Beans and quinoa.. in cookies?! Yes!!

Thanks to the Rollin' Oats Market and Cafe Blog for featuring me in their latest blog post!!!!!! I was sooo thrilled when I saw this!! Thank you! :D


Now to today's recipe, trust me on this one, these cookies are good! This is not an original idea from me, I made these cookies from one of our favorite recipes, Lindsay from the Happy Herbivore's butterbean cookies ! Butterbeans are our favorite beans, so when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to make it! And, honestly, I didn't think we were going to love it, but we did! So, thank you Lindsay for coming up with bean cookies! I make these pretty often, and in doing so, I've adapted her recipe a bit (I'm not good at following recipes, I tend to look at ingredients and then do my own thing).


To her recipe, I subbed out the sugar and instead added in a banana and maple syrup. Also, I added in raw quinoa! The quinoa gives the cookies a nice, subtle bit of texture, and a lil crunch. It also helps to increase the protein of the cookies (not that I'm eating these for health reasons...) These were really good, they tasted like Lindsay's but had the extra crunch from the quinoa and the banana flavor.


Ingredients:
1 cup flour (I used white whole wheat)
1/2 cup oats (I used quick, rolled oats)
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 T quinoa (raw)
1 medium banana, mashed
1 scant cup butter beans
1/4 cup natural applesauce
1 t vanilla extract
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 T nondairy milk (I used almond)
1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips (I used Trader Joe's brand)


-Mix dry ingredients together
-Grind beans in the food processor
-Mash banana in separate bowl and then add beans and remaining wet ingredients and mix
-Mix wet into dry until combined (batter is somewhat dry)
-Fold in chocolate chips

-Bake at 350° for about 15 minutes
-This made 12 cookies

A few weeks ago, I found this at the thrift store and I loved it! Perfect for our kitchen wall:

Then, a couple days ago, I found this!! They go together!! I was sooo excited because I loved the first one!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday Favorites!

This is an installment I see on many of my favorite blogs, and it's my favorite! So, now each week I'm going to list some of the things I've seen around the internet that I've really liked!

This Lavender Bean Scone from Manifest Vegan looks so pretty and delicious! Unfortunately it calls for a lot of ingredients I don't have.. I think I'm going to try to adapt the recipe to ingredients I have already around the house. If you never visit Manifest: Vegan, it is a great source of not only vegan, but gluten free recipes too!

 I absolutely love this Plenty of Fanfare Dress from ModCloth! It is so cute and it makes me wish summer was here (and that I had endless funds for pretty dresses)!

This radio is adorable, I love pink!

This Pink Ice Cream Cake from Pure 2 Raw looks really good! I don't often make specifically raw recipes, but I LOVE raw desserts!

And those are my favorite things this week!

Sweet Potato Burgers

I can't believe it's still not warm here! I'm still wearing my winter coat AND gloves.. I want summer to come sooo bad! Until then, I will just stay inside and eat!

I'm in a vegetarian nutrition class right now and one of the assignments was to try something new, preferably something soy. A lot of people tried soymilk; some liked it, some hated it.. One person tried tofu and thought it was terrible, so I posted a link to a "tofu tutorial" about how you need to press it and different ways to flavor/cook it. Someone else tried a veggie burger and said it tasted like cardboard. Well, I don't know where they got the cardboard part from, but, I don't really enjoy store bought veggie burgers either.. Usually when I make them, I just mash together stuff I love! So, tonight I made sweet potato/chickpea/tofu burgers with Pepper jack Daiya and Upton's bacon! If you haven't tried Daiya's new flavor, it is GOOD. I don't know what cow's milk pepper jack tasted like, but this stuff has great flavor and a lil kick!

Ingredients:

1/2 block tofu (pressed)

1/2 large sweet potato (peeled unless organic)

1 can chickpeas

1/2  tsp smoked paprika

1 T dried parsley

2 garlic gloves*

1/2 cup bread crumbs 

*I used two large garlic cloves and it was pretty garlicky, which we love. If you don't love the taste of garlic, reduce to one clove instead

--Chop sweet potato into chunks and boil until tender

--Drain and rinse the chickpeas

--Put all of the ingredients into the food processor except the breadcrumbs and puree

--Put puree into bowl and mix in bread crumbs

--Form into patties (I got 6) and put onto greased cookie sheet

--Bake at 350° for about 8 minutes on each side

--Add any toppings/condiments. Other than the cheese and bacon, I added some sauteed onions and some veganaise. These were good!

These burgers did squish out a bit (not as much as some others I've made), they might need more breadcrumbs. But we thought these were really good and I can't wait to make them again!

Feta (ish?) and "Ice cream"

Yesterday when I was with my friend Dawn, she mentioned how she recently made a really good salad that had a ton of stuff in it. Well, I eat salad every day for lunch and I'm always trying to find ingredients to add to it to make it my entire meal. I decided I wanted to make Vegan Feta, but I've never actually had feta.. (I may have a long time ago, but I have no recollection of it.) So, basically I just waned to add some tofu to my salad to add a good protein source to help keep me fuller longer. I've seen some recipes for vegan feta, but for some reason the idea of adding moist tofu to my salad didn't appeal to me, I wanted it to have a different texture since there are already so many ingredients in a salad with a ton of moisture. So, this is what I came up with (and I'm sure it doesn't taste anything like feta, but I thought it was good and I didn't eat again until my post-workout snack!)


Ingredients:
1/2 block firm tofu (pressed and crumbled)
1 Tablespoon Nutritional Yeast
1/2 teaspoon rice vinegar (I'm sure balsamic could be used, I just love rice)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon oregeno
1/2 teaspoon basil
salt and pepper to taste


Add all ingredients and mix:

Then spread out onto greased cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes at 350° then let cool:

This was a great addition to my salad which also contained butter beans, Upton's bacon, carrots, cucumber, and sunflower seeds!

After dinner tonight we made banana "ice cream", which is one of our favorite desserts to make. I've seen it on many blogs, but the first place I saw it that made me try it was from the Happy Herbivore. The first time I tried this, I really didn't think it was going to be good. But it gets to be soo creamy like ice cream! And you can add whatever you want, like frozen blueberries or strawberries, peanut butter, or chocolate chips like we did! The only problem is that it gets really melty pretty quickly.. Make sure you use really ripe presliced bananas (even if they look TOO ripe, as you can see one piece is extra brown in my photo). 

I really recommend trying this, it's very good!

Food (Review) & Friends

Today I went up to Local Flavors in Chesterton, IN with my friend Dawn and her boyfriend Tim. This place serves vegan food featuring Upton's Natural and Daiya as well as vegan ice cream (cones, sundaes, shakes) by Chicago Soy Dairy! They sell a variety of different sandwiches including a BLT, gyro, panini, stomboli, and pub. And, they're located right next to a new Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant called Sprouts Groceries! Ive been now three times and I've loved everything I've had. Their menu and hours seem to be pretty limited (to mostly sandwiches, but I think you might be able to get vegan waffles too), but hopefully they will be able to expand on both! This is a great restaurant for anyone who wants vegan food but doesn't want to drive into Chicago.

This was the stromboli with Upton's ground seitan, Daiya mozz, and peppers and onions!

This was their HUGE Pub Sandwich! It had Upton's Ground Seitan and Bacon, Daiya Cheddar, and grilled onions!

I found these great prints at the thrift store recently, and they now adorn my bathroom wall!

And I will leave with one of my favorite things ever, I absolutely love Glee and Kurt is my favorite!!!

Birthday!

Last week was my birthday, which is my favorite day! I spent it with my boyfriend Michael and got to see a couple of my friends as well. It wasn't a very nice day, so we just basically spent the day eating, antiquing, and going on a "car hike" (driving through the woods and such on super narrow back roads!) Another thing we did, with our friend Monica, was to go look at the houses at Tryon Farm, which is a conservation community. The houses are amazingly unique, some are even built into the hills! Look at how cool this is!:

We had Ethiopian for dinner, and our favorite part was this appetizer. It was a chickpea salad, we didn't think it would be anything that special but it was AMAZING!

A recent thrift store score:

This retro can opener!

Newbie

Hi, I'm Amy Lynn and this is my blog!
I will be posting a lot about vegan foods, cats, cute things, and thrift store finds.
I have three cats and the youngest one, Link, had a birthday yesterday!

♥ Amy