Waste Naught

I know it shouldn't anymore, but it never fails to amaze me that Western society, in general, has this insane tendency to waste things. Food. Money. Gas. Electricity. Water. Brain cells... the list goes on and on. Not only do we lack the ability to use the gifts and benefits that we have as gifted nations, but instead we continue demanding more of everything we already have. Why else would warehouse supply companies such as Costco, who used to only supply retail outlets, now be doing a roaring trade in the consumer world? Do the majority of 4-5 person households really need to buy 20 tins of sardines at a time? Or huge 3-packs of Tabasco sauce? And what about the ubiquitous Super Wal-Marts that have taken over every town from gigantic Toronto to tiny, hick Ajax? Oshawa has two of them - in fact, a brand new (and already large) "regular" Wal-Mart down the street from me was demolished and re-built into a supercentre, even though the demographics of my area are as stagnant as ever. I don't understand it, and I don't really know if anyone will really be able to. We're in a land and age of excess, and somehow I doubt there's really an end in sight. Thank goodness for our family's three freezers, 2 fridges, huge pantry and well-shelved basement... that's all I can say.

It's obvious that our family, like many out there, is often left with a bevy of random items that have just begun to pass their prime, or are so close to being stale that the "picky" *cough* lazy *cough* ones won't touch them anymore. Usually our overages tend to be in the produce department, leaving me with bananas and apples to play with at will, but occasionally I'll poke my head into the pantry and come up with a host of other things to cobble together, recipe or no.

Such was the birth of these chewy, brown sugary morsels. I can't assign a real "definition" to them, as they are far more than a simple blondie, nor are they a brownie, cookie bar or quickbread. Rather, they are essentially a mixture of all the end "bits" of our pantry - chocolate chip cookie crumbs, broken pretzel rods, butterscotch morsels and a handful of roasted soy nuts - mixed with a leftover knob of butter and some silken tofu from the fridge and just enough flour to stick everything together before being baked into a more or less cohesive mass. Intensely sweet, but with a hint of salty "bite" from the coarse rock salt on the pretzels and a touch of bitterness from the molasses in the dark brown sugar, they're best given out in small portions - but that doesn't mean you have to stop at one.

Really. I promise I won't tell.

Miser Bars

Serves 16

2 tbsp butter, melted

1 tbsp canola oil

2/3 cup packed brown sugar
150 g silken tofu, pureed
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups crushed chocolate chip cookies
2/3 cup broken, salted pretzel pieces
1/4 cup roasted soynuts (or peanuts)
1/4 cup butterscotch chips

1. Heat oven to 350F° and grease a 9" square pan.
2. Beat together melted butter, oil, brown sugar, tofu, milk and vanilla until well blended.
3. Slowly stir in the flour and salt, then add the cookie crumbs, pretzels, soynuts and butterscotch chips.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until set in the center but still soft.

Amount Per Serving
Calories: 220.6
Total Fat: 8.0 g
Cholesterol: 8.2 mg
Sodium: 120.9 mg
Total Carbs: 33.9 g
Dietary Fiber: 0.9 g
Protein: 3.8 g

A Conflicted Love

Ever found something that you loved so much you kind of wish you never discovered in the first place? That's my dilemma with the sunchokes I finally found. Roasted, they are so amazingly delicious that I ate my way through almost the whole bag, but now I have none left - and nowhere to get them but downtown Toronto.

Roasting the 'chokes to my favourite point - with a crispy, crunchy exterior and a tender, starchy middle - was dead simple, once I found the basic instructions on The Kitchn. I served them with roasted green beans and pan-seared tilapia tonight, dusted with sea salt and cracked pepper and finished with a hint of maple syrup. Perfection!

For roughly 8 oz of the tubers (in no way related to "real" or globe artichokes, FYI), this is what I did:

1. Preheat the oven to 425F, line a cookie sheet with parchment or spray with cooking spray.
2. Wash the sunchokes well, unless the skin is really thick and rough don't bother peeling them - the peel gets super-delicious like on steak fries!
3. Slice the sunchokes into roughly 1/4" thick pieces (I gave up on really "slicing" and tried for a roughly equal chop). Toss onto the cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt and coarse black pepper.
4. Pop the sheet into the oven and roast for 25 minutes, stirring / shaking the pan to redistribute the slices halfway through.
5. Switch the heat to "broil" and continue cooking the sunchokes 3-4 minutes, until beginning to get dark brown and crusty.
6. If you want to add green beans like I did, top, tail and halve two good handfuls of them and add them to the cookie sheet(s) for the last 10-15 minutes of roasting. If you want them extra-crisp and roasty keep them under the broiler when the sunchokes are finishing.
7. Drizzle with the barest touch of maple syrup and eat up!

If anyone has any tips on growing these in the GTA, I'm all ears! I have 2 saved and would love to grow my own! Apparently they're pretty self-reliant once you get them started, but I don't know if my storebought ones will cut it as the "foster" plants (even though they are organic). Seriously - they're my new obsession, and since my neighbourhood sucks for finding these babies, my backyard is the next logical choice!

FYI - per 8 oz of delicious, nutty-sweet-starchy goodness, this is what you get (thanks, CalorieKing!)

Calories 172 (720 kJ)
Total Fat 0g 0%
Sat. Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 9mg < 0.1%
Total Carbs. 39.5g 13%
Dietary Fiber 3.6g 15%
Sugars 21.8g
Protein 4.5g
Calcium 31.8mg
Potassium 973mg

And on a totally random, non-food related topic, I got my co-op placement letters today! I can't wait to start documenting my travails at the Boys and Girls Club a few towns over, and sharing any and all stories from the retirement home near me too! I'm so excited to be getting anything off the standard "retirement home and that's it" theory of my program!

A Blue [Banana] Monday

"What's the story, Morning Glory?"

Well, if I could tell you that, I think we'd all be a bit better off! I've been in a rather depressed funk the past week or so, probably a combination of the ever-present overwhelmed-by-schoolwork feeling and the fact that, at the end of April, I will truly be cast out into the wind as far as a structured life goes (unless I decide to go to the holistic college I'm looking at for another year). It's kind of lonely around here, too... between me being at school all hours of the day and night and my mom jetting off to Fairfax twice last month for work, too often it's just been me and the stepfamily at home - and we all know how that can be. Since my schoolfriends are located so far away from me, I don't really get much other social interaction either - not to mention that although we're all in a Food and Nutrition program, the only "foodie" is me!

Oddly enough, instead of just being exhausted by it all, I've also got some kind of weird electric hyperactivity pulsing through my veins. I guess you could say I'm suffering from a major case of "strenergy" - energy fostered by stress! Until today, I was forced to try and downplay it in order to slog through a section of Labour Cost homework (word to the wise: if you ever find this on your time table, run!), but I finally couldn't take it anymore. Darn it, it was Monday after all, I was stressed and moody, and I needed to break for a bake!

Throwing any sort of nutritional-minded caution to the wind, I stopped into the grocery on the way home and stocked up on some of the "big guns" of baking that I almost never use - including good, unsalted butter and some more dark chocolate. I'm expecting the chocolate/butter/egg/sugar combination to become a rather popular one with me if I'm left to my own devices... God knows I have enough ideas flitting around this skull of mine (too bad I don't get any credit hours for them!). Coming home with my bounty, and unearthing my frozen cache of baking supplies with it's gigantic Ziploc of bananas, I started the comforting task of embracing simplicity - you can't go wrong with a super-fluffy, sweet banana cake! In homage to the song that's been running through my head nonstop for the past two days, New Order's "Blue Monday", as well as my all-time favourite store in Kensington Market downtown named the Blue Banana Market, I added a hefty dose of food colouring too. It's not every day you get a Blue Monday that's this good!

Blue [Monday] Banana Muffins

Makes 21

3 large, ripe bananas, mashed

1/4 cup non-fat plain yogurt

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp banana extract

2 tsp blue food colouring (optional)

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup softened butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

6 oz silken tofu, pureed

1. Preheat oven to 350F, grease or line muffin cups with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, combine bananas, yogurt, lemon juice, extracts and food colouring. Set aside.
3. In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
5. Add tofu, beating well to combine.
6. Beginning and ending with the dry mixture, alternate additions of flour and banana mixtures, beating ell after each addition.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until they test done.
8. Turn out immediately and cool completely on a wire rack.

Amount Per Serving
Calories: 160.0
Total Fat: 4.7 g
Cholesterol: 11.7 mg
Sodium: 40.7 mg
Total Carbs: 28.3 g
Dietary Fiber: 0.8 g
Protein: 2.1 g

And I Thought I was Original...

Well, it's Nutella Day. And, while I had planned on making something awesome for this year (or at least something, since I was part of it the last 2 years!) the dreaded worlds of life and school got in my way. Coupled with the fact that for some odd reason I had pegged WND as being on the 18th instead of the 5th of February (Lord only knows why) and - well... I'm short.

But don't despair - I won't let the sun set on Nutella Day 2010 without at least a slight contribution from me! I have an oh-so-bad-for-you, totally not "Nutritionist Reccommended" but incredibly delicious breakfast I would sneak my young, "wild child" self once or twice a year when nobody was home to govern what was a "suitable" selection for me. I don't really recommend indulging in this sort of thing more than once or twice a year, though - unless you happen to be on Death Row, by which all means, eat as many as you like!

I had thought that the whole Nutella "Waffle-Wich" was an original of mine, but it turns out I'm way slower off the draw than I thought. I have yet to find a French toast style Nutella Waffle-Wich though, so I guess I'll lay claim to that!

Home-From School Special

Serves 1

2 Eggo waffles

2 eggs

splash of milk

dash of cinnamon

sprinkle of brown sugar

As much Nutella as you can stomach

butter or cooking spray

1. Toast waffles until light brown (about 1 shade lighter than you usually would make them).
2. Meanwhile, beat eggs, milk, cinnamon and brown sugar together until well blended.
3. When Eggos are done toasting, slather one surface of one (or both) of the waffles and sandwich them together. You want a fairly hearty layer to ensure they stay together - plus its just darn tasty!
4. Heat a skillet or frying pan with a touch of butter or cooking spray (you know, to be virtuous) over medium heat.
5. Dip the waffle-wich into the egg, soaking the waffle well and coating all the sides thoroughly.
6. Flip the waffle into the hot pan, pouring the remaining egg mixture overtop.
7. Cook as you would any French toast, flipping halfway through. Serve immediately.

*Note: Come to think of it, really, I bet a good smoky bacon would kick serious butt in this waffle-wich too. But I'll leave that up to you. Or possibly Joel, if he gets there first.*

Vegan Lemon Bars

"Hey, what'cha doin?"
"Oh, I'm making lemon curd bars for mom's office."
"Lemon curd? What the hell is that?"
"It's like a creamy custardy jam thing, usually with egg yolks and sugar. It's really good on toast."
"Okay, no... that just sounds nasty. Why the hell would they call it curd? That's like all, booger-y"

Yes - my sister and I have the most mature dialogues, don't we?? Generally we wind up descending into some form of kindergarten-esque language and behaviour by the end of it, but really... that's the fun of it! You're only young once, really, but if you listen in on one of our conversations (especially if one or more of the cats are around to taunt / distract us) you'd swear that we were going around the track again.

So yes, I made lemon bars. But I did stray away from the "boogery" nature that the egg yolky / buttery filling can sometimes take on (not that I've done anything like curdle eggs... nooo, not me *looks around*) and went with a rather interesting vegan approach I discovered in The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. She uses one of my all-time favourite baking ingredients - silken tofu - to get the creamy texture just right. I wound up jazzing the citrus flavour up a good deal more (can you ever have too much lemon??) and since I added some extra lemon juice I tossed in some tapioca starch flour to help compensate. The crust was a crapshoot creation of mine (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) involving the combination of shortening and Earth Balance "Buttery" margarine to make a sturdy base with just a tiny crunch from some fine cornmeal. The contrast of textures and flavours - sweet and crunchy from the cookie/corn base, tart and smooth from the lemon/tofu filling - was incredible. My mom even chucked her "semi-detox" diet out the window for a corner piece the next day!

Vegan Lemon Bars

Serves 12

1/4 cup margarine, softened

1/4 cup shortening

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 cup minus 2 tbsp flour

2 tbsp fine yellow cornmeal

6 oz low fat firm silken tofu

3/4 cup sugar

Zest of 3 lemons

3/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 tbsp lemon extract

2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp tapioca starch

2 tsp sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Lightly grease an 8" pan and line with parchment paper.
3. Cream margarine, shortening and powdered sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add flour and cornmeal, mix just until the dough comes together.
5. Press into the bottom of prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes and set aside to cool while preparing filling.
6. Blend tofu until creamy.
7. Add sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and lemon extract, pureeing completely.
8. Pulse in flour and tapioca starch until well combined.
9. Bake for 30 minutes in the prepared crust.
10. Cool completely before serving.

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 181.2

Total Fat: 8.1 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 57.3 mg
Total Carbs: 25.6 g
Dietary Fiber: 0.4 g
Protein: 2.2 g