Birthday Pumpkin Waffles

Recently we celebrated Ryland's 4th birthday, and as per his request I made Pumpkin Waffles for his celebratory breakfast!

2 cups flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbl cornstarch (I use arrowroot)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 large eggs, separated
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 Tbl melted butter (I've sometimes used oil)
3/4 cup chopped nuts

Combine flour, sugar, cornstarch, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, ginger and nutmeg in a large bowl. Combine egg yolks, milk and pumpkin in a medium bowl and mix well. Add wet ingredients to the flour mixture. Stir in the melted butter or oil. Beat egg whites in a small bowl until soft peaks from. Gently fold them into the batter mix.

Preheat waffle iron according to manufacturer's directions. Pour in batter and generously sprinkle with nuts (I've discovered that many kids do not like nuts in their waffles, so I do the first half of the batch without this step, then add the nuts to the second half).

Delicious served with yoghurt and pumpkin maple sauce - which I make by mixing pumpkin puree with cinnamon, adding maple syrup and heating on the stove top.

Ryland obviously THOROUGHLY enjoys these:-)

Butternut Squash Soup

Winter is hanging on, and with a recent round of long illnesses in our house, we've been eating soup non-stop. I absolutely love soup as a staple to my diet during the colder months, but find the challenge to be finding a recipe that all five members of the family will enjoy. This soup happens to fit that bill, so I thought I'd share the recipe in the hopes that your family will enjoy it too!!!!! I'm sure at one point I scribbled the exact measurements down from a magazine, but now I've made it so often that I just wing it each time.

Butternut Apple Soup

1 Tbl oil, or melted butter
1 small purple onion
1 medium butternut squash
4 Macintosh apples
1-2 tsp cumin
large pinch ground ginger
2 cups soup stock

Peel and chop the squash into small squares, set aside. Peel and chop the apples, and set aside. Heat oil or butter in pot, and cook onions on medium heat until they are soft. Add the squash and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the cumin and ginger and stir well. Add apples and cook for a minute, then add soup stock and enough water to cover. Partially cover the pot with a lid, and cook under medium heat until everything is soft. Blend soup together, and add salt and pepper as needed.

Enjoy! One daughter loves this soup with cheese melted on a baked potato, another with a tea biscuit on the side.

Vegan Stuffed Cabbage

Winter is seemingly never-ending, so we're still digging out hearty recipes to try, that will make us feel cozy (even though a beach and a fresh tropical fruit salad would really be most welcome right now)!

Last night it was vegan stuffed cabbage. A friend had said she loved the "meatloaf" from the Field Roast brand, so we thought we'd try it. V. is a much bigger fan of fake meat than I am, but it was flavorful and had good texture, and as far as processed vegetarian food goes, this seems fairly harmless (no weird ingredients, short shelf life, organic). Here it is:

Crumbled tempeh or even just rice and mushrooms would have made a perfect filling as well!!

I served the rice on the side, as well as some sauteed kale, so that we would get our greens!

All the recipes I read said to hold the cabbage rolls together with string or toothpicks, but I found that laying them close to each other in the pan made them hold together fine. They do look like something from an alien science lab at that point (but they'll get covered with sauce):

Stuffed Cabbage

1 head of green gabbage

4 cups of cremini mushrooms

2 small yellow onions

2 leeks

3 cloves garlic

1/2 cup white wine or vegetable broth

1 Field Roast Classic Meatloaf (or 1-2 packages crumbled tempeh)

2 32oz jars of your favorite tomato sauce (or home-made)

olive oil

Bring water to boil in a pot that is big enough to hold the entire head of cabbage. Place the cabbage in the water and cook for approx. 4 minutes. Remove from heat and take cabbage out of the water. Let it cool a little. This will make it easier to peel off individual leaves, without tearing them.

Cover the bottom of large, deep saute pan with a thin layer of olive oil. Saute the chopped onions, garlic and leeks until they start to turn golden. Add the mushrooms and wine or broth. Cook on medium heat until the liquid has reduced. In the meantime, cut the meatloaf into small cubes and add to the mushrooms. Add about half a jar of tomato sauce. Transfer everything to a bowl and set aside.

With the heat off, put a layer of tomato sauce in the bottom of the same sautee pan. Stuff individual cabbage leaves with as much filling as they will hold. Place in the pan, seam side down. Squeeze in as many cabbage rolls as will fir. Completely cover with tomato sauce. Cover pan and simmer for about 45 minutes, until the cabbage is tender.

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Vegan Arugula Walnut Pesto

Since V can't have dairy, we almost never have pasta with pesto sauce together (I usually buy some and eat it on nights when he's not home). But the organic baby arugula at Trader Joe's looked really good this week, so I decided to make arugula pesto myself...cheese free! It's really the easiest thing in the world! And I froze a whole bunch for later use (in sandwiches, on grilled tofu or grilled vegetables etc...)!

We chopped some fresh baby heirloom tomatoes to go on top, along with some pine nuts for crunch!

Arugula Walnut Pesto

4 cups arugula (I used baby, but it's not necessary)

3 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 cup walnut pieces, toasted until fragrant

1 cup olive oil

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

salt and fresh black pepper

Place the arugula, the garlic, walnuts and nutritional yeast in the food processor and blend until it forms a rough paste. While the machine is running, add the olive oil.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Cook and drain pasta of your choice. Mix in as much pesto as you like. Your easy mid-week dinner is done!

Apple Rings

We are FOREVER trying to come up with healthy snack foods that everyone likes, in order to feed these bottomless pits we call children! I'm astounded by how many times they complain of being starving 15 minutes after we've eaten a huge meal, so my goal in life right now seems to be creating healthy and affordable snack foods that they can grab on their own!

We had a bag of apples that no one seemed willing to eat, and finally it came out that everyone thought they tasted gross. So one night Jamie had the brilliant idea of pulling out our dehydrator (something we use a tonne in the summer for camping meals) and dehydrating the apples into rings. Because they didn't like the taste of these specific apples, we put lemon juice and cinnamon on them before hand, but since then have done another batch up plain and the kids LOVED both of them. Pear rings are also a HUGE hit, and now I'm excited to try all sorts of other fruit - melons and blueberries and mangoes. Those will probably wait until the summer, though, when they're more readily available - for now we've included jars of dehydrated apples and pears to our snack list!

Vegetable Phyllo Roll

This recipe is really just a variation of the vegetable pie from January 24th, but a little lighter and quicker! In this case, I not only roasted squash and brussels sprouts and sauteed mushrooms, but also included some cooked wild rice.

On the first night we ate the rolls with miso-mushroom gravy. After that Vernon took them to work and had them without sauce, which was still tasty!

Erica made a variation of these when I was in Ottawa, so she turned me onto the phyllo, and I love it! It makes it easy to portion out the meal, it adds a tasty crunch, and it looks fancy. Next time I might leave out the rice and add tofu, and maybe some spinach!

Phyllo Rolls

1 package frozen phyllo pastry, thawed overnight in the fridge

1 cup wild rice, cooked in vegetable broth

1 small butternut squash, peeled and cut into small cubes

2 handfulls of brussels sprouts, cleaned and quartered

garlic

olive oil

3 cups cremini mushrooms, sliced

1 large shallot, finely chopped

white wine

fresh thyme

Toss the squash and brussels sprouts with olive oil and spread on a sheet pan. Slice a few cloves of garlic thinly and spread over the squash. Sprinkle with salt. Bake at 400F for about 40 minutes.

Heat some olive oil in a pan, with the chopped shallot and some minced garlic. When they become fragrant, add the mushrooms. Add a dash of white wine and some salt. Keep cooking until the mushrooms are soft. Add thyme and cook a couple of minutes longer.

If there is any liquid left in the pan, save it and use a slotted spoon to take out the mushrooms. Set aside.

Lay the phyllo out flat and cover it with wax paper and a damp dish towel. It dries out quickly and this will keep it moist. On a flat surface, spread out a sheet of phyllo, making sure the rest gets re-covered. Brush with a thin layer of olive oil. Add another layer of phyllo. Continue like this, layering oil and pastry, stacking 4-5 sheets of phyllo. Proceed carefully, but don't worry too much if the sheets tear a little.

Spoon a strip of all the fillings along the center of the phyllo. Roll everything up and transfer to a baking sheet. Brush the roll with more olive oil and bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until it starts to look golden.

Cut into pieces and maybe top with gravy!

Miso Mushroom Gravy

1/2 cup miso paste

1/2 cup olive oil

3 tblsp. cornstarch

2 tsp. garlic

2 cups of water

leftover cooking liquid from sauteed mushrooms

Place all ingredients, except for the water, in a food processor and mix well. Add the water and mix again. Transfer everything into the pan you cooked the mushrooms in. Heat, always gently whisking, until the gravy starts to thicken. Done!

Granola

We're big granola eaters in this family - I love it as an evening snack when I'm feeling peckish, and now that Jamie has to get up so early on the days he drives into work, he likes a meal that he can bring along with him and eat once he arrives in the office. We haven't found a brand that we like in the grocery stores, so have been experimenting with homemade ones. We quickly discovered that we don't like granola made with molasses, so have scratched those recipes from our list - and then last weekend I tried out a combination of a few recipes I'd read and came up with a version we both really enjoyed. I still may tweek it a bit here and there, but since that's more to personal tastes, I thought I'd share the recipe so far. I'd love to hear other versions that you make, as it's fun to change up our breakfast foods every once in a while!

Homemade Granola

6 cups of oats (we use a combination of regular oats, quinoa flakes and barley flakes)
4 cups of seeds and nuts (things like sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chopped almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, shredded coconut, raisins, cranberries, etc - essentially a combination that appeals to you!)
2 cups of flour (I tried adding a bit of wheat bran, but I think that made it more bitter)
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch sea salt
2/3 cup oil
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup orange juice (we used mango juice as that's what we had)
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract

Mix all of the ingredients well, and place on a baking sheet or two. Bake in a 300 degree F oven for 45-60 min, turning the pans every 15 minutes or so to ensure even browning. Store in an airtight container.

I love to eat this with half yoghurt and half applesauce, while Jamie prefers his with a little milk. Enjoy!

Homemade Marshmallows

My daughter Tiegan was definitely born with a sweet tooth. I swear she has a sixth sense, and can smell a box of chocolates hidden a mile away. So I find we end up eating more 'junk' food than I'd like, and although I haven't managed to cut sugar completely out of our diet, I'm always trying to find ways to reduce it and also to cut out a lot of the dyes and chemicals. So when I heard about a blogging friend making homemade marshmallows, I knew I had to give it a go. We are serious s'more makers in the summer, and hot chocolate drinkers in the winter, so I could see making a few batches of these throughout the year, they were declared yummy by all. Most importantly, by Tiegan!

Homemade Marshmallows

2 tbsp Gelatin (I'm sure there's a vegan alternative, I'm just not sure it would be the same amount?)
1/2 cup Cold Water
1 cup Maple Syrup
1/4 cup Water
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 Vanilla Bean
Butter and Icing Sugar for preparing dish

Butter baking dish very well and then dust evenly with icing sugar to prevent the marshmallows from sticking.

Pour gelatin and 1/2 cup cold water into large mixing bowl. Let sit 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour maple syrup, 1/4 cup water and sugar into saucepan. Split vanilla bean, scrape seeds into syrup mixture and then add vanilla bean pod.

Cook syrup mixture over medium low heat. When mixture begins to boil, set timer for 11 minutes and continue to cook without stirring. After 11 minutes, remove syrup mixture from heat and discard vanilla bean pod.

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, gently mix gelatin to break up for about 3 seconds. Then with mixer running on low, slowly add hot syrup. Mix on low for 1 minute, then increase to high and beat 10 minutes more.

Pour mixture into the prepared dish. I used a spatula to spread mixture evenly in dish, or you can also wet your hands and use those.

Lightly sprinkle powdered sugar on top of marshmallows and let sit for four hours or more. Once they are set, use a knife to cut them into squares, or use a cookie cutter to make shapes. We did some squares, but also made mini hearts for gifts - they're the perfect size to slip into a hot chocolate!





I'd still like to seek out a recipe using real marshmallow root to try on our next batch, and I also imagine it would be fun to flavour the marshmallows with peppermint extract, or a favourite liqueur.

Finally, a post from Erica, as in the 'Anja and Erica' Erica!

Anja and I decided to set up this blog AGES ago due to our shared passions of food and healthy living and photo taking and writing. And I was so excited at the thought, but then life got crazy and we built a house in the woods and lived for many months without phone or internet, and blogging seemed to take a back burner as it were. BUT, this is a new year, and I now happily have four walls around me, a solid roof over my head and a deliciously fast internet connection and so I thought I would start holding up my end of the bargain and post some of my favourite recipes alongside Anja!

So hello (wave)! I'm Erica and I live in Ontario with my husband Jamie and three kidlets - Kea (10 1/2), Tiegan (7 1/2) and Ryland (4 at the end of this month, gah!!!!) And although I will be including photos of food for future posts, I did not get a chance to photograph this first dish before it was INHALED by my family, so you'll all just have to suffer through a few photos of the kids instead:-)

This past week has brought snowy blizzards and vicious viruses to our neck of the woods, and thus I have spent much time inside and in my kitchen. However, we like to make sure everyone gets outside for at least a little while every day, so on this day we bundled everyone up against their wills and tried to convince them it would be fun to play in the crazy cold weather.

Kea put on her skis because we were originally going to go for a ski, but that quickly dissolved into tears by half the camp so we opted to stay closer to home.

Tiegan had a blast creating caves and snow mountains and holes, and amused herself in a snow hill forever.

And Ryland was plain old miserable. He was pretty sick with a brutal cold at this point, and pretty much everything was setting him off. But when he played with his bulldozer for about 2 seconds and broke into his 3rd round of tears in 10 minutes, we decided that this torture was enough.

Fresh air might be good for the health, but going inside and baking with mom is healthy for the soul. So that's what we did, and there weren't tears for at least an hour after that!


Black Bean Brownies (hand written on the back of an envelope by my good friend Lori in Vancouver - passed on to her by another friend)

1/2 can black beans
1/2 cup ground hazelnut (we ran out and used almonds instead, still yummy!)
1/2 cup coconut oil (I sit the jar in hot water for a bit, and pour melted oil in)
3 eggs
3 Tbl sunflower oil
4 Tbl cocoa (I like Camino's dark cocoa)
1 pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup sugar (I used brown sugar, but I'm sure many others would work too)

Mix ingredients together in a blender to puree.

Pour into a 8by8 pan

Add any nuts or other bits you like in your brownies, we tend to leave them plain and eat with fruit after they're baked.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

Swedish Apple Cake

We watched "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" the other night, and of course, a Swedish movie calls for some Swedish pastry to accompany it. So I dug out my copy of "The Great Scandinavian Baking Book" and V. picked out this apple cake. The beauty of this book is that almost all the recipes are straight-forward, no frills, using basic ingredients, so it's easy to throw something together for a last minute get-together with friends! As always, I tweaked the recipe a little bit (I used less sugar than stated, and I omitted the suggested step of drizzling icing sugar over the finished cake), so what you see below is my version.

This recipe is very similar to what my mom used to make in Germany when I was little. There's a general Northern European-ness to this kind of cake I think...basic, not too sweet batter, topped with something fruity! Not fancy, but so satisfying that everybody ate at least 2 pieces!

Bake in a 9" springform pan!

Swedish Apple Cake

2/3 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

4 eggs

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

4 medium apples, pared, peeled, and cut into thick slices

2 tblsp sugar for tossing

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1/4 cup simple syrup

1/4 cup rum (I used dark St. James from Martinique)

Grease the cake pan and pre-heat the oven to 350F.

Cream the butter and sugar. Gradually add the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy. Combine the flour and baking powder and then mix into the creamed mixture, until just incorporated. Turn into the prepared cake pan.

Put the apples in a bowl and toss with the sugar and cinnamon. Press into the cake batter and sprinkle with almonds, so it looks like this:

It's a rustic cake, so there's no need to be too neat about this process!

Bake for 40-45 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.

In the meantime, make some simple syrup: bring 1/4 cup of water to boil with 1/2 cup of sugar, until all the sugar has dissolved.

Mix the rum into the simple syrup. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, spoon the syrup all over the cake. You want to add enough to make it moist, but not so much that it get soggy. But don't be shy....it can absorb quite a lot and your cake will have a delicious rum aroma!!