• 3-4 cups cubed butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into small cubes
• 1/4 cup vegan butter (something like Earth Balance)
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth*
• 2 tablespoons miso paste (yellow or red), dissolved in the broth
• 1/2 cup unsweetened plant milk (soy, almond, etc.)*
• 1 and 1/4 cups nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• Optional: shredded dairy-free cheese (like Daiya cheddar shreds)

* In a pinch you can do all broth or all plant milk, for a total of one cup liquid.

1. Boil the squash cubes until completely tender and then drain.
2. Meanwhile, heat all the other ingredients except the optional shredded “cheese” in a saucepot until the butter, miso paste, and nutritional yeast are dissolved and the liquid is hot.
3. Combine the cooked squash cubes with the liquid and blend until smooth using a standard blender or an immersion blender.
4. Serve over prepared noodles of your choice.  I prefer to stir the noodles and sauce all together in the saucepot.
5. If desired, stir in Daiya cheddar shreds until they start to melt and stretch.
6. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

The post Vegan Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Oddly enough, I am not a fan of pumpkin pie, but I love all things pumpkin spice – Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer, Pumpkin Spice Pancakes, and pretty much any iced pastry with “Pumpkin Spice” in the title.

This is my go-to breakfast in the cold weather months.  Oatmeal is already a healthy, hearty breakfast, and the pumpkin and molasses both add an extra kick of vitamins and minerals.

The recipe below is for one bowl (great for before school/work).  You can also multiply everything by 4 (or whatever number you want) and make it in a crock pot.  Also please note that the amounts for Oatmeal and Water will vary based on the kind of oatmeal you use; I use a mixture that is 1/2 steel cut oats and 1/2 muesli mix.

Ingredients
1/4 cup dried oats
1/3 cup water
—–
3 tbsp pumpkin puree
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses*
1 tsp real maple syrup*
1/2 tsp cinnamon*
1/4 tsp allspice*
1/4 tsp ginger*
1/8 tsp cloves*

* SUBSTITUTIONS:
– You can substitute the cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and cloves for 1 tsp “pumpkin pie spice,” but watch out for added preservatives.  I make my own (in roughly the proportions listed above).
– You can substitute brown sugar for the molasses and/or the maple syrup, but the flavor won’t be quite as perfect.  Also, if you subtract the molasses, you’re losing an excellent source of iron, calcium, manganese, and copper.

Directions
1.  Mix the oats and water in a microwave-safe bowl.2.  Microwave for 3 minutes.  Stir.  Add an additional tbsp water if necessary.  Microwave for one more minute.
–OR–
1.  Prepare one bowl of plain, unsweetened oatmeal according to package directions.
2.  Stir in the pumpkin, molasses, syrup, and spices.
3.  Serve and enjoy!

Stay warm, friends!

The post Easy Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

I love all things Halloween, especially Creepy Halloween Food.  Beet Rat Tails are one of my favorite wince inducing Halloween delicacies.  This fun, simple, and grotesque Halloween treat is sure to gross out all of your ghouls and goblins this year whether they are big or small.

1.   Start with a bunch of whole beets (with greens and roots still attached) like this:

2.  Cut off the greens.  Save the greens!  They are delicious, and very nutritious, stems and all.  I LOVE beet greens in salad, and they are also good sauteed like any other green.  DO NOT cut into the beet, meaning leave the root and some little spiky stems on your beets, like this:

3.  Put your beets in the pressure cooker and cover with just enough water to cover the beets, and cook on high pressure for 15 minutes*.

4.  Allow your beets to cool enough to handle (I, being impatient, often rinse them in cold water).

5.  Slice off the roots, and BAM, you have your rat tails.

These are great served over a thin bed of white rice to really contrast up the bloody look of the thing.  Be sure to have your tail-less rubber rat nearby!

(For the actual beets you have left over, slice off the tops and peel them.  They are incredibly easy to peel, the skin will just slide off with a little rubbing.  I squeeze them, and the beets pop right out of their skins.  Dice them up with a couple tablespoons of balsamic or apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon or two of dill.  Sooooo Yummmy.  If you’re not a fan of beets, try my amazingly nutritious pink pancakes.  You can also use the red beet water to make broth, or substitute it for water in any recipe for a little extra nutrition and some pink color.)

*This recipe calls for an electric pressure cooker.  Cooking times may vary; refer to your pressure cooker’s directions.  Instructions for a stove top pressure cooker can be found here.  You can probably make these without a pressure cooker, but I don’t know how.  I always cook beets in my pressure cooker.  It is amazing.

More Halloween Fun

     Halloween is my favorite.  I’m Jack, the Pumpkin King in my own mind.  In that vein, I was discussing my favorite Halloween movies with a co-worker today and realized that, not shockingly, my two favorite Halloween movies also happen to be two of my overall favorite movies of all time:

The Nightmare Before Christmas
and
Hocus Pocus

      Imagine my shock on discovering this morning that Hocus Pocus is 20 years old this season!  Whaaat??!!  It’s not that that fact makes me suddenly feel old (I already know I’m old, ha); it’s that the MOVIE doesn’t feel old to me.  I suppose it’s what they call timeless (though not really in the same style as, say, Gone With the Wind*).  I’ve already watched it with the kids twice this week, and have high hopes of watching it one more time before it gets packed away with the Halloween stuff (to keep it special) and Thankfulness (not Yuletides) abound.  The article about Hocus Pocus turning 20 is pretty entertaining.  It includes and interview with Jason Marsdon (the voice of Binx the cat) – fast becoming an icon among “nostalgic millenials” – a generation I seem to fit into all too perfectly.

* Humorously, the first movies I thought of to put instead of Gone With the Wind were: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Marry Poppins.

Costumes are Sooooooo Fun!

       I’m struggling a little this year because we have had next to no time to work on our costumes, which saddens me.  I think they’ll still be good enough and fun, but not as great as they could be.  I already have an amazing idea for next year, though.  In recent years we’ve gone as:

The Addams Family – Flintsone, featured here as Pubert from Addams Family Values (another one of my favorite Halloween movies!) is about 6 weeks old.  Punky really got into her Wednesday role and took possibly too much pleasure in tearing the head off a barbie doll to prepare.  MacGyver was as charming and amorous as Gomez any day; and I was a particularly shapely Morticia 6 weeks post-baby.  I am zombied up because we spent this Halloween at a Surprise Zombie Wedding for a good friend, and instead of matching dresses, all the bridesmaids got zombiefied.  (The wedding was a surprise because all the guests, and even the parents of the bride and groom though this was just an engagement party – super fun!).

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Batman Villains –  (I had a lot of metal in my face at this point for my jaw surgery, hence that beautiful face).  Flintstone = the Riddler; Punky = Catwoman; me = Poison Ivy; and MacGyver in his incredible Joker outfit.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, Monty Python – Flintsone being the killer rabbit himself with me as is unfortunate victim, Bors, and MacGyver the gallant King Arthur.  Punky opted to part from the family theme and went Vampire.  This year, she is back in the fold.  If you have never seen this part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail before, it is below.  You’re Welcome.

Samhain

Samhain is the pagan holiday associated with this time of year.  If you are at all interested, please read this excellent history from the lovely Stephanie over at The Coexist Cafe.  I would love to go into it hear, but I have costumes to finish!

Samhain is a time for spiritual reflection and mediation on, and appreciation of, loved one’s we have lost.  This is especially important to me since losing my brother, Boo – as well as several other wonderful people in the last few years.  While the magic and fun of Halloween stems from the history of Samhain, we celebrate them separately as a family to preserve the meaning behind Samhain.

***

I could go on and on and ON about Halloween (and Samhain), but as I’ve alluded to already, I still have a lot of work to do, and I’m ready to get out and enjoy these holidays!!!

What is your favorite Halloween movie?  And What are you going as this year?

The post Creepy Halloween Food: Rat Tails (Plus a Bit of Hocus Pocus) appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

The Pumpkin Spice Latte is a quintessential flavor of Fall. But if you, like me, live way too far from the nearest Starbucks, or if you just don’t like to dish out $4.25 every time you want that quintessential flavor, perhaps you should try out this simple, but utterly delicious, Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer recipe.

Part of the reason I love Fall so much is because of the flavors. Hot, spicy drinks. Pumpkin, squashes, and other roasted Fall veggies. Cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger! Wonderful. And, thankfully, all things I can use to get my Fall fix even on those odd days when there are no beautiful Fall colors, crisp breezes, or hayrides and when the only sweaters I’m wearing have short sleeves.

Even though I am a complete coffee house addict, I’m still not the type to be spitting up almost $5 a pop on a regular basis for fancy coffee drinks. MacGyver and I hit up coffee houses as a treat. One of our favorite impromptu dates is always to grab coffee down by the waterfront then go for a long walk. Those rare treats don’t even come close to filling my Pumpkin Spice coffee requirements for the season, though.

Enter, Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamers. My absolute thrill at discovering these fancy holiday creamers in the grocery store was short lived. Most grocery store coffee creamers are full of all sorts of yucky stuff: hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and worst of all (in my opinion) factory farmed milk. The way those cows are treated is enough to make me wretch. And I can’t even bear to think about what they do to all those little baby calves.  Not to mention the stomach-turning health detriments caused by dairy.

Any way you slice it, whether it’s health concerns, sugar issues, fat issues, lactose issues, ethical, or humane issues, I just couldn’t continue buying those creamers. Your purchases say something! Not just about you, but about where you stand on various issues. I try very hard to keep my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

So, while I was sitting around pouting about the fact that the nearest coffee house where I could get a soy Pumpkin Spice Latte, was 40 minutes away, it occurred to me that there really isn’t all that much to coffee creamers. I mean, really, it’s just sweetened, flavored milk, right? So why not try to make my very own Urban Earthworm Ethical, Vegan, Healthier Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer? And, that night, that is just what I did.

I kept the recipe simple (mostly because I was trying to do this before making dinner ;-)), and was surprised by what a breeze this was to make. And, like most of my recipes, it’s pretty easily customized based on what you have on hand.

Ingredients
Makes about 2 cups of creamer
2 cups Almond Milk*
2 tbsp mashed pumpkin (canned is fine, but make sure it’s just pumpkin and not pumpkin pie)
2 tbsp maple syrup**
1 tsp cinnamon***
¼ – ½ tsp nutmeg***
¼ – ½ tsp ground cloves***
¼ – ½ tsp ground ginger***
½ tsp vanilla extract*

* If you use Vanilla Almond Milk, you may not need to add any additional vanilla. You can also use Soy Milk, Rice Milk, Flax Milk, or Hemp Milk. Do not use animal milk – it will separate, go spoil quickly, and taste off.

** Adjust to taste and desired sweetness. If you use sweetened Almond Milk, you won’t need as much sweetener. Fair Trade/Equal Exchange brown or white sugar or agave nectar can be substituted for the maple syrup. The Maple just Falls up the flavor that much more.

*** Adjust spices to taste. You can also substitute pre-mixed “pumpkin pie spice.”

Directions

1. Whisk all the ingredients, except vanilla if you’re planning to add some, together in a sauce pan over medium-high heat.

2. Heat until steaming, but not boiling.

3. Whisk in vanilla.

4. Pour into a jar for storage.

It’s that easy!

Shake before using, as the spices may settle.

This stuff makes my morning!

What flavor would you like to see me try out next?  My co-workers have requested eggnog.

What do you put in your coffee?

The post Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer (Vegan) appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Carrot cake was an obvious starting point for me because our whole family LOVES carrot cake, but we rarely get to indulge.  Plus, Flintstone thoroughly enjoyed his carrot cake at his first birthday party:

But I knew I wanted to add more than just carrot since traditional carrot cake doesn’t actually have that much nutritional value. I decided on zucchini because I happened to have some very nice local zucchini from the Farmer’s market on hand, and I know zucchini bakes well.

Finally, I decided to come up with a vegan recipe. We are not technically vegan. We have backyard chickens for eggs, and I could have just as easily used eggs in the recipe, but then I probably wouldn’t have posted it. Some people don’t think twice before using grocery store grade eggs in a recipe, even with all my harping on ethical eating. So by posting a recipe that calls for eggs, I worried I would be inadvertently encouraging people to buy or use more eggs. If you aren’t familiar with the sickening practices of egg factories, including throwing thousands of baby chicks into meat grinders ALIVE, the please be a responsible human being and educate yourself about the products you buy.

It’s not like me to forget to take pictures of food, but I was pretty wrapped up in Flintstone’s birthday, so this it the only decent picture I got of his cake:

I was worried when I was making it because it had SO many veggies veggies in the batter and it looked a little dense, but it turned out really great, and it was a huge hit.  As soon as it was served, people started asking me what was in it and asking for the recipe, and it was at that moment that I realized that I needed a better picture for the post, but, alas, the entire cake was quickly consumed.  Which is why I have dubbed it my “All Gone” cake:

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp Ground Flax Seeds
6 Tbsp water
2 Cups shredded organic carrot
2 Cups shredded organic zucchini
2 Cups Fair Trade/Equal Exchange Brown sugar (white sugar is ok, too)
1/2 Cup coconut oil (or other oil, your choice)
2 Cups fun flour and all purpose whole wheat flour*
2 Tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tsp ground nutmeg
pinch cloves (optional)
1 Tsp salt
2 Tsp baking soda

* We have been experimenting a lot with alternative kinds of flour.  I actually used about 1/3 coconut flour, 1/3 teff flour, and 1/3 all purpose whole wheat flour.  Different kinds of flour are fun and can really up the nutritional value of the recipe, but be aware that they may change the liquid requirements.  I just continued adding almond milk and water until my batter reached a “batter” like consistency before I added the veggies, and it turned out perfect!

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 (or don’t, and save a little electricity).  Use coconut oil to grease and flour a 9X13 cake pan.

2.  Thoroughly blend the Flax Seed Meal with the Water – you may want to use a food processor for maximum effect.  Let sit for at least 5 minutes.  During which time, you can:

3. Grate the carrots and zucchini.

4.  In a large batter bowl, mix the flax seed goo with the sugar until creamy, then stir in the coconut oil until well mixed.

5.   Add in the flour(s), spices, salt, and baking soda, and mix well.  Add almond milk or water as necessary to achieve a “batter” like texture.

6.  Stir in the carrots and zucchini – you could also throw in some nuts in this step if you wanted.

7.  Pour/spread into the prepared pan.  Bake approximately 50 minutes until a reusable skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Vegan “Cream Cheese” Icing:

Do you have any idea what they do to dairy cows, and, even worse, what they do to the baby cows they have to continually impregnate dairy cows with to keep them producing milk?  I, quite honestly, had no idea.  I went on eating cheese long after I stopped eating meat.  Even though I have tried to train myself to always questions where my food comes from, I was raised in a culture that takes food for granted.  And I LOVE cheese.  Love it.  It was the one food I never thought I’d give up.  Until the first time I saw a newborn calf being brutally dragged from it’s mother, both of them crying out for each other, the baby being carelessly injured in the process, and the mother remaining locked in a small cage, producing milk, set to repeat the whole process every year of her life.  Just remembering it is almost making me cry now.

I love cheese, and there are still some places I can get it, local goat farmers who I know don’t engage in these practices, and maybe one day we’ll have our own cow.  It is, after all, possible, after allowing time for cow and calf to establish a relationship, to take 1/2 the cow’s milk production humanely.  But you won’t catch me buying cheese, or any other dairy product, from a grocery store ever again.

So, please, if you can’t find or are unwilling to use vegan cream cheese, which is now available in almost every grocery store except Piggly Wiggly (ugh!), top this cake with something else.  Use Cinnamon icing, or any frosting recipe from Happy Herbivore.

Ingredients:

VEGAN Cream Cheese
Fair Trade Confectioners/Powdered sugar
Almond Milk (or your choice non-animal milk) – Vanilla flavored works great.
Cinnamon

Directions:

There are no set proportions for this recipe, at least the way I make it.  I used about 3/4 a standard container of vegan cream cheese, maybe 3/4 a cup of powdered sugar, and more almond milk than I needed.  I like my icing so that it drizzles over the cake, but really I had intended to make frosting so the cake would be easier to decorate.

Put your cream cheese and sugar into a bowl and add small amounts of the almond milk, mixing in a little at a time, until you reach desired consistency.  Adjust sweetness with more sugar.

Add cinnamon to taste.

***

Stand back, and watch it disappear.  This cake will be all gone faster than Todd Aikin’s credibility at a feminist rally.

As always, if you try it, please stop back by and let me know how you like it!

***

Today I’m linking up with Impulsive Addict and Seriously Shawn for Talk to Us Tuesday.  I rarely do blog memes, but this one has no rules, so it’s hard to resist (almost as hard to resist as the lovely hosts).

The post Carrot and Zucchini “All Gone” Cake appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

      “Dangit!”  he exclaimed.  “I didn’t even think of that.”

      “What?”
 
      “Mom made the best honey ham for Easter, and I was really excited about having one for Christmas, but I guess that won’t be happening at YOUR house.”  READ MORE>>

The post Holiday Ham appeared first on Urban Earthworm.