Bishop's Bread-Our Fruitcake

That is exactly how it is written in one of my most prized posessions- A handwritten little cookbook my mama gave me when I moved out at 18. It is full of recipes that are unique to our family.
This post will probably be sentimental, and not a lot about baking techniques. So read on if you like.

I have to preface this recipe with some background.  My entire childhood (and maybe into my late teens) I always heard people bashing fruitcake.  It was always the dreaded gift around the holidays that no one wanted.  I just could never understand this! I always thought-

"What is wrong with fruitcake?  My mama's fruitcake is SO amazing!"

Each and every year of my life I looked forward to so many things at Christmas, but there were a couple of things that definitely meant Christmas was upon us. My mama's Santa's whiskers cookies, and fruitcake.  It wasn't until later that I realized I had been deceived (not purposely) by my mother!
GASP! OUR FRUITCAKE IS NOT FRUITCAKE.
It's real identity is Bishop's Bread, and it's so amazing. It's got some fruitiness to it, but from what I understand is nothing like fruitcake.

I wouldn't know. I've never had real fruitcake.

So here we go. This is my cookbook recipe written by my mama.  The following are the changes I made to it including egg replacer and such.  One thing I can't change is the maraschino cherries.  There is nothing else in the world that equals the weirdness of maraschino cherries, so don't try. It's probably the only thing I buy that has that much food coloring and high fructose corn syrup... but... this is a once a year thing people.

First of all. When preparing these ingredients, you have to know a secret. You have to cut the maraschino cherries with kitchen scissors. I tried chopping them once and the chunks were not right. I don't really know why this is how it is, but... it is.  My mama did it this way, and when I tried it differently, it was not right, and that is all I know. So if your fingers aren't stained when you are done, you did something wrong.

Second of all.  We always used the packaged dates that are already cut and all sugary. You can find them on the same aisle as raisins.  Now that I cook all the time I often have weird things like whole Medjool Dates.  They are giant dates that are naturally extremely sweet. So I just cut those up (with my trusty kitchen scissors).

Also, to keep with the theme of this blog I replaced the eggs with egg replacer.  The following is my updated recipe.

One more thing! This recipe is the BEST with pecans, but they are very expensive right now, so walnuts were a great replacement!

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

4 1/2 tsp Ener-g egg replacer + 6Tb water (equivalent of 3 eggs)
1 1/2 c sifted flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
6 oz vegan chocolate chips
2 Cups chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1 Cup chopped Medjool dates
1 Cup chopped Maraschino cherries

Grease and flour loaf pan. Line with waxed paper or parchment paper (if you have the patience).
Combine egg replacer with water, and beat until foamy.
Combine egg replacer mixture with sugar and beat well.
In a seperate bowl combine flour, salt, and baking powder.
Add dry ingredients, including flour mixture, chocolate chips, pecans, dates, and maraschino cherries to wet ingredients. Mix well. 

It will be a big thick sticky mess.

Press into three small loaf pans.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours- 1 1/2 hours.
Remove from pan.
Cool completely on wire rack.

These freeze well wrapped in seran wrap after completely cooling.

Farmer's Market Spaghetti

So... I finally got around to using those homegrown tomatoes the other day that Greg acquired from the farmer's market.  I wanted to make one last spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes before the summer bounty is over!

I made this up as I went along, but I wrote everything down, because it was SO delicious.  I froze the batches I made, and we thawed one and had it over whole wheat spaghetti tonight with a salad.  I was too excited to take pictures of our delicious feast! 

I cooked my spaghetti sauce in the crockpot all day, but this would be even better if you could simmer it on the stove for an afternoon to reduce the water a little.

Warning: this simply will not work with store bought tomatoes.  They have no flavor.  If you want to make spaghetti sauce with canned tomatoes see this post.

Spaghetti Sauce:

Ingredients
20ish  medium homegrown tomatoes
small amount of olive oil
1 small-medium yellow onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
8 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried basil 1/4 cup red wine

• Get some water boiling on the stove.
• Prepare your tomatoes:
• Mark an X with a knife through the skin on the bottom of each tomato
• In batches of about four, blanch the tomatoes for a couple of minutes in the boiling water
• Once cool enough to handle, peel the tomatoes with your fingers. If the skin does not come off easily, you did not blanch them long enough
• Dice tomatoes, and remove excess liquid and seeds (don't worry about doing this perfectly, I just let the extra run off of my cutting board into the sink..  a few seeds won't be a big deal)
• Meanwhile you could start the onions, red pepper, mushrooms, and garlic:
• Saute onions over medium with a small amount of olive oil until they start to sweat a little.
• Add the red pepper and mushrooms and saute until softened (about 7 minutes), not browned
• Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute more. Remove from heat.
• At this point you can add all of the ingredients to the crockpot and cook it on low for 5-7 hours. If you are cooking it on the stove: combine all ingredients, and bring to a light boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer.  You could simmer this for a little as 30 minutes, but a couple of hours on very low would be perfect. 20 minutes before you are done cooking, add 1/4 cup of red wine.
• Transfer about half of the mixture to a blender and blend until the big chunks are gone. Return to pot.
• Serve over spaghetti, spaghetti squash, or any other favorite!

Summer-y Tomato-y Squash-y Yummy-y Pasta-y

I'm (hopefully) going to be completing my first 5k in about 12 hours. SO I took the opportunity to "carb up".  Just kidding.  It's pure coincidence that I decided to make pasta the night before my race, but it worked out nice. 

While I was working today Greg was so nice to go to the farmer's market for me with one request: "I want a BIG OL' bag of tomatoes."  He came through and brought be a full sack of tomatoes.  My plans for these tomatoes are some sort of slow cooker pasta sauce in the next few days, but I just couldn't wait to dig in, so I made up a little recipe out of what we had in the house.  It really turned out to be so good, that I am going to try and write it up to share!  Measurements are best guesses, and you could add lots of things to it.  The spiral pasta, with subtle vegetable flavors really added something though.

8 oz spiral multi-color pasta
Olive oil
4-5 medium home grown, very ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 medium zuchinni, sliced in half moons
1/2 red onion, sliced in half moons
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
4 TB Earth Balance margarine

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Arrange tomatoes and zucchini in a single layer on parchmet paper in a roasting pan, or cookie sheet with a lip. Put into preheated oven to roast for about 20 minutes
• Meanwhile, get the water boiling for your pasta, you want your pasta done around the same time as everything else.
• Saute red onion in a little olive oil for 5-10 minutes, until it's very soft and begins to brown.
• Add the garlic to the onion, and saute a minute more. Remove from heat.
• When pasta is done, drain and return it to pan with the Earth Balance.
• Toss in the tomatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, and basil.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.  At this point I wanted a little more garlic flavor, so I added some garlic powder here.

Zucchini Bread

I bought some really delicious zucchini from the farmer's market last week and I just couldn't use it all, so I decided to make zucchini bread.  You'll probably hear this over and over again, but my very favorite baking cookbook is The Joy of Vegan Baking. So I decided to use the recipe from there for zucchini bread. (You can follow the link for the recipe on Googlebooks)   It turned out great!

Tips on the recipe:

• It tells you to grate the zuchinni, but I shredded it, unpeeled, with the shredding blade on my food processor and it turned out great!
• It also gives you the option of using Ener G Egg replacer or ground flax seeds. I used Ener G.  The stuff is great to have around even if you cook with eggs because sometimes you run out, and if you have a box of this in your cabinet you never have to go without your favorite baked goods just because you ran out of eggs!  Tip: It says to whip it in a food processor or blender first.  They're not kidding,  don't skip this! It becomes this creamy fluffy stuff that helps make it more like an egg.  I use the beater on my Kitchenaid on high for about 2 minutes.
• The recipe calls for nuts and raisins. I didn't have any so I left them out.  My friend puts frozen blueberries in hers and it's so good!  She said she tosses the frozen blueberries in flour first to keep them from bleeding into the bread.

Slow.Cookin.Chili.

The temperature drops below 105 and I decide it's Chili time! With school in session, I am happy to make anything that lends itself to a slow cooker.   Also, Greg pretty much lives for the stuff, so it's automatic praise from the hubby.  He has officially had 3 bowls in the last two hours.

So over the years of experimenting with different chili recipes, I basically just threw them all together in my head and created my own. It happens to be vegan, and every meat eater that's tried it loves it just the same! I had to sub my favorite bean combinations today for what was in the cabinet and it turned out delicious, but I still favor my original recipe.  So here it is my friends! I am considering entering it in the neighborhood chili cookoff!

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Chili

HINT: Good spices are VERY important.  I have never had much luck with store bought chili powder, it always seems too spicy.  I like to use mild chili powder from our local spice store.  You get more chili flavor without so much heat. I go to the local Spice Merchant for all of ours.

Save yourself some time in the morning by chopping your onion and green pepper before bed.


Ingredients
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 medium onion, diced
    1 medium green bell pepper, diced
    1 clove garlic, minced
    1 (14-ounce) can red beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can red kidney beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can pinto beans drained and rinsed
    1 (14-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, no salt added
    1 (14-ounce) can tomato sauce (no salt added)
    8 ounces vegan ground burger (e.g., Boca meatless grounds)
    1 to 1-1/2 tablespoons MILD chili powder
    1 tablespoon cocoa powder
    1 tablespoon molasses
    1 teaspoon ground cumin
    salt, to taste
(salt is to taste becuase I buy ALL my beans and ALL my tomatoes and such with no salt added) If you use salted stuff it is likely that you will not need any additional salt)
Directions:

1. In a pan, heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onions and bell pepper; saute until onions are translucent.  Add garlic; saute for 1 minute.

2. In a slow cooker, add remaining ingredients (red beans, red kidney beans, pinto beans, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, vegan ground burger, chili powder, cocoa powder, molasses, cumin, and salt), then onions-pepper mixture.

3. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.

Serve with crackers, fritos, daiya vegan cheese, or whatever else your heart desires.

Millions of Peaches... Peaches for Me...

So. I made a pie. 

There really is no better feeling than making an entire pie from scratch and have it come out beautifully (or not so beautifully).  My Aunt Patty made pies with ugly crusts.  One year, she came to Christmas at my house with a pie plate as part of my gift (with a pie in it, of course!) and she told me about how she liked her crusts no matter how ugly they were. Everytime my pie crust is a little funny I just mush it together and think of Patty.

Peaches are in season right now so I decided to adapt this Blackberry and Nectarine recipe from Vegetarian times to make a peach pie.  WARNING: I LOVE TAKING PICTURES OF PIES.   There will be no apologies for overloading this post with beautiful pie making pictures.  I am not going to post the recipe, since I linked to it. I'll just tell you some tips, and changes from me. Here goes.

FIRST: FREEZE EVERYTHING!!! Before I make my pies, I freeze my rolling pin, my food processor (I use it to make the crust) my flour, my margarine, etc..   Pie crust will come out so much more flaky if everything is icy when you use it.

Also, quality flour is everything. War Eagle Mill. Enough said.

I pulse my crust in the food processor. The idea is to get whatever fat you are using (oil, shortening, margarine, I use Earth Balance vegan margarine) to be in tiny little pebbles covered by flour. THIS is how you get the flakiness.  If overworked, you get a chewy unflaky crust, so the food processor works best. Otherwise you'll need a pastry cutter. This is how it should look before you form it into a ball:

After you have made two dough balls (one slightly larger than the other) just chill...  Put them in the fridge to chill for an hour in plastic wrap while you make your filling.

Lots of recipes call for you to blanch nectarines or peaches to help peel them. Do yourself a favor.. SKIP IT. It is too time consuming. Bust out your peeler and get to peeling like a potato.

Another tip about the filling.  This recipe calls for tapioca flour, but you can sub arrowroot powder in my opinion.  If you use tapioca flour, you'll need a little more than called for if you use peaches. I subbed the vanilla bean for 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract, and used 3 1/2 lbs of peaches, and no other berries.

Now it's time to roll the crust out. Confession: I have no good tips for this, because I always tear my crust and have to do some magic patching... so maybe you should google that one. The only advice I can add is that you should use the larger doughball to make the bottom crust so you have plenty of edges leftover to fold over the top one.
Notice husbands mouth in corner... I have got to start putting bells on him.  Always sneakin into my pictures..

I always use a pie crust protector for the first half hour of pie baking so my crust isn't too brown. You can buy them anywhere that sells baking supplies.

Voila! It's pie!

It was the flakiest, most delicious crust I've ever made!  We had some after it cooled last night.. and I can't wait to have pie for breakfast tomorrow morning!

Southern Fried Chick-free.

     Saturday I went to the farmer's market and came home with a loot.  I got peaches, zuchinni, tomatoes, salsa, green peppers, pasta, and a giant bag of okra.  So Saturday night I set out to make some deliciousness. I really wanted to use the okra so I did some research and fired up the oven to roast it.   Next, we needed to figure out a main course, so we opened up the cookbooks.
    
     My favorite cookbook is Veganomicon... or really any of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's cookbooks.  Greg and I both use this cookbook regularly and have never had anything less than great results and a delicious dinner.  So we usually just pick something and go for it.  This time we picked the Chickpea Cutlets.  We're going southern here, so of course I had to add some country gravy.
  
To roast the okra:
Preheat oven to 425.
All you have to do is wash it and cut into pieces about 1/2 inch thick and toss it with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread the okra in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for about 30 minutes until carmelized and slightly crisp edges. (stir and turn every 10 minutes or so). I like to line my baking sheet with parchment paper or foil so there is less mess. I chopped a few fresh tomatoes up and roasted them on a different sheet at the same time (I recommend parchment paper for that one).

Here is my gravy recipe:
            1/4  C all purpose flour
            2 Cups unsweetened plain soy milk  (you could use oat milk too, but rice milk and almond  milk are a little too sweet)
            1/2 tsp onion powder
            1/4 tsp salt (more to taste)
            pepper to taste
            3 TB Earth Balance butter

Add the flour  to the "milk" in a medium saucepan over medium heat, and whisk until combined. Add onion powder, salt, and any other variations, and keep whisking over medium heat until gravy thickens.  Once gravy begins to thicken, add the Earth Balance and pepper, and whisk in. I like lots of pepper.  Remove from heat when desire thickness is reached.

variations: add 1/2 tsp or more of sage, or thyme.
 

Note: Greg reccomends that we cut a little bit of the vital wheat gluten out of this recipe. So we might try a little less of it next time!

           

I should also add that I made sage and dill biscuits the next morning and we had this all over again as leftovers! 
    





Too much goodness! Spaghetti Squash with Spaghetti sauce!

Here's the short story.  I have been wanting to start a food/life blog for awhile now but never seem to have the time.  Now that school is getting underway again I am sure I will have even less time, but the problem is I have made SO much fun food this week that I felt I should share some ideas.  I don't have the pictures I would like for these, but it's a start and I will update and revise later. 

First of all, if you have never had Spaghetti Squash you MUST try it ASAP.  It's healthy for you and so easy to prepare.  A couple of nights ago, I made it with homemade spaghetti sauce.  I like to make spaghetti sauce from fresh tomatoes, but no salt added canned tomatoes work well too.

You can google many ways to cook a Spaghetti Squash and pictures to see the magic of it, but I don't have any this week. So the short answer is: Cut in half, rub with olive oil, roast with cut sides down for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees.   After it cools for awhile, use a fork and run it across the flesh. A magical thing happens and suddenly you have hundreds of spaghetti like strands to set aside and use for your pasta.

Here's my basic, quick, spaghetti sauce.  You can cook this in the slow cooker for a few hours for a more complex flavor, but 25-30 minutes will do on a simmer.

2 tsp TB olive oil
1/2 small onion diced
2 cloves minced garlic
2  14oz cans organic-no salt added diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 red wine

Saute onion in olive oil over medium heat until translucent.  Add garlic and saute a minute more.  Add remaining ingredients. Use a potato masher to mash up some of the tomatoes.  Bring to a gentle boil, then turn down to a simmer and simmer for about 30 minutes (or however much time you have).  About 5 minutes before you are done simmering, add the red wine.  It should have a little time for the alcohol flavor to cook out.

That is how easy a basic spaghetti sauce is.  It gets a little more complicated if you use fresh tomatoes, but not much.  Also, you can add whatever you like. Suggestions: saute some green pepper and mushrooms with the onions.