Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-free

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Hannah

At first glance, you may think that the above Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding is nothing more than an innocent sweet breakfast (or quick dessert) that ticks all the vegan, gluten-free, non-threatening, sweet yet healthful, delicious, moreish, and irresistible (particularly when topped with mini chocolate chips) boxes.

However, this breakfast/dessert is more than that. My peanut butter pumpkin pudding is a refutation, or perhaps proof positive (I haven’t quite decided yet), of Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital and cultural hegemony, as defined and discussed in his seminal work La Distinction.

On the one hand, we have ingredients liked organic canned pumpkin, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, coconut flour, and mesquite powder, all of which can be classified as luxury goods available predominately to the cultural elite: those with the money, knowledge, and leisure time to be aware of, value, and have access to products (and “tastes”) classified by society as Healthful, Prestigious and [often thereby] Tied To Moral Virtue (“you are what you eat… and what you eat should by organic/local/ethical/healthy/virtuous”).

On the other hand, I threw in peanut butter-flavoured sugary kids’ cereal, blended it all up, and topped the resulting thick and creamy pudding with chocolate chips. Which is less in line with the Eat Only Homegrown Sprouted Polka-Dot Chickpeas And Foraged-By-The-Light-Of-A-Crescent-Moon Maqui Berries strain of cultural capital, and more, well, trashy, perhaps?

Of course, you’re more than welcome to simply call this recipe “delicious” and have that be that. It is, after all, a tasty and nourishing creation, with the nutty maltiness of the cereal, mesquite, and coconut flour combining well with the roundness of pumpkin and your chosen extract and sweetener.

But, see, sometimes I miss academic life and how it felt to thread together the theories of Bourdieu, Veblen, Baudrillard, and Foucault in such a way as to cast light on the way our world shudders and moves around us.

So I’m calling this my Capital Pudding. Because it is both capital (ol’ chum!) and potentially reflective of class capital.

Though I still haven’t decided whether it’s more high or low culture.

Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-free

Original recipe
Serves 1

1/3 cup (heaping; 100g) pumpkin puree, canned or pureed
1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk, or any non-dairy milk
1/2 cup (heaping; 25g) Peanut Butter Panda Puffs, or similar peanut butter cereal (*cough Reese’s Puffs cough*)
1 tb coconut flour
1/4 tsp almond extract (or vanilla extract)
1/4 tsp mesquite powder (or cinnamon)
pinch salt
sweetener, to taste (coconut sugar, maple or agave syrup, or stevia)
chocolate chips, to garnish

1. Are you ready for this? PUREE EVERYTHING (except the chocolate chips) in a blender until gloriously smooth and thick. You can now enjoy this straightaway, or put in the fridge for an hour or so, at which point the pudding will thicken up gorgeously and you will be very happy. Garnish with chocolate chips before serving.

2. “Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.” - Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, Volume One.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend, Healthy Vegan Friday, Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love, and 5 Ingredient Monday.

Vegan Puppy Chow, To Celebrate The New Year

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Hannah

Riddle me this: is there any better way to celebrate the dawning of a new year than with chocolate and peanut butter?

No. The answer is no. Chocolate and peanut butter should always be used to mark the beginning of a new year, because chocolate and peanut butter together create such irrefutable and reliable deliciousness that to eat a treat based on their wondrousness is to ensure that your year is founded on happiness.

Look, yes. I know there are other aspects of life capable of helping 2013 start off with a bang. You could play frisbee in the park with friends, for example, or write a list of all the different ways you intend to be awesome in the next twelve months.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if my 2013 began with the discovery that talking red pandas exist, because then I would track down such a talking red panda and convince him to be my best friend. I would call him Lord Snuggleruffle, he would call me Sparkleheart, and together we would live a life of such adventure that movies would be made about us and I’d end up with so much money from royalties that I could spend my life perpetually chasing summer, back and forth, back and forth, across the world.

I also wouldn’t mind starting 2013 by writing a post listing all the grammatical/spelling/just-plain-wrong errors I keep seeing in blogs. They’re driving me insane. Won’t somebody please employ me as The Internet’s Proofreader? Please? If I see one more person write “peaked my interest” instead of “piqued my interest”, “bare with me” instead of “bear with me”, or “here enlies the problem” instead of “herein lies the problem” (enlies isn’t even a word oh dear holy), I’m going to lie down in the snow until my eyelashes freeze together.

See? Starting the year with chocolate and peanut butter is far preferable to starting the year with a[n I-really-want-to-be-an-editor] rant about language errors.

Therefore I give you Puppy Chow. A strangely-named (here veganised) heavenly treat of Chex cereal coated in melted chocolate, peanut butter, and butter/vegan non-dairy spread, all tossed with icing sugar.

It’s incredible. It’s insanely sweet. It’s like crack. It’s American (of course). It’s chocolate and peanut butter and crispiness and sweetness. It’s irresistible. It’s Puppy Chow.

Oh, and the sculpture above? It’s made of neither chocolate nor peanut butter, but it is perhaps the most hilarious and terrifying piece of street art I’ve yet come across in Toronto, and thus it is great. (It is Koilos by Michael Christian.)

Happy New Year! Here’s to a 2013 filled with joy, sweetness, and the correct use of apostrophes.

Heel click,
Hannah

Vegan Puppy Chow

Makes 9 cups. Recipe from all over the Internet.

1 cup vegan dark chocolate (I used a 70% dark chocolate)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup vegan non-dairy spread, such as Earth Balance or Nuttelex
1 tsp vanilla extract
9 cups Chex (rice cereal squares)
2 cups icing sugar

Combine chocolate, peanut butter, and Earth Balance/non-dairy spread in a large saucepan over medium heat and stir until all melted together. Add in the vanilla, and stir to combine.
Place the Chex cereal in a large bowl, then pour over the chocolate and peanut butter mixture. Gently stir until all the cereal squares are coated.
Put the icing sugar in one enormous container/zip-lock bag or several smaller containers, and tip the coated cereal squares inside. Seal the containers/bags and shake shake shake! Shake shake shake! Shake your booty! … until the sugar has coated all the cereal.
Place the cereal in the fridge until the chocolate hardens, and then enjoy. Preferably with your new talking red panda friend by your side. Because why not? Exactly. Happy New Year!

Vegan Pumpkin Mesquite Overnight Oats

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Hannah

Dear Australian and Assorted Other Southern Hemisphere Folk,

I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve crossed over to the other side. I didn’t mean to, I swear. It just happened. You must let me convey to you how sorry I am.

Please accept my sincerest apologies for joining the apparently endless hordes of American and Canadian food bloggers who are so obsessed with pumpkin and winter squash that they seem to forget that not every country in the world is currently experiencing Autumn/Fall, produces canned pumpkin and diverse squash varieties, or even has a food culture of sweet squash and pumpkin treats. I know from experience how annoying it can be for you, down there dancing in the first blushes of Spring, to open your Google Reader to endless variations of the same pumpkin pie-esque flavours, particularly when you may never even have had pumpkin pie to begin with.

I never meant to add to your pain.

But, you see, pumpkin and winter squash (and the spices that regularly accompany them) are extravagantly wonderful, and I seem to have found myself in the orange vortex.

If it makes you feel any better, I endeavoured to ensure that my pumpkin overnight oats aren’t exactly-exactly the same as every other recipe out there, most of which use chia seeds and the vague-to-those-who-didn’t-grow-up-with-it “pumpkin pie spice”.

I tried put a spin on this sweet breakfast treat by using coconut flour in lieu of chia seeds, and also throwing in mesquite powder, which has a lovely subtle nutty caramel flavour. My pumpkin mesquite overnight oats are creamy, sweet, spiced, nuanced, delicious.

So please don’t hate me. The heart wants what the heart wants.

Love always,
Hannah

Vegan Pumpkin Mesquite Overnight Oats

Serves 1

1/3 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup pumpkin puree (canned or homemade)
1 tb maple syrup, or more, to taste
1 tb coconut flour (or chia seeds)
1/4 tsp mesquite powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of salt (because it makes the flavours sing)
1/2 cup + 2 tb almond milk (I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk; use any non-dairy milk of your choosing)

In a mason jar, bowl, or any container (imagine that!), stir together the oats, pumpkin puree, maple syrup to taste, coconut flour, mesquite, spices, and salt until well combined.
Gently stir in the almond milk until completely mixed through, cover, and place in the fridge overnight or for as many hours as you can bear to wait. The oats will soak up much of the liquid, and the coconut flour will also help thicken your breakfast (or anytime) treat.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend.

Fresh Huckleberry Plum Smoothies, and Being Laura Ingalls Wilder in Carmel Valley

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Hannah

With two days in San Francisco under our belts, Jeniqua and I set off on Saturday morning to wend our way, via Caltrain, bus, and private vee-hick-el, to her current place of residence in the mountains. For the sake of Jeniqua’s (and the owner’s) privacy, I shan’t give exact coordinates, but suffice it to say that I’ve spent the past week on a mountain farm in the Monterey/Big Sur/Carmel Valley area, and

was

breath-taking

idyllic

real

above-clouds

warm-earth

sweet

fresh

breath-taking.

When we arrived, I discovered I’d be sleeping in my own private attic-loft, and my heart fell in an instant for this room that made me feel like I was Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Oh, how I adore the words that flew from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pen, and oh, how I dreamed as a kid of living her life (minus the malaria and periods of near-starvation and farming struggles, but plus an extra-strength Almanzo, if you please).

As I stepped into the attic I felt my heart leap again in my chest, for the farm’s owner and Jeniqua’s friend, Lloyd, had placed not only a fresh bouquet of flowers by my bed, but a little box of chocolate covered cacao nibs on my pillow too.

Thank you, Lloyd. You are magical and made me feel truly welcome.

(I also appreciated honing my mountain goat skills by climbing up and down the near-vertical steps to the attic, particularly at 3am with a head-torch strapped to my head.

Yes, a head-torch. Sometimes I’m so glamorous I can’t even stand it.)

One of the most wonderful parts of my farm visit was the abundance of fresh fruit always readily available, including fruit I’ve never had the chance to try before.

Like huckleberries.

Sweet, tart, tangy, juicy, delicious huckleberries, which I spent two hours sorting and picking over one afternoon, neck burning in the sun as I swatted bugs away from my (mine, all mine!) bounty.

Once the sour green huckleberries and twigs had been removed from the ripe glowing berries, Jeniqua and I called in Lloyd and the WWOOFers with the promise of frosty sweet huckleberry smoothies.

Listen ye well: our smoothies were magnificent. Into one batch went huckleberries, burstingly-ripe yellow plums, almond milk, vanilla, and ice. Into another went peaches, huckleberries, agave, ice, and almond coconut milk.

All sweet, all locally picked or foraged, all refreshing, all perfect.

Fresh Huckleberry Plum Smoothie

Serves 1 (ingredients are estimated; adjust to taste, and add sweetener if needed)

1/2 cup fresh huckleberries
2-3 ridiculously ripe and sweet little plums
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 – 2/3 cup almond milk
1/3 cup ice

Blend all to a gloriously thick magenta creation.
Drink in the sun with friends, happy.

Question Time: Have you had huckleberries before? What did you do with them?

Ooh, I finally have something for Ricki’s Wellness Weekend and Healthy Vegan Friday again!

Pandan Quinoa with Cinnamon and Star Anise

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Hannah

head up eyes forward don’t falter walk tall beating heart burning sun crystal frost hear it thrum

head up remember

remember those who would have given anything to be here one more day just one more day

remember those who have never shown anything but faith in you, not even when you’ve crouched down panther-eyed waiting for a flicker of doubt to cross their faces

a flicker of doubt that never comes

remember that you’re here and this is your only your only that this is your time-pocket only

and keep

your head

up.

I made you a little bowlful of Pandan Quinoa with Star Anise and Cinnamon today. There’s almond milk, too, and a little agave, but you can use any milk or sweetener you please.

In fact, you could leave out the sweetener altogether and serve this quinoa as a fragrant glorious accompaniment to a spicy warm heady curry, or satay-smothered grilled tofu, or any delicious savoury dish to which this quinoa could play the heroic sidekick.

I had my quinoa for dessert and for breakfast, tossed with diced fuyu persimmon, pomegranate seeds, toasted pistachios, and an extra drizzle of sweetness.

I love the fragrance, flavour, and healthful goodness of this quinoa cooked in almond milk with greengreen pandan and spices. I hope that you do, too.

Pandan Quinoa with Star Anise and Cinnamon

Serves 1, easily doubled (or tripled or quadrupled)

½ cup quinoa, rinsed
1 cup almond milk (or milk of your choosing; coconut milk would be blissful)
1/3 cup water
1 long pandan leaf, tied in a knot
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 tb agave syrup (or sweetener of choosing)
pinch of salt

Place all ingredients into a small-medium saucepan, and bring to the boil over medium-high heat.
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until tender and the liquid is almost completely absorbed, about 15 minutes. Remove the pandan leaf, cinnamon stick and star anise.
If desired, serve with fruits, nuts, and syrup of your choosing. I like this both warm and cold, and think it would be equally lovely without the agave, served as a fragrant side at dinner.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend.

Wayfaring Chocolate

adventures in chocolate, travel, cooking, and living

Category Archives: Breakfast

Vegan Puppy Chow, To Celebrate The New Year

Vegan Puppy Chow

Vegan Pumpkin Mesquite Overnight Oats

Vegan Pumpkin Mesquite Overnight Oats

Fresh Huckleberry Plum Smoothies, and Being Laura Ingalls Wilder in Carmel Valley

Fresh Huckleberry Plum Smoothie

Pandan Quinoa with Cinnamon and Star Anise

Pandan Quinoa with Star Anise and Cinnamon