Thanksgiving Dinner, Take 1

So, since our beloved Tofurkey is out (big surprise, it has corn ingredients in it) I've been trying to come up with something else to bring to Thanksgiving dinner next week. Last night was dry run #1.

Recipes tried were:
Sweet Potato Biscuits from Vegan Holiday Kitchen: More than 200 Delicious, Festive Recipes for Special Occasions
Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Crumb Topping from Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook

The Sweet Potato Biscuits were delicious. I thought that the prep was a little weird, since you make the dough in the food processor, and I'm not used to doing that, but it was easy, and the taste was very good. These will be made next week.

The Pumpkin Ziti was eh. A little on the glue-y side, and pretty bland. I fear that this is the kind of vegan dish that non-vegans hate, and with good reason. It didn't have a lot of flavor, which was weird, because the cashew ricotta tasted good and the breadcrumbs and the onions were delicious individually. Put it all together and it's not a winner, which is surprising, since everything else I've made from Veganomicon has been delicious. Oh well, you can't win every time. This will not be made next week.

Friday I will be making the Baked Thanksgiving Risotto from the Vegan Holiday Kitchen, minus the corn. Fingers crossed!!

Make Your Own Almond Milk (It's Really Easy)

OK, when we figured out my husband's corn allergy this summer, and realized that the almond milk we buy had corn-derived ingredients in it (Almond Breeze Unsweetened, if you're curious) he suggested we make it. I was immediately against it. What a pain in the ass.

Boy was I wrong.

It's really easy, and I actually like how this stuff tastes, which I can't say that I did for the Almond Breeze. Why bother? Yes, we also buy corn free soymilk (WestSoy Unsweetened, Trader Joe's Unsweetened, and Eden Soy Extra Unsweetened are nothing but soybeans and water)- but baking with soymilk is pretty bad. Baked goods have this weird, smooth texture that I don't like. Baking with almond milk is (to me) just like baking with regular milk- baked goods turn out fluffy and delicious.

You do have to plan ahead a little, but we go through this stuff regularly enough that I seem to always have a cup of almonds soaking.

Ingredients:
1 cup raw (non-salted) almonds, soaked from anywhere from 4 hours to several days
3 cups water
1 T honey
your blender
a nut milk straining bag

Making Almond Milk- Soaked Almonds, a photo by zombie amelia on Flickr. 

Yes, I know that ideally, you should only soak your almonds from 4-8 hours, but I've not noticed any difference in the finished product if I soak them longer. You just get weird white fatty stuff soaking in your water. I soak the almonds at the ratio of 1 cup almonds to 2 cups water, and just set it out in a Pyrex glass measuring container on the counter and leave it there.

Once your almonds are soaked, strain them (discard the soaking water) and rinse them off. Put in the blender with the water and the honey.

Making Almond Milk- Before Blending, a photo by zombie amelia on Flickr. 

Puree that stuff. For a minute or two.

Making Almond Milk- After Blending, a photo by zombie amelia on Flickr. 

Once you've pureed it for a few minutes, pour it into a container through your strainer bag. The strainer bag is really helpful. I tried it with a mesh colander and it was all over the place.

Making Almond Milk- Straining Bits, a photo by zombie amelia on Flickr. 

Remove the bag from the milk and squeeze the milk out of the bag, discard the almond bits.
This recipe makes about 3 cups of milk.

Honey Oat Bread (Dairy Free)

Dairy free, delicious, honey oatmeal bread :)

Adapted from Bakingdom's Soft Honey Oat Bread and made in my new bread maker. Why a bread maker? With all our food allergies, it's hard to buy a bread that both my husband and I can eat. Clasen's bread, from Middleton, Wisconsin, comes closest, even nicely labeling when they use cornmeal on the bottom of bread, but we like a softer, honey oat type bread than the one variety of bread of theirs we can both eat. So, I bought a bread maker. I love the bread maker. It's so easy.

All you have to do is put the ingredients in the bread maker in the correct order and turn it on.

The bread maker requires correct layers of ingredients: bottom is the liquids, then the dry ingredients, and then the yeast.

This is a 1.5 lb loaf of bread, I set my bread maker to medium crust darkness.

So, in order to make this delicious bread, you need (in order):

1 cup almond milk (room temperature, not right out of the fridge- you can warm it to about 75-90F)
1/4 cup water (lukewarm/warm temperature)
2 tablespoons melted Spectrum palm oil shortening
1/4 cup honey (the tangier, the better)
2 & 3/4 cups bread flour
1/4 cup whole wheat bread flour
3/4 cup oats
1 & 1/2 tsp salt
1 package Rize yeast (no corn ingredients) it's about 2 & 1/4 tsp

The yeast actually goes into a little indentation you create in the top of your dry ingredients, a little well to hold the yeast.

Finished loaf!, a photo by zombie amelia on Flickr.

You can also opt to drizzle honey on top of your loaf and sprinkle oats- this can be done when your bread maker tells you the last rise cycle is starting- this is when you get the option to remove the paddles and reshape the loaf, sometimes I do this, sometimes I don't.

Either way, the bread is soft and delicious.