After a recent trip to the farmers market, where I picked up a green tomato, I did a bit of searching and came up with a fabulous recipe for fried green tomatoes.  I had never made them before but I think I’m hooked now!  They were super easy to make.  The sauce was so creamy and delicious and a side of fried, sliced potatoes rounded it out into a perfect meal.  Check it out here. 

Saturday morning Eric and I went to the Green City Marketwith our friend Joe.  When we got back from out frigid spring outing I made some hot coffee in the french press and Eric made this delicious breakfast.  He’s obsessed with different styles of bruschetta and so he somehow came up with this.  Sliced, fried potatoes topped with sauteed red pepper, vidalia onion, green onion and garlic – not the version you’d think….it looked like this…

…to top it off he drizzled a reduced balsamic vinegar on the each piece.  It was so good and such a fun twist on a hashbrown breakfast.  We’d also picked up some amazing fresh wheat bread from Bennison’s Bakery , which we toppedwith Earth Balance and Rasperry Mint Preserves from Seedling (I’d never thought of putting mint in my preserves but it was fabulous!  I’m going to do that when I make my next homemade batch)

What a great way to start the day – before I began my LONG project of cleaning out my pantry – which took me all day long to fully empty it, wash it down and re-organize it all – I suppose it was the perfect thing for a rainy day.

photo from The Great Vegan Conspiracy

The other night I made the most amazing sticky toffee pudding.  I LOVE sticky toffee pudding but I’ve never made it before.  I randomly came across this recipe and got super excited to make a vegan version of this yummy treat.  The hardest part was converting the measurement to ones that made a bit more sense in my kitchen.  You’ll find this funny – I quickly glanced at the label on my Earth Balance butter and say 14g, so somehow got it in my head the entire package was 14g (but really its 1T).  So, I started thinking how unhealthy this pudding was going to be and even ran out to buy more Earth Balance butter since I didn’t have enough!  So, after I creamed my third stick of butter with the brown sugar, I suddenly realized what an idiot I was.  I put all the creamed butter in a bowl and spooned out the correct number of tablespoons and adjusted my sugar.  Oh my – what a mess I would have created if I’d gone ahead with all that butter!

Anway, I got the recipe from The Great Vegan Conspiracy.  You’ll find the original recipe here and below you’ll have an more Americanized version.

Ingredients for two 350ml puddings:

1 cup dates

4 tablespoon  vegan butter

½ cup brown sugar

Egg replacer equal to two eggs

1 cup self raising flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

1 teaspoon molasses

1 teaspoon golden syrup (I was out of maple syrup so I added more molasses)

1 teaspoon vanilla

50ml soy milk (I used coconut milk)

Ingredients for the sticky toffee sauce:

6 tablespoons vegan butter

½ cup brown sugar

250ml soy cream (I used vanilla coconut creamer to add a little more flavor)

1 tablespoon molasses

1. Preheat the oven to 365°F.  Spread two pudding basins with butter and dust with flour.

2. Finely chop the dates and place in a bowl. Pour 175ml of boiling water over the dates and leave to one side.  After soaking I put mine in the food processor and pureed them.

3. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the egg replacer then fold in the flour, baking soda and ground flax seeds, followed by the milk and vanilla. Fold in the dates, molasses and syrup.

4. Divide the pudding batter between the two basins and cover with foil. Place in the oven and cook for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for a further 10 minutes. Do a skewer test to check the puddings are done.

5. During the last 10 minutes of cooking make the toffee sauce. Melt together the butter and sugar over a low heat and add 100ml of the cream. Bring to the boil and cook, stirring for 5-8 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken (mine really didn’t thicken but it wasn’t a problem at all – it still tasted fabulous).

6. Run a knife round the edge of the puddings to help release them from the basins. Stir the remaining cream into the sauce and drench the pudding. Serve with vanilla ice cream (that might be a bit much – the pudding on its own is enough).

**I made mine in one basin rather than two but it took a lot longer to bake.  Next time I’ll split it up per the recipe but if you don’t have two small basins one larger one will do.  Also – by basin they just mean a bowl.  I used a pottery bowl, you could use any type of bowl – glass, tin, etc.  

***Be sure to serve this warm – if you manage to have any left-overs, always heat bef