English Muffin Bread

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I had a wonderful first Christmas as a married lady with my hubby.  As much as I love Christmas, I'm a little bit relieved the holidays are winding down.  I enjoy the whole month of December, with all the decorations and parties, but it is a lot of work (and spending money and not eating so great!).  

One of my gifts this year to coworkers and family was English muffin bread.  If you haven't had English muffin bread before you are missing out.  My gift to you is that I will share my (veganized) recipe for you to enjoy yourself.

I used to beg my mom to make me a loaf of English muffin bread.  It tends to disappear quickly.  My mother's recipe is not vegan but the other week she gave us a loaf…a vegan one!  I didn't think it was possible, but it was so good, and my husband and I polished off half the load before breakfast time.  All it took was two simple substitutions and you too can have a (vegan) loaf of your very own.  

I'll admit.  It's a little bit of a pain in the butt to make and messy.  Well maybe I'm just messy.  Dylan had to clean the kitchen after I was done…flour everywhere.  Once you get the hang of it it's really not so hard to make.  Here's what you'll need…

Ingredients

• 5 1/2 cups four (spoon cups with a spoon to pack lightly)
• 2 packages of active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups unsweeted soy or almond milk (be conscious of allergies!)
• 1/2 water
• cornmeal
• vegan butter (for lining pans)

First you're going to combine 3 cups of flour, the yeast, sugar, salt and baking soda into a bowl.  Heat your milk and water in a separate pan until they are warm.   Since I was making these for coworkers I used soy milk because I wasn't sure if their kids had any nut allergies.  You have to be careful these days.  The soy milk came out fine and I used almond milk for my family at it was perfect as well.   After your water and milk are heated add this to the dry ingredients and stir in more flour to make a stiff batter.  I would recommend using an electric mixer for this.  Grease two 8.4x4.5 inch pans with vegan butter and sprinkle cornmeal on the sides.  Next you spoon your batter into the pans.  Cover your pans and let rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes.  I don't have too many warm spots in my apartment so I keep it in the oven on the warm setting.  

Next cook your breads at 400 degrees for 25 minutes and you're done!  Remove the bread from the pans right away and let the loaves cool.  Make sure you toast this bread before you eat it!  I recommend slicing it nice and thin.  I've also used this bread to make garlic bread.  Yum.  

I have a couple more packs of yeast calling for me to crank out some more loaves of this bread while we are on winter break.  I think I'm in trouble.  As you can see from the meal above, we've been eating very well this holiday!

Sophie get's some mashed potatoes as well!  Merry Christmas everyone!

Vegan Meatballs

As you can probably tell by now, I love feeding people.  My husband and I had our parents over for dinner on Saturday night and I was super excited to cook for them.  I love having people over and you can guarantee I'm going to make way too much food (who doesn't love leftovers?).  Having people over (especially on weekends) allows me to really bring it to the waltz when it comes to meal prep.

Since our parents were our guests I'm made everything from scratch. I'm kicked the husband and child out of the house (don't worry they had fun seeing Santa) so I could really get to work (and clean this place up!).  I dressed the puggle up in her best Christmas outfit and got to work…

I mentioned my sauce recipe on here before so that was in the works because I'm made (drumroll) vegan  meatballs!  How do you make vegan meatballs you may ask, well I'll tell you.  The main ingredient for my meatballs is mushrooms.  Don't turn your nose up yet.  Mushrooms are a nice meat substitute because (not to be redundant but) they have a nice meatiness to them.  You've probably seen portobello mushroom burgers on menus before.  My husband it not really a big fan of mushrooms but he likes when they are disguised in a recipe.  I've tested these meatballs out on him before and he approves so stay with me...

Meatballs are fun to make.  Vegan meatballs are especially fun because you don't have to fret about contamination from meat or eggs.  You can really get your hands dirty (literally) with vegan meatballs (after washing them first of course!).

I've seen quite a few recipes for vegan meatballs online, and I took inspiration here and there depending on my family's preferences.  My (now vegan) husband always talks about his nana's meatball recipe and how they had oatmeal in them.  Of course I couldn't make vegan meatballs without oatmeal so I incorporated that into mine.  Here's what I did…

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/4 cups oatmeal (uncooked)
• 10 ounces of sliced mushrooms 
• 1 chopped onion
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 shallot (you don't really need the shallot, but I love them!)
• 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• vegetable oil (for frying)
• salt and pepper to taste

First in a pan I sautéed the onion, garlic and shallot in olive oil until they were lightly browned.  I then added the veggies to the Vitamix (you can use a food processor if you don't have one).  I added my flour and oatmeal (add spices here!) to the mix.  

You should get a sticky brown mixture and you should not be able to differentiate between onion, oatmeal and so on.  This mix is going to be pretty hot after sautéing the veggies so let it sit in the fridge for a little bit.  Once it's cooled I scooped out about two tablespoons at a time and rolled it into a ball.  You can really make you meatballs any size (tiny ones would be great for sliders!), plus you don't really have to worry about internal temperature (since it's vegan!)

You know I like to be healthy, but sometimes you need to fry…these meatballs are a perfect example.  I put my meatballs in a pan with some vegetable oil.  I cooked and flipped them over medium heat until the meatballs were browned on the outside.   

I then added my meatballs to my homemade sauce and served over pasta.  I know they're not your traditional Italian meatballs but everyone seemed to enjoy them!  Cheers!

Happy Holidays Sangria

My husband and I had a major milestone this weekend…we hosted our first party together.  Hosting can be a tad stressful, but it's a heck of a lot easier when I have someone else I can tell to clean the bathroom and take out the trash.

Check out Sophie's festive sweater.

The holidays are a great excuse to eat and drink too much.  One of my favorite drinks to make is sangria.  I've been exposed to some quality sangria and some subpar sangria, and I've come up with what I think is a pretty solid combination.  It doesn't involve the most quality ingredients in the world (as you can probably tell by the box of wine) but it's tasty and it's great for a party.  Plus it's super easy to make!

I think the trick with sangria is that you need to make it ahead of time.  That way the fruit, juice, and alcohol really become one.  It's science trust me.

I recommend making your sangria 24-48 hours in advance (just make sure you're not going to sample it too much!).  We had our party on Friday night, so I made my Thursday evening after work.  There's nothing like making a big batch of sangria after a long day at work...

Ingredients:

• One box of white wine (I think they're usually about 3 liters)
• 2 cups of triple sec (more or less depending how potent you want your sangria to be)
• 3 cups of pineapple juice
• fresh fruit 

With the fresh fruit you can really get creative here.  You can use whatever is in season (or on sale!).  My favorite combo is a fresh pineapple chopped up, one orange cut and squeezed, and two limes cut and squeezed.  I throw everything together in a pitcher and 24-48 hours later…magic.

Happy holidays!