Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘vegan’

Jan 20

8 Comments

The Motley’s vegan chocolate chip cookies

This is an update from a post I first wrote in 2010 – the recipe updated for clarity and ease, new photos added, and the commentary streamlined. Enjoy!

Cooling_cookies

These cookies have an intensely strong flavor association for me – one bite and I’m taken immediately back to college, when I spent much of my time studying (or socializing, or wasting time) at The Motley, the student-run coffee house one campus over. When I was at the Claremont Colleges, most of the food at The Motley was prepared by some off-campus company, aside from the packs of vegan cookies prepared by students. The cookies were delivered every few days, wrapped in packs of three, and they were widely known across the campuses. I probably bought packs of these cookies at least half of my visits there, and together with how often they showed up at other campus events, I can tell you that I ate a lot – a lot – of these cookies between 2002 and 2006. Read more

Jul 30

Summer blended gazpacho

Summer in Oregon isn’t exactly the summer I’m used to. I grew up in the rainy, humid, sweltering summers of the Midwest, then spent most of the last decade’s summers in the dry, oven-like heat of inland Southern California. I’m not used to these overcast mornings and cool evenings, where dinner the backyard is more comfortable with sleeves. But don’t take this as a complaint – I’d take chilly over sweaty any day, and am always more comfortable in a sweatshirt than in shorts.

I just say this to point out that gazpacho isn’t quite as necessary here as it is in the sort of summer that keeps you out of the kitchen at all costs – but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t perfect for a post-travel light summer meal, and that I didn’t happily eat it in the backyard with a sweatshirt on.

gazpacho1 Read more

Apr 26

1 Comment

Awesome vegan chocolate peanut butter cookies

I have something exciting to tell you.

No, it’s not that I have five different open containers of cocoa powder in my pantry.  (And I wonder why I never have any room in there.) But it does have to do with the photo. Read more

Mar 27

1 Comment

Vegan chocolate cake with fluffy “buttercream” frosting and a surprise

Like a huge number of 20-something foodies around the country, I used to be vegetarian. For 10 years, which is a pretty sizable period of time. Now, don’t let that lead you to believe I actually ate as a vegetarian should – there were far more microwaved Morningstar Farms vegetarian chicken nuggets in my high school diet than I’d ever like to admit – but all those meat-free years definitely changed my perspective on what makes up a meal and what ingredients are necessary for a given recipe or dish. I still try to minimize my meat consumption and am often far more attracted to the vegetarian options on a menu (though I have to say – it feels liberating to be able to walk into a restaurant and pick almost anything on the menu, after spending 10 years choosing between two or maybe three options at most places). Read more