Cordially Delicious Cookies

So when someone invites you to a board games party, what do you do?

Make cookies, of course!

I flipped through all my cookbooks to find a sufficiently easy, but also mildly impressive recipe to make. If you're making cookies for a party of people you don't know that well but think are really cool, the natural desire is for your cookies to knock their socks off so they will want to be your friend, even if it's just to eat more of your cookies.

That's right, I'm a manipulative bitch!

I would also like to take this time to point out that I GOT A NEW KITCHEN FURNITURE THINGY AND NOW HAVE A COUNTERTOP.

LOOK AT IT.

Now I don't have to balance mixing bowls and ingredients on my stovetop / in my sink! YAY FOR A COUNTERTOP!

So yeah...

Color Me Vegan had a nice little cookie in the brown section of the book...

Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies Pg 83

These cookies are basically supposed to be like the cherry cordials you eat at Christmastime. I don't know if you really do eat them at Christmastime, but my freshman year roommate told me this one time and it's never left my brain.

So whatever season they're supposed to be made in, I didn't care, because I made them on May 29th and it somehow worked out without the magic of Christmas lights and tinsel.

Anywho, as a typical baking recipe, please empty your pantry and put all your baking supplies out on your countertop.

First step: make your egg! Mix together a tablespoon of ground flaxseed and 3 tablespoons of warm water!

YUMMMM.

Next step: cream together your 'egg' with a cup of sugar and half a cup of butter (and then mix in a tsp of vanilla extract!)

Once you've got your creamy fatty sugary goodness over there, get a new bowl and mix together the dry ingredients!

That situation there is a combo deal of 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup baking cocoa, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, and 1/4 tsp salt. It's a lovely little bowl full of puffy chocolatey goodness.

Also, I made my FIRST FLOURY MESS ON MY  NEW COUNTERTOP! SO EXCITED! LOOK AT IT!

NOW COMBINE THESE TWO BOWLS OF GOODNESS.

Your dough will be kinda dry and crumbley, but when you pick some up and mash it together into a ball, it creates and nice little non-greasy ball of chocolately dough.

PS: I ate like half the dough because I'm a fat bitch and I love chocolate foods, especially cookie doughs.

Also, my GOD the dough was delightful.

I WILL BE FAT FOREVER WITH THIS DOUGH.

Anyways, then you make your chocolate sauce. The recipe told me to use 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips, but I couldn't find any vegan chocolate chips at the Asian grocery store (shocker) so I got semisweet chocolate baking squares instead.

You heat your chocolate up with 1/4 cup of the milk of your choice (my choice was Almond Dream, because on top of being a fat bitch, I'm a poor bitch, and it was on sale).

Then, you put in 4 tsp of maraschino cherry juice in there.

When it's all nice and gooey, turn off the heat. Then chop up some marschino cherries in half and put them aside.

Make your dough into balls then put a thumbprint on each one...then put a cherry half on each thumbprint!

SO. FUCKING. CUTE. !!!! !  ! ! !!

Then, drizzle some chocolate sauce on the cherry to cover it up and bake those little cherry babies in the 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.

WHEN THEY'RE DONE YOU WILL WANT TO EAT ALL OF THEM. BUT REFRAIN FROM DOING SO, BECAUSE YOU STILL HAVE TO IMPRESS YOUR SOON-TO-BE-FRIENDS AND SHOWING UP EMPTY-HANDED AND 30 LBS HEAVIER IS NOT THE WAY TO DO THAT.

So maybe just eat one??

 [[OR FIVE ?!]]

YummyYummyYummy. <3

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 2/5
So many steps. It's a baking recipe, so it's to be expected, but now I have a million dishes to clean and the wait for my cookies was long. *Grumble.*

Deliciousness: 4/5
These cookies were heavenly. Yum. I wish the dough were a little chewier, though, so maybe next time I'll put a second 'egg' in there.

Prettiness: 5/5
Chocolate covered chocolate goodness with a hidden bright red cherry inside! CUTE AS ALL HELL.

Best Mashed Potatoes EVER (probably because they're Irish)

Yes, yes  - another recipe from Color Me Vegan! I swear I will be branching out.

This dish is called

Irish Mashed Potatoes with Kale (Colcannon) Pg. 120

I chose this recipe because the ingredients are fairly inexpensive and won’t go bad terribly quickly. So in reality, I wasn’t expecting much.

Holy shit on a motherfucking stick. I was IMPRESSED. This recipe makes me want to eat my own hand when I think about it now.

You basically make mashed potatoes the regular old way. You peel and chop up some potatoes, then boil them!

That's what boiling potatoes look like!

Then, while they're boiling to death, you sautee some onions, kale, and minced fresh garlic together.

Onions!

Onions with the kale! [[There's garlic in there now, too!]]

Then, when the veggies are done cooking, you let them chill out while you mash up the now-tender potatoes.

These potatoes are mashed up with some vegan butter and some salt and pepper. BUT. The deliciousness of regular old mashed potatoes isn’t enough to make them IRISH. Irish mashed potatoes must include the kale and onion delightfulness PLUS

boiled soymilk [[or whatever kind of milk you like]] with nutmeg. YUM.

So then, when you mix in your cooked kale/onion/garlic mixture with the creamy nutmegy potatoes, you get this!

AND THEN WHEN YOU GET THIS

 YOU FREAKING EAT IT

AND THEN YOU EAT IT SOME MORE.

So if you can borrow Color Me Vegan from a library, a friend, or if you want to go ahead and buy it (an investment I feel is infinitely worthwhile)

MAKE THIS CRAP. IT WILL MAKE YOU SO JOYFUL.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 3/5

It doesn’t require any magnificent skills to make this recipe, but it does take a while. Probably an hour’s worth of waiting around for this dish to be done. [[Well worth it, though!]]

Deliciousness: 5/5

Definitely a comfort food! Mashed potatoes have NEVER tasted better!

Prettiness: 3/5

Looks like a typical side dish, mashed up potatoes with greens and golden onions. Not eye-catching, but still appetizing!

Sautauthig (...Say what now?)

Ok, I swear, this will be my final recipe from Color Me Vegan (at least for a while!)

Ok, so this recipe is called....

Sautauthig Pg. 95


Now, what the hell is that?!

It's a delicious polenta-porridge dish that was apparently concocted by Native Americans in colonial times. All it is, really, is cornmeal boiled up with some water and soy milk...

Mix in some blueberries and maple syrup....

Then, you FUCKIN' EAT IT.

For being SO SIMPLE, this is surprisingly delicious. And the odd thing was, I ended up not wanting very much maple syrup on it at all. I kinda wished I didn't put any extra on top. And usually I'm an extreme sweet-tooth (my Starbucks drink is a 5 pump toffee nut soy latte....I like my sugar :-D)

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5 
Super fast and easy, but there was a lot of constant stirring going on.

Deliciousness: 4/5 
I feel like maybe I could have tried a more varied fruit topping, like throwing in raspberries and blackberries too.

Prettiness: 3/5 
It kind of looks like a glob of blue and yellow messiness. A pretty glob, but a glob nonetheless.

Hiccu-mah!

This is another recipe from Color Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

The recipe I chose is...


Jicama Slaw Pg. 175

Now, I'd never had jicama before. I do remember having talked to someone in a grocery store about it. She had this big brown ball hanging out in her cart, and I simply had to ask her what it was. She told me that it was jicama, and it goes very well in salads. She said it's a refreshing, crispy root vegetable and it's amazing.

So, two years later, I finally found a recipe that made jicama look delicious. It's basically a vegetable FIESTA.

Here's a picture of the delicious produce, just waiting to be thrown together in gloriousity....

The jicama is the giant brown ball on the right.

For this recipe, I peeled the skin off the jicama and then cut it up into matchstick-sized pieces.

YUMMMMMMMMMMM.

Then, as with all good recipes, you combine this fabulous, crispy, light, excellent vegetable with a bunch of other delicious vegetables to create a...

FIESTA OF DELICIOUSNESS X 10THOUSAND

This is about 3 pounds worth of shredded or chopped veggies. Carrots, cabbage, jicama, and cilantro (eee! favorite!) are all hanging out in this huge bowl. Awesome.

I freaked out with excitement and ate a few jicama slices....

Finally, to make this pile o' veggies into a slaw-ish style meal, the recipe asks you to create a dressing for it. Some of the ingredients are lime juice, chili powder, agave nectar, and rice vinegar. I improvised a little because I only had one lime (I probably needed about 4) and no chili powder. I ended up using lemon and lime juice, and a packet of guacamole seasoning I hadn't used. (VERY SPICY!)

It looks like a mess, but it smelled DIVINE.

In the end, I slapped some of this dressing on my pile o' veggies and created...

JICAMA SLAW: THE BEST 3 LB VEGGIE FIESTA ON THE PLANET!!!!

YEAH! I ATE IT WITH GLEE!

Now go make some and eat it with glee (with me).

RATINGS:


Ease of preparation: 3/5
There's no actual cooking involved, but there's a hell of a lot of chopping and slicing and peeling going on in this recipe.


Deliciousness: 3/5
It tastes like a very good, unconventional salad. It's nothing particularly special, except for the fact that jicama isn't a common veggie in many dishes so it's interestingly odd.


Prettiness: 3/5 
Basically just looks like a colorful salad / coleslaw / veggie-fiesta!

Purple X 8 Billion

I have become obsessed with this cookbook:

The book is set up in color sections: red, orange, yellow, green, etc. So of course, I flipped to the purple section first!

Recipe I chose:

Lavender-Roasted Purple Potatoes and Purple Onions Pg. 147

The setup of this recipe was easy enough. It took me a total of an hour to have it finished, but it didn't feel that long. There were a lot of little steps that took about 5 minutes each...it felt like the time flew by.

 Nothing beats a perfect purple onion! I ate a few slices raw....yummy! :-]

Here was the coolest part of this recipe. The potatoes and onions are tossed with this olive oil / spices mixture, and the smell of this oil was AMAZING. In the mixture, there's 2 tbsp culinary lavender, fresh thyme, and (not originally in the recipe) rosemary and sage. I wanted to rub this in my hair so I smelled like it all day! Hahahah!

So, here's where I mixed up the recipe and made it my own! The original recipe called only for purple Peruvian potatoes. I used to live in Okinawa, Japan, and therefore have a special place in my heart for Okinawan purple sweet potatoes. I figured that since it keeps up the purple theme, I would do half Peruvian and half Okinawan potatoes. It made for an interestingly sweet and savory flavor.

The final product! In reality, I could have cooked it a little longer and made it crispier, but I was terrified of burning it. Next time!

The potatoes were really excellent, perfectly cooked and nothing compares to the flavor of an Okinawan sweet potato! The combination of the floral lavender with the thyme, sage, and rosemary was simply DIVINE. And mixed with sweet potatoes, it gave it a cool twist. I think if it were with only savory potatoes, though, the spices could have stood on their own a little more and wouldn't be as overpowered by the sweetness.


RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 3/5 
There was a lot of preparation involved, but it went by so quickly because there were so many steps.

Deliciousness: 2/5
I think that the lavender could have been cut in half. I also think that I should try it with just savory potatoes.

Prettiness: 5/5
So much PURPLE!