First Ever Favorites Friday

 These are a few of my

favorite things... 

Yes, I'm starting a new feature on this blog and calling it Favorites Friday.  In these posts I'll cover a few of the recipes and foodie posts from around the web (and maybe elsewhere) that have caught my eye and that I feel deserve a mention.  This will give visitors plenty of places to visit over the weekend while I take my "away from the computer" time.  I'll tempt you to come back with several hints of what's to come over the next weeks and leave you with a question so you can share your wisdom with me.  How's that sound?  Good.  Then let's get started.  

Our first stop along the way keeps with the wise adage "Life's short, eat dessert first."  And what better blog to visit to fulfill that bit of wisdom than Chocolate Covered Katie.  She's got a reputation in this house, already.  When I was searching for where I had seen the recipe for butternut squash fries and started looking through her blog posts, my husband was sure it wasn't going to be at Chocolate Covered Katie - he had come to believe she only ever wrote about stuff meant to appease the sweet tooth monster.  He got this idea from seeing her blog titles on my Google Reader.  I proved him wrong though, because that was exactly where I found the recipe for "Butter(nut) Me Up" Squash Fries.  I have a butternut squash waiting to be transformed so I'm sure there will be more to come about that.  But that is hardly dessert and I said we were having dessert first and indeed it is at Chocolate Covered Katie that I found a recipe for something I've been wanting to try for quite some time.  A quick and vegan version of chocolate mousse.  Check out the recipe for Five-Minute Chocolate Mousse.  I'll let you know how it turns out in the next couple weeks - promise.

While perusing through the posts at The Voracious Vegan I came across a link to the Raw Epicurean.  I'm going to have to find more hours in the day just to explore this website.  It is loaded with recipes (with an ingredient Index - yeah!), interesting interviews, raw lifestyle articles and happy of happies for me an Herb of the Month section (I love all things herbs).  This months is about rose and promises to have articles, information and recipes featuring this herb.  Add to that a section of links to many more raw food blogs for me to get lost navigating through and I could be entertained for days, weeks, months, years!   Thanks to The Voracious Vegan for the link!

Moving along now to Love Veggies and Yoga where I discovered more raw snackybits to drool over.  Specifically the Raw Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.  Last night I had quite the adventure making these and then re-making them completely different.  One recipe - two totally different raw cookies.  I can't wait to post the results with pictures next week.  Thanks, Averie, for the adventure!

Cooking for a Vegan Lover did a book review on the book Go Dairy Free that caught my attention.  Not because I plan on going completely dairy free anytime soon but because I love to read about alternatives to my normal way of cooking and eating and seeing what wisdom I can glean and what new ways of doing something I can try out.  So I'll be looking to put this book on hold at the library soon.

Finally Vegan Crunk wrote about her experiences with Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet.  I'm on a waiting list several miles long for this book at the library and after reading this review of sorts and hearing about the recipes I am that much more impatient to get my hands on a copy of this cookbook.  The Ginger-baked Tofu she mentions was the final straw.

In the mean time I do have two cookbooks out from the library that I am eagerly going through and look forward to doing more of just that this weekend. 

The Vegan Table is all about recipes for entertaining but from the first glances I think they would be just as yummy if I made them to entertain just lil' ol' Mark and me.  There seem to be several recipes that would make a scrumptious vegan high tea - I'd just have to find some local folks adventuress enough to try it with an open mind.  I'll have to work on that! 

Then there's Vegan Brunch, which has already had a muffin recipe made from it and I'll be sharing about that sometime soon too.  But there are many more dishes in there that I look forward to trying.  My only complaint so far are the number of dishes that call for Nutritional Yeast, something I cannot eat, and an ingredient that so far no one has given a good alternative to.  It is one thing if it calls for only a tablespoon or so, I figure leaving it out is simple enough.  But for recipes that call for 1/4 cup or more?  And that brings me to my question:

If you couldn't use nutritional yeast, for whatever reason, what would you use in its place or how would you alter a recipe to make up for the missing nutritional yeast? 

With so many vegan products and recipes calling for it, I find myself somewhat discouraged by not being able to use it.  I could use help from all you wise peoples out there!

Coming soon to Rutabegas and Other Adventures:

Vegetarian Stroganoff with Seitan

Super Quick Bowl of Noodles and Veggies

Garlic and Kale Soup with Spelt Berries

Vegan Chocolate Almond Moose

Raw Cookies

Butternut Squash Fries

And so much more....

So, until next week (and all its fun-filled, recipe-laden goodness), happy eating, dreaming and exploring the vegetarian life!