I've had a complicated relationship with dairy lately. I've eased up on gluten a little (sneaking a flour-y treat here and there)--and perhaps that was the cause of my having two colds in 6 weeks' time. Grrr.
And now I've found myself looking side eyed at dairy, too. I've stopped adding it to my coffee (Later, cappuccino!), stopping using butter in cooking/baking/spreading, cut the yogurt out of my smoothies and overnight oats, stopping sprinkling parm on my pasta (nutritional yeast, you are an umami girl's best friend!) and stopped indulging in those creamy sauces the Swedes love putting on their potatoes, meats, desserts, etc.
So what's a girl to spread on her bread when she wants something non-hummus-y to go with a fruit/nut bread? Cashew cream cheese! It's basically cashews (soaked, bien sur), lemon juice, and a little nutritional yeast (for proper cream cheesy tang). Looks almost like the real thing, right? And tastes pretty damn good. If it weren't for my not wanting to be a royal pain in the ass at dinner parties/fikas/meals out, I might kick dairy to the curb entirely. As it stands now, it can be my faux friend--we can pretend to get along in social situations (I'll give it the cold shoulder but others will hardly notice). But yeah, I'mma talk shit on dairy behind its back and it's totally not on the list for any parties I'm having.
Except, cheese.... why does cheese hang out with the dairy crew? I don't miss my fancy cheeses yet and honestly eating locally produced (Who am I kidding? I live in Sweden. Let's say EU-produced with my eyeballs square on FRANCE.) cheese never messed with my system much at all (unlike getting the dairy bloats from straight-up milk) and it's produced in a small/craft/not overly processed way that I dig, so yeah... fancy French cheese, you can still come to my parties.
It's been a smoothy frenzy up in this piece lately. This one's a peach-banana jammer with chia seeds, coconut-rice milk, and a smidge of honey.
You know I love all things made with glutinous rice flour. (Thanks to Korea for turning me onto it, and Indonesia for making my love burn a little brighter.) I fashioned these puppies after some pumpkin doughnuts I had in Korea. I found a recipe online, but you basically steam a sweet potato, mash'er up good, then combine with glutinous rice flour, some normal rice flour, and add some honey or maple syrup. Fry them up in some coconut oil, then drizzle/toss with honey and sprinkle/roll with dried unsweetened coconut. Damn, these were GOOD. I brought a few into work every day and found myself nibbling on them throughout the day, pulling them out of my bag while I was walking around the city, like a little urban squirrel.
This may not look like much, but this perfectly cooked (oven-baked, maple-syrup-alized) piece of thick (eco, local) bacon sits atop a (ripe--not rotten--but not awesome. The avocados we get in Sweden taste like [Warning: here comes a smell-as-taste comparison. But for real: I have never actually tasted this or any make-up. But really real: except maybe that Dr. Pepper flavored lip gloss from the tube in 1988 but that shit was borderline food product--THEY EXPECTED US TO EAT IT. The human animal cannot have something that good smelling on its very lips and not indulge, says me.] the drugstore face powder my Aunt Helen has used on her face for the last 39 years. Are you with me? Our avocados taste like face powder. It's not fair, you having all of the avocado flavor, California.) avocado mash that sits atop some spinach that sits atop a homemade oat-rice-honey piece of flatbread that you can't even see but that tastes like a delicious drop biscuit. Oh, and there's a bit of watery tomato to round it out. Anyway, this was breakfast yesterday. If you take anything away from this ADD paragraph it should be that this dish was delicious. And that the avocados here suck.
These are two photos of last night's dinner, which--now, here in the morning light--looks like someone barfed in a moldy wrap. Here's what it really is. A buckwheat spinach crepe filled with apples and chickpeas tossed with some tahini, lemon juice, and olive oil, and topped with some mango-curry tofu. We had some fancy French cider to go with our hippy-bastardization of a Breton meal.
