Sunday Morning Pancakes

I love Sundays. By far my favorite day of the week. On a typical Sunday here is our family schedule -

Hang out

Go get coffee and hot chocolate at River Maiden

Driving around and looking at houses we can't afford

Today we are adding in pancakes. 

I used to be a Snoqualmie Pancake Mix snob. Sadly, they use buttermilk and egg yolks in their mix. So now I need to make them from scratch.

The first issue is eggs. A lot of things can replace eggs, but for this I am using flax eggs.

Flax egg = 1 tablespoon flax flour (fresh ground is really best) + 3 tablespoons water. Let is rest in the fridge for about twenty minutes. 

The next issue is milk. Use your favorite milk substitute, I am using rice milk. Remember even "Original" contains sugar, so if you don't like sweet pancakes you may want to omit the sugar in the recipe.

Pancake Recipe  (makes 4-6)

• 1 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1.5 tablespoons raw sugar
• 1 cup rice milk
• 2 tablespoons melted Earth Balance Buttery Spread (this is salted so you don't need to add salt to recipe)
• 1 flax egg

Mix the dry ingredients together (including sugar). Mix wet ingredients together in a separate bowl. Add wet mixture to dry mixture, don't over-mix. A few lumps are okay.

Over medium heat pour 1/3 cup mix on to pan. (Use whatever oil you desire to make it non-stick). When the edges of pancake start to get dry and there are a lot of bubbles; flip your pancake. I swear, wait until the edges are dry and you will always get a well cooked pancake.

You may want to warm up your oven if you are making a lot, so you can keep them warm while you make stacks of pancakes for your loved ones. 

Top with REAL maple syrup. (and peanut butter, if you live in our house.)

**Kris doesn't really like pancakes. He just told me that he really likes these! He even said "Husband approved!" That's high praise.**

Squash, Anyone?

So I totally said I would put this recipe up today only it turns out that "today" was three weeks ago. Whoops. There are excuse, some of them valid but let's just pretend this happened right away and I am an excellent blogger.

Okay moving on.

Acorn Squash Filled with Onions, Sage and Oyster Mushrooms (this is a variation of something I saw on jointhereboot.com)

You will need -

• An acorn squash
• Sage
• Yellow onion
• Oyster Mushrooms
• Garlic
• Chili flakes
• Olive Oil
• Salt & Pepper

First take an acorn squash cut the ends off, cut it in half lengthwise -

Get rid of the guts brush it with olive oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper on it -

Turn it upside down and bake on foil or parchment paper at 450 degrees for 35-40 minutes until it is soft. Seriously make sure it is soft. Mine wasn't done all the way and it sucked.

While baking the acorn squash dice up a medium yellow onion and mince two cloves of garlic and sauté with olive oil over medium heat. You don't want the garlic to burn - 

Add fresh sage. About this much... -

Get your oyster mushrooms (or any you want, I like these because I am new to mushrooms and they have a pretty delicate taste and texture) and chop them into small pieces.

Add to them to the pan and let everything get nice and soft -

If you are like me you may want to add a few dashes of chili flakes. It was a nice kick. I buy them in the bulk section. Turn down the heat on the pan to low until your squash is soft.

Once your squash is nice and ready, flip it over and spoon the mixture into it. Bake for another 15 minutes.

Tah dah!

 If you go sparingly on the oil this is a really healthy meal!! Low fat, high in fiber and it kinda makes you feel domestic.

I ate a Muchas Gracias burrito in less than 3 minutes

It was 11 in the morning.

It was so awesome that I stared down at my wrapper in disappointment that it was all in my belly already. I only made it through 1.5 hot sauces.

But Gretchen!! Dude, you can't eat Muchas Gracias burritos. Those days are over!! They are all lardy and cheesy.

Not so, says I.

Get your burrito loving booty the awesome Muchas that used to be an A&W. They have the "Vegan Burrito" on their menu.

Whole wheat tortilla, whole pinto beans, guacamole, lettuce and pico de gallo. All for like $3. I paid a little more because the guy at the drive through flirted with me so much I tipped him.

Really. I tipped the drive-thru guy and then I ate my burrito in less than 3 minutes.

I am not even remotely ashamed.

This day rules.

Not Tuna Salad

I saw a recipe for Mock Tuna Salad in the Happy Herbivore cookbook and it totally inspired me to make my own using ingredients I love.

Her original was good so if you are looking for a standard recipe complete with pickles and celery, check out her website or buy her book!

Here is what I whipped up.

Greek Toona (or whatever way you want to show that it isn't really tuna by misspelling it) Salad

Gonna have to call this not a very appetizing picture. It was yummy, I swear.

• 1 can of Garbanzo Beans (aka Chickpeas) rinsed and roughly mashed
• 1 can of artichoke hearts drained very very well. I squeezed them. Shred them up.
• 8-10 kalamata olives finely diced
• 1/4 cup finely diced red onion
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 1 big ol' shake of garlic powder
• a couple teaspoons of roasted seaweed (I just chop it really finely or you can by the kelp flakes)
• a good splash of balsamic vinegar
• a couple scoops with a handy spoon of vegan mayonnaise
• salt and pepper

As you can see, not an exact science. Add as much or as little of the things you like.  Mix it all up and serve it on a bed of  microgreens. Also tasty as a wrap or on bread, anything you like salad on really - In a bowl is also good...

(Psssst - you can buy microgreens anywhere, especially farmers/urban growers markets. I got mine from Trader Joe's because they have totally made me their bitch.)

Pizza-dougha!

So have you played Dead Or Alive 2 (DOA2)? Well that's okay, it is a really awesome game. In it there is a character called Lei Fang and when she attacks it sorta sounds like she is an Italian stereotype yelling "pizza dough-ah" which is weird since she is clearly not Italian. As you can guess, we can't not say the word combination pizza dough without that inflection. Pizza Dougha!!

Totally not the point of this post but I know you are dying to hear my inner musings.

I made a pizza.

In a 3-foot-wide by 6-foot-tall shelf space, sandwiched between 500 kinds of hot dogs and 200 kinds of cheese, you will a bizarre space of pickles and pizza dough at Winco. They sell little bags of dough, all kneaded and ready for you to roll out for your dough needs. There is white and whole-wheat. And it is vegan.

So I picked that up with vegan pepperoni, Daiya (Mozzarella), tomato sauce and fresh basil. You will have to make a special trip for the Daiya.

Voila!

Now this isn't that cheap. So if you are feeling lazy you can just buy the Tofurky version at Fred Meyer or New Seasons or Whole Foods or whatever, but where is the fun in that.

And then you wouldn't get to yell "Pizza Dougha!" (I mean there isn't a law against you yelling it without actually having pizza dough on hand. But there should be.)

Date Night for 40$

For our 8th Anniversary this year Kris and I decided to go to Blossoming Lotus in Portland. We have heard great things about it but for some reason haven't made it there.

We hit up the Happy Hour.

Holy Freaking Tofu this shit was good. There is a ton of raw and live food if you are into that sort of thing. And a great selection of cocktails.

But what really blew our little minds were the tacos. The raw one in particular was excellent. We also ordered the White Bean Pesto and chips. That's it 3 tacos that we shared and some Chips and Dip and we were stuffed. Like didn't finish it all stuffed.

Cocktail - I had the Ginger Fizz. If you don't like Ginger, don't get this. But if you do, get ready to find a designated driver. Kris is drinking the Vaporizer from Double Mountain Brewery. It rocks if you like beers hoppy.

Eats -

Total spent - 25 dollars (Including tip)

Then we scooted to the Kennedy School. We got a pitcher of the Copper Moon seasonal beer and saw Men in Black 3 because we are really super cool. And shut up, so what if we cried at the end. Don't judge.

Kris decided to pull a face. That'll teach him. This shit is on the internet now honey.

Total spent - 15 dollars. (two tickets and pitcher of beer)

That brought our whopping total to 40$!!! Now that is a date night I can get excited about.

(A good thing to not is that we had to do this pretty early in the evening to cash in on these kinds of deals. But that left plenty of time to come home and watch movies with swear words, which is a pretty novel thing when you have an almost 5-year-old hanging around your house.)

Hostess HoHos Are a No Go

Kris and I were perusing the prepacked donuts on Saturday morning. Sometimes you get a hankering for an Old-Fashioned that is kinda waxy and artificial tasting. I don't know why but stranger things have happened to us all.

So, as is tradition, we were reading the back of the packaging to see if any of them are vegan. They aren't. We wen't down to the Hostess section. Not only are they not vegan, they aren't vegetarian.

There in the list of ingredients - BEEF FAT. It actually says beef fat. Not even trying to dress it up as lard.

Now when something savory contains beef fat, sure, it's gross animal fat that is destroying your organs but when your snack cake has it that is down right gagtastic.