Every year around this time, regardless of where in the world we were living at the time, my mother will be looking forward to making this traditional recipe from our home country, Spain.
It was not an easy feat. In Spain you can find the particular type of bread needed to make torrijas in almost every corner when Easter recipes start appearing on TV, but this is not the case in other places. (more…)
My kids are BIG TIME nibblers- fruits, veggie sticks, hummus, rice crackers, energy bars… you name it and I’m pretty sure we have it around the house, because they constantly ask for these things. Thant said, they eat very well, so at least I can be re assured that they are getting all the good stuff in during mealtimes and we can be less picky with their choice of snacks. (more…)
Date paste is one of my favorite sweeteners to use at home. It’s cheap, easy to make and has the best nutritional profile out of the liquid sweeteners that you can find out there. They are a great source of energy and fiber and contain essential minerals such as calcium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc. They also contain vitamin A, and vitamin K among others.
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Who loves breakfast??? ME, ME, ME I would scream if someone asks. I must say that there is something amazing in the versatility of what is considered ‘acceptable’ in the morning- sweet, savoury, hot, cold, it doesn’t really matter as each culture has a very different interpretation of whats expected as food as first order of the day.
As you probably know by now, I like to make non vegan recipes into vegan ones. For that, it is important to find vegan friendly replacements for ingredients that are consistently used in baking and cooking. Eggs are one of those ingredients that you find almost in every baking recipe so I set out to find the best natural and healthier replacement. (more…)
Today the day was bright and sunny, but very cold so I decided to warm ourselves up with a lovely and simple pumpkin coconut curry. Due to Halloween’s celebrations we have an immense amount of pumpkins to use in the next week, so I have been roasting lots of it almost every night to be able to easily incorporate them into the next day meals. (more…)
For the last year or so, we have been (irregularly) using activated charcoal toothpaste to help us remove any stains from our teeth. For those of you not familiar with activated charcoal, its usually made from coconut shell. It is similar to common charcoal, but is made especially for use as a medicine. To make activated charcoal, manufacturers heat common charcoal in the presence of a gas that causes the charcoal to develop lots of internal spaces or “pores.” These pores help activated charcoal “trap” chemicals. It can be used internally to help with stomach ailments as well as to cleanse the body, and we use it externally as toothpaste. (more…)
‘What natural beauty & skincare products do you use?’ This is a question I get asked quite often. It’s a fair question, because we use mostly (at least within our possibilities) everything organic and as pure as we can get. Most people initially think that maybe the quality or the performance of such items would not be as good as the more commercial counterparts, (more…)
Cultured cashew butter- what a discovery! It tastes delicious, tangy, salty and just plain delicious. I have been making raw vegan nut cheeses for ages, but I never thought to actually make it taste more buttery until recently because Ariana loves to spread on her occasional breakfast toast and I’m not a big fan of vegetable spreads.they contain too many unnecessary ingredients.
Fall is here and so is Halloween… the time for scary and (pretty disgusting) looking treats and endless baking afternoons to make enough for the neighborhood kids trick and treating affairs! These vegan Halloween inspired spooky cookies are the best to make with the kids and they are made with unrefined sugars and natural plant colours.
Last year we decorated the front of the house and we had a fair amount of fun doing it. Lots of kids passed by picking up sweets (little did they know that we would be giving them healthy cookies instead of sugar laden sweets! :))
I’d love to share our, I must admit, pretty basic cookie recipe for last year. We simply made gingerbread cookies with scary shapes using cookie cutters, as Ariana was still quite young and this was the best she could do at that time. But this year we are going to build on last year’s recipe using vegan buttercream made with aquafaba, my newest and most loved addition to the kitchen pantry (or fridge!) to decorate our scary looking cookies. This is the cookie cutter set we have bought.
The cookie recipe is a basic sugar cookie (made healthy of course!) but the most fun we have had decorating them.
Basic Sugar Cookie recipe:
Makes 12-14 cookies with Halloween inspired shapes:
2 cups of flour (I used this one)
1/2 cup unrefined caster cane sugar*
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 homemade aquafaba butter (recipe here or use any vegan butter)
1 tsp vanilla powder
2 tablespoons oat or cashew milk (thick milks work best!)
pinch of salt
First preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the aquafaba butter together with the caster cane sugar. Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl and slowly add into the aquafaba sugar paste mixing by hand. It will become kind of like a crumbly mixture, but if you add the milk it should create a dough ball, that keep together and that you can roll out. You can always add a bit more milk if it is not soft enough to roll without it falling apart.
Roll the dough until its about 0.5 cm thick and cut your shapes. Keep rolling the excess dough until you don’t have enough dough left! the last piece can just be made into little balls and press down with the rolling pin to the same thickness as the cookies. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden on top, let them cool down on a wire tray and decorate!
It is also nice to make these cookies with chocolate flavor by replacing 1/4 cup of the flour for raw chocolate powder.
For the decorations, you will need to have your aquafaba royal icing and natural food colouring ready.
* I make cane caster sugar by blending unrefined caster sugar until a very thin powder.
Breakfast today was this quick and easy winter spiced apple porridge. There is something very comforting about porridge and in cold crispy bright mornings we really enjoy having porridge for breakfast. This particular winter spiced apple porridge is easy, the spices we use are always available in our cupboard and we all like it, including the kids. (more…)