Yummy vegan oatmeal cookies!

I am not a recipe person--I cook a lot, and I make up plenty of dishes, but I don't so much, like, measure in the strictest sense of the word. Ask my sister, she has emotional scars from trying to take down my mac & cheese recipe. But it yielded a funny blog on her MySpace! Which I cannot locate...must have been a while back. But I digress.

This recipe was born out of a desire for cookies that at least sound healthy, and made vegan by a spousal misplacement of ovum. The Spouse had bought eggs, but three days later we couldn't find them anywhere. There was a brief scare where we thought they might be in the pantry... *shudder* Alas, they were not. But without eggs I figured what the hell, lets go full vegan.

I made a test half batch that I feel was a success, so I made a full batch and actually--gulp--MEASURED ingredients and wrote down the temperature and baking time, etc. It was very unnatural for me, but my discomfort didn't make the cookies any less delicious. So, without further ado, my first reasonable, measurable, followable-by-all recipe:

VEGAN GORAM HIPPIE OATMEAL COOKIES
1/2 C soy butter, softened
3/4 C maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (or more--cinnamon good!)
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1 1/2 C rolled oats

Goodie mix:
1/2 C vegan chocolate chips
1/4 C flax seeds
1/4 C red raisins and dried cranberries, chopped
1/4 C black walnuts, chopped

Mix soy butter and maple syrup; add in vanilla, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda; work in the flour, then the oats; finally, add the goodies. Really you can use anything you like here--fruit, nuts, whatev--just use about a cup. I realize my recipe actually totals 1 1/4 cup of goodies, but flax seeds are tiny and fill in all the spaces between the chunkier stuff, and I was sort of reverse-engineering the mix from a bowl of stuff I had mixed earlier...math and recipes make me uncomfortable, just work with me here. Put in a cup or so of stuff, it'll be fine.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 7-8 minutes--cookies won't really get much browner, but theyill look dry on top.

100% Spouse approved!


(full disclosure--I did not use vegan chocolate, I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips, which, if you are not vegan, are damn yummy)

Unholy Yarnings

I am a bit of a whore for textiles. And I love horror movies. Hence, Unholy Yarnings--my fledgling line of horror-themed handspun yarns. I use the the term of art "line" very loosely. There is only one, and it is really just a prototype--me thinking with my hands and making it up as I go, if you will.

I call it Coagulating Bride.

It is a strand of white bamboo with a few strands of angelina, plied with a hand-dyed strand of red-streaked bamboo with hand-dyed soy gobbets. Think blood-soaked bride. I don't know whether the dye is vegetarian or not , but the fibers are, which I think is pretty cool.

The most fun was playing with the dye, mixing up the bloodiest red and streaking up the fiber. My kitchen came out remarkably unscathed, despite my basic dismissal of all safety and protective precautions. My garage floor, however, looks a teeny bit crime-sceney.

The first round was too pink, but I got new dye powders and achieved a more satisfying gobbety red. The pic on the left is the bad pinky bamboo; on the right is the soaking soy.

The rinsing part was tedious but very CSI/Bonesy/random innardsy. Or at least how I claim to imagine random innards to be, as of course you cannot prove that I have practical knowledge of such things.

As a side note, Oxy and Magic Erasers can have a white porcelain-coated sink looking like new in no time.

And the final product, coming in at 73 yards:

I will definitely do it differently next time--maybe dye the streaks after spinning, and do it more streakily, and maybe ply the (still pre-dyed) gobbets in with a super-thin strand of bamboo/angelina. I dunno. I have some leftovers, we'll see.

As if you needed proof that I am a wild and crazy gal.

Pizzeace.