Kate's Granola Bars

La Fenice is a commedia del arte troupe based in Austin, TX. We have been performing with them for several shows now - the current show is called "Sloop of the Damned", and is about true love, pirates, and zombies on the high seas. The gal currently in charge is Kate, and she was nice enough to give me her very awesome recipe for granola bars. I modified it to be vegan, and it is absolutely delicious!


Kate's Granola Bars
(vegan subs by April)

1/2 stick Earth Balance (or 1/4 cup oil)
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of maple syrup
1/4 cup of peanut butter
2 cups of rolled oats
1 1/2 cups of other stuff (like sunflower seeds, flax seeds, cranberries, raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, etc.)

Melt Earth Balance (or oil) with brown sugar and maple syrup. When it just starts to boil, toss in peanut butter. Toss with rolled oats and other stuff. Make sure to coat everything.

Press well into a 9 x 9 pan lined with wax paper. When they're cool, cut them up.



For this particular batch, I used chocolate peanut butter, raisins, sunflower seeds, and vegan chocolate chips. It's very important that you wait for the liquidy part to boil before you add the oats and stuff, or otherwise it won't stick together as well.

Bikram Scones, Take 3

Mark's parents took us to lunch at Whole Foods yesterday, and I got a good selection from the hot and cold bars, as well as a vegan fruit & nut scone and some soup. Mark's dad had never heard of scones before, and was fascinated. After trying a small bite of mine, he decided that he'd love to have some, and I thought that was an excellent reason to make another batch of the PPK Bikram Scones that I've tried making twice before.

The last time I blogged about making scones, I mentioned that both my first and second batches, while having very different textures, were both a bit underdone in the centers (actually, the second batch was a bit too moist overall). My boyfriend Mark also mentioned that 2 tablespoons of baking soda seemed like too much. This time, I used 1 TBSP + 1 tsp of baking soda, and was going to use just 1 cup of soy milk, but after mixing, discovered that it seemed too dry. I added another 1/4 cup of soy milk (bringing the liquid to the specified 1 1/4 cups), and added raisins instead of chocolate (not my choice, exactly; Mark's dad isn't a big chocolate fan, but he likes fruit). Other than that, I followed the recipe ingredients exactly. In order to hopefully get the scones a bit more done, overall, I increased the baking time from 15 to 17 minutes.



This ended up being just right. The scones had a very scone-like texture: uniformly done throughout, dry, but not too dry, and a bit crumbly.



My one complaint was that they didn't seem sweet enough, though I'm betting that putting chocolate chips in them instead of raisins would have probably fixed that problem. Also, most of the fruit scones I've had at other places (Whole Foods and the Steeping Room in Austin) seem to have nuts in them as well. The next time I make these, I'm going to mix up the dough, split it into two bowls, and mix fruit and nuts into one and chocolate chips into the other. I'm also thinking I might go back to applesauce instead of oil, since it will be healthier and possibly sweeter as well.

Tamales and tacos and cupcakes, oh my!

Mark and I have spent our last two weekends performing at Four Winds Faire in Tyler, TX.  This means I've been eating a lot of vegan bars (Cliff, Luna, ProBar, Lara, etc.) and the occasional batch of sweet potato tots from Sonic.   Yesterday, we had our first performance with La Fenice at Whip In, doing a commedia del arte show called Sloop of the Damned.  Since we're doing another show tonight (and Mark and I are doing our steampunk music set after!), we decided to play hooky from Four Winds today.  This morning we visited the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market for breakfast.   I had a sweet potato and a tempeh breakfast taco from Happy Vegan Baker as well as a tiny cappuccino cupcake, and a nopalitos tamale and spinach and onions tamale from The Gardener's Feast. I was sad that I didn't have any room left over for the vegan pakoras down the way.  The tacos and tamales were all fresh, hot, and flavorful.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, since it was very windy and I was trying to keep all of the napkins and other stuff from flying off the table.

Pancakes & Pizza

Mark and I are currently performing at Sherwood Forest Faire in Paige, TX (on Hwy 290, about an hour outside of Austin - if you've got a free weekend this month or next and are in the area, come see us!), and we're living in our 14 foot tiny trailer.  I will post pictures of the trailer later (we're fixing it up), but I had to blog about this morning's breakfast.  Last weekend, Mark and I bought a 6-8" cast iron skillet with  a pretty green ceramic bottom.  This morning, he used some Bisquik (not particularly healthy, but vegan), powdered soy milk, and a banana as an egg replacer and made pancakes!  He also made syrup out of water, sugar, and vanilla.  Oh, the luxury of having a 3 burner propane stove while camping!




I brought my Republic of Tea Double Chocolate Mate, so Mark made me a soy chocolate mate to go with my pancakes.  This was such a great breakfast, and not something I ever thought I'd be eating while camping!



For lunch, Mark got creative and made personal pizzas by toasting Orowheat sandwich thins and topping them with tiny "beef" and chunky "chicken" TVP, vegan bacon bits, organic red pepper flakes, and marinara sauce.  After we each had a pizza, he put the rest of the toppings on some orzo.

A Quick Update...

I used a lot of the groceries I bought yesterday to make today's lunch - kale, spinach, and carrots with tempeh. I also added a splash of soy sauce, some coconut oil, a splash of flax milk, and a tiny dollop each of Asian chili sauce, vegan blue cheese dressing, and cashew tamari dressing.

Mandelbrot Caulipots

Last week, I bought a bunch of organic collard greens from Sprouts to go with the Butler Soy Curls I'd got from Wheatsville's bulk section.  I finally ran out of greens today, so I went to Wheatsville to buy more.  While there, I picked up local organic spinach, kale, and carrots, and was fortunate enough to get a small head of Romanesco cauliflower from a local farm.  I have been calling it Mandelbrot cauliflower since it looks like a bunch of fractals. If there's anything more awesome than fractal cauliflower, it's miniature fractal cauliflower. (So cute!)



Since I figure I now have more veggies than Soy Curls, I picked up some locally-made tempeh.



I also bought a vegan chocolate heart-shaped cake, since I had been very tempted to get one for Mark last weekend, and they're on sale now for only $2 each. Score!



My roommate requested some popcorn tofu and cashew-tamari dressing, so we split that for dinner.  To go with it, I was going to make the Caulipots from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's cookbook "Appetite For Reduction", but didn't realize that the "cauliflower mashed potatoes" used both cauliflower *and* potatoes. (See, class, this is why we read the directions first!)  I had no potatoes, nor did I have any vegetable broth.  I ended up just boiling the cauliflower, mashing it with the potato masher, and adding a bit of salt, soy sauce, flax milk, coconut oil, and nutritional yeast. The finished product tasted more like cauliflower than potatoes, but the texture was good, and the overall flavor very satisfying.

Tofu Molé

Since adopting a semi-nomadic lifestyle, I've been falling into the trap of not properly planning meals in advance, and just buying ingredients at the store that look like they'll be useful at some point. This happens mostly at my parents' house, since we go shopping as a family, and I am not one to turn down free food. *grin*

On a previous trip to one of the two health food stores in New Braunfels, I picked up a block of firm tofu (not silken). I decided that today would be the day that I turned that simple block of tofu into a delicious meal (or two or three), so all that remained was to try to decide what to make. I pulled up all of the recipes on my hard drive that use tofu as a main dish, and finally got it narrowed down to Tofu Scramble and Tofu Molé. The scramble was a much easier recipe, but the molé was calling to me.

The recipe comes from Diet, Dessert and Dogs.

Since I didn't have either a bell pepper or a jalapeño pepper, I substituted a small can of chopped green chilies. I also decided to indulge my inner chocoholic and use Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter instead of the almond butter. Instead of using pre-made veggie broth (since I didn't have any of that, either), I made my own, using one stalk of celery, two small broccoli florets, a bit of chopped onion, and some spices. Finally, since I didn't have 2 oz. of unsweetened chocolate, I substituted 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder.


Homemade veggie broth


Fried tofu


Molé, pre-blending

After blending the mole mixture (yay, Blendtec blender!), I transferred it into the pot I'd used to make the veggie broth. In the short time it took to look at the recipe and determine that yes, the tofu *did* need to go in with the blended sauce, I discovered that the "cover the pot" step was *very* important! The sauce had started to bubble up and spew here and there, creating my very own Bog Of Eternal Stench (without the bad smell, of course). I'll spare you the sight of mole splotches all over the stovetop (and the sound of my mother wailing that I was ruining her kitchen), and we'll just jump to the finished result.



For my final substitution, I served it with corn tortillas instead of rice (guess why.)



The sauce was thick, rich, and subtly nuanced. I think it definitely could have had more spice, so next time I make it, I'll add a couple of serranos.

Overall, I think that the dish was yummy and flavorful, and I look forward to making it again.