Raid The Cupboard Vegan Christmas Cookies

Mom baked all year long, but only
at Christmas did she turn out an array
of cookies that made we three
sisters drool.

It seems that every family has it's favorite cookie. My sister-in-law adores Snickerdoodles and two of my seven grandkids think they are the only cookie worth making. My husband loved all cookies and it mattered not what they were made of. Somehow, he managed to get his large hand in and out of our cookie jar with great dexterity. My daughter-in-law makes the best oatmeal cookies in the world. I kid you not. She has won several Blue Ribbons with that cookie and lucky me, she shared the recipe so I could make them too. But that's another post.

Church suppers were the norm in the
tiny town of my youth. I think we went
to every one of them, no matter what the
denomination.

Growing up in Minnesota, our family ate a vast array of Norwegian and Swedish cookies that appeared only during the Christmas season. Since my dad was a business owner, we got invited to any and every church Christmas supper for miles around our little rural town. My mom got some of those recipes and they became our favorites too, even though we had to wait a whole year for them to show up once more on our table. But that's another post too.

Shortly after I was married, I went to
mom's and copied all her recipes I'd
grown to love. The cards were stained
and the print had grown dim. Now my
cards look just like hers.

With the holidays upon us, it seemed like the right time for me to share tried and true cookie recipes that I grew up with and love to this day. During the coming month, I'll share the best of the best recipes that I've veganized successfully and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I also hope you print out or write down the ingredients and stash that piece of paper wherever you keep your treasured recipes. I also hope that over the next many years, your recipe cards become as stained and wrinkled as mine are.

RAID THE CUPBOARD COOKIES

These are NOT the most beautiful cookies you'll
ever make. Nor do they travel well. But they do
stay fresh a long time and chances are,
they won't last long enough to get stale anyway.

1 stick of vegan margarine, room temperature

3/4 cup of sugar

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. of unsweetened applesauce

2 Tbs. non dairy milk

1 cup flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup diced nuts, your choice

1 cup flaked coconut

1 cup raisins

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup dried mixed fruit

This is my personal favorite brand
of mixed dried fruit

You can change the ingredients to whatever you wish. Just make sure that if you eliminate 1 cup of one thing, you make up for it by using 2 cups of another ingredient. Since I'm not a big fan of chocolate chips, I change the mixed fruit and chocolate chips around. Sometimes I exchange the raisins for chopped dates. The recipe is quite versatile. Just keep the quantities as given.

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a medium sized bowl, beat the margarine and sugar until it is light and fluffy. About 2-3 minutes. Add the applesauce, vanilla, and non-dairy milk. Mix to blend.

Use any uncooked
oatmeal you have on
hand.

Now add the flour and oatmeal along with the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix till just blended. Do not overbeat or you'll have a tough cookie.

Stir the remaining ingredients into the dough by hand and then drop the dough by teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes or until the edges are nicely brown. Allow the cookies to cool a bit on the sheet before moving them to a rack to finish cooling. Small pieces will fall off each cookie. Don't be alarmed. I've made this recipe at least a hundred times and that is the norm. Once cool, the cookie hardens a little so they can be transferred to your cookie jar. They can also be frozen for up to a month with no noticeable difference in taste.

I love this cookie. Not only because it is easy to make but because I don't feel guilty giving them to my grandkids. All told, they are a healthy alternative to most cookies out there.

Whoever thought of drying cranberries
to they could be used in assorted
treats goes down in my book as
a genius. 

A Seedy Tale

It's just about everyone's favorite snack. But it's also a flower, a vegetable, a clothing dye, an ointment, and a snake bite remedy. It can grow to 20 feet high and produce a flower 2 feet in diameter. It has a brown center that's packed with seeds. What is it?

If you guessed Sunflower, you're right. Although the plant is native to North America, it is now grown all around the world. The seeds are large, sprout easily, and do their best when sown directly in a hot, sunny spot.

The resultant plant does well in nearly any kind of soil, fends for itself during drought, and seldom has disease or insect problems. The large, yellow flowerhead with its center of brown seeds numbering in the hundreds is attractive to birds, squirrels, mice, and any other seed-eating critter poking around the garden--including man.

It's the seeds that man and beast fight over. They are miniature power houses packed with unsaturated fats, protein, fiber, vitamin E, copper, zinc, selenium and high in magnesium and contain absolutely no cholesterol. The seeds are considered to be a great energy source and according to nutritionists, a single handful will temporarily satisfy a person's hunger.

One year when my kids were quite young, I bought a pack of sunflower seeds and sent them out to the garden to plant them wherever they wished. Weeks later, I began noticing sunflowers sprouting all around the house. I suspected more than a few seeds had been dropped on their way to the garden, even though the kids claimed only to have planted them where they'd been told.

Almost overnight I was awash in gangly green plants that hovered over everything else in the yard, and looked more like scrawny scarecrows with bright yellow heads than the prim plantings one would expect in a suburban home. It didn't take the birds long to begin noticing the seed-maturing stage. They checked daily to see how things were progressing, but no more than did my own kids who thought the minute the flower appeared it was time to cut it off and eat the seeds.

It was a daily ritual to check the seed production and I tired of the game way too soon. At my wit's end with all the begging to get the seeds into their stomachs, I finally gave in and cut the flowerheads off.

We were supposed to let them dry for at least a week but the kids wouldn't hear of it. So I spread newspapers on the kitchen table and let them have at it. We had seeds and fluff and a general mess all over the kitchen, but once the seeds were pretty much separated out, we gave them a good rinse and laid them on a cookie sheet.

I sprayed them with salt and olive oil and roasted them to a golden brown. They were crispy and nutty and doggone addicting. All 4 dozen of them. I had told the kids it was too soon to pick them. Sometimes a visual lesson is a better teacher than any verbal argument.

Sunflower, Cranberry & Oat Granola Bars

1 1/2 cups quick oatmeal

3/4 cup sunflower kernels, roasted and salted

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup toasted wheat germ

1/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup agave nectar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Stir to combine and set aside.

Mix the vegetable oil, brown sugar and agave nectar and bring to a boil over medium heat. Pour over the dry ingredients and stir till everything is well coated. Press the mixture into a greased 8x8x2 inch square baking pan. Sprinkle with additional sunflower seeds and coconut if desired. Bake 25-30 minutes or until slightly browned around the edges. Remove from oven. While the bars are still warm, press the surface gently with the back of a spoon to flatten them. Score into bars with a knife. Let cool completely.  Makes 24 bars that are easy to carry in a purse, pocket, or briefcase.


Copyright 2011 by Sandra L Keith, All rights reserved

Busy Vegan

I'm a busy vegan

I don't have time

to chop the onion

and squeeze the lime

My day is packed

work, meetings and chores

Don't want to plan meals

go shopping in stores

It needs to be

pretty and hasty,

easy,

fit the budget and tasty.

So here's the deal

I've laid it all out

It's an amateur

beginning, no doubt.

The Scandinavians are famous for the open faced sandwich and there isn't a better time than breakfast for one of my latest open faced sandwich creations. If you don't have gluten restrictions, any bread will do. For me, it's a round rice cake. Round is nice since the key ingredients are round.

Layer in this order: Rice cake, hummus, baby spinach, slice of red onion the size of the rice cake (don't be shy), slice of cold red beet or two, enough to cover the onion. Done. If you are serving others, throw a little parsley sprig on top to class it up. It is delicious. I ate two of these for breakfast this morning and it held me straight through to lunch.

Lunch today was a Hollywood adventure. I went to visit LA for fun and lunch. She was in charge of finding the vegan restaurant. She gave me two choices. I chose California Vegan because I liked the name.

California Vegan is located at 7300 W. Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, CA. Take out, delivered, or eat in. It's a little place facing Sunset Blvd. The street side wall is glass from table top height to the ceiling. Along that wall are 7 diner style booths, the benches covered in bright yellow vinyl. And on the window sill, the salt and pepper shakers and a small vase holding a single gerbera daisy, a different color at each booth. Behind a high counter on the other side of this narrow room, was the kitchen. We waved to the cook. He said hi. On the counter, next to the cash register was a vase of pink tulips. My first impression was "fresh".

We were seated and waited on. LA started with a sparkling water, but I chose the Fresh Young Coconut Juice. I was not ready for what was served. I could have been on a tropical island.

A whole, coconut, the top lopped off, hanging by a thread, a little umbrella stuck into the shell and a straw. It was refreshing. LA knew a little something about this coconut juice (or coconut water). It is a young coconut so the liquid almost fills the center cavity and the coconut flesh is soft and thin at this stage. This coconut juice is used as an intravenous fluid in some developing countries where medical saline is unavailable. It's also marketed as a sports drink because of its high potassium and mineral content.

My lunch was the lentil loaf served with a big scoop of brown rice and a green salad. It could have been better. I ate the lentil loaf with the tomato from my salad. It helped. Where were the herbs? It needed something.

The pluses: 1. it was no problem to be a gluten free, soy free vegan. 2. it was a very comfortable environment. 3. the waitress was knowledgeable and friendly. 4. I was in good company.

OK. I will tell the truth now. I skipped Dinner. I was full from lunch and I heard the Purely Decadent Coconut Milk frozen dessert in my freezer calling my name. I ate 1/2 a pint. Thanks Ben for introducing me to that dessert.