One of my favorite blogs to read is Gena’s Choosing Raw.

Even though I don’t follow a raw foods diet, her blog has shown me that there are many ways I could be incorporating more raw food, and the plethora of yummy recipes she’s created have helped me to do just that.

One recipe I make constantly is her carrot miso dressing.  I can remember the first time I made it I was looking at the raw carrot chunks in my half-made dressing and thought “well, it’ll probably be good for health food, but not really good.” I was so wrong.

There were so many “mmmms!” let out during that first salad. I couldn’t believe I was enjoying a salad that I made that much, as I’d never been able to recreate the awesomeness of a restaurant salad at home before.

I tried to use up the left-over bottles of pre-made salad dressing in my fridge, but after a month I gave up and threw them out.

The best part is that it’s really simple to make.  I followed her recipe exactly the first time, but now I substitute the soy sauce for a heaping tablespoon of tahini. The miso I use is already so salty that adding soy sauce was too much, and the tahini makes the dressing slightly creamy.

It’s as easy as throwing everything in the food processor…

Blitzing it up thoroughly…

And either storing…

Or using right away…

Mmmmm….. That’s a baked sweet potato covered in garlic powder, salt, and honey. Sounds weird, but it’s an awesome combination. Paired with a small salad topped with the carrot miso dressing, it was a delicious ode to orange!

October 19, 2010 Alayna Discussion 4 comments

Sitting here eating a little breakfast of toasted vegan pumpkin bread smeared with Earth Balance, and a hot and damp-smelling pu-erh tea.

Today is a great day because it’s my husbands last day at his current place of employment!  He is moving on to much greener pastures and I’m so proud of him for pursuing more fulfilling work.

What’s really great about that is that I get him all to myself all week while he takes some time off before his next job starts.

I love it when we’re off during the week together.  It makes me feel so sneaky, like we’re cutting class or something! I also never get anything done when he’s home cuz we goof off and play games all day.

Maybe I should try to get a little housework done before he gets home then?

October 19, 2010 Alayna Discussion Comments Off on A week with the hubs

So, we’ve had a bunch of bananas in the freezer for kind of a while now and I’ve been meaning to turn them into banana bread for as long as they’ve been in there.

Today was the day! Banana bread for everyone! Yay to using up left-overs!

Not really.

I put the bananas in the fridge to thaw over-night and what greeted me this morning was not pleasant. They had oozed out a brown banana-scented liquid all over the fridge and were sagging and falling apart.  They were in an unsalvageable state.

Enter pumpkin, our hero of this tale! I knew I made all that pumpkin puree for something!

I was inspired by this recipe.  I’ve made quite a few changes to the original so I don’t feel bad about writing it out with my adjustments for you:

• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/4 cup softened Earth Balance
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup flax meal
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 cup almond milk
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Start by creaming together the vegan butter and sugars, then add the pumpkin. This picture shows the wrong way to do it…

I got ahead of myself here and added the pumpkin in with the sugars because that’s what the original recipe said to do. The butter clumped though, and I think it would have incorporated better without the pumpkin present. The finished product didn’t seem to be affected by the uneven butter though, so no worries if you do it this way.

Meanwhile, mix all the dry stuff together…

Add it to the wet slowly, in three installments.  When it’s completely incorporated, add the almond milk and mix through.

Pour into a buttered and floured loaf pan and spread to the edges.

Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees.

And here she is!…

I let it sit until it was cool enough to pick up then turned it out of the pan and let it cool on a rack.

I did not have high hopes for this bread, the batter tasted kind of awful. The finished bread is a real winner though.  It’s not too sweet; should make a great breakfast bread. It may look a bit dry in the pictures, but I assure you it’s nice and supple!

I’d say this is a triumphant ending to the great banana massacre that took place in my fridge.

Oh, pumpkin.  You’re my hero!

October 18, 2010 Alayna Discussion, Recipes Comments Off on Vegan banana (er…pumpkin) bread