Vino Italiano and other impressions

I accompanied my 1st grader on a class trip today to a vinyard/farm, so this post won't contain any recipes but just a few pictures I wanted to share. :)

The kids got to stomp some grapes themselves, which they had a lot of fun doing, of course.

I didn't ask if the wine from the vinyard is actually vegan...

To be honest, I didn't want to stick out more than I felt I already did (a bit) after having mentioned to a few other moms that I'm vegan...[On a positive note though, the reaction I got was quite positive!]

I won't go into the farm part, containing chickens, geese and a few goats.. Let's just say they didn't look very happy...

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This actually made me laugh; only in Italy do you get to see that kind of

food pyramid! *lol*

[The kids got each a piece of plastic food that they were asked to put in the proper category, which a few still mixed up, as you can see. ;-) ]



Loooove the colors!!!

It's like a little piece of foliage that we otherwise don't get here in Sicily!

My kind of food! ;-)

And just in case you wonder, what it is in the round 'windows'...

...Sneakers!

To my question, why they are there: "It's art!"

Ok then... ;-)

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I hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures!

The next blog post will be about my cooked food, including recipes again! :)







Comfort food!

What's the first dish that comes to your mind when you hear 'Comfort food'?

Mine is Mac 'n Cheese, hands down! Which is funny, considering I never even heard of it until 11 years ago when I met my husband and he introduced me to it! (Back then it was the Kraft box kind.. and I couldn't understand how anyone could like this chemically tasting stuff! *lol*) 

Since then we have moved away from the box kind, thankfully, and after having had the vegetarian version many times [until I became vegan], I now finally dared to venture out and find vegan recipes for my Nr.1 Comfort food! =)

I've tried quite a few and probably will always be up for testing out new/other ones, but Susan Voisin (another great woman known to most of us in the vegan world, from Fat Free Vegan) has got me hooked on her recipe!!!

 Susan V's Easy Macaroni and Cheeze

I added just a little bit more vegan margarine for my personal taste, together with a good whirl of fresh black pepper and veggie salt.

I could eat this easily 3x per week! ;-)

Thank you, Susan, for sharing this recipe with the rest of us!

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Wanna tell me what's your comfort food? I'm all ears, especially if it's vegan! :)

Hillbilly Banana Bread and home made rice milk

I know, I've been slacking a bit in posting dishes and recipes daily... 

My apologies! 

Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will")  happened to be going on for us these past days, so needless to say, I wasn't in the best mood to take pics of food or even talk about food..

Which is actually kinda sad as I've made (for the '100th' time) a real yummy Curry that tasted sooo good and I wish would have taken the time to get a snapshot at least!.. Oh well.. I'm sure we'll have it again soon!

For today I'm posting a quick recipe for home made rice milk as well as a veganized version of a banana bread found on Hillbilly Housewife  

It's called My best banana bread

My veganization:


*I've cut down the sugar to 2/3 
*Instead of margarine or corn oil I used coconut oil.
* I just used ~1/2 c water with a splash of lemon juice due to not having any OJ
* I added my last soy yogurt [which needed to be eaten anyway] since I only had 2 ripe bananas
* Also I had to use 'Valencia Orange zests' ~1 Tbsp for this mix as there was no orange in sight here. 
*I used whole wheat for the entire amount of 2.5 c of flour
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The results.. I couldn't taste anything orange-y at all, so most likely it would have been best using real OJ and maybe a teeny tiny bit more sugar.. I'll try it with the OJ alone first though.

It's not the best pic, but you get the idea.


As for the Rice milk it's really very simple but might not be everyone's taste!
(Personally I'm not a big fan of it either, but my Hubby and daughter like it. My son doesn't even wanna try it! *lol*)


How to make your own rice milk:
Cook rice in the pot (I'm on a Basmati kick lately), when it's ready to pour the rice in a strainer, collect the water!
Let it cool down, pour through a smaller strainer (there's a little gelatinous glob forming in the cooled down 'milk' for whatever reason..), add a bit of sugar (or not), vanilla flavoring (again, or not) and voila.
Your own home made rice milk! ;-)