Thursday, November 3, 2011

Candy Apples, Dandelion Tea, and Green Alfredo

I felt like the walking dead on Halloween so we canceled our party, turned out all the lights (first time to do this on Halloween), and I stayed in bed while Rob trick-or-treated with the kids. This means a whopping three pictures of them in their outfits and one complaining short video as he realized the camera was set to record. He was a trooper and dealt with everything on a work/school Monday/pseudo holiday. I am thankful.

Halloween 2011:
 Amara, Indigo, and Josie (she had three outfits and ended up wearing Bat Girl sans cape with tiara with the matching pumpkin container provided by thoughtful neighbor, Margie)
 Parker as the red ninja and Dema as the black ninja
The boys trick-or-treating at Vicky and Greg's (they always have some vegan candy for the kids and so do Margie and Rick...lovely, lovely neighbor friends).
I am also thankful for awesome friends. Seth made vegan caramel for candy apples for our party. I never made vegan caramel, but Seth isn't vegan and he makes it. How cool is that?!
Gita offered to bring a few candy apples over even without the party. Aren't they cute?
These treats totally made them forget about their disappointment and made me feel like I wasn't the worst mom in the world getting sick on Halloween. Gita also took Josie to pottery and they joined Rob and the kids for trick-or-treating. You guys are the best! It took that afternoon/evening and the next morning for the kids to eat them. The caramel hardened quite a bit, but it didn't deter the kids. I thought about warming them up, but it was a challenge they enjoyed. Parker ate his apple to stem/seeds, but left some caramel. Dema ate all the caramel and left most of the apple (he loves apples, but the caramel was the point this time). Josie ate most of hers and then gave me the rest. This pretty much sums up a lot about their personalities.
I felt fine Tuesday and probably overdid it, but you know how when you feel awful then you feel better you just get this huge burst of energy and happiness? That is how I felt on Tuesday. I am thankful for dandelion tea because I consumed copious amounts of the stuff Monday and felt better Tuesday so maybe that helped. I have now grown found of it, so that is a plus too. I really felt like cooking again for Wednesday lunch...
Rice Noodles with Alfredo-like Sauce from Vegan Planet 
The recipe calls for fettuccine, of course, but all I had was rice noodles. As I was cooking, I thought, "This is an accidentally gluten-free meal." We aren't gluten free, but I've been paying more attention to that since we have several friends avoiding gluten now. Then I added some Vegan Diner seitan to it, but if you are gluten free this is a great recipe because the rice noodles worked just fine.  I wanted to add broccoli, but only had one bag so I ended up pureeing it all with the sauce in my Vitamix so there would be no fighting over who got the broccoli. Ends up not being an issue since three out of five people don't like Alfredo sauce in my family (Parker and I love it, but Parker was at school...yet another reason I miss homeschooling him). Rob didn't even like Alfredo in his pregan days, but I still hope to win him over some day.
This sauce is not oily like Alfredo tends to be and has silken tofu as an ingredient and I had some to use up. I thought it was light, but filling and just Alfredo enough. The seitan really added to the flavor, but it would have been fine without. I would not leave out the broccoli and pureeing it in the sauce made it slightly green so great for this time of year. I added flax seeds to the sauce in the Vitamix, just for fun, and I would do that again as well.
Dema and Josie did eat it with mangoes, but they said no more pasta for a while (we have served a lot of pasta lately). I made some salsa verde so we'll be having enchiladas soon.

2 comments:

Gita Carey said...

I love the picture of Dema and Josie with their apples. I'm sorry. Those apples were pretty obscene for just one kid to consume. We'll have to try to perfect the caramel to be a little lighter and softer for next years apples. Love the pic of the girls before we headed out too.

VeganLinda said...

Gita, They were great and they didn't really have any other sugar that night since we didn't have the party so no big deal. Thanks again!