Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Vegans who eat meat???

What's that you say?  You bake vegan monkey bread, vegan chocolate chip cookies, and vegan rum balls and then eat them along side meat?  Real meat?  As in you are "we just bought a sixth of a cow to eat" meat-eaters?  Who are you people???

Well, as it turns out, we aren't as crazy as we sound.  Because Amanda can't eat milk or eggs (without paying dire consequences and who wants to go there) we tend to follow vegan recipes and then add some meat to our meals in other ways.  At first I thought that cooking for someone with allergies was going to be a huge challenge and limiting in the variety and complexity of the food we eat.  Turns out the only thing we haven't been able to find a dairy and egg free version of is meringue.  Well, and cheese but that is a sore subject for Amanda anyway.  And me?  I have become so accustomed to cooking without milk or eggs that it is second nature!

As we mentioned in our Christmas post we made vegan monkey bread for our Yellow House Christmas which turned out just as well as the original and was tres délicieux.  If you haven't heard of monkey bread it is basically balls of biscuit dough dipped in melted butter, rolled in cinnamon sugar and then baked so that when you turn out the pan there is a pile of gooey, sticky, sinful little bites of deliciousness to pull apart and devour.

A classic monkey bread recipe via http://www.craftyinthekitchen.com/
So how do you take a non-vegan recipe and make it safe for Miss Amanda to eat?  We typically break a recipe down into its components and look at them separately to see what makes the most sense.  In the case of monkey bread, since the base is biscuits (most commonly refrigerated biscuit dough) we looked at our options for biscuits first.

The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has become our Bible when it comes to the basics of vegan baking.  Using her Drop Biscuits recipe and making a few tweaks in their preparation, we were able to make a pretty darn tasty version of what would be a completely off limits food for Amanda.  And you never would have guessed that there was no milk involved.

Yellow House Monkey Bread

Ingredients
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup canola oil

1/4 cup Earth Balance dairy free margarine, melted
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F.

Mix together sugar and cinnamon in a shallow dish.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt until combined.  Add the milk and oil and stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened. It will be very sticky and thick, not smooth like cake batter.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to 1/2 inch thickness.  Cut into roughly 2 inch squares.  Roll each square into a ball.  Dip balls into melted Earth Balance, then roll in cinnamon sugar.  Place balls in baking dish.

Bake about 10-12 minutes, depending on the shape of your dish.  The Earth Balance should melt and the dish should look gooey and shiny.  The dough is cooked when it is is firm to the touch.

Let cool for  5 minutes, then turn out onto a serving dish.

Adapted from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  Patrick-Goudreau, Colleen. "Drop Biscuits." Recipe. The Joy of Vegan Baking: The Compassionate Cooks' Traditional Treats and Sinful Sweets. Beverly, MA: Fair Winds Press, 2007.pg. 48.


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Merry Christmas from the Yellow House!

Merry Christmas from the Yellow House!  We have all be super busy, getting ready for all the festivities that the holidays bring.  Care to take a look?  Of course you do, don't lie.

There were Christmas gifts to be made.

You can't expect us to reveal too much, now!  Christmas isn't until tomorrow after all.
And there were stockings to make and hang,
Stefan slaving away at the sewing machine, once again.
The finished product!
Hanging our stocking presented a problem since we have no mantel or even a wall we can put holes in without the 80 year old plaster crumbling off.  Turns out, our little book vignettes make pretty sturdy hangers. 

And check out these cute kiddos!  Can you spot your favorite Yellow House resident?



Stefan, age 3
Katie, age 3

Amanda, age 5

Brandon, age 9
 And what is that you spy over our stockings?  Oh, that would be Brandon's Christmas Village- the crown jewel of our festive decorations.  Just a few of the fab shots captured by B & A.






There was also a tree to be decorated, 
The living room pre-tree...

...the tree being fitted....

...and being lit...

...posed with...
Our tree's name is Nigel.  He is a nobel fir.  We love him.
...and decorated.

That pretty much brings us to today.  To celebrate the first annual Yellow House Christmas we had a delicious breakfast of vegan monkey bread (see an upcoming post for the recipe),  bacon and fruit salad.  And there was lots of laughter and overall goofing off.  Meals are fun around here, if you hadn't guessed.

And then there were stockings and gifts.  It was a lovely and relaxing way to spend our last morning together before heading off to our various family gatherings. I love these people and I am so happy we got to have our own special Christmas together.






Merry Christmas from SKAB (aka the Yellow House).
xoxo Katie


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Projects galore!

The Yellow House Project? What exactly do we mean by "Project"?

Well, as Katie mentioned in the last post, we have all sorts of projects going. Some are current, some are next in line, and others are our "let's dream big, yea?" projects.

What's that?

You want a list?

Well, okay.

GARDENING

We are super excited to have this beauty for a backyard.


Please don't mind the lawn chairs under the tree. They were moved when the lawn was mowed yesterday, and well, we haven't moved them back yet.

While I have no idea about the actual size, it's big. Say, the same square footage as the house. The previous tenants divided it up a bit and sectioned off the back 1/4 for gardening. It's a weedy, bushy mess at the moment.

     Projects include:

  • Pruning the plum and apple trees this winter
  • Pruning and relocating the rose bushes this winter
  • Pruning the raspberry bushes back
  • Building a chicken coop for the garden area
  • Buying chickens and letting them go craaazy in the weedy, bushy garden area
  • Building raised garden beds for veggie garden
  • Build compost bin




Generally speaking, this is where Brandon and Stefan reign. They love working in the garden, getting their hands dirty, and turning that weedy, bushy mess into something lovely. 

COOKING

This is where Katie and I (usually, but not always) reign. In the twelve days since K & S moved in, we've cooked up homemade spaghetti and meatballs, sweet potato hash, chicken pesto pasta, chicken & gravy with herbed carrots, and five loaves of homemade bread. (Can I just say- I woke up this morning to the smell of fresh baked bread and it was heavenly.) 

When it comes to food, we love homemade, simple, nutritious, and if possible, organic. Brandon works for a local, organic grocery store and we love their staff discount, so that's where we do most of our shopping. Our biggest challenge is accommodating food allergies. I (Amanda) am allergic to both dairy and eggs, so we try to substitute when possible and put the offending foods "on the side" as much as possible. 

DECORATING

Oh, la, la. We love to decorate. Katie has a degree in Interior Design and Stefan & Amanda learn through osmosis (and Pinterest). Brandon is generally agreeable to whatever we have in mind, unless it involves Victorian floral patterns (too reminiscent of his childhood). He'll usually join in on conversations and will help with the execution of the plan. The last 12 days have been full of decorating, redecorating, organizing, and a growing list of DIY projects. 

We'll be snapping pictures of our progress thus far soon, so stay tuned.

DIY PROJECTS

A few of our short-term projects
  • Make and hang cafe curtains in kitchen
  • Finish bench for entryway
  • Paint Brandon and Amanda's bedroom

WHOLE LIFE

This is the category that isn't so easy to explain. It's a bit nebulous. We're living together, sure, but we're also actively participating in each other's lives. We're not just random housemates, we're close friends who want to honor and respect each other during this time. Everyone can think back to a time when you lived with a friend and realized you were "better friends than roommates" right? Well, we want to be great friends and great roommates. That means we're closely involved with each other's highs and lows; helping each other with dishes and big life decisions. And that's the part we're most excited about. 

Anyone else out there co-housing? Or do you think we're crazy?


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