Vegan MoFo, Day 2: Tasty Drinks--Week 1

Day Two! And a theme within a theme! Yay! Jean Prescott Adam's cookbook, Meatless Meals, has a bunch of drink recipes in it (non-alcoholic, though you could certainly tweak them!). So I'm going to have one day of posts a week centered around several drinks from her book.

Up today: two super-simple recipes.

Mint Tea
from Meatless Meals, page 43-44
serves 2--supplies potassium

handful of mint leaves (she calls for 1/4 pint green spearmint leaves)
4 cups boiling water

Boil water. Wash mint leaves. In a bowl, pour boiling water over leaves and bruise leaves with a potato masher (or other such implement). Cover bowl for 10 minutes to allow tea to steep. Strain.

{my mint plant is like 4x the size of when i bought it}

{see??? it's reaching the top of the window!}

{half the plant washed and ready to go}

{hot wataaaa!]

{not shown: me bruising the hell out of the leaves with a potato masher}

{i know it looks like water, which is why the jug of tea is included so you can see the color}

{this is probably one of those medicinal drinks from a long time ago--don't they have this in The Hunger Games??}

{really refreshing served on ice, too!}

This stuff is really delicious and refreshing. You can add lemon juice or sugar; and you can drink it hot or cold, depending on the weather. And it uses up mint, which grows like there's no tomorrow.

Mrs. Adams also included a recipe for making milk more interesting.

Spiced Milk
adapted from Meatless Meals, page 47
serves 2--supplies calcium and protein

2 cups soymilk (or rice milk, hemp milk, almond milk, etc.)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp sugar

Add spices and sugar to the chilled soymilk. Shake up in a lidded jar. Serve on ice.

{pre-shake--best done in a tight-lidded jar}

{refreshing, creamy, foamy, and so frackin' good}

{you could probably top this off with some booze}

{i drank this over the course of sunday}

Check back next week for more cool drink recipes!

Jes

VMF Day 2 2011: Spaghettaaaaah.
VMF Day 2 2010: Green Soup, Part Deux

Stash's Chai Spice Black Tea is the BOMB!

That is all :)

Jes

Apple Pancakes with Passionfruit Tea-Infused Maple Syrup. Yup.

You know when you've had the utter week from Hell and you're not looking forward to the next week? You know what helps that out? Pancakes.

No lie.

I was a right mess before I got home and wanted something to cheer me up. Pancakes came to mind. Then I remembered the organic honeycrisp apple hanging out in the kitchen and wanted some of that, too. Together.

Solution to my worldly troubles: Apple Pancakes.

How can this NOT make someone happy?

1/2 cup AP flour

1/2 cup spelt flour

sprinkle of sea salt

1 tbsp turbinado sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp veg oil

1 cup soy milk

1/2 tsp vanilla ext.

1 apple, small dice, microwaved to cook for about 1-1 1/2 minutes

Mix dry ingredients. Mix in wet ingredients. Toss in cooked apple dices. Stir, stir, stir. Heat your griddle/pan and scoop up the lovely mixture onto said cooking implement.

Now, the fun part!

I didn't just want maple syrup, and I wanted to try out the Passionfruit Tea my thesis advisor gave us for the wedding (it comes from a local shop, and it smells like I'm walking in a grove of flowers...SUPERB.). So, I put the real maple syrup in a small saucepan and added about 1/4 cup of brewed passionfruit tea to the pan. Mix, heat. YUM.

I didn't think it made any difference at first, but when I started to dip the pancakes into the syrup mixture, I could smell and taste the passionfruit tea. It really changed the syrup...I loved it.

Stack of 'cakes

My day instantly became much happier!

Jes