Eat Dance Live

Sometimes in winter, when your face feels so cold it hurts, you just want to come home to something warm. A couple night ago, that something came in the form of a warm vegan bolognese sauce poured over gluten-free brown rice linguini. Now for your little bit of food history: Bolognese sauce is a meat-based sauce that originally came from... Bologna, Italy, of course! It was first documented in the late 18th century by the father of Italian cooking, Pellegrino Artusi (also the guy who penned one of the earliest recipes for minestrone, which he thought had made him fatally ill until he found out it wasn't bad minestrone, but cholera. No really, look it up.) The original recipe calls for meat, specifically veal (the cursed meat of all vegans), onions, carrots, and butter. Mushrooms were approved as a good addition. The recipe was pretty simple: nicely mince and brown everything, and then cook the whole thing in meat broth. My vegan recipe is almost just as simple... but healthier...

Happy Easter! Happy Easter to all those to whom it's relevant! I hope you all had a wonderful day of warmth, sunshine, family, Easter egg hunting, stuffing your face with chocolate post-Lent, or whatever you usually do today.     To celebrate the spring, a girl  kitchen date  was in order and baking ensued, the perfect cake was made for the lightness and elegance of springtime :)  Vegan and Gluten-Free Orange Cardamom Cake w/ Orange Pistachio Icing ...and yes, there was  a middle layer of frosting and blood orange jam.  Coconut Chocolate Pie w/ Spelt Crust And on a final baking note:  These are actually the best macaroons ever. I made a batch last night, and they are half gone... amazingly simple, and yet so delicious.

Happy Easter, everyone ! Oh the joys of Easter Sunday, when kids hunt chocolate eggs, women were fabulous spring hats, and the post-Lent crowd pigs out on all they've missed out on for 40 days. We decided to be the too-cool for "post-Church brunch" kids and had brunch BEFORE Church. After being woken up at 6:45am by a kitten on my head (I have never been more tolerant of being woken up that early in my life), we started off our day with the (never)homemakers' vegan French toast recipe . The only difference between that recipe and my tweaking was that I used a little bit more soymilk, didn't double dip, and used 6 slices of kamut bread instead of English muffins. I layered the slices with bananas, and topped it off with blueberries and some good ol' Canadian maple syrup. It was amazing. After Church, we wanted to check out this weekend's Ottawa Eco-Expo , but got distracted on our way by the Trillium Bakery on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South. Th...

With the end of classes coming around and procrastination from papers increasing with the end of the semester, I'm hoping to be posting more frequently from now on (along the lines of twice a week). It seems like people are looking for all sorts of substitutes recently (myself included!) whether it is to make something vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, low-sugar, low calorie, the list goes on… this is why this week’s ode is to quinoa. Quinoa: it’s something of a grain, but it’s gluten free and you can use it for ANYTHING! It can substitute rice, couscous, breakfast oatmeal, you can find quinoa flour, you name it! Like I mentioned in one of my last posts, I always find it fascinating (but mostly scary) how far removed we have become from our food. When we consider that traditional South American diets understood the need for complete proteins, or that traditional Chinese cooking emphasizes the consumption of ‘internal body cleansers’ or 'energy balancers' like ginger...

Despite the fact that it's Easter long weekend, this week means papers, papers, papers for me to write so instead of posting a recipe I wanted to give you a quick baking tip that I have found more and more vegans have been adopting recently: using chickpea flour! Lately, I’ve been substituting about ¼ (or more, I've done up to half) of any flour in my cookie recipes with chickpea flour and it always ends up tasting amazing. It gives cookies a much richer, nuttier taster, and a warmer darker color. Because I tend to only use flours like whole wheat, spelt, etc. I find that you can substitute it one for one no problem. Since I’m straying furthe r and further away from really sweet desserts, I find that by providing a richer taste, chickpea flour makes baking less cloyingly sweet. I haven’t tried it on anything other than cookies at the moment though (like cakes, muffins, etc.) so if you have insight into that let me know! On the nutrition side, using chickpea flour is ...