Vegan Baking Bonanza!!!

First up: Kashi Thin Crust Mushroom Trio & Spinach Pizza review! (Nutritional info here). The Kashi website describes this pizza as:

Baby Portobello, Champignon and Shiitake mushrooms with spinach, mozzarella and provolone cheeses with a tomato parmesan sauce on a wood-fired, thin crust made with Kashi 7 Whole Grains & Sesame™ and flax seed. Vegetarian.

Well, yum! Ross and I both enjoyed this pizza (please make sure to cook it according to the “crisp crust” standards or it won’t be as yum). However, I think this is something Meghann has commented before too, but it’s just not enough as is. Ross had 5 slices, I had three and that sounds like a ton, but it’s completely not. Make sure you either eat it with soup or salad…or be like us and go get ice cream afterwards.

Moving on to today!

I woke up with awful cramps, so we stayed home and watched a church service online at a church we used to go to (and loved!) in Orlando – Discovery Church. Amazing. Kinda miss that church! It was fun though, going to church in bed haha.

After my painkillers kicked in we hit up Winn Dixie for some awesome produce sales they had (fresh local blueberries $1 each; Bosc, Anjou, and Red pears $1/lb; and fresh green beans $1/lb). After dropping the produce off we went on our way to TARGET!!! Y’all know how I love me some Target. I feel like we’ve been going there a lot lately, but today we had an excuse – I had to pick up a prescription! Oh what? You can transfer prescriptions to different pharmacies? Oh? Well…maybe that was just an excuse… We had fun anyway!

Once we got back I began my vegan baking bonanza!!! SO much fun, and I am so glad I got to play with vegan baking! Sundays are totally becoming baking days.

Round 1 was my rendition of these Vegan Blueberry Oat Muffins that Heather posted her rendition of yesterday. Yum! The ingredients I used were:

1 c. unsweetened original almond milk
1 c. rolled oats (Quaker old fashioned)
1 c. white whole wheat flour
1.5 tsp. baking powder
little salt (no where near the 1/2 tsp. they use)
ground golden flax egg replacer (1 T. ground flax + 3 T. water; sit for 1-2 min.)
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
3/4 c. turbinado
1 c. fresh blueberries (lightly dusted in WWW flour so they won’t sink to the bottom).

Please see the original recipe for instructions/ baking times and temp. Mine came out wonderfully!

Don’t you just love the beaming rays of light shining down on my muffin? I’m SUCH a nerd!!

Up next was my attempt to mimic Kashi’s GOLEAN Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Bars. My husband loves these, but they’re rather pricey in my opinion. I used this recipe as an inspiration/ basis for mine. Here are the ingredients I used:

1 mashed super-ripe banana
1 c. light brown sugar
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1.5 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 c. white whole wheat flour
2 T. ground golden flax seed
2 T. ground sesame seed
1 tsp. baking powder
salt (couple tiny shakes, not much at all)
2.25 c. old fashioned oats
3 T. water
1/2 c. roughly chopped raw almonds
1/2 c. raisins
1/4 c. raw sunflower seeds

I mixed everything according to my inspiration recipe (adding the ground flax and sesame with the flour and stirring in the almonds, raisins, and sunflower seeds at the end). Instead of making mine like cookies I made one giant square-ish blob on a cookie sheet and baked for 30 minutes.

I then sliced to bar-ish shapes:

And I left some plain and then drizzled some with white chocolate (non-vegan, guess those ones are just vegetarian!!)

And there you have it! LC’s Oatmeal Almond Raisin Bars! Aren’t they cute? Which hubs says don’t taste like the Kashi bars (well duh, they’re not them) but I think they taste better and way more natural!

Thus ends Vegan Baking Bonanza Sunday and began yucky-meat-rib-thing-fest-because-I-love-my-husband-so-much-and-he-says-I-never-feed-him-real-meat. I’m such a good lil’ wifey.

His:
Hers:

I cut some of the least fatty chunks off and kept them for myself. I only ate about half of the meat picture on my plate.

However, even though I wasn’t the world’s most happy camper during the experience, Ross LOVED it! He said my ribs blew so many others he’s tried out of the water (oh yeah, who’s the non-rib eating but best rib-making master!?! haha jk…). He wants me to make them again sometime, so here is my attempt to remember what I did.

Dry rub on the ribs – brown sugar, kosher salt, ground red pepper, garlic powder, paprika, thyme, oregano, marjoram, fresh ground black pepper. Smush in on both sides of rib, bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until meat reaches 160 degrees F.

BBQ sauce made separately – lotsa ketchup!, lotsa molasses!, honey mustard, balsamic vinegar, little apple cider vinegar, little BBQ sauce I already had, garlic powder, ground red pepper, marjoram, oregano, fresh ground black pepper, kosher salt, pineapple juice….think that’s it!

He loved it. Wayyy too much heat for my little tastebuds! Woo sucker, I gulped down some vino and jumped for mas agua!!

The green beans I made using a technique I read about on my friend Jamie‘s blog. She talked about marinating veggies, and I wanted to give it a try. I marinated my green beans in balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper for about an hour, then put them in a 400 degree oven for 7 minutes. YUM!!!

We also had a slice of my Hawaiian Oat Beer Bread on the side.

OK SUPER LONG POST DONE!!! Sorry y’all, I obviously just had a HUGELY productive afternoon in the kitchen!! Time for me to go chillax.

Also – PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR THIS VIDEO AS MUCH AS YOU CAN SO IT CAN BE SHOWN AT THE GRAMMYS!!!!! I’m told Matt looks like Jacob in the Twilight movie?? (Haven’t seen it, I know, I’m nuts). Thank you guys so much for voting!!!!

http://www.cbs.com/specials/grammys/moment/video_player.php?vid=407

Have a great Monday tomorrow!!!