"Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give an Elf"

Well, it’s been quite a week in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen! We’ve been extra busy with helpin’ out at the Crossroads Café in addition to bakin’ cookies for said café. Restaurant work is hard, especially in a popular eatery and the pace can get quite fast. Staffing shortages certainly add to the level of intensity, so the Elf was only too happy to respond to a need. Also this coming week as well, so time in the KEK will be limited. We are kinda behind in preparing some of our own staples such as the plant-based Chikun Shreds, Sausages and various hummuses (or is the plural hummi) that we keep on hand almost all the time. AND cookie bakin’!

For our Fat Free Vegan Kitchen recipe this week, we prepared the Vegan Scalloped Potatoes with Chickpea Cheese Sauce. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2016/01/vegan-scalloped-potatoes-with-chickpea-cheese-sauce.html

This is SUCH an easy recipe to prepare and the results are so lovely to taste. Since we were sorta pressed for time, we took the recipe and added plant-based meat crumbles to it for a complete meal (kinda casseroley).

We are always a bit on the uneasy side when we tinker with Susan’s awesome recipes but the crumbles added just the right amount of substance that, with a nice salad, provided a lovely supper. After attending the Plant-Based Immersion day a few weeks back, we are even more conscious of limiting how much fat we eat…another SPECTACULAR reason to follow so many of Susan’s recipes. So, for the newly initiated Elfsters, here are the links to Susan’s Facebook page as well as to her terrific blog. Susan’s blog and site have been recognized by Kaiser Parmenente as a resource for folks who’ve been given medical guidance to limit their intake of fats. 

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/

https://www.facebook.com/susan.voisin?fref=ts

We’ve also been playing with the recipes from the Isa Does It Cookbook; one night we had the Korean BBQ Portobello Mushrooms and paired those with the Roasted Yellow Beet Salad with Warm Maple Mustard Dressing. The mushroom caps marinated in a lovely sweet/sour and delicious concoction (we always marinate longer than suggested; don’t know why, perhaps our rebellious Elfin nature) and then pan seared.

Big Solid is not a big fan of KimChi so we omitted that in favor of the salad. We also don’t eat a lot of bread, so we served our portobellos over one slice of whole wheat bread. The salad was to DIE for!! We LOVE beets in any way shape, form or fashion. These were baked, then sliced while warm and topped with toasted pecan pieces

and the WARM MAPLE MUSTARD DRESSING that your Elf could ALMOST use as a Sundae topping (not really, but that’s how good it is)!

Here are links to these recipes which all contain attribution to the Isa Does It cookbook. We highly recommend this book and we are just getting started on trying some of the recipes. http://www.veganviola.com/?p=786

http://www.theppk.com/2011/01/roasted-yellow-beet-salad-with-warm-maple-mustard-dressing/

AND, again as a reminder of how much fun the Plant-Based Immersion Day was, we decided on evening to prepare the Lentil Oat Loaf that we enjoyed for lunch that fun day. It’s from the Engine Two eating regimen. http://engine2diet.com/recipe/lynns-meatloaf/

In keeping with following some of Dr. John McDougall’s advice about eating starches more often, we ‘fixed’ garlic smashed potatoes

and sautéed a passel of kale.

And let this lovely loaf sit in the pan fresh from the oven for a bit before we sliced it. We also had great sandwiches from it all week!!

This week will be another busy week of ‘heppin’ out at the Crossroads Café; we’ve kinda gotten the hang of how to make a wrap that doesn’t squirt the food out of each end because we didn’t close it up good! In fact, we now even VOLUNTEER to do the wraps; the one exception is gluten free wraps…those have a tendency to disintegrate before you can say ‘it’s a wrap’, so we are on the lookout for a more substantive gluten free wrap.

Tomorrow, your Elf is meeting with Mitchell Moore, owner and pastry chef supremo at Campbell’s Bakery (now in two locations! in Jackson and Madison MS). Mitchell has recently embraced a plant-based eating regimen and is coming up with all sorts of good ideas. Anywho, we are going to talk with Mitchell about something special for the Elf’s 70th birthday with is coming up pretty damn soon! HOLY HELLO! Will keep you posted on that. And speakin’ of birthdays, Big Solid’s birthday is Tuesday so we’ll figure out some kind of Kinky Elfery celebration for him!!

We leave you with one final picture to show you that GREEN SMOOTHIES from the Crossroads Café make little Princesses happy. When you start them young on a healthy lifestyle, you have half the battle won!

Until next week, y’all be kind, eat plants, laugh a lot, and DO EPIC!

Your Elf