Mixing it all together

OK, another recipe from the Healthy Lunchbox. True, we had already made a brown rice pudding, but what the heck, we thought we would do another one.

Only problem was, we didn’t have any rice milk or almond milk or soy milk in the house. I thought I had goat milk, but when I picked it up I discovered it had curdled. What to do? I took some powdered milk and made the milk with that. I was trying to cook with what I had at home, and not run off to the store.

Here is what the recipe called for

• 1 1/2 cup of nut or rice or soy milk (we used powdered dry milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup of honey
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup of raisins
• 2 cups of brown rice
• 1/2 cup chopped almonds

We cooked it at 350F for about an hour, as they suggested.

Finished Rice Pudding

For some reason, our stuff never looks showroom perfect, but it ends up tasting fine, most of the time, as this one did.

which one did I like better? I’m not sure, since I wasn’t the one eating the brown rice, but this one tasted fine. Not sure if we’ll make it again or not.

Unlike me, Cartoonist gets sick of eating the same food all the time, so we have to rotate through a lot of food.

carrots and coconut milk

Wow, this was a great recipe, and we loved how it came out. We discovered this one because Cartoonist has to make her lunches, this year, in high school, and we wanted a cook book that was made for lunches, and packable lunches. What we bought was “Vegan Lunch box” by Jennifer McCann. We figured it was a good place to start. (and I spend far too much on cookbooks, but oh well, we all have our vices)

pre mix

Cartoonist started leafing through the book, and found Coconut Carrot Rice Pudding. We had all the ingredients, so figured it was a good one to make. The only problem we ran into was that it called for 3 cups of brown basmati rice. Brown rice takes about 2 hours to cook, vs. white rice, which is 20 minutes. So, I put the rice in the rice cooker, and went on to do other things. Cartoonist kept saying, “Aren’t we going to make the rice pudding” and I kept saying, yes, when the rice is done.

Although the recipe called for grating the carrots, I ended up putting them into the food processor. Here is what was needed.

• 1 pound of carrots (peeled and grated (3 cups worth). I didn’t peel them.
• 1 can of light coconut milk (I just used the regular kind
• 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup (we used a quarter of a cup, as it is so sweet)
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamon
• 1/2 cup golden raisins (we used black raisins)

So, We took the carrots, coconut milk and maple syrup and put them on the stove and cooked until it was all soft. Then we put in the rest of the mix and kept cooking until it was thick.

finished

When it was all done, we tasted it, and thought it tasted quite good, even though it didn’t look too good. Once it was cool, it still looked odd, but tasted great.

A keeper.

Cartoonist took that as well as the chilled apple soup, to school for lunch.

Fresh Plumbs

Well, what do you do with plums, other than eat them? One thing, not to do, is to leave them on the counter until they go moldy, which is what happened to the first batch I got from my CSA. So, I was bound and determined not to let that happen again.

I almost took the plums that had gone soft and hadn’t gotten moldy, and tried to make plum jam, but I didn’t have pectin, and I didn’t have the time, so decided to just cook the plums that hadn’t gone bad.

So, I read all my cook books, but could find nothing that I wanted to make with plums, so I asked my friend, Chris, to send me what she had. She found one called Swiss Plum Cake, along with a bunch of other ones, that sounded closest to what I wanted to do with the plums, and didn’t call for me to make them into plum jam, which seemed like a waste.

Plums in the batter

It seemed like an easy thing to make. It called for 1 egg, I used three, because I was going to make it with non-wheat flour. I took the three eggs, mixed with 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of my home made yogurt and mixed them together

Then I took 1 cup of King Arther Gluten free flour and 1/2 cup of coconut flour, and mixed them in with one teaspoon of baking soda and a pinch of sea salt. Then I added 6 tablespoons of melted butter, and cut up the plums. The recipe called for 2 pounds, but I just put all the plums I had into the batter, after I poured it into the pan. The last touch was to drizzle honey on top.

Finished cake

I baked it at 375F for 45 minutes.

I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like, and I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to taste like, but it tasted fine, a little tart and not too sweet, which I liked.

My sweetie ate it nearly all up and called it a “keeper” so, that is a good sign. If I get more plums, I’ll make it again. That is the problem, however, with making things with fruit in season, that when the season is gone, so is the dish, until next year.

Fruit mix

Last night, I thought I would be practical, and do a recipe that would use up some of the fruit was was going bad. Not bad, like fermented, but a little squishy. I found a great recipe on the King Arthur flour blog for sorbet that didn’t require an ice cream maker, so thought, that sounds cool, let me try that. (the link above isn’t quite the recipe I followed, but has more pictures and steps.The original link, for Sorbet two Ways, has less pictures and explanation.)

The recipe called for 3 3/4 cups of blended fruit. They recommended using apples, kiwis and pears or raspberries and peaches. I decided that since it said fruit, I could use any fruit that I could mush up, so I set to it. I wrote it down too, in case this mess turned out to be any good, seeing as I wasn’t really following the recipe at that point.

I used 1 strawberry (that I found in my garden.), 1/2 pint of blueberries that were a bit on the bitter side, 2 figs that were past their prime, 2 kiwis, 3 or 4 small plumbs, 2 granny smith apples, which I cut up and zapped in the microwave, as requested.

The blender actually blended everything, which surprised me to no end, as it usually didn’t do that.

On the stove I heated on cup of water and 3/4 of a cup of raw sugar. I don’t think I needed to heat that much sugar, as this was to be added to the mix, and the mix was already sweet. I think if I make this again, I’ll add tarter fruit, or less sugar.  Once the sugar and water were cool, I mixed it into the fruit, and added about two lemons worth of lemon juice. I think I could have added more.

Finished sorbe

The recipe called for chilling it in the freezer in a flat pan, and then stirring it every hour on the hour. I said, after the first stir, screw this. The recipe also called for taking it out to server after a few hours, but once again I was in the screw it mode. It was late, and I didn’t feel like staying up late to stir frozen fruit.

In the morning it wasn’t too solid as I was able to put some on my granola, which helped with the overly sweet taste. This afternoon, when I tasted it, it had frozen even more, and I had to jab to get any out. This is probably why, like the souffle, one must server it when it is ready to be served.