Homemade Pita Chips

This is a great recipe as it is pretty cheap, fast and easy to make for a party. All you need is a cookie sheet, some pitas, salt, and olive oil.

Just rip or cut the pitas into chip sized pieces. Lay them out on the cookie sheet. Spray them with some olive oil. Sprinkle them with some salt. Put them in the oven till they are as crisp as you like them, if you prefer softer I would stick closer to 350 degrees and from crisper chips closer to 400 degrees. This should make it easier to not overcook them.

Vegan Eggnog Muffins wtih Boozy Raisins

Todays special treat was these eggnog muffins with boozy raisins. These were something hubby saw in my current favorite baking cookbook and decided he really wanted me to make them so today I made a test batch and if we like them then I will be making more for the Festivus party we are going to Thursday night. I know they are a bit too traditional holiday to normally bring to a Festivus party, but hey they do have rum in them so considering this Festivus party is really pretty much all about booze and video games I think I am fine with these muffins.

This recipe is from page 67 of Kris Holechek's The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes: Amazing cookies, cakes, muffins, pies, brownies and breads.

Vegan Pumpkin cookies with Vegan cream cheese frosting

This is not the first time I have made these cookies, but this is the first time I have made this frosting and frosted these cookies. These cookies are nice and moist and rather tasty, but let me just say that this cream cheese frosting is incredible and really makes these cookies irresistible. I know this will become one of my go to cookies cause these are so amazing with this cream cheese frosting.

The cookie recipe is from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek and the frosting recipe was veganized by me from a recipe I found at Cooks.com

Vegan blueberry pancakes

I have made these buttermilk pancakes a number of times, but this was the first time I added blueberries. Usually I add chocolate chips if I add anything at all to them, but last night my son was requesting blueberry pancakes so I went to the store and picked up the couple of extra items I needed to make these pancakes. They were definitely tasty, but I think next time I will also make some kind of a blueberry compote or syrup to go with the pancakes.

I adapted the buttermilk pancake recipe from The 30-Minute Vegan: Over 175 Quick, Delicious, and Healthy Recipes for Everyday Cooking by Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray.

Vegan Pumpkin cookies and Pumpkin chocolate chip jack-o-lantern cookies

We have a party to go to on Halloween and there is a pot luck at the end so of course I had to figure out something to bring just in case we stay for the pot luck. Cookies seemed like a good safe option, especially since desserts are usually the hardest thing for me at parties. Almost all desserts have dairy in them so I usually try to bring a dessert so that I am safe.

I was thinking about making either chocolate chip cookies or peanut butter cookies and then I cam across a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and thought for Halloween that seemed pretty appropriate. I forgot to mix the chocolate chips into the mix before putting the cookies on the sheets for baking so I ended up making half with chocolate chips and half without, thus the attempt at jack-o-lanterns for the cookies with chocolate chips. Hopefully the cookies will be a big hit at the party.

Vegan chocolate chip cookies with pecans

Tonight I had a bit of a craving for cookies so I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. They always seem to make everything better. Maybe it is that they make you think of childhood when times were simpler and a cookie really could make all your problems melt away. For me even the act of making them seems to put everything in perspective. I guess for me baking is a kind of zen like activity and when I am done there is something delicious to share with others.

My husband absolutely loved these cookies. He said they were the best chocolate chip cookies he has had in a long time, longer than he can remember. This recipe was from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes: Amazing Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Pies, Brownies and Breads by Kris Holechek which is my favorite vegan baking book and one of my favorite baking books period. I highly recommend this for anyone, vegan or not. I bought it because I have severe dairy issues and I am very glad that I did buy this book because the recipes are so good my husband doesn't request recipes outside of this book because he loves these so much.

part time vegan

These days I am a part time vegan, I am aware that saying I am a part time vegan sounds a bit odd and probably even makes some people question my commitment to a change in my lifestyle but this isn't about getting acceptance from others. Over the years I have made a lot of changes in my life and I think how I got here and why this works well for me and my family is an interesting story that may make you think about what is the best way for you to make long term changes in your life, should you wish to make changes.

A few years ago I was introduced to the idea of being a part time vegetarian for environmental reasons and we thought that sounded like a good way to start eating less meat. Both my husband and I had tried to go vegetarian in the past (independently of each other) and found after time that we weren't feeling our best so we went back to eating meat again. It seemed that eating a well balanced vegetarian diet would take more time to plan out than either of us had so as my husband says we were non practicing vegetarians.

When we decided to give part time vegetarianism a try we decided to aim for no more than 7 meals a week that included meat. This may sound like a lot, but if you think about it a lot of people eat meat with all 3 meals every day and that is approximately 21 meals a week. Since we had a newborn at the time this part time vegetarian diet made balancing our diet a little easier on us. Over time we tended to eat less and less meat, but we never gave up meat completely.

About 2 years passed with our part time vegetarian diet I began playing with some vegan recipes due to my ongoing issues with dairy and our son's upcoming birthday where we would have a few vegan and non-dairy friends in attendance. I didn't want these kids to not be able to enjoy the cupcakes or to have to bring their own meals to the party. I found that vegan baking wasn't all that difficult and no one knew the food was vegan if I didn't tell them. My cookies, cupcakes, muffins, and even pancakes were just as good as the traditional diary versions I made.

Over the next few months I ended up being very happy that I had begun learning to bake and even cook and eat vegan friendly meals because my diary issues really started to flare up again. This time I had already done much of the homework to make the transition easier, previously when my diary issues flared up badly I really didn't know what I was doing and had a difficult time eating dairy-free. I do still eat a little bit of dairy here and there, but when I do have a little dairy I often end up feeling really sick after wards.

I have been very happy taking my dietary changes slowly and have found that easing into these changes has made it much easier and I also feel much healthier than in my previous attempt at a vegetarian diet and a dairy-free diet. Now I am a part time vegan and really don't feel deprived. I still have to try making a vegan cheesecake and tiramisu, as those are two very dairy heavy deserts that my husband and I both love.

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

These are a variation on a recipe in The 100 Best VEGAN BAKING Recipes by Kris Holenchek. The recipe in the cookbook called for green and blue food colorings to make the cupcakes look like Earth, but by omitting the food coloring I have cookies and cream cupcakes.



I frosted these with a buttercream frosting (from the same cookbook) and mixed crushed cookie pieces into the frosting so that I had a cookies and cream frosting for the cupcakes. The first time I made these cupcakes I made the buttercream frosting, frosted the cupcakes and then dipped them in crushed cookie pieces. The cookie pieces didn't adhere too well to the frosting by applying them to the frosting, but mixing them into the frosting really did the trick.

Lemon Almond Bling Muffins

I have made these muffins before and one of our friends really loves these, she said these are the best muffins she has ever had. I tried this recipe when I was in the process of majorly trimming back my lemon tree, I baked and cooked all kinds of things with lemon. I also made lots of lemonade and lemon soda at that point in time. Now that the lemon tree is healthier and isn't quite so full of lemons I can use them at a more sane pace, but I still love these muffins and a few other recipes I found during that lemon period. This recipe is in The 100 Best VEGAN BAKING Recipes book on page 66. Seriously I know it seems like I only make things out of this book, honestly I don't, but it is an excellent book. I love this book very much and recommend it to all my friends who are looking for vegan baking recipes, this has definitely become one of my favorite cookbooks.

Raspberry Lime Muffins

I know for a 3 year old's birthday party you need to have lots of cupcakes and of course I will, 4 dozen cupcakes. But then I thought what about something a little less sweet for those who maybe find cupcakes to be too sweet or for those who might be watching their weight and so I decided to make 2 kinds of muffins as well. I saw the recipe for Raspberry Lime Muffins in The 100 Best VEGAN BAKING Recipes (page 68) and thought that these would be a nice alternative to a cupcake with frosting, something a little sweet with the raspberries but not overly sweet and no frosting necessary. I can hardly wait to try these at the party, I'm even kind of hoping they don't all get eaten so I can have some for breakfast next week. I guess if they all get eaten though that would be a good thing, it would show people enjoyed them. I guess either way I'll be happy.

Banana Split Cupcakes

I found this recipe in The 100 Best VEGAN BAKING Recipes by Kris Holenchek (page 98) and they sounded so amazing that I couldn't help but try the recipe out for my son's birthday. After all they sounded like something a crowd of toddlers would love. I have had amazing will power to resist eating one myself yet (I admit I did taste the batter as did my little helper) but I did give one of the cupcakes (unfrosted) to one of my son's teachers the other day to say thank you for an amazing act of kindness on her part. She loved it, she said she was expecting blueberries and then realized there were chocolate chips in it and was very pleasantly surprised.


I am planning to frost these cupcakes with Fudgy Frosting (page 157) and then sprinkle them with some chopped up salted peanuts and top each one with a stemmed maraschino cherry. Of course another fun option would have been to use Buttercream Frosting (page 157) and then drizzle some chocolate syrup on top and then sprinkle on the peanuts and top with the cherries. Anyhow, I am really excited to have such fun Vegan cupcakes to serve for this birthday party. Especially since my son has 2 friends who can't eat dairy. It makes me feel good to know that I can provide a yummy birthday spread that all the kids can enjoy. I'll try to remember to take pictures of all the cupcakes when they are frosted.

Meatless Monday...

I know that Meatless Monday has been pretty widely publicized, but I thought I would share the goal that we have made in our house.

I really liked the idea of getting people to make a small commitment like 1 day or 3 meals a week. Well since we haven't been eating a lot of meat for quite a while I figured that we would do better to do Meat Mondays. By Meat Mondays I mean that we try to eat meat only 3 meals a week. We figured that this would make a bigger environmental impact and would encourage us to keep getting greener in our eating.

An unexpected side effect of eating more vegetarian and vegan meals is that we are getting more creative about what we eat. We have really begun to enjoy our local Farmer's Market more and more as we have been adding more vegetables into our diet. It is a lot of fun to go to the Farmer's Market and see what looks good and just buy some to bring home and figure out a yummy meal to make with the fresh vegetables we picked up.

Last week I made baked potatoes with fresh broccoli, red bell pepper, onion and a little cheddar cheese. They were so yummy. There is nothing more tasty than some truly ripe and fresh food.

My evolving diet

Through my adulthood my diet has slowly changed for various reasons. I more or less gave up on all pork after getting a bad case of food poisoning from a pork sandwich once. I have cut back on most dairy over the years as a result of my body having difficulty in processing milk and cheese products. I have slowly been eating less and less meat over time for many reasons - first because it was just expensive when I had little money, then because I was really afraid of getting salmonella or some other food born pathogen, after that I became more concerned over the environmental impact that eating meat has and the way the animals are treated, and now I am beginning to realize that when I have a reasonable amount of meat with any given meal I feel really heavy after I'm done (think about how you feel after Thanksgiving dinner or any other really big feast) and sometimes the next day I wake up feeling a little under the weather (as if I am coming down with a cold).

This is how my diet has slowly evolved to being primarily vegetarian and leaning towards vegan for the most part. I must say that this evolution of my diet has had some wonderful effect already. I get sick less often that I used to. I don't feel so heavy or uncomfortable after I eat. I have been losing weight without even trying. I have been eating more and more fresh foods and have even begun to buy more locally produced food. I have also grown to have a big interest in growing my own food. I have also begun to be far more willing to experiment in the kitchen, this has led us to find many new favorite foods. I am also very happy that our 2 and 1/2 year old son loves his fruits and veggies and other healthy foods so much, he will choose a good piece of fruit over a cookie any day.