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Showing posts from 2012

No Need to Fret with No-Knead Bread!

Do you, or someone in your household, bake this fragrant, hearty, genuine crusty bread?  The particular loaf above is a rye bread with caraway seeds in it.  It has a crispy, crunchy crust and a hole-y crumb (inside of the bread).  I baked it using the fantastic recipe and videos from Breadtopia AND my brand new favourite tool (read: kitchen toy) called LaCloche (you can see it in the background.)  It's a stoneware, or clay (or you can use enameled cast iron) "baker" that comes in two parts: a baking 'pan' base (more like a cake pan in shape) and a heavy lid. Available from Amazon. Click Above. The LaCloche simulates baking your bread in a clay oven (the highlight of Pioneer Days in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan was the delicious bread the Hutterites baked in an earthen/clay oven behind their booth). This rye bread is no-knead... that means you don't thump and knead it as part of the process.  It's made with quite a lot of water, and allowed to rise

Upside-Down Vegan Banana Cake

So, I made this delicious Upside Down Banana Cake adapting a recipe from the blog US Masala I saw on Pinterest -- dee-lish-us!  I did lots of substitutions to the original, but I'm sure it tasted just as good, but not better.  This is a great way to use up 3 or 4 over-ripe bananas.  I made fresh apple sauce in my Vitamix, but you can, of course, use the ready-made stuff.  And I used both coconut oil instead of butter and coconut oil (melted) instead of the oil called for in the original recipe.  AND, I made full use of my food processor, as usual.  But other than that, well, it could be the same recipe. INGREDIENTS: For the Upside-Down Layer: 3 ripe bananas, cut in 1/2" pieces 1/4 C. Brown Sugar 3 T. Melted Coconut Oil For the Cake: 1 C. Unbleached Flour  (or sub 1 1/2 C. GF mix for this and the tapioca starch) 1/2 C. Tapioca Starch 1 tsp. Baking Powder 1 tsp. Baking Soda 1/4 tsp. Sea Salt 1/2 - 1 tsp. Organic Cinnamon 5 T. Coconut Sugar 1 tsp. Vanilla (

Bushels of Salads...

Every Girl Should Know How To Make A Salad I have had a lovely summer... and lots of great salads! Above is a picture of my 6-year old granddaughter making a salad -- what I want her to be skilled at in the kitchen, actually.  In my day it was an omelet.  But we vegans have different ideas about what is appropriate! If you want to see a pile of excellent salad recipes why not go to my Pinterest Salad Board and 'follow' it?  There are great recipes for salads on there right now, and a bunch more to come!  You could have a different salad every day of the year...wow! (Keep them organic of course!)

Imagine this Beauty in your Garden!

  Wow, I just ran across this gorgeous stained glass structure while doing my early morning peruse of Pinterest .  Can you imagine anything so beautiful in your own garden?  Can you imagine yourself inside of this enchanting art piece: the sun streaming through and reflecting all the colors, blending them-- what if there was sunshine AND rain falling: imagine the rainbows!  This is the inspirational and beautiful idea-filled material you will find on Pinterest... are you part of it yet?  If not, why ever not?  Follow me and I'll follow you! If you are the photographer/artist/owner of this image, let me know and I will credit you or delete it from my blog.   The same disclaimor is on the Tumblr blog where I got this from. Our Food Matters-- Join a Social Network to Match Your Own Social Ethics and Wisdom

How to Lose Weight and Stay Healthy at 60+

Anyone out there who is over sixty (or maybe just over 50) knows how hard it is to take off weight and keep it off .  Weight loss is harder for older people than you might think... or that is, healthy weight loss.   So I was absolutely thrilled to read about how Low Fat Vegan Frederic Patenaude's mother, who is in the 55+  age group, lost 55 pounds in just 8 months (she still has another 15 to go to reach her ideal).    I'm excited because Frederic talks about what his mom now eats and what she avoids eating, and it really isn't too different from moi!  It actually fits in very closely with what most of us saw in the film "Forks Over Knives" or what you can get from Dr. Michael Greger at nutritionfacts.org So, do you wonder why it is so hard to lose weight when you are over 55? Speaking from experience, I think it is a combination of really jumbled up eating "habits" (yo-yo dieting, eating the wrong things, over-eating even the right things, rewardi

Organic Gardening in my Yard and Garden- Early June 2012

The following pictures are of aspects of our front, side and backyard that I have been working in/on.  Today was a splendid point-and-shoot picture-taking day. Ancient Apple Tree with Comfrey and Digitalis at its base attempting to nurse it back to wellness. This almost looks like it could be some cutesy flower box on Pinterest, doesn't it? It's really our deck step with weeds poking through-- shame, shame! Lupins in the sideyard where no one gets to see them-- therefore, do they exist? (next 2 pics also) Our expanded "Kidney garden" in the front... the multi-colored orange bark mulch was recentlly laid down and will, I hope, have more interesting features as time goes on.  Daylilies, catnip, irises, fragrant Asian lilies, lavender, and other stuff grows here.  In the mulched area is a fig  tree (bearing this year we hope) and an infant Azalea I bought last year at Canadian Tire.  It had a nice show of magenta blossoms in the earlier S