It's Officially Pie Day

Back around Thanksgiving, I seriously wanted a pie that I could safely consume. Looking through online recipes I found one of my favorite pies: sweet potato. The recipe I used can be found at The Witchy Kitchen: Vegan Sweet Potato Pie. 

My friend, who shall be nicknamed Pyro, had decided to surprise me with a Hannah-friendly pie. So Friday the 23^rd of November officially became Pie Day. I was souped.

The Boy also hung out that day (sadly he did not get to fully join our festivities; he does not like sweet potato and he was gone by the time Pyro’s pie was ready). While I baked my pie he had the idea to finally try out the new donut pan I’d bought a few weeks earlier. Awesome right? I have a boyfriend who LIKES to bake and cook. Plus! He wanted to make the recipe I had found, peanut butter donuts. This new adventure made Pie Day ten times more fun.

As for my sweet potato pie, I followed the recipe as is. I like to the first time I make something to see what the original is like, the next few times I’ll start playing with it. Like for this, next time I may add some peanut butter to the filling itself. For me, you can just never have too much peanut butter.

The pie did take most of the day to make. I didn’t mind though, I got to spend the day cooking. It may be important to say that my day started at 10:30am…so…yea, that might have had something to do with the time frame.

It wasn’t hard work, just a lot of baking and cooling. For the most part the hardest thing was probably making the sweet potato as smooth as possible. But once again, I wasn’t using an electric mixer or anything, just a trusty old fork.

Making the pie basically goes as follows:

1) Bake the sweet potatoes; let cool

2) Make crust out of oats, pecans, dates, oil, water, and peanut butter; stick in fridge

3) Peel and mash potatoes till smooth; then to potatoes, add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and mix together

4) Then add milk (substituted almond milk), yogurt (substituted coconut yogurt), and vanilla

5) Pour mixture into the pie crust and bake again; then let cool for a couple hours

See? Simple stuff, just takes time. All the best things do.

In fact, the pie was quite tasty. I love sweet potato pie, so this Thanksgiving I was extremely thankful for this recipe.

The donuts…were more of an experiment. The Boy and I didn’t have all the ingredients for the original recipe. So, we did what the best experiments call for, we improvised. 

Pyro was nervous about our end result. But honestly, the improvisation worked out just fine. However, the minor detail that I had previously used basically all of our measuring utensils that morning and the night before…That made it a little difficult.

Most of our eyeballing worked, except for one. Baking powder.

I knew we shouldn’t have eyeballed baking powder. But what else we were supposed to do?

(Sure I could have cleaned off one of the teaspoon measures, but really, that just seemed like the easy way out.)

On the bright side, we underestimated. The first donuts tasted wonderful, just didn’t rise correctly.

The next few tasted just as good AND rose to a nice fluffy height. 

Later on, the feasting commenced later in the day on Official Pie Day. Pyro came over after he ran a few errands; he had made a yogurt and whipped cream (oil based so I could eat it) pie. It has to refrigerate for a while. So we did our own improvisation and stuck it in the freezer.

I was quite impatient.

I wanted pie.

The Boy had to leave, but Pyro and I stayed dining and talking over two distinct and tasteful pies.

Conclusion: Official Pie will definitely become a tradition.

My Best Recipe Book

Elephants. Probably African. Quotes: Dr. Seuss, Holden Caulfield, a Bible verse, Mark Twain, other various writers. Numerous icons. Word documents. Excel sheets. Folders. Unfinished poems. Lots of blue. Not a dark blue, but light. 

My computer desktop.

I stare at it a lot.

Most of the time I’m not really doing anything on my computer. Just sitting there, staring at my desktop background, waiting for something to happen. (Unfortunately, I do not have a magical computer that creates amazing works of writing or art by itself that I can take credit for.)

So until one of those brilliant, momentous, immensely rare ideas comes along my desktop gazing and the Internet keep me occupied.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, and around again. Unfortunately, like my computer, those sites are not magical and not self-propelled, that they do need a human behind them to make something happen. Staring at them won’t make a bunch of people suddenly want to visit to my blog, or follow me on Twitter and Tumblr. Staring at Facebook won’t make one of my friends decide they want to message me.

So, I turn to Google.

Ahh… Google.

The depths and crevices and caverns of Google used to intimidate me. I was one of those who stuck to the top two choices. If they didn’t give me what I wanted, I ran away screaming saying the answer could not be found.

(Not out loud or anything, just a small fit of frustration inside my head.)

However, one day I realized that Google could be magical. Google can lead you to wonderful things, full of goodness and tasty joy.

As I continued to learn more and more about myself, like all the different restrictions my body was making to my diet, I also learned the wonders of one of the most used search engines.

Google was no longer some mysterious place full of unneeded knowledge or useless and undiscoverable information. I now saw Google as one giant, enormous, ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-changeABLE recipe book.

Now, when the confines of social networking bring me down or just aren’t moving fast enough, I spend my time looking for recipes that I can eat or alter to my needs. By the way, you can find some pretty strange recipes online. (There are some really freaky food combinations going on in the world.)

People are weird these days.

Through professional websites, linking sites, and other personal food blogs, I’ve acquired many recipes and gained a ton of foodie knowledge. I often look for recipes that I wouldn’t have to change a lot. It’s been surprising how much is out there that I never realized before. Another favorite thing is finding recipes that I can distort into my own culinary creation.

Google has also validated that I’m not so crazy. (Or maybe…I’m just not crazy alone.) People think I do weird stuff with peanut butter; you should try googling “Peanut butter sandwich recipes” or “Best peanut butter sandwich.” I get a lot of my ideas from searches like that.

Peanut butter, mustard, and onion is one experiment I did not think up myself. But it doesn’t sound half bad at all.

Also, I never knew this (how naive I am) that peanut butter and oatmeal is actually a big deal. Who knew?

Ants on a Log Oatmeal

Google is the best for the times my oatmeal is lacking or I’m tired of the same old, same old.

My advice to you is to start with something simple (oatmeal, pizza, peanut butter sandwich, etc.), whatever your favorite is, and go on Google and get inspired. Try something totally new. Do you like two certain things? Try them together. That’s how I got my peanut butter and horseradish mustard sandwich. Now, that combination has flown way past sandwich filling status.

Having to be so careful with what I eat, I’m suddenly aware of how much I love to cook (or experiment, as I prefer to call it). I don’t do it a lot, but finding recipes and getting my hands dirty is a joy I never knew I had.

Until the inconsistent World Wide Web flips and flops again and transforms into something new, Google will continue to be a great source of inspiration and my best recipe book.

I’ve gathered so many recipe links, that I sort of overwhelmed myself. I just kept finding more and more without ever actually making any of it.

This year I’m hoping to change that.

Tuesday, (the last day before school started) was bittersweet for me. Bitter because I knew when I woke up in the morning I’d have to prepare for school. Sweet beyond imagination because I chose to spend the day in the kitchen. I went through the list of links I have and found a couple recipes I had been dying to try.

The first was from a website, Nutty About Health. The author, Karey, posted a recipe titled “Low-carb Sweet Almond Buns.” When I read it and saw how she raved about them, I went out and bought almond flour specifically to make them. Tuesday, I finally took action.

I did make a couple changes though. I used actual brown sugar. I omitted the coconut oil and just subbed another tablespoon of margarine. I love sea salt, but I didn’t have any, so regular worked fine. Even with my alterations, I couldn’t believe how delicious these were! It was my first almond flour recipe and it was a great first impression. They even had a nice little tang to them. I love simple recipes that are quick and easy to make.

Karey, thanks for the awesome Hannah-friendly recipe, I’ll definitely be keeping this one around.

After school snack yesterday! With The Bee's Knees Peanut Butter.

The second treasure I tried was from Big Girls Small Kitchen. From here, I baked their Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookie Breakfast Bars. I am absolutely positive it did not turn out the way they intended. Due less to the fact that I had to alter it, and more to the fact I need to learn to read the direction section completely.

Either way, I can guarantee you I will be making this again.

In my version I could say I omitted the vanilla extract, but frankly I just forgot about it. Then, the whole “bar” part sort of got left in the dust when I put all the batter into ONE loaf pan instead of TWO.

(I seriously need to learn to read directions.)

I also probably didn’t let it cool as much as I should have before cutting into it.

As I said though, I’ll be making it again.

I cut the loaf into strips, and then carefully wiggled them free. Some of them were really crumbly, so parts of it were not kept. For the majority of creation, I sliced it thick then made little squares. (After splitting three into squares, I learned my lesson and stuck the rest in the fridge for a little to chill.)

Finally tasting chocolate chips (I found dairy-free) surrounded by a gooey cookie dough again was enough to sell me. Even without the vanilla, I didn’t feel like the squares were missing anything. The pecans give it crunch, the chocolate melts, and the dough of my version had a classic chewy texture necessary for any cookie bar to succeed.

A couple pieces made their way to school with me.

Lastly, I looked around at a couple different baked tortilla chip recipes and sort of made my own. They came out pretty tasty. I used whole-wheat tortillas, cut up into triangles, and added some spices and olive oil. I need to tweak the spice combo, but I thought for a first attempt it wasn’t bad.

These wonderful treats made my first week of school much less terrible.

With all my lists of recipes, I wonder, instead of passing down family heirloom scrapbooks filled with recipes; is my generation going to pass along e-mails filled with web addresses? Or a secret flash drive that only a few select people know how to access? 

Well, that's my philosophical wonderings for the day. 

For the recipes I made above, follow this links:
Low-Carb Sweet Almond Buns
Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookie Breakfast Bar

COOKIES!

For all the rude and “clever” comments The Boy (my boyfriend) thinks to say about my food. It turns out he’s not so normal himself.

(Well, I knew that already, but now he’s admitting it when it comes to food.)

In the last week, The Boy has been over twice while I was making a peanut butter and BBQ sauce sandwich. (A note of importance: He has never ONCE said anything positive regarding this combination.) The first time we were going to meet some friends after the hurricane at basically the only pizza place open. I knew they wouldn’t have any food I could (especially with limited supplies due to Sandy), so I made my sandwich. The second time was when he visited me in between his school and my work. I made the same sandwich in case I had to stay late over dinnertime.

During the sandwich making two amazing things happened.

First.

Before we went out to dinner, as I was contemplating what to put into my sandwich, he asked me if I wanted to add onions.

This simple question is not just a BRILLIANT question (what flavorful, on-the-go-sandwich appropriate ingredient could be tastier than onions????). It also proved that he was slowly, but surely, beginning to think in my strange ways (and not just to poke fun of them).

Second.

While making my sandwich for work, The Boy actually TASTED the BBQ and peanut butter mixture.

And get this.

He liked it.

So what’s all this to do with cookies?

Well, last Friday night, The Boy and I were hanging out and as usual we had no idea what to do. Then, he comes up with an idea (he came up with it earlier in the day, but brought it up again in our lack of knowing how to spend the night).

The idea by itself should be documented, let alone the fact we actually went through with it.

The Boy randomly says, “We should make peanut butter and BBQ cookies and see what they taste like.”

Our recipe consisted of…

1 1/2 cup peanut butter

1 1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

2 eggs

1/4 cup of each BBQ sauce (separate from each other)

For the peanut butter we just used my homemade stuff (which, he still isn’t a giant fan of, but I don’t mind. More for me!)

We made enough to split the batch into three for testing.

One was plain peanut butter (the control batch, if you will).

The second was peanut butter and BBQ sauce.

And the last was peanut butter and honey BBQ sauce.

After baking them, we both decided that out of the BBQ type we liked the honey BBQ best. It added a nice kick of sweetness. Plus, the other BBQ had a strange ting at the end of it; it was still tasty, just a little off.

It was nice to have a partner in my crazy cooking experiments.

(The winners, the honey BBQ)

(The still tasty, yet less so, original BBQ)

(The all-time, ever-tasty plain peanut butter)

(We had some leftover batter from the BBQ batches…)

**If you decide to make these with BBQ sauce, I would suggest adding a little more peanut butter just helps them thicken up, ours were a little thin, but still good.