Wedding Vows, Exotic Spices and Slow Cookers

Wow, what a crazy month! April was a complete whirlwind with the end of school, finals and our crazy two month planned wedding! Everything worked out amazing and the ceremony and the dinner after were wonderful. I got to hang out with the fam and my new in-laws who are also amazing. Now things are getting back to normal post-honeymoon and I’m still on vacation! No school until next week! Woo! Well, school has started but I haven’t found the time to blog until now. So,here I go!

Flowers at Granville Island

 

I have some food related plans for the summer including perfecting pizza dough (wedding gift pizza stone!), making doughnuts, fondue experiments (wedding gift fondue set!) and getting into my cookbooks! I just reorganized all the books in the house which took all day with bookshelves in three rooms and they are in some semblance of order now; fiction, mystery, science fiction and crime fiction alphabetized. I still have to work on the non-fiction though, at hour five of the organizationathon they just got shoved in.

But as far as the cookbooks are concerned, the top of my list is my bread one (Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads) and like every other food blogger on the planet, Jerusalem! I have already made a few items but have barely cracked this beautiful ode to Middle Eastern cooking! I have been interested in that region’s cooking for a long time so I am loving the book so far.

Sunset on Harrison Lake during the honeymoon

My new obsession is za’atar, the spice mix used throughout the book. I got it for a specific recipe and have been putting it on everything! After searching for it at a few grocery stores, I found it a great middle eastern store on Main st called Yek O Yek (to the Vancouverites out there, if you haven’t been there, go now!). I should have just gone there in the first place. They had several sizes of containers of the spice which is mix of several dried herbs including varieties of thyme, oregano and sumac. I got a big container for five bucks and I’m so glad I went for the big size because it’s almost gone! It is great on rice, tossed on salad, mixed with breadcrumbs and crusted on tofu, stirfries and my most recent indulgence on hot buttered popcorn! It would also be yum mixed with plain yogurt for a dip or in a hearty stew or soup! I love it! So when, I started this post a few weeks ago, I was going to post a za’atar inspired recipe but unfortunately I’ve used up almost all of it so that recipe will have to wait.

The view from the beach!

 

But I do have a couple of other ideas up my sleeve. The other day me and the man were window shopping and I saw a very cheap cookbook, Now, I have a fair amount of cookbooks but I don’t buy them very often (before Jerusalem it had been a long while). I prefer to get them out of the library and use them more for inspiration than for actual recipes. But when I saw this book, I knew I would be able to get some real use out of it. It’s called “Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker” by Robin Robertson and it has a million (well, 200) ideas!

My husband bought a slow cooker a couple of years ago and I can think of tons of meat based recipes to make in it, but when I though about veggie stuff, I was like, chili….Then I was out of ideas! This cookbook has essentially blown my mind with recipes for things I never would have associated with slow cookers. How about cake? Dips? Bread? There’s recipes for all this stuff and it’s all vegan! I dove in and have a couple recipes inspired by some in the book.

They’re not all winners and some have a bit of a 70’s vibe but hey, I like the 70’s, I like the nightlife, I like to boogie, on the disco rooooound! Anyway, I used some recipes from the book as the inspiration for these but tweaked them a bit. Now, bear in mind, your slow cooker may be a bit different than mine so you might need to keep an eye on things (for the cake anyway).

Vegan (fat-free) Apple Spice Cake (adapted from “Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker”)

Apple Spice Cake (sorry about the lighting)

1 3.4 c. all purpose flour

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t ground cinnamon

1/4 t ground ginger

1/4 t ground cardamon

1/4 t ground nutmeg

1/4 t ground allspice

3/4 c. brown sugar

1/3 c. soy milk

3/4 c. applesauce (I used unsweetened but it’s up to you)

1 t vanilla

2 apples, peeled and diced

2 T marmalade (I used ginger but again any type will work)

confectioner’s sugar for sprinkling

-Line your slow cooker with a double layer of parchment paper

-combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, and the wet (except the diced apples) in another

-mix together (the batter will be pretty thick)

-press into cooker, spreading evenly and top with diced apples. Place a tea towel over the cooker (with the lid on) and cook on high for two hours, check for doneness after an hour and a half. Lift out the cake when down and sprinkle with sugar! It’s nice and spicy (with flavour not heat) and would be good with coffee or for breakfast or just for snacking!

This is going to be a two recipe post! Making up for lost time. So, I am an oatmeal lover and love steel cut oats. The only thing is,they take about half an hour so sometime I don’t have time in the morning. Enter the slow cooker, you just have to get it together the night before and you will wak up to a hot breakfast and a delicious smelling kitchen. So, this was also inspired by the slow cooker cookbook and by finding a can of cranberry sauce left over from Christmas! You may be in the same boat so use up your leftover canned fruit, I think any type would work, maybe peaches or pears too!

Apple-Cranberry Slow Cooked Steel Cut Oats

1 3/4 c. steel cut oats

1 can cranberry sauce

5 c. water

2 peeled, diced apples

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t ground cardamon

1 t vanilla

1/3 c, brown sugar

-spray the inside of the cooker (this was a sticky one because I didn’t spray mine!)

-combine everything in the cooker, give a little stir and set it for low for eight hours. That’s it! So easy.

It’s not super sweet so you can add more sugar when it’s done if you want. Hopefully these recipes will get you dragging out those slow cookers from the cupboard and looking at them in a different light. So, more on za’atar next time!