All Rileyed Up

I bought a few yams at South Coast Farms and didn’t know what to do with them. We had a bit of a cold front sweep in last weekend, so I made some soup to warm everyone up. Both of the kids enjoyed it too (with some prodding for the initial tasting). Wish I’d thought to take a picture, but really, it’s liquid. How exciting a photo would that be?

You’ll Need This:

1 big yam or two small ones, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cups broth (veggie or chicken as you prefer)

You’ll Do This:

Heat oil and sauté onions and garlic until transparent.
Add carrot and potatoes, cook for another five minutes.
Add brother and bring to a boil.
Cover and set to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blend contents of saucepan.

Optional steps:
Add to blender two tablespoons of honey or agave nectar.
Serve with dollop of sour cream/tofutti.
Garnish with parsley and toasted walnuts.

Enjoy.

I tried to recreate this recipe with pumpkin in place of yam, and it didn’t turn out quite so good. I guess pumpkins aren’t quite as va-va-va-voom on the taste front as a yam. I am going to try it again with two apples added to the mix. I think that’ll do the trick.

Made some animal friendly, allergen-free-approved sorbet for The Boy and Husband to enjoy.

You’ll Need This:

An ice cream maker.
1 cup fruit juice of your choice (I pureed watermelon, because we had a watermelon that needed to be eaten)
¾ cup sugar
2 lemons, freshly squeezed
2 cups milk substitute (I used hemp milk even though it does kind of make for an unattractive color), the colder the better
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll Do This:

Mix everything EXCEPT the milk in a blender or food processor.
Done?
NOW you can mix in the milk.
Pour into ice cream maker.
Churn.
Mmmmm…

Here’s an easy vegan, gluten-free, casein-free treat that the kids really enjoyed making.

Ingredients:
1 banana per two people
3 oz. vegan chocolate (not as hard to get as you might think)
Dessert topping of your choice, eg: cookie crumbs, chopped nuts, crushed cereal. As for amount, I just pour out enough to cover a plate:

Step One: Cut a banana in half, impale (stronger word than ’stick’, no?) on a popsicle stick, then freeze:

Step Two: Melt chocolate on the stove top (note my snazzy double boiler). I added a little bit of almond milk because I found the chocolate melted quicker and more smoothly than when I tried it with just chocolate alone. I might have been imagining such things, but that’s nothing new.

Step Three: Dip the bananas in the chocolate until coated on all sides

Step Four: Roll the bananas around in the topping of your choice. I attempted a batch of snowball cookies the other day with corn flour that came out too crumbly, so I crushed them up and used them as the topping (the way I see it, the cookies were telling me they wanted to be crumbs anyway).

(Just know: If you let the kids do it, the bananas come out unattractive, but they have more fun. )

Step Five: Freeze for at least five minutes so the chocolate can harden; ward the kids off from eating the leftover topping; you can continue to freeze the treat as long as you want. We stored ours for a couple days because the kids found they were so rich they only needed a few bites to get full.

Step Six: Enjoy.