Tea time with Coconut Scones

We have been having difficulty exercising good table manners at home lately. Forget about going to a restaurant - that is completely out of the question.

So we've been coming down pretty hard. Forcing the issue. The kids are old enough to have enough discipline at the table to use polite manners. And I want to have a nice meal.

So my solution? We started having daily tea after school.  At least that is one component of the solution.

This is not a pretend tea party. A real after school snack where we all sit at the table together. I get out the fancy-but-not-too-fancy dinnerware and bake a plate of scones or put together little sandwiches or some fresh fruit.  The kids don't drink tea (we are careful not to let them have caffeine), but they will usually have milk or water.

It seems to be working. They have something to eat that they like. They are hungry. And it's a short duration-maybe 10 minutes. They tell us about their day. It's fun!

One unintended benefit (to my surprise) is that dinner is pushed back to 6:30-7. Much later than we used to eat (used to eat at 5 or 530).  Since they are older and going to bed later now, there is plenty of time for bath and stories after dinner. A later dinner hour also gives me more time to cook dinner and I don't feel so rushed. I love it.

By the time dinner rolls around they are hungry again. Then its much easier to enjoy dinner because it seems they are able to retain some of what we practiced at tea.

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Coconut scones

Baking anything without butter or egg and getting the same result as a dairy baked good is very difficult. No - its impossible.  I guess when you decide to go vegan you have to accept that your baked goods are just not going to be the same.  But I thought these coconut scones were pretty good. Not the same, but still really good. Pretty dense. And the coconut flavor was not too intense. Thats either a plus or minus depending on your affinity for coconut.

With only 2 tablespoons of sugar, they are not to sweet either.  I like that.

Serve them with a little pineapple jelly or whipped coconut cream (for directions on how to make whipped coconut cream, see my blog entry on Strawberry Shortcakes).  I like my tea served with light vanilla soy milk and maybe some honey for added sweetness if I'm in the mood.

Scrapbooking & Strawberry Shortcake

Scrapbooking Fun!

I was recently helping my mom doing a little cleaning and I found some old Christmas photo cards that I sent her when the kids were really small. I also found other family member's photo cards. 

"You saved these all these years?" I asked her

"Of course!" she replies. "The kids are so cute. I have to save them"

It does seem like a shame to throw away a photograph.  I breaks my heart to do it, but each year at Christmas I get a few of these photo cards and I don't know what to do with them.  People who are important to us go through the effort to make these cards and remember us at Christmas.  But I can't be expected to keep them ALL, so I force myself to toss them. 

Then I feel ashamed of myself.   But not for much longer. 

I got to thinking.... I could help mom (and me) by giving her a place to store these cards so they will all stay together and in nice condition. 

After a few google and pinterest searches I thought I'd make scrapbook.  But how? I have very little scrapbooking experience.  It looks intimidating. There aren't any pre-made albums with pockets to slide in the cards of varying sizes and those magnetic pages are just bad for the photos over time.  So I guess I have to go from scratch. 

I know what I want to do, and its pretty basic.  Just make a book with Christmas papers and put the year on it so after Christmas she can just slide in the photo card in the appropriate year's page. But I wanted to look nice. I don't have time or money to do these tricked out professional looking pages. Besides who knows how many of each size card she will get.  The pages would need to have room to put several cards.

I found scrapbooks at Michael's for $5 each. They are not Christmas themed, but they do the job. Just a basic 12x12 20 page scrapbook.  My favorite craft store to shop at is Jo-Ann.  I love their coupon policy. I save beaucoup bucks there because of it.  They had tons of Christmas themed papers to chose from. 

I couldn't leave my in-laws out, so I made each of them one too. Then I found out 2 of my aunts also save every photo Christmas card they receive. So I'm making 6 albums all together. I needed to get an assembly line going because even though I love the creative process, I'll be darned if I'm going to do this again.  

Buying stickers to make the yearly labels would have been super expensive.  But I got lucky. My neighbor has a Cricut Machine (one of those nifty die cutting machines that cuts the papers to perfection). She let me borrow for as long as I needed.  I was saved. I thought I was going to have to cut these all by hand. 

I did have fun doing it. The end result looks like this:

Pretty basic, but it does exactly what I needed it to do: Organize by year, be Christmas-y and be flexible.  Its fun to flip through and see how everyone changes year by year. 

Now I have the bug and I want to use this machine as much as possible before I have to give it back.  I'm making a scrapbook to put all my kids' professional photos in by age. 

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Strawberry Shortcake with Whipped Coconut Cream

Scrapbooking doesn't make me hungry.  Staying up until midnight while scrapbooking does. 

I'm trying to dramatically reduce the amount of refined sugar I'm consuming.  I feel so much better without it.   We had berries and I wanted to do something special for dessert one night so I made strawberry shortcake. 

They were easy. Like the previous posts about baking, the cake part was dense.  I liked it, didn't love it, but I'd eat it again.  These instructions called for macerating the berries in sugar the night before. I didn't do this - I think its unnecessary. Berries are delicious just the way they are. 

Whipped Coconut Cream

Strawberry shortcake HAS to have whipped cream, right?  But we all know that is out of the picture.  So the closest we get here is whipped coconut cream. 

Its easy. Just prepare the night before by sticking a can of full fat coconut milk in the fridge to chill. This makes the coconut milk separate and easier to whip. 

When ready to whip the cream, carefully open the top and scrape the thick cream part into a bowl. Don't shake the can- you want the separation or your cream won't get fluffy. 

Them beat them with your mixer until fluffy. Mine took about 10 minutes. 

Who Wants Dessert?

The Elvis and Magic Bars

My daughter loves to read my cookbooks. She loves cupcakes and cookies. She inherited my sweet tooth. Last year when I first turned over this vegan leaf I was relieved that I wouldn't be tempted by desserts anymore. Then I discovered Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her books Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World and Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar.  There goes that plan.

If you have a sweet tooth, I'd recommend both of these books. She hasn't steered me wrong yet.

The first one is the Elvis. My daughter picked this one out by herself. I was a little skeptical. Wasn't Elvis's favorite food a peanut butter sandwich with bananas and bacon?  Ick.

But whatever, if she wanted to try it I'd go for it. The cupcake part tastes just like banana bread. Very light with a fine crumb. Top it off with peanut butter icing (not my favorite) and garnish with chopped peanuts, chocolate chips and a banana slice.  The combination was actually quite delicious.  If you are really brave, try sticking a piece of facon bacon on it to be really authentic. I couldn't bring myself to do that.

Secondly, she wanted to make magic bars. Now, these I was really game for. Kinda like a 7 layer bar with coconut, nuts and chocolate chips. It was fun to do with her too she could help with all parts of the assemble since no loud machinery like a mixer was involved.  She stirred the base and put it in the pan, I poured the caramel sauce then her favorte part: making the layers. Which actually turned out to be more like mountains of each ingredient in the middle of the pan, but we were able to get them spread out.

Refrigerated overnight and voila! Bribes!