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I can’t believe I haven’t posted this recipe yet! This is my go-to cookie recipe. It can be vegan or not depending on what ingredients you have around, and the cookies are just super tasty. I think the large portion of vanilla makes them extra good — and if you’re also using vanilla soy milk, just woah. We got our first snow of the season today in Minnesota and baking cookies seemed like the perfect cozy activity. I also needed something to bring to my orchestra concert tonight for the post-show reception, so, win-win. I get a cozy, cookie-smelling house, and concert attendees get delicious cookies.
| Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies |
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Recipe type: cookies
Author: Megan Kocher
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 40 mins
Makes about 35 cookies depending on how much dough you eat (no judgment!)
- 1 1/2 C Flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 C Canola oil
- 1 1/3 C Sugar
- 2 Tbsp vanilla soy milk
- 6 Tbsp Apple sauce OR 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 Tbsp Vanilla
- 2 1/2 C rolled oats
- 12 oz Chocolate Chips
- Preheat oven to 350
- Mix flour, baking soda, & salt together. Set aside.
- In a different bowl, mix together oil & sugar until creamy.
- Mix applesauce/eggs into sugar mixture, then mix in the soy milk & vanilla.
- Stir in the flour mixture, oatmeal, & chocolate chips.
- Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheet & bake for 9-13 minutes
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And here are the rolls I served with the veggie sausage & white bean stew. They are nearly impossible to stop eating when they’re warm & fresh from the oven. I adapted the recipe very slightly from the Poppy Seed Pull-Apart Roll recipe in Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.
| Rosemary Pull-Apart Rolls |
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Recipe type: bread
Prep time: 2 hours 10 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 2 hours 40 mins
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
- 3 cups white flour
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp dried rosemary
- olive oil for brushing
- Combine yest, sugar, and water in a small bowl and set aside for about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, combine flour, salt and rosemary in the bowl of a stand mixer and make a well in the middle.
- Add water mixture to flour mixture and beat on low until a dough forms (about 30 seconds.)
- Switch to dough hook and knead the dough for a few minutes, until smooth and springy.
- Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel and put in a warm place until dough is doubled in size (about an hour).
- Punch down the dough. Divide into 16 balls and place the balls in a greased, 9 inch circular cake pan. Start with 1 roll in the middle and form circles around it. Cover and let rise for another hour.
- Preheat oven to 375.
- Brush the tops of the rolls with olive oil, sprinkle with additional rosemary, and bake for 30 minutes.
- Serve warm.
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Sara is working on the research for her PhD dissertation. It’s a grueling process that so far has been full of much excitement and some major lows. At times, it seems like this study is taking over our house. I’m glad that I can at the very least be a support for her during this process because of love, and because I really believe in the work that she’s doing. And of course, the way that I best offer support is with food. Yesterday we were badly in need of something comforting around here, so I decided to make this hearty stew coupled with homemade pull-apart rolls because, really, what is more comforting than freshly-baked bread? I think this will be a good recipe to keep around for the long, cold months coming up.
| Veggie Sausage and White Bean Stew |
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Recipe type: Soup
Author: Megan Kocher
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 35 mins
Total time: 50 mins
- 2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
- 1 lb Gimme Lean vegetarian sausage
- 2 cups diced yellow onion
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 cup diced carrots
- 3 Tbsp flour
- 2 tsp dried rosemary
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup marsala cooking wine
- 1 15oz can Great Northern beans
- 1 bunch curly kale, stems removed, chopped into bite-sized pieces
- 3 cups vegetable broth
- 1 bay leaf
- Heat 1 Tbsp of olive oil in a large pot or dutch oven. Crumble the sausage into the pot and saute until browned (about 5 minutes). Remove sausage from pot and set aside.
- Heat the remaining Tbsp of olive oil in the pot and add the onion, celery and carrots. Saute until soft, about 7 minutes. Add flour, rosemary, and salt and saute for 2 more minutes. Add wine, beans with liquid, kale, broth, and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Serve over rosemary pull-apart rolls.
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It’s my birthday! And I have a pie pumpkin, so I made up this recipe for pumpkin hummus. It tastes great — birthday magic!
Recipe type: Dip
Author: Megan Kocher
Prep time: 10 mins
Total time: 10 mins
- 2 C cooked or canned chickpeas
- 1 C pumpkin puree
- 1/4 C lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 2 Tbsp toasted pine nuts
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- Combine all ingredients except olive oil in a food processor.
- While food processor is running, add the oil in a steady stream.
- Continue processing until well combined.
- Sprinkle with additional paprika to serve.
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 "OM NOM NOM" CC BY-NC-SA notemily, flickr The Internet has been feeding me since my college days when my roommates and I would scour allrecipes.com every week to find new and exciting things to make in our dorm kitchen. I think I was possibly the most well-fed college student ever. Now that the Internet is all grown up, I can spend hours and hours digging through recipe websites trying to find the best version of something to try out (or more likely, the version of this thing that uses ingredients I have in my house). It’s exhilarating/exhausting.
Also exhausting is digging around the web trying to find something I made 5 months ago and am craving again. It’s a precious few recipes I make more than once, so I thought I’d save both you & me some time by rounding up a list of favorites so we don’t have to look all over for them.
Baked Oatmeal with Pecans, Blueberries, & Bananas (ok, I made this for the first time just last weekend, but I already know I’m going to want it again.)
The Moosewood Cookbook’s Thai Salad
Root Beer Cupcakes with Vanilla Malt Frosting (recipe mashups are my favorite kind of mashups)
Basil Hummus
Scrambled Tofu with Greens and Berry Chipotle Sauce
Red Split Lentils With Cabbage and Indian Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes
Best Brussels Sprouts
My sister has been bugging me for an update on the garden I planted in the spring, so I’ve put together a Harvest 2011 slide show. One thing to note: Those yellow flowers you see everywhere are marigolds. They were meant to be a small border flower, but instead they are giant 4-foot-tall MARIGOLDS FROM SPACE.
This recipe was a big hit at the food swap last weekend. Someone commented that these scones taste like sunshine. I like that. I based them on the orange scone recipe I’ve posted before (from Vegan With a Vengeance.)
Basil Lemonade Scones
Ingredients:
1 1/4 C soy milk
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 C all-purpose flour
1/3 C sugar
2 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C vegetable oil
3 Tbsp finely grated lemon zest
3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh basil
lemon basil glaze (recipe follows)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet (or cover it with parchment paper.)
Combine the soy milk and vinegar. Set aside.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, & salt. Add the milk mixture, oil, orange zest, and basil. Mix until just combined, so that the dough is clumpy (not sticky), and there’s still a some flour dusting the bowl.
Divide the dough into two portions. Form each portion into a 6-inch disk, and cut each disk into 6 wedges. Arrange the wedges on the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes (until slightly brown & firm on top). While scones are still warm, top each with about 2Tbsp lemon basil glaze.
Lemon Basil Glaze
Ingredients:
1 C confectioners’ sugar
2 Tbsp nonhydrogenated margarine, melted
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 tsp finely chopped fresh basil
Mix together all ingredients in a mixing bowl until smooth.
One of the memories I can just grasp from my early childhood is watching a cartoon that featured a trading post (in my memory, it was Rabbit’s Trading Post on a Winnie the Pooh show, but the internet has, so far, been unable to confirm that for me.) I loved the idea of a trading post then, and am still a huge fan of the barter economy. This weekend, I had the great good fortune to participate in two Minneapolis swap events: The MPLS Swapper’s Food Swap and the Swap-o-Rama-Rama. I love Minneapolis!
The first event was all about food. This was my first food swap so I was super nervous. I decided to bring root beer cupcakes with vanilla malt frosting and vegan basil lemonade scones (recipes for both coming soon.) I got there early to set up my station. Here’s my very own trading post:
And here’s everything I brought home in exchange for all that sugar:
I traded all of my leftover frosting for that big bunch of kale. Other very exciting items I brought home with me included: chocolate orange zucchini bread, a vast assortment of jams, pickles, cowboy caviar, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, pie pops, and candied sesame walnuts. This event is so full of win. I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the swap is held at Open Arms Minnesota, an organization dedicated to providing nutritious meals to people living with serious and life threatening diseases.
The Swap-o-Rama-Rama was all about clothes. It was much less organized than the food swap, but I brought a garbage bag full of clothes to share and came home with a full bag of new duds, so I consider it a huge success. In addition to a giant pile of clothes to dig through, this swap had sewing machines and an airbrushing station for anyone who wanted to make immediate alterations. I didn’t make use of any of the stations, but I have a whole new Winter wardrobe (huge thanks on this to the friend I attended with who brought great clothes.)
After three weekends of traveling, I finally got to stay home and go to the farmer’s market last week. I was so excited to be back, I wanted to splurge on everything. I got a kohlrabi t-shirt, honey, 12 ears of sweet corn, fingerling potatoes, and chanterelle mushrooms. To round out my bliss, I decided to pick up a beautiful bouquet of pink, yellow, orange, and purple flowers. However, having been raised Lutheran, I couldn’t justify buying flowers just for myself, so I bought them for a friend to enjoy by proxy. Fortunately, Sara decided independently to buy me a bouquet of my own, so I get to enjoy them first-hand, without guilt.
Anyway, all gooeyness aside, the chanterelles I bought were incredible. I fixed them pretty simply and served with crepes so I could really enjoy their flavor. Such bliss! And I can’t do crepes without something sweet, so I cooked up some apricots and honey, too.
 Chanterelle Crepe Filling
1 Tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil
3 Shallots, diced
1 Pint Chanterelle mushrooms, sliced thinly
1 Tsp Fresh Sage, chopped
2-3 Tbsp Marsala cooking wine
1/4 Tsp Salt
Heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium saucepan. Add shallots and sate until soft. Add mushrooms, sage, cooking wine, and salt, and saute until mushrooms are cooked and most liquid is evaporated (about 5-8 minutes.)
Honeyed Apricot Crepe Filling
5 Apricots, peeled, pitted, and sliced
3 Tbsp Honey
Combine apricots and honey in a small saucepan. Simmer over low heat until a thick sauce forms (about 10-15 minutes).
Tip: to help get the skins off the apricots, I boil them whole for a couple of minutes, and then put them in cold water
Serve with your favorite crepes. I used this recipe from Minnesota Monthly.
Gather ’round hippies, this summer has seen the renaissance of my favorite no-bake cookie recipe. There’s no refined sugar, no gluten, and even better, they’re delicious and take about 10 minutes to make. I used to make these for my book club when I first moved to Minneapolis. Today, I made them at the special request of a friend. They’re little gooey dark chocolate blobs of awesomeness. Enjoy!
Vegan No-Bake Cookies
2/3 C Maple syrup
1/4 C Vegetable oil
5 Tbsp Cocoa powder
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 C Peanut butter (smooth or crunchy is up to you)
1 C Rolled oats
1 Tsp Vanilla
In a saucepan over medium heat, combine maple syrup, oil, cocoa powder, and cinnamon. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter, rolled oats, and vanilla until well blended.
Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto waxed paper and chill to set (about 30 minutes). Store in the refrigerator.
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