Milk. Toast.

This was the perfect example of how simple is better. Milk toast. From Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book. If you don’t own this book you should correct the errors of your ways. Both the prose and the recipes almost make me want to be a breakfast eater. Almost. Naturally I had milk toast for dinner. She gives variations both for oven and stove-top versions. This time round I did the stove-top version. You toast bread, bring milk to a simmer then take it off the heat, stir in some butter and optional sugar and nutmeg. I opted for some stevia. I also used some smart balance instead of butter. This is poured over toast, covered and allowed to sit for five minutes. Take the cover off and it’s just magical: your toast is about 3 times larger. And soooo delicious. This goes next to oatmeal in the simplicity is perfection category. Now go have some milk toast for breakfast, lunch, brunch, dinner, midnight snack…

Supervegan!

Well, not really. I am vegetarian. But I enjoy my certified organic cage-free eggs and organic happy cow milk products. Anything non-dead makes it in my mouth. Except maybe coconut. I hate coconut. Or live animals, for that matter. They may not be dead but that wouldn’t make eating them right so I guess non-dead is not the correct term. Can ya tell I’ve been drinking champagne with a girl friend?
Anyway I made this ages ago and debated posting it since its beyond not pretty. Vegan creamed spinach, one of the variations on creamed onions in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. The original recipe used light or heavy cream and butter. The vegan version used oil, all-purpose flour, and almond or hazelnut milk. I used smart balance(for that buttery taste sans animal product), whole wheat flour, and almond milk. And baby spinach plus some salt n’ pepa. Yummy-ness! I love almond milk, and the whole-wheat flour added a nice nutty flavor too. But it was sort of ugly:

But delicious. I might try it with some other greens sometime…

Food for Winners!

Ooooh, ooooh, oooh, I actually won something! Well me and like ten other bolg readers. I was reading the food blog Kaitlin with Honey and she was doing a giveaway of Coach’s Oats. The cool thing about Coach’s Oats is that they are the wonderfully nubbly steel-cut oats, but you can prepare them fast. All you had to do was say how you like your oatmeal in the comments and you were entered. And I did. I like to cook my oats with water, eat them with plain unsweetened almond milk on the side and sometimes sprinkle in Equal. Yes I know. Bad. But as I’ve said at least I stopped with the diet soda.
Here is what a little packet of the oats looks like:

And cooked, pre-almond milk and equal:

Soooo good. I have a confession: sometimes I really like eating foods that are supposed to be hot, cold. These oats had some time in the fridge. The texture was extra dense and oh so nubbly. I love nubbly-ness.

Shakes then and now

Months ago I went through a fruit shake phase. One of the prettier shots of those shakes is this:

Note the pink martini glass. I purchased it as a graduation present for myself and happily drink everything from shakes to Gatorade to real cocktails from it when I wanna get festive by myself.
Also note the flowers. More red roses. I love those.
Now last week I suddenly craved a fruit concoction but the picture was taken after I’d started in on the shake and I was drinking out of a slightly less fancy glass and there were no roses:

So less pretty but equally yummy. And now my approximate shake recipe:
Equal parts frozen fruit(blueberries and cherries are favorites) and vanilla frozen concoction of your choice-ice cream, frozen yogurt, rice cream, they all work. I used an ice milk with a touch of maple in it. Add some vanilla protein powder if you like and if you like it really sweet like me add more sweetener to taste. Yes I added equal. I know it’s bad but hey, I at least kicked my diet soda habit…Now the shake secret is to also add some extract. Vanilla and almond are equally exceptional. If you have them some vanilla bean is magical. Add enough almond milk to make it as thin or thick as you like. Blend it all up with an immersion blender if you hate washing blender canisters like me and drink that goodness on up.