Vegan Ice Cream

As the mother of a family on a vegan and gluten free diet, sometimes I just run out of ideas and I don’t know what to make for mealtime.  This morning was one of those days….
So I asked the Little Farmhands.  A more organized mother would not be polling her offspring for opinions, but that’s what I did.

“Let’s have ice cream!” they said.

Being the ever-so-responsible parent that I am, I said, “Yeah!  That sounds like a great idea!”

And it did sound like a great idea at the time!  But you know that inevitably, today will be the day that a grandparent calls and asks one of them, “So, what did you have for breakfast today?” And they’ll say, “Mama let us eat ice cream.”  And I’ll be jumping up and down in the background waving my arms wildly, yelling in a whisper, “No!!  Don’t tell her that!” 

But I didn’t think of that in the moment, so I said, “Yeah!  That sounds like a great idea!” 

Here’s how we did it….

Earlier this week Papa the Farmer came home with a couple of large brown bags of really brown, squishy bananas. 

We peeled them and laid them out on a cookie tray.  Then we put the whole tray in the freezer and let them freeze.

 

This morning, we pulled out our Champion Juicer. 

(Frugal note here!  If you want to make banana ice cream like this, but you don’t have a juicer, you can probably find a used one comparatively cheaply!  These juicers are top of the line so a lot of people buy them when they make a new year’s resolution to juice more or be healthier or whatever…  Then when the phase fizzles out, you see a lot of Champions on Craigslist and ebay, just looking for a new home!  If you want to be even more frugal, you can just skip the juicer altogether and just chop the bananas up and eat little frozen banana slices.  That’s pretty tasty, too!)

Now, are you ready for our very complicated recipe?

The next thing you do is run the frozen bananas through the juicer.  It comes out looking like this….

 

 Hey!  Who is sticking their finger in that!? 

Get your finger out of there!  Don’t you know I’m posting these pictures online later?!

We wanted to make carob “ice cream” so as we were running the bananas through the juicer we also added a scoop of peanut butter and about a cup of carob powder.

That’s it.

 

It’s important to have good help for the clean up phase. 

I may consider renting out our farm’s Dripper-Licker-Upper for a small fee.  Otherwise you’ll just have to lick up your own drips. 

To redeem myself in the “responsible mother” department, I didn’t just let them eat ice cream for breakfast.  We had air-popped popcorn, too (sprayed with a little olive oil and sea salt!)  After all, corn is technically a grain (not a vegetable).  That’s almost as good as cereal, isn’t it? 

 

How To Get Children (and Adults!) To Eat Their Salad!

Around here we have rule at the table:  No cooked food before raw food!  Raw food contains vitamins and enzymes that are destroyed during the cooking process, so it’s really important for good health that everyone in the family eats raw food every day.

We’ve had visitors who are amazed at how heartily my little farmhands will eat their veggies!  But let’s face it… hunger is an excellent motivator!  I have discovered that children will happily eat almost any vegetable when they are good and hungry…

My other secret is to slather delicious salad dressing on raw veggies.  Be careful here!  Store bought dressings can be high in fat and contain a lot of nasty additives!  We made a quick salad dressing for lunch the other day that turned out so well, I just had to share the recipe!

Fresh Parsley Salad Dressing

In a blender, blend together:

1 package soft tofu

1/2 cup fresh parsley

1 Tbsp onion powder

2 Tbsp honey

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 fresh lemon (peeled and seeded!)

1 tsp salt

1/2 – 3/4 cup of water (enough to make sure you don’t burn out your blender motor!)

After you blend, Enjoy!

Oh!  One other warning…  This recipe can lead to family fights:  “I want the last of the salad!”  “No!  Let me have it!”

Vegan, Gluten Free Yummies!

Over on Facebook, somebody is hosting a Gluten Free Cookie Recipe Swap.  Gluten free baking is a challenge… mostly because gluten-free flours taste like… well…  let’s just be honest.  Gluten free flours can taste like cardboard.

As an aside, I lived in Guyana for a year.  Apparently, the Guyanese people who are my age grew up under a dictator who banned imports – including wheat flour.  Most of what they ate growing up was made of rice flour.  It’s grainy and yucky.  I cannot imagine growing up eating mainly rice flour.  When I lived there wheat was allowed, but even so, Guyanese baked goods didn’t taste very good to me.  And so, when I realized that my family has gluten sensitivities I resolved that we would not be eating desserts that taste like cardboard.  If it’s going to have that many calories, it’s got to taste great!

Here are some of the yummiest recipes I made for Papa the Farmer on his birthday.  If you like these recipes, be sure to go back to the Facebook Gluten Free Cookie Recipe Swap and click “like” on my recipes, so that people will know they are yummy and they should try them!

Of course, there is my now-famous recipe for allergy free fudge which was published over on the EasyLunchBoxes.com Blog:

And here are some new ones that I haven’t posted yet.  I hope you enjoy them!

“Peppermint Balls”

In a food processor, blend 4 cups of pecans and/or Walnuts, 4 cups dates, 4 cups fresh mint leaves and 1 cup carob powder.  Slowly add a couple of Tablespoons of water until the mixture reaches a doughy consistency.  Roll dough into little balls.  Chill in the fridge.

  “Crunchy Almond Bars”

(This recipe is inspired by a similar recipe in “Country Life Today” by Diana Fleming")

1/4 cup oil

1 Tablespoon liquid lecithin

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tablespoon vanilla

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 or 2 tsp almond extract

1/2 cup finely chopped almonds.

1 cup gluten free oats

1 1/2 cups dry, uncooked millet.

In a bowl, beat the first seven ingredients.  Set aside.

In a coffee grinder, grind the gluten free oats into flour.  Add the gluten free oat flour to the first mixture.

In same coffee grinder, grind the uncooked millet into a flour.  Add to the first mixture.

Thoroughly mix first mixture with flours. 

In a well greased 9”x13” baking pan, spread the mixture out, patting down with your hands. 

Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

Cut into bars and serve.

Lemon Bar Variation:  omit almond extract and chopped almonds.  Add 1 1/2 tsp lemon extract and 1 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind.

“Polynesian Bars”

(This comes from the cookbook “Country Life” by Diana Fleming)

1 cup dates, packed into cup

3/4 dried apricots, packed into cup

2 cups unsweetened orange juice

1 cup millet flour

1 3/4 cup gluten-free oats

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup coconut

1 cup finely chopped walnuts.

Soak dates and apricots in 1 1/2 cups orange juice for 10 minutes.  (Don’t be like me and think you can skip this step!  If you do, you might burn your blender out like I did.)  Then blend on high until fairly smooth.  Set aside.

Make Millet flour by blending 3/4 cup dry millet on high until flour consistency, stopping blender once to stir well.  Measure one level cup and pour into bowl.

Add remaining ingredients to the millet and rest of the orange juice, mixing well with hands.

Press half of mixture into bottom of 9”x13” oiled baking dish. 

Spread fruit filling evenly on top.

Crumble remaining half of mixture over filling.

Press into fruit lightly.

Bake at 300 degrees F for 45-60 minutes.

The Farmer Has A Birthday!

This year, for Papa the Farmer’s birthday we surprised him with a most unusual present!

We have been vegan vegetarian for a long time now.  A few years ago we discovered that our children seem to have a gluten sensitivity.  Gluten sensitivities are often an inherited trait and I suspect that Papa the farmer (and his father too!) have the same sensitivity.  So, I put everybody on a gluten free diet.  We’ve been eating gluten free for a couple of years now.

Now think about what that means… No wheat, no oats, no barley, no rye.  No grain that has gluten in it.  Basically, if it comes in a package, we can’t eat it.  And if it is dessert it almost certainly contains something on the “no-no” list. 

Papa the Farmer has been really missing his desserts.

When he woke up on his birthday and came into the kitchen, the table was set and covered in a bed sheet.  He was pretty surprised when he lifted the bedsheet…



to find 3 turkey platters full of vegan, gluten free birthday treats!

How did I do this?  Basically I used gluten free oats (which are expensive!  I only buy them on birthdays!) and replaced a lot of the wheat in recipes with millet flour.  As far as gluten free grains go, I like millet flour the best.  It has a good texture and can be used in a variety of recipes.  (I’ve had good success making gravies and “cream of…” soups with millet flour.)

The little farmhands helped to make all these goodies, of course!  Here’s a picture of them showing Papa the Farmer who made what.

My personal favorite dessert was the “Fudge.”  I can’t end this blog post without sharing the recipe. 

Nutty Carob “Fudge”

In a bowl mix together the following ingredients:
1 1/2 cups honey (or 1 cup honey + 1/2 cup maple syrup)
2 cups sunflower seed butter
2 tsp vanilla
 (I use the sunflower seed butter because almond butter is expensive and Papa the farmer is allergic to peanut butter... It would probably be good with peanut butter!)
Add 1 cup carob powder until well blended.
Add various seeds and nuts of your choice, totalling 6 cups. I used:
1 cup sunflower seeds, 2 cups chopped walnuts, 3 cups chopped almonds
Stir until well mixed.
Pack into sprayed pan and refrigerate!  Then try not to eat it all in one sitting!  =)

It Never Rains but it Pours!

Perhaps that’s not the best metaphor for a farm…  Ok… I will call this post “Feast or Famine…”  No, that’s not a good title for a farm blog either.  =)

Whatever you want to call this post, I am finding that there is either nothing going on, or everything is happening at once!  Papa the Farmer wouldn’t say that.  There is always something going on for him to do…  But I’m not the farmer, I’m the farmer’s wife.  So really, I only spring in to action when there is food that needs to be prepared or preserved…

We had a reasonably good peach harvest this year, considering that it was the first year our peach trees bore fruit.  We moved to this house in 2006 and I remember that the two peach trees that were already here had a bumper crop that year.  I picked the peaches, chopped them and made peach sauce with them.  Then Papa the Farmer (in his pre-farmer life) came home from work and he and the only little Farmhand that had been born yet ate our entire winter’s supply of peaches in one weekend!  I scolded them for it but then decided, “If you can’t beat them, join them” and they were tasty!  But we haven’t gotten any peaches since.  We planted all the other fruit trees the following January and have been waiting and waiting for some peachy-goodness. 
And this year our patience was rewarded.  I wish I had taken a picture of the peaches, but I didn’t.  But I will let you in on my top secret peach-canning recipe: 

First, remove peach pits (very important step!  Trust me, I forgot once!) and place peaches in the blender:


Then, blend.  =)  (You can add a teaspoon or so of citric acid if you care about color retention.)


Doesn’t that look yummy-delicious?     Now honestly, I probably should have cooked the sauce at this point, but in my infinite wisdom I decided it would cook enough in the canner and it would be healthier (“more raw” somehow) if I didn’t cook it so I just poured it into canning jars and put them in the canner. 

Big mess.  I had some oozing and it just seemed like there was peach ooze everywhere.  It didn’t help that I had a baby farmhand helping in the kitchen!  (The official taste tester!)  But for every 7 jars that went into the canner, 6 of them sealed!  (Of course, some had to be run through the canner twice.  Hmmm… I will get better at this!)  We had just enough to enjoy some now and have a little bit all winter long!