Fruit of the Month: Cherries!

Who doesn't love cherries?? (My sister, apparently. Crazy!) I have been eating cherries like they were air this season. I have been buying cherries for $7.99/kg at my fruit shop for a couple of weeks now - they are the reject cherries marked down because no one would buy them at the normal price (15 or so dollars/kg) but I think they are still good, especially used in what I've been using them in!

Cherries are apparently an aid to sufferes of gout (and arthritis) - the flavonoids in the cherry juice help reduce uric acid levels in the blood stream. Doesn't work for everyone, but it does for many! They also taste good. For only 87 calories per 1 cup serve, they make an excellent snack choice for anyone. (Not that I care about the caloric content - I'd eat the whole kilo if I wouldn't feel sick!) That same one cup serving also has 3% of your daily iron needs, 16% of your vitamin C and 2% of your calcium. [Source: nutritiondata.com]

Now for some uses:

Freeze them for the long cold winter ahead of us. I've found this to come in handy. I've hardly bought any frozen berries lately (because my freezer is full of containers of cherries) and pitting all the cherries is quite relaxing. I just cut them in half, twist it apart and then pry out the pit with a knife. Don't cut yourself. Apparently if you freeze them whole they'll take on an almond flavour from the pit. I just put it all into plastic takeaway containers (or whatever container you want) and freeze. When I need to use them it only takes a second to pry them apart (once you get one the whole lot usually falls apart).

Use them in a tart or pie. (Top right obviously). This was our Christmas dessert table! I contributed the Pear Frangipane Tart from the Post Punk Kitchen. Everyone loved it. I've made it twice now. I'm sure the pear version is lovely, but I don't think pears are in season here right now. But when they are I'm totally making it. Again.

Put them in your breakfast smoothie. I have smoothies for breakfast quite often. Since my old food processor finally carked it (JUST when I was about to start making my christmas tart) and I bought myself a fancy pants new one with a blender attachment, smoothies will be much more regular. Here's one I had this morning:

Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I small frozen banana

1 cup frozen cherries

30g (1/3 cup) almond meal

30g (1/3 cup) rolled oats

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 1/2 cups slmond milk

Blend. Makes about 2 cups.

This smoothie provides:  17g protein, 28% daily calcium, 10% daily iron, 23g fat (only 2 of which are saturated). Not bad huh? I was pretty impressed. It also lasted me for like, 3 hours.

Bake them into a cake or muffins. I made Lemon cherry muffins by Vegan in Bellingham. I chose this recipe while searching 'vegan cherry muffins' on the net because I already had all the ingredients. And they are so good. I made them yesterday afternoon and there's only 3 left. Good thing they are relatively good for you :)

And last, but not least, ice cream! I was gifted with an ice cream maker for Christmas from my mum and HOOFUCKINGRAY! I tested the wodnerful machine out today with a basic vanilla ice cream with what was supposed to be blasamic cherry swirl, but it turned out a little more like cherry ice cream. I used the lazy vanilla ice cream from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise blog, except instead of creamer I used a can and abit of coconut cream. Unfortunately the shop only had light in the cheap brand, but full fat would definately have been better. This ice cream still rocks my world though!

I cooked 2 cups of pitted cherries down with 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar. This would be good on top of plain vanilla ice cream too, but I wanted something fancy for my first time use of the Wonder Machine! I'd chop the cherries up into little bits next time because I had to mash them this time and one squirted me in the eye. I thought I'd go blind. I didn't, obviously. So anyway, I let the ice cream maker do it's job for 20 minutes, and then I blobbed in this sauce (and 1/4 cup cacao nibs) and let it swirl around for a few minutes. Oooh it's good. The balsamic adds just a touch of a different flavour as an aftertaste. yum. I've had to stop myself from eating the whole lot. it's not even frozen yet!

---

Happy cherry eating! I hope they stay cheap for just a little while longer...I want to freeze more for when I hibernate.

Wholemeal Carrot and Currant Muffins

I'm a muffin person, not a cake person. Though I do like the odd bit of cake sometimes :)

Anyway I fully intended on making these delicious sounding carrot muffins from Wayfaring Chocolate, but I found all this other stuff in my cupboard, and grated too much carrot, even for a doubled recipe which is what I intended...So it's practically a whole new muffin!

These aren't very sweet (trying to cut back on sugar) so you may wish to add a little more.

Wholemeal Carrot and Currant Muffins

Makes 12 regular and 9 mini muffins

Ingredients
2 cups wholemeal flour
4 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 cups coarsely grated carrot

1 ½ tbsp chia seeds
5 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla extract
300ml soy milk
2 tbsp unrefined coconut oil

¼ - ½ cup currants

Method
Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Grease a regular muffin tin and half a mini muffin tin. Or, it will probably make 15 regular sized muffins.
Mix together chia seeds and water. Set aside to thicken.

In a large bowl mix together all dry ingredients and grated carrot.
In another bowl whisk together the vanilla, soy milk, coconut oil and the chia egg. (The more energetic you are with whisking, the more your muffins will rise, apparently. I can't remember where I read that. PPK?)
Mix wet into dry until just combined. Fold through currants. Divide mix evenly among muffin holes and bake for 20-25 minutes (yes, even the little ones!) I cooked mine for 20 minutes and they came out very moist. You may want to leave them in a bit longer.
 
----
 
I love taking muffins to work to eat on my morning tea break. I'm usually starving by then so a good wholemeal muffin really fills the hole. I usually take two, and have them with a cup of tea and a muesli bar.

Wholemeal Banana and Raspberry Muffins

I love banana muffins. It's really the only kind of banana I like, but the same old plain banana muffins get boring after a while.

Wholemeal Banana and Raspberry Muffins (cane sugar free, fat free)

Makes 12 regular muffins

Ingredients

2 cups plain wholemeal flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp whole flaxseeds, ground mixed with 3 tbsp water

3/4 cup soy milk

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (2 small)

1 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries

Method

Lightly grease a muffin pan with margarine or oil. These muffins will probabaly stick to paper liners, and my muffin pan isn't non stick, though if yours is in theory you won't need to grease.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

In a small bowl or jug mix together the soy milk and cider vinegar and set aside to curdle.

In a large bowl sift or stir together the flour and baking powder.

In another small bowl mash the banana and stir in the vanilla, flax egg, curdled milk and applesauce.

Gently fold the milk mixture into the flour and stir in the raspberries. Divide evenly among muffin holes and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean :)

These were just sweet enough for me. We are trying to cut out sugar, but if you want a little extra sweetness in your muffins you could add 1/4 - 1/2 cup of sugar. I have to remind myself that just because they are healthy it doesn't mean I can eat them all at once haha. I have a million frozen bananas so I could just make some more..

I was going to post the rye banana muffins I made but I can't find the recipe I wrote down! So I posted these instead.

Also, I finally figured out how to add a tab across the top of my blog page! So now there is an about me section. I figured people read this now so why not. I'm thinking of adding a recipe page too. One day :)

Loaf!



Housewifery!

I baked some muffins today! these Carrot Spice Muffins from FatFreeVegan blog. They turned out perfectly! I had heaps of carrots in the fridge to use before they went bad (I bought a 2kg bag at the farmer's markets because we usually use carrots in everything! Haven't used them once. I resorted to taking carrot sticks to work.) Anyway really yummy muffins. Make them. They are tasty AND healthy.

I made this DELICIOUS loaf for dinner tonight. There aint nothing like a good vege loaf. I think I've found my Christmas dinner :) It is Beetloaf by The Stripey Cat. It held together really really well even though I cut it almost as soon as I got it out of the oven. We had it with steamed corn, brocolli, carrots and beans from the garden.

It's a little blurry but the loaf is bright pink and yummy.

And Bob looked too cute today, dozing (literally all day) on the spare bed. :)

Food update and my first radishes!

I've just started my new job (it isn't very exciting - i'm just a checkout operator at a big fruit and vege shop) and I now literally have no time to do anything.  So I've just been taking pictures of what we've been making. Nadine works a lot too so it's mostly re-runs or easy stuff.

Today I had the day off (yay!) so I made muffins. These muffins in fact. I thought I wouldn't like them because I'm not a big fan of cooked apples, but they were really delicious! I used rolled spelt instead of oats and whizzed them in the blender to try and make meal. It didn't reaaalllly work, but once cooked it added a chewy texture to the muffins. Pretty good :) I served it on this beautiful Japanese china dinner set my mum gave me (it was nana's) but I had coffee in the little teacup and it seemed wrong.

 Spicy beans and olives on pasta swirls...

 I bought a nice eggplant from work because they were really cheap. We made eggplant cutlets (big thick slices fried lightly til soft) with tomato sauce and olives. I made mashed potato and parsnip - amazing. The parsnip managed to make the potatoes coconutty.

My first radishes! I picked the one on the right way too small but the others are alright. They are so much sweeter and more moist than store bought!