Super easy collard greens recipe

I am doing so well with my resolution not to waste food. My collard greens were starting to show hints of aging, so I made them tonight. The most time-consuming part of this recipe is rinsing the leaves off.

Super Easy Collard Greens with Balsamic Vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch collards, rinsed
1.5-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Remove the stems from the collards. I don’t bother with a knife. I just tear the spine out. It is kind of satisfying. Then, chop the stems up and save. If you sautee the stems at the beginning, they become so crisp and delicious that they are actually my favorite part of the vegetable. Tear the leafy part into smaller pieces.

Sautee the garlic for a couple minutes over medium heat. Add the collards stems. Sautee for 3-5 minutes, until the stems turn a beautiful shade of bright green. Then, add the chopped leafy parts. Sautee for five minutes or so, until it is a bit wilted. Then mix in the balsamic vinegar and remove it from the heat after a minute or two.

Then eat.

I do not know if Sprocket is as fond of collards as he is of kale because he was too busy with his post-dindins nap to help me.

And here is a bonus picture of Chun with a glitterball that he considers to be nutritionally superior to collard greens.

Why there is floof in my food, Reason #1541

Choopers camping out on my cookbook in the midst of all the ingredients. We made the rum nog pecan cookies from Veganomicon (recipe here). It was a cooperative effort. They became an instant favorite.

Chun didn’t trust me to make the rum cookies without proper supervision

Chun was impatient for me to get started. It turned out he was the one who couldn’t be trusted with the rum.

Also, not pictured here, Choopers sampling rum buttercream frosting.

Limes. Do Not Want.

I love limes. Really. It’s Chun who doesn’t.

lime + stripes

Perhaps he is disdainful of the fact that the lime is not quite fresh anymore. It was buried in my fridge at the bottom of the produce drawer. Half of it ended up in the delicious Coconut Bamboo Curry I made today, and the other half will end up in a Veganomicon soup tomorrow (acorn squash, aduki beans, and mushrooms!). I’m very proud of today’s curry because I cobbled it together without a recipe.

Have your cookie dough and eat it too

I needed some happiness tonight, mostly to cancel out the effects of my Walking Dead mini-marathon (the first season in two days, before I lose Instant Netflix. Do *not* snack while watching that show. Not a good idea. Also, not suitable for kittens – I had to cover Sprocket’s eyes when I got nervous and I startled Chun at least a couple times with my squeaks).

Happiness = cookies! chocolate chip!!

maximum happiness = cough dough + half-baked cookies + full-term cookies

How this works: You get to eat the cookie dough as soon as it is mixed. Save some for later, because you have 10 minutes to wait before the cookies are done (15 min in my oven). But wait – don’t forget to snag a couple cookies midway through. They’re still soft so you need a metal spatula, but the only thing better than chocolate chip cookie dough is warm melty chocolate chip cookie dough.

You get to eat cookies at each stage of development, and then if you saved enough, you can finish off your snack with more cookie dough.

The recipe!! Adapted from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

Chocolate Chip Cookies (Dough)
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (sometimes more is better than less)
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup non-dairy milk
1 tablespoon of tapioca flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups AP flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1+ cup chocolate chips (to taste! the more the merrier)

For the egg effect, mix the sugar through vanilla vigorously with a fork (or preferred utensil) before adding the dry ingredients. Save some to eat. Bake the remaining cookie dough (1 tablespoon scoops) for 10 minutes at 350F, or more, depending on the health of your oven.

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* I understand that making cookies at 10pm isn’t exactly the healthiest thing to do. There are those who believe that sugar is addictive and evil. Perhaps they are right. The effect of my tripartite cookie feast has been to make me as bouncy as Sprocket. This is a considerable achievement. I should use my extra energy to clean the Miao House (house guests this weekend! brother & friend!! staying in the Miao House for the first time in years!!), but instead I am blogging and folding paper cranes. Oh, and eating cookies. 😀

** Tomorrow, I will go running for the first time in two weeks. My ankle is 95% better, just some tenderness when I press around my Achilles’ tendon. This is good news because the more I run, the healthier I eat. It’s like my body demands better nutrition (and less sugar) when it needs more fuel. Sugar only leads me astray when I’m not running.

*** No photos. I realized that if I kept waiting till I uploaded photos, I’d never post anything here. Please trust me that the cookie dough was beautiful.

Oh, here’s a photo anyway.

beep beep beep beep beep

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies x2

This recipe is modified from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (original recipe here). I doubled it because I found it does not yield the promised two dozen and cookies disappear so fast in the Miao House (due to our crane invasion). Also, I added more raisins, and even though it makes it more complicated, I use two different kinds of sugar and flour. My brown sugar is so dark the batter gets too sticky. Also, I like the texture of whole wheat pastry flour mixed with AP flour.

Chun loves these cookies. I don’t add chocolate chips just so I can share them with him (even though I know he’s trying to eat a grain-free diet).

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
2/3 cup almond milk
4 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 cup sugar (or a little less)
1/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup oil (or a little less)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup AP flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups quick oats (if you use whole oats, the cookies don’t cohere well)
1 to 1 1/2 cups raisins

I always get lazy with the instructions part.
1. Mix the milk and flax together, add the sugar and oil and vanilla and whisk it together until it is slightly thick.
2. Add all other ingredients and mix.
3. Make tablespoon-sized cookies.
4. bake 12 minutes at 350F (my oven is a sad oven and I have to bake it at a higher temperature for longer)

***** Somehow I managed to add an extra cup of flour to tonight’s cookies. Adding fractions can be a challenge these days (3/4 plus 3/4 does not equal 2 1/2). The cookies are biscuit-like but still edible.

My spirits were low again today because I can’t run. Something happened to my ankle on Tuesday. I went to the chiropractor the very next day, determined not to let it get bad. They warned me against a steep incline on the treadmill, as it stresses muscles in unnatural ways. I may have given myself tendonitis or bursitis or something inflammatory around my Achilles’ tendon. Running on the treadmill gets so boring, so I vary things a lot, and as I’ve been building endurance, I’ve been increasing the incline for intervals. Now my brilliant idea backfired. I tried running again on Friday and it was awful. I decided I should stop when I nearly fell off the treadmill. My ankle is swollen, I’ve been using ice, and after a day of sitting around and doing nothing, it was feeling a lot better, until I made the cookies, which isn’t much of a workout especially when you consider how small the kitchen is.

But nonetheless, the cookies have raised my spirits in the way that only sugar can.

What I had for supper tonight

First, I finished the millet amaranth greens. Delicious and filling, but not quite filling enough, because then I treated myself to another meal. Running gives me a huge appetite and I could eat the vegan equivalent of a horse. If I stopped running, I think I would save quite a bit of money on food. Things aren’t so desperate yet, but I *was* desperate for a quick but warm meal so I fell back to one of my favorites from my non-cooking days:

Rice and Hummus/Baba Ghanoug

In this case, it was rice and baba ghanoug*. I haven’t yet discovered the perfect recipe for it, but I intend to, since it is one of Papa Miao’s favorites. For now, I buy it premade.

Instructions: Take your freshly cooked rice and mix in generous spoonfuls of baba ghanoush. Eat.

It was so good, I took seconds and thirds.

contains tahini!!!!!!! and floof

* Papa Miao says there are a variety of spellings depending on Arabic dialects as well as choice of spelling convention. This is his preferred spelling.

Pumpkin cookies save the day!

I was having quite a gloomy day until I opened the fridge, saw some leftover pumpkin from Thanksgiving, and resolved to make Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) again. You can find the recipe here. It is a fun recipe to make, especially if you’re fighting over the pumpkin with your kitty. The steps are a little more time-consuming, but well worth it. You have to boil the pumpkin down, which takes almost an hour (don’t forget to stir!). You also have to beat the shortening and sugar together, which is always a workout for me. I use coconut oil instead of regular vegan shortening because Earth Balance cookies always seem a little on the greasy side to me. Coconut seems to work.

I don’t expect the cookies to last for long.

When the cookies are all gone in the morning, I won’t be able to blame Chun.

If my plan is to improve my food photography, I really need to take the photos during the daytime when I can use our meager natural lighting. I do most of my cooking after dark (ha! that means after 4pm), so I have to use flash.