Coconut Apricot Energy Ballz!

For my long(er) ride yesterday, I decided to make my own energy bars using a recipe I had stumbled upon a few days ago from Read Food. Real Deals. Aside from the Apricots, we pretty much had everything already and the recipe is pretty easy to do, and vegan 8)

I tweaked a little bit the recipe, though, by reducing the amount of coconut shreds and adding 1/4 cup of chia seeds (which was too much). Also, I used oven-roasted almonds for a better taste.

Since the goal was to eat them while cycling, I used a 15ml measuring spoon to form small balls. It worked well, although maybe the balls ended up being a little too big. I may put some hemp seeds in the ball next time.

Ride wise, I was planning on another 100km ride, but the wind in greater Vancouver was so damn strong (and dangerously strong at time), that I had to settle for only 80km :-(

The Vegan Zombie's Neatloaf

As a flexitarian, I thrive to keep my diet plant-centric and so when I cook (which is not as often as I should ...) I only do vegan recipes. Over the months, I had some good and bad experiences with the recipes I have found on-line. The only on-line source that have been pretty consistently good, is The Vegan Zombie.

For Easter, I made the Neatloaf (a vegan meatloaf) which they posted this past week and it was pretty darn good. Even meat eaters that had some agreed!

Here's the video of the recipe:

I made a couple of change to the recipe though:

• Replaced the caraway seeds by the same amount of Provence herbs
• Added a teaspoon of Chipolte sauce for 3 tablespoon of Ketchup 

Recipe: Vegan Crêpes

Yep, you've read that right, this post is a recipe for Crêpes (thin french pancake); the vegan kind. It came about this morning as my wife made some non-vegan ones Saturday morning. Curious to how a vegan version of the recipe will taste like, I decided to try it for Sunday breakfast. And it was a resounding success, IMHO. Here's a few pictures of the crêpes in the making:

Making the recipe animal products free was pretty easy albeit a little worrisome as I kinda suck at cooking and substituting ingredients is a bit like dark art for me, still ... Anyhow, here's the ingredients list (which should yield about 4 standard size crêpes):

• 120g of Flour 
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 2 tbsp Sugar
• 2 Flax Eggs (2 tbsp grounded flaxseed meal + 5 tbsp water)
• 1 cup of (unsweetened) Soy milk
• 4 tbsp Water
• 2 tbsp Orange Blossoms water (or Vanilla extract)
• 2 tbsp Vegan butter (e.g. Earth Balance)

The batter preparation is fairly easy:

• mix all dry ingredient in a bowl
• mix all wet ingredient in a separate bowl (you'll need to melt the vegan butter first, the flax eggs count as a wet ingredient)
• whisk the wet into the dry

It is custom to leave the batter to rest for a bit, I didn't and it turned out fine, YMMV. Grounding the flaxseed meal my not be necessary. I have the habit of doing so as I found the one I have to be not that well grounded. I think that for a crêpe you want it to be as fine as possible as they are not supposed to be "seedy".

I enjoyed mine with some Italian Figs jam and it was just as yummy as the non-vegan one! Enjoy!

The n00b's recovery drink

We went for a 10k run this morning after taking Saturday off. When we got back I thought about making a recovery smoothie. However, since I have not yet looked into details to what are the things such a drink should contain for post workout, I mostly worked off things I recalled from what I heard in the (sports) podcasts I listen to (e.g Zen and the Art of Triathlon) and it was yummy:

Here's the recipe:

• 1.5 cups of Almond Milk
• 2 small Plums
• 1 medium Banana
• 3 tsp Chia Seeds
• 4 Dates

I used SparkRecipes to estimate the nutrition info, and it seems pretty decent to me (carbs, protein and electrolytes) but hey, what do I know? ...

I shared the smoothie (about 2 cups) with the wife and the kid, but I had probably 2/3 of it.

Impromptu "Hawt Dawg"

For dinner we fired up the BBQ (since it's BC day and all) and cooked among, other things, one of the staple of the vegan diet: Portobello mushrooms. Since we had "hot dog" style buns, I thought I should try making a "hawt dawg" out of the mushroom ... and it was yummy! Here's what I put in it:

• 1 portobello mushroom (BBQed, sliced in two)
• 2 slices of Tofu (BBQed also)
• half of a small bell pepper (BBQed)
• mustard, relish, ketchup

Assemble and enjoy!

Raw Vegan "Larabar"

Da wife made some "Larabar" ... I have been talking about making some for a few days, but she didn't want me to mess up the kitchen, so ... She kinda winged but here's the approximate recipe:

• 1 cup of dry figs
• 1/2 cup of dry cranberries
• 1/2 cup of blanched almonds
• 1 to 1.5 cup of walnuts
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of almond butter

Soak the figs and cranberries for a bit in hot water (cover). Use a food processor to process all the nuts then add all the other ingredients until well mixed and crushed. Press in a pan then store in the fridge for a bit before cutting into bar.