Organic Granny

So, March forward I will with delicious potato recipes as a highlight of the pure joy and potato nutrition that abounds in our everyday world. Poutine is truly French Fries drowned in melted cheese curds and fatty gravy. Delicious by all accounts. But not so much a thrill for vegans, of course (or the poor critters that go into the fatty gravy). However, take a look! There are several vegan poutine recipes online. Most of them have replicated the fatty gravy and dense, gluey cheese curds with a scary closeness. The vegan poutine sauce/gravy in this recipe is a little less fatty, but the nuts and seeds (cashews and tahini)have the reqired mouth appeal, and the liquid hickory smoke gives them a scrumptuous rustic je ne sais quoi.   Try the recipe.  Doctor it up and let me know what you think. Get your fries out of the freezer.  Read the instructions  package to bake your fries crispy,  Set the oven or prep your air fryer. Meanwhile: Ingredients for Smoky White Cheese

You probably think I'm obsessed with potato recipes... and maybe you would be right.  I love spuds.  I reallly love garlic mashed spuds. The potato has so much going for it and has been so misrepresented as a fattening, 'bad' junk food.  Wrong! The potato is root vegetable which means that it has great accessible amounts of starchy energy, and lots of other wonderful nutrients: Vitamin C, fibre and potassium, being three.  The scare about the potato being fattening comes from the way some potatoes are prepared (deep-fried) and/or the smotherings we sometimes introduce: dairy cream, sour cream, butter, cheese, bacon, even mayonnaise.  There are the sources of your "fattening".  Good News: Potatoes are delicious with much less fattening accompaniment, and much healthier if you kick the fat down and take out the cholesterol (animal products).  Much kinder to the animals and the planet. A 7-ounce serving of a side of these luscious garlicky potatoes is about

One summer day a few years ago our younger son pointed out various exotic trees as we walked around our neighborhood.  One with clumps of  luscious blue-black berries caught my eye.  Black Elderberry.  I asked if the berries were edible, and he said they were.  And the black elderberry ( Sambucus racermosa ssp pubens var melanocarpa ) is native to our Vancouver Island.  As someone wanting to grow only native trees in my yard, I have the ethical go-ahead. (To read about why we should grow native trees if we grow trees, see this article about botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger.) And... did the berries not have some medicinal benefits? I wondered aloud.  He told me that indeed elderberries were noteworthy for staving off and remedying colds  coughs, sore throats and flu.  Customers' Most-Loved Gifts Click to learn more...  A New Study  from the University of Sydney, Australia, published in 2019 in the Journal of Functional Foods...  shows that this amazing berry contains phyt

The 12th Annual Tapping World Summit is online now (February 24 to March 4, 2020) If it is still on when you read this, you can click the image above to register free. TAPPING:  Tapping on body meridians to deal with any number of issues and goals, from easing a recurring headache to becoming a confident, self-caring unstoppable on the way to success in all areas of your life, is not a newly introduced "energy medicine."  But this is the first time I have done an article on it in some time, so if you are new to the concept, and curious how it works, here is a useful video to watch: Suggestions on How To Tap with Brad Yates   After you get over the feeling that it is a woo-woo thing, you will understand when Brad says "The only silly thing about tapping is not doing it." The Tapping World Summit is the longest-running online "summit" or series of webinars of interviews with prominent experts in the Tapping Community.  The Ortner family-- si

"Duke" Fabric on Stretched Canvas by Barbara Yates Beasley Before Christmas I put together a 10-day series of Christmas crafts and gluten-free cookie recipes for people to do by themselves or with their child, mom, friend-- even thinking about the crafting gave me a huge jolt of creative aspiration.  I am gung ho to take that creative surge into 2020-- I will call it "my 2020 Vision." While I love fabric art-- art quilts and the like-- I do not own a sewing machine, and confession, I am not a good seamstress/sew-er.  But I absolutely drool over the quilts I see that express feeling and perspective in much the way that artists do without other media. So, I have been spending quite a lot of time on Pinterest lately, and guess what I found?  I found a delightful way to do "fabric art on canvas"-- in other words, to paint a picture on a canvas with pieces of fabric-- no sewing required! Fabric Art on Canvas Here are some examples with links to thei

I am extending the Christmas season a tad so that we can enjoy some more of that nog flavour that we were just getting into! This chia not pudding recipe is: vegan (no eggs, no dairy). I am a vegan who considers raw honey as just nectar passed through a bee... some call us bee-gans.  Sub for the honey in the recipe with maple syrup or 4 dates. gluten-free (no gluten proteins) full of chia protein, which is the form that chia carbs take! full of chia's pretty balanced omega fatty acids (good for the brain) very tasty in that recognizable noggy way sweet, but not cloyingly sweet like the commercial nog can be eaten all year long or just saved up as a Christmas tradition INGREDIENTS FOR CHIA NOG PUDDING 14 oz/414 ml   full-fat coconut milk 2 tablespoons  raw honey or maple syrup or 4 soft pitted dates 1 teaspoon       ground cinnamon 1/2-1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 2 teaspoons      vanilla extract 6 tablespoons   chia seed (or 10 tablespoons chia gel*) (Makes

Here you have what our family has come to call the BEST Hummus. Why? Because to our tastebuds, it is just simply the best tasting hummus!   Where the recipe calls for 4+ Garlic cloves?  We really amp that up-- I think I used 7 today. There is no olive oil or other oils-- just the tahini-- to carry to oily mouth feel.  Please feel free to add a little olive oil if you desire. We enjoy the smoky taste of tahini, but if it tastes a little "off" to you, go ahead and use peanut butter or some other nut or seed butter (hemp seed would be tasty). We likely use about a 1/2 - a full teaspoon of sea salt, but really not much is required if you trust the garlic and tahini to carry the flavour. I also buy dry garbanzos and cook them up in my Instant Pot (electronic pressure cooker) until they are soft (today's batch of beans were kind of old and I had to cook them for a record-breaking 40 minutes on the bean/chili setting, but normally 20 minutes in the pressure coo

ck Salads are not usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the Christmas dinner, unless you are doing a Christmas potluck and someone assigned you a big green salad to offset all the richer fare.&nbsp Think about it.  Festive salads are generally the fresh piece to offset all the cooked and baked and sugar'd up stuff that even dedicated and disciplined vegans "allow" themselves during the time of feasting.  A fresh salad is often all it takes to quell an over-eating of something a little richer than what you are used to. The following salads are either new and different, or vegan take-offs on traditional salads.  I hope you find one that you want to try! 1. CANTALOUPE, RED ONION AND WALNUT SALAD Find this delicious sunny brunch salad @ Giadsy.com This great-looking canteloupe, red onion and walnut salad is a true Mediterranean delight-- from the island of Sardenia where people lead very long and healthy lives.  Besides the can

When I was a young married woman, eons ago, the making of the Christmas cake (or "fruit cake," the recipes also interchangeable with "wedding cake") was still a big tradition in many families. The recipe ingredients included a lot of dried fruits-- some that looked and tasted not anything like the original fresh fruits-- and the usual feasting culprits: sugar, dairy, eggs and alcohol.  The preparation that went into the cakes generally involved a lot of soaking (in alcohol) that could extend to many days.  With all the ingredients in, your typical fruit cake was dense and heavy enough to be used as a door-stop, if need be. There were "light" and "dark" fruit cakes in my family.  The light cakes probably used less soaked fruits and were baked for a shorter period of time?  The dark cakes had a slightly bitter, burnt taste.  I preferred the light cakes that my Auntie Geneva baked every year and sent out.  They were sweeter and tended to h

courtesy of Pixabay Yes, I too love the traditional Christmas tree-- the fragrant pine or the standard luxurious artificial tree with the built in LED lights that never need to be strung or removed.  But this year I thought it would be fun to have something in one of the corners of a room that was NOT a traditional tree as defined above.   The best place I find for ideas is on Pinterest 1. LET'S START SMALL..... Mittens with Greens Pretty easy representation of a small tree.  More like a wreath.  But shaped like a tree, so it passes.  Get a pair of knit mittens and stuff them with greens-- fake here, but you could use fresh cedar, etc. 2. The Gentle Woodlands Tree Hanging .. Image Sourced from OHbaby This is a simple and sweet stylized Christmas tree that would look good on any wall.  Drill some holes in some sticks of lessening lengths, put string through to take on the triangle tree shape, and hang (or perch) your choice of whimsical decorations on the s

Here are the vegan mains, sides, soups, smoothies, desserts, pastries, and breakfasts as shown on Instagram.  These recipes appeared on Instagram in 2019 . Just go ahead and click on the link below to go directly to the recipe! They are arranged in their categories from the most current Instagram recipe to the oldest-- to see them as they come out, join me at  https://www.instagram.com/healthiacynthia/ ADDICTIVE SNACKING Best Hummus Recipe- Garlicky, Vegan, GF MAIN COURSE VEGAN RECIPES Roasted Brussels Sprouts Zucchini Basil Linguine Sweet Potato-Braised Purple Cabbage Real Deal Baked Veggie Burger                                                                                               Tofu Amritsari Masala Curried Chickpeas with Spinach and Tomatoes                                  Sweet Potato Vegan Stew                           Maple-Brown Sugar Glazed Tofu                                           Vegan Baked