram
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• dash of sweet paprika
• dash of ground cumin
• salt to taste
• 1 Tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp nutritional yeast
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• One half of a green bell pepper, sliced
• 3 beets, steamed and grated
• handful of fresh basil leaves
• freshly ground black pepper

Make the pizza dough according to directions. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic. When garlic is starting to brown, add dry herbs and spices. Chop half of the tomato finely and add to the pan. Now add tomato paste, nutritional yeast, balsamic vinegar, and bell pepper. Cook until the sauce turns thick (this may take a bit). Add the grated beets and spread the sauce on the pizza dough. Slice the other half of the tomato into thin slices and layer with the basil leaves on top of the sauce. Add pepper.
Bake at 350°F for about 30-40 minutes.

Fall is coming and I wonder, have I ever understood the meaning of Erntedank the way I do now?

Wax beans galore, fat cucumbers by the dozens, the last cherry tomatoes of the summer, and soon an abundance of potatoes and squash for the winter.

Excuse my forgetting what I put in this. But trust me, it’s delicious.

In the Pacific Northwest this is the time of year the horribly invasive Himalayan Blackberries start hanging heavy with berries. We did our part and gathered as much as we could without shriveling into a pile of ashes in the blazing sun.

I made blackberry vanilla chocolate cookies with the cookie recipe I posted recently. Knead a tablespoon of cocoa powder into half the dough, roll both parts of the dough into a log, cut slices and press a frozen blackberry into a vanilla slice to top it off with a chocolate slice. Very yummy fresh out of the oven! No pictures though, sorry.

Then this morning I made blackberry pancakes using the “Hot Cakes” recipe from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman, a cookbook I have not used nearly enough in the years I owned it. I modified her recipe slightly by adding a bit of raw sugar to the dough along with a teaspoon of egg replacer and another one of cornstarch (I was afraid they wouldn’t hold together). I stirred the frozen blackberries in last thing before pouring it into the pan. Very yummy!

It’s always late morning when I catch Joe on the living room floor begging me to photograph him in this one single beautiful ray of sunlight shining through the evergreens of our front yard.

His eyes are dazzling.

Now some pictures from my garden plot.

Sweet millions cherry tomatoes, waiting to become red and be devoured by me, my one single perfect looking kohlrabi, which I might never pick because I would have to destroy its beauty,  a pretty cosmos from Jessie’s plot, and Jessie working on her plot (I wonder if she meant to match the dahlias with her shirt in this picture).

There is no real recipe for it. It makes sense that if you freeze a whole bunch of yummy things in layers, there is no way the end product could taste anything but yummy.

I used this Basic Yellow Cake recipe from VegWeb.com, and froze it with layers of WholeSoy&Co. chocolate hazelnut frozen soy yogurt, so delicious fruit sweetened vanilla soy icecream, peanut butter mixed with some canola oil and raw sugar, mashed banana, crushed peanuts, and banana jam (family recipe, I’ll post it another day).
I froze it in a metal loaf pan, so that I could freeze it and dip it in hot water to get the cake out without the vessel breaking (as glass probably would). We also made some cupcakes with the same ingredients, which I didn’t get to try but they looked cute.

No birthday candles because we had none, but if you noticed I am now 24 according to my little blurb about myself, not 23 anymore. Yay for feeling old. I am about 5 years older than most of my friends.

I’m not usually picky with sweets, but I have had problems making vegan cookies that I like. Then one day I tasted a veganized sugar cookie recipe from a friend that substituted banana for egg and it was the closest to tollhouse cookie dough I have tasted since going vegan. I’m not a big supporter of tollhouse type cookie dough, but I remember eating it right out of the package my first year in college.

The Chameleon Cookie Dough

• 1 cup softened margarine (or 1 cup canola oil + 1/4 tsp salt)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 medium banana, mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups flour
• optional: cocoa powder, cinnamon, coconut, chocolate chips, etc…

Beat the margarine (or oil+salt) with the sugar. Add banana and vanilla extract and stir until well combined. Add flour and baking powder in intervals. The dough will seem dry but this makes it easier to shape.

Roll into balls, roll into a log and cut into disks, squish into flat cookies with a fork or whatever you would like to do with these. They keep their shape pretty well so whatever shape you make them will be the one they stay in.

Bake at 375 F for 10-20 minutes. The longer you bake them, the more they turn into short bread.

I had never tasted flowers before this summer. No one told me that I was missing out. Actually, I don’t think there are that many people who eat flower pedals at all. Maybe I’m special because of it

Flower Pedal Salad

• Baby greens
• Daikon Radish
• Fresh Chives
• Fresh Parsley
• Calendula flower pedals
• Broccoli flowers

Dressing

• 2 parts balsamic vinegar
• 1 part olive oil
• 1 part yellow mustard

Toss the first set of ingredients except the flowers. Mix the dressing and pour over the greens. Then sprinkle the flowers over the salad to serve.

Some felines are just photogenic no matter what. Or maybe it’s because Joe knows how to match his eye color with his resting spot.