A meat-loving girl in a vegan world

So now that I am living in a vegan household, much of my cooking has been sans meat and dairy, which means that many of my future posts will follow suit. Although I, myself, am not vegan, I don't mind eating like one, most of the time, until I get the occasional craving for a good piece of meat or seafood or some deliciously satisfying cheese. The plus side of cooking vegan dishes is that I get to show my diversity in the kitchen, which is always a good thing.

While I have concocted several meat and dairy-free meals since I moved in, I have been so busy getting adjusted to everything that I haven't found the time to write about it. But, that is all about to change. So, on with my first VEGAN post!

I was craving something sweet and glutinous tonight so after scouring recipes of dairy-free breads, cookies and cakes I decided on a Pumpkin Crumb Cake With Pecan Streusel from Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero's Veganomicon cookbook, which I am enjoying right now with a nice tall glass of Thai tea. Although I traded in the pecans for walnuts, because that's all I had, it turned out great. And you don't have to be vegan to think so.

The recipe follows.



Pecan streusel
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 Tbs. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1 Tbs. canola oil
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Cake
1 15 oz can pureed pumpkin
3/4 cup soy milk
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 Tbs. light molasses
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
3/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

Prepare the streusel
In a small bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar and spices. Drizzle in the canola oil and mix with your fingertips until crumbs form. Add the pecans and mix.

Prepare the cake
In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin, soy, milk, oil, granulated sugar, molasses and vanilla. Mix well. Add roughly half the flour, the baking powder, salt and spices, and use a fork to fold everything together. Add the remaining flour and mix gently until combined. Don't use a hand blender for this, as pumpkin can get gummy if it's mixed too aggressively. Blending with a fork helps maintain the texture.

Pour batter into the prepared baking pan and spread it out with a spatula. Scatter the streusel on top as evenly as possible. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a knife inserted through the center comes out clean.

Remove from the oven, let cool and cut into squares.

Moving out and on

So, I have been slacking on posting but for good reason. I have been moving and getting situated in my new life! And let me tell you, moving my stuff up two days before, and actually moving up the day I started my new job was not the best idea I have ever had.

However, I have been doing a lot of cooking from Mother's Day on, so I have a lot of writing to catch up on....starting tomorrow! I hope ;)

Dream or reality?

Dreams are funny.

I think because I fell asleep thinking about my time cooking in Germany, which seems so unreal to me now, I ended up dreaming about being in the kitchen.

I had this vivid dream of being involved in a cooking competition with teams of two partners. I was paired up with another female, and for some reason we were focusing on desserts. The dream wasn't necessarily a nightmare, or a bad dream, but it definitely had a stressful element.

Apparently, my work space had already been used by someone else, and it was a HUGE mess: flour everywhere, all kinds of dirty dishes piled up and used rags laying all over the counter. And no matter how I tried to straighten things up, it seemed like the mess just kept expanding.

I somehow came over my problems, however, and came up with a brilliant idea for a dessert. You know how sometimes in your dreams things sound great, but in real life they would be ridiculous? Well this was not one of those times, and I am excited to try-out at least part of my dreamed invention.

And then the dream ended.

It was strange, how when I woke up the dream seemed more real to me than what I fell asleep thinking about.