Weekend eats ...

So, the best news ever - Vodka's tumor came out to be a Grade 1 - which, apparently, is the best thing to hope for when it comes to mast cell tumors - so no more surgery or treatment - Yay! The countdown is still on - 6 more days before his sutures and staples can be removed. 33 - that's how many staples there are in his franken-scar! But the monkey is a total sport, he's holding up really well - though he keeps wandering around wondering why he can't seem to find any ball to play with! :)

(Photo Courtesy: Stephanie & Shawn of Dog-e-Central)

Obviously, the occasion called for some treats - I was hoping to bake something totally human-grade, but Vodka-palatable too :) After some poking around, I found the perfect recipe to work with - Suganya's vegan lemon poppy seed cookies!

I reworked these to use vegetable oil instead of margarine (and cut that by over half) and threw in a bunch of ginger - it actually worked really well.




I think these lemon-ginger cookies should go to Sunita for her fabulous Think Spice event. The theme this month is ginger - I've used ginger in several recipes in the last few weeks, but these cookies were strongly defined by the ginger flavor - enough to be my submission of choice.

Ginger-Lemon-Poppy Seed Cookies
Adapted from Suganya's vegan cookies

Servings: 13

1 cup pastry flour
1.5 T corn flour
3 T vegetable oil
2 T lemon juice
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2" ginger
1/4 t cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 F

Sift the flours, cinnamon and salt into a bowl.
Grind the ginger in a processor and separate out the chaff to extract the juice.

Mix the ginger juice with the brown sugar till the sugar dissolves - let this sit for about 10 minutes. I was hoping to substitute for the effect of ginger crystals by letting the zing of the ginger and the earthy sweetness of the brown sugar mix into each other - I think this is what really gave the flavor to the cookies!

Beat the oil with the lemon and ginger juices till blended.
Fold the flour mixture in gently, constantly stirring - maybe adding a few drops of water if needed for consistency.
Knead the dough and form small 1" balls.
Grease a baking sheet and flatten the dough balls onto it.
Bake for about 17-18 minutes till the edges of the cookies start to brown - the cookies may look underdone, but that's the time to yank them out! :)
Cool on a wire rack.

Eat :)


Since I'm still working through a mountain of apples from PO, I figured this might be the time to use up a couple of those and bake some more. So, I ended up with a bunch of apple-honey cookies too!

Apple Honey Cookies (Vegan!)
In honor of that Tasty Palettes girl :)

Servings: 13 (Yes, a baker's dozen :))

1 braeburn apple
1 cup Pastry flour
1 T Corn flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
3 T honey
1 t vanilla
1.5 T port
3 T vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Mix flour, corn flour, salt and cinnamon and sift into a bowl.
Grind the apple up in a food processor till smooth to a pulp.
Cream the apple, oil, honey, port and vanilla extract till blended.
Fold in the flour mixture, a few tablespoons at a time.

Grease a baking sheet with oil spray (or use a nonstick sheet).
Take about a tablespoon of the dough, roll it into a ball and flatten it onto the baking sheet.
Repeat this with the rest of the dough, leaving about 1" gap between the cookies.
Bake for about 25-28 minutes till the edges are browned.
Cool on a wire rack.

Notes for the future:

One thing I would do differently the next time around is use margarine or butter and maybe use honey crisp apples - the cookies turned out chewy, but seemed like they could use a little more shortening or oil. Also, I think cooling the dough before making the cookies might be a good idea.

This troubleshooting guide might come in useful in the future :)





So, this weekend's meals included another round of upma - this time, the simple onion kind - lots of green chillies, ginger and onions - it made for the perfect breakfast food!