in my last post, i inundated all of you with lots and lots of cookie recipes. so i thought that in this week, post-holiday festivities and indulgences, i would give you a hearty, low cal, and extremely satisfying recipe.
i promised all of you the recipe for my homemade applesauce that i made for our sixth annual latke party, and so here it is as an early christmas present! i have to start off with the disclaimer that i LOVE apples, but i am really not a huge fan of applesauce. there aren’t many things that i enjoy as much as a crispy, tart, and flavorful bite of apple. my dad used to take me apple tasting at the ucsc farm and garden when i was little, and taught me to really delight in the differences between apple varieties – kind of like wine tasting for all ages. now, i look forward to picking out all sorts of new and exciting varieties of apples (plus the old favorites) to eat and compare notes with mike on the sweetness, crispness, texture, bite, etc.
ok, so it’s two days before thanksgiving, and i’m guessing that most of you, dear readers, have your thanksgiving food planned out already. but i have this delicious recipe that i’ve been meaning to share with you. and i meant to post it weeks ago, but i’ve been busy reorganizing my kitchen, baking breads, soups, & pasta dishes with delicious fall ingredients (you’ll see these in later posts!), celebrating mike’s birthday, celebrating mike’s birthday again (the recipe for the peanut butter chocolate cake is here: smittenkitchen.com), and celebrating olivia’s birthday.
i know, it’s a really rough life, huh? so here we are, two days away from t-day, and i’m going to share this recipe anyways – just in case you’re still looking for a vegan dish to make.
this week, mike and i packed up our car and headed up to mendocino and calistoga to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. we spent four days and three nights camping in mendocino (with no internet or electricity – can you believe it?), then headed down to calistoga (where we are right now, living the life with free wifi in our hotel).
hi readers, how are you doing? long time no post. i hope you’re all having a good summer and enjoying the beautiful weather outside. we’ve been quite busy the past month, with both fun events (peter and jenny’s wedding, katie’s birthday, and a trip to ohio) and a sad event.
throughout the good times and bad, the constant in our lives is food – whether it’s the (mostly) healthy stuff we make at home or the not so healthy stuff we eat when we’re on vacation. i love food, and as you may have gathered from other posts, cooking is part of my genetics – my whole family loves to prepare and consume delicious comida. mike and i make at least 4-5 meals at home per week, all of which are vegetarian and some of which are vegan (i will eat and bake with eggs, but i use very little dairy). i also read a ton of food blogs (my favs are 101 cookbooks, smitten kitchen, and vegan lunchbox), and we subscribe to a great magazine called vegetarian times that continually inspires us to create new, seasonal meals.
a month or so ago, my sister-in-law laura and i were sharing our favorite food blogs, and she was telling me how she wants to create her own food blog about the scrumptious vegan food she cooks. during the course of the conversation, i began to wonder why i haven’t yet taken some of the things i love doing – cooking, writing, and taking pictures – and combine them into blog posts about food. silly me!!
so…drum roll please….i am planning on posting at least once per week with a dish we’ve made! many of the recipes will be classic powell family cuisine that i grew up eating (i should probably make sure my parents are ok with me publishing the secret family recipes – will you guys please let me know if this is ok in the comments?), and the rest will be my own spin on vegetarian times or food blog recipes, letting you know how well they turned out in real life.
to begin this new feature on my blog, i prepared a picnic lunch that you may have read about on my husband’s blog. we packed up the picnic items: falafel, pita bread, hummus, fresh veggies, my own version of tabouli salad (recipe is below), iced tea, and some delicious raspberry bars into our backpacks and biked out to the bluffs of wilder ranch to enjoy the feast and the view.
