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!

Pooch Treats!

After everything that Vodka has been through over the last few days, he deserves loads of treats and many swims in the lake! The latter is yet to come, but we figured we'd get started on the yummy treats part :)


Pretty amazing how a bunch of fruits and some oatmeals makes for fabulous doggy cookies. Actually, they're pretty appealing to the human palate too, I snuck one when Vodka wasn't looking!

Apple'n'Pear cookies

2 honey crisp apples - diced
1 pear - diced
1/3 stick of butter
2 cups of oatmeal - softened in warm water
1/2 cup of milk

Melt the butter, mix in the fruit chunks, add the oatmeal and milk, mix it all up. Drop spoons of it onto a greased baking tray. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes.


Vodka says *drool*!