Holiday Delight

Armed with new batteries for my camera that seems to run out of batteries once a month even though I only use it for food blogging, I am back with a vengence!

Tonight I was feeling especially merry as evidenced both by the excessive Christmas decorations adorning my apartment and by the seasonal delights I made. I've been wanting to make some sort of cranberry soda since I had a giant bag of berries leftover from my acorn squash stuffing. I did some googling and came up with this recipe, a combination of homemade ginger ale and cranberry juice recipes:

1 cup peeled, finely chopped ginger

3/4 bag fresh cranberries

2 cups water

Boil cranberries until the pop, add ginger for 5 minutes, then set aside for 20 minutes. Strain into container of your choice- I opted for a glass jar. Now, I suppose you should combine it with club soda, but I'm a huge fan of seltzer water and used that instead. I just mixed until I found what I liked. To sweeten, make a simple syrup by mixing 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of boiling water and stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Add what tastes good to you.

For dinner I went for some stuffing, and when I looked up the recipe I noticed that on the same page was a recipe for Brussels sprouts, my favorite. So, from page 228 of the November 2006 edition of Better Homes and Gardens, I used this Old-Fashioned Bread Stuffing recipe. My only change was that I used fresh sage and fresh tarragon (left over from the squash stuffing) and I used vegetable broth instead of chicken.

Also on that page I found this recipe for Creamy Brussels Sprouts. I followed it for the most part, again subbing veggie broth for chicken, but it calls for whipping cream and cheese so I had to get creative. I creamed together a half block of silken tofu and about 1/4 soy milk to replace the cream, and I made no attempt to sub for the cheese mostly because I overlooked it when I was making my shopping list.

The stuffing was a little bland despite my addition of fresh herbs. I'm wondering if they cooked too long and lost their flavor. Or maybe I just prefer poultry seasoning. And I suspect the veggie broth was less than stellar because it wasn't high quality.

The sprouts were interesting but I enjoyed them. Nutmeg is the secret ingredient in everything and even though I don't particularly care for it, it made the dish what it was. Next time I'll use Better Than Cream Cheese instead of tofu/soy mlik and I bet it will taste even better.

And of course, they were both delightful chased down with my delicious cranberry soda.

A Day in the Park

My dog and I spend lots of time at the park, often sleeping, when the weather is nice. We always pack lots of snacks and water/drinks, but since we had a guest accompanying us, I thought we'd make something a little more fun.

The first thing that came to mind was some sort of fresh fruit spritzer. I'm not sure what that means, but I wanted something with freshly made juice and whatever people mix it with that isn't alcohol (I'm strangely anti drinking during the day). Strawberries sound delightful, possibly because I was eating them when I dreamt up this plan. But I was worried that our guest wouldn't like strawberries, so I went with mangoes instead, as if those are generally more people friendly than strawberries. I also had some Pink Lady apples, my favorites of all time, so I thought I'd use those as well.

In grad school I purchased the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer that I'd been eyeing for months. It was the best $100 I ever spent- back in grad school. I'd use it every day to make tons and tons of juice, but it's been sitting in my cupboard since I moved to the D.C. area. However, that all changed.

After some quick Googling, I found that I should mix 2 parts fruit juice and 1 part sparkling water or wine. I'm not exactly sure what that meant, so I ended up juicing 4 mangoes and putting the juice in a large water bottle, then filling up part way with soda water. The juice that came out was pretty thick but tasty nonetheless. I did the same with the juice of 4 apples. There was no measuring, but a simple taste test at the end indicated I might have gone a little heavy on the soda because the juice seemed diluted, especially in the mango spritzer. Lesson learned.

And, of course, you have to serve it in glass jars. If I wanted to get fancy, I would have frozen some fruit (grapes, strawberries, pineapple) and used them as ice. Or I would have frozen the puree or edible flowers in ice cubes. Or I would have put some chunked fruit on skewers or toothpicks. And garnished with mint. But, that's too much effort when I'm just going ot the park. (I only added the strawberry for the picture).

And since I was having something so sweet, I thought a nice unsweet treat was in order. I happened to finally tune into Get Fresh with Sarah Snow on Discovery Health this week to see her make some oat/peanut butter/cocoa patty goodness. I am choosing to ignore the fact that honey is not really vegan, and I left out the spirulina because I'm just not sure about it yet. And I left out the whole flax seeds and replaced it with more oats because I'm not sure I'll ever use whole flax again. Oh and my oats were really 5-grain hot breakfast cereal.


I halved the recipe and made one set of patties with peanut butter and the other with cashew butter. I went to great lengths not to let the flavors mix. Everything was fine until I decided I had to use both hands to form patties and put on cookie trays. There was chocoloate/nut butter goodness everywhere. No, I'm not complaining, just saying...I finally made the patties and put them in the freezer as long as I could so they'd harden some.

The "cookies" are essentially a very healthy version of the no-bake cookies you had as a kid. I'd like to try adding a little salt to them, but we'll save that for a time when it's just me devouring all of them.

It was perfect for the park, but necessitated some paper towels. Great times.