Frozen Mint Chocolate Swirl

Just a quick and fun little recipe to use up those avocados on your counter.

Yep, avocados.

In vegan ice cream!

Creamy, delicious and good for you.. what more can a girl ask for??

(PS – can you spot my newest cookbook addition sitting on top of my beloved Veganomicon??)

Frozen Mint Chocolate Swirl
2 ripe avocados
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon pure mint extract

In a blender, puree all ingredients until smooth. Chill overnight and freeze in your ice cream maker. Once the ice cream is finished, but before you stop the machine, drizzle in chocolate. You could melt some chocolate chips with a bit of oil or mix up some quick “syrup” out of cocoa powder, sugar, canola oil and a bit of water.

If you aren’t devouring it immediately, make sure you let it sit at room temp for about 5 minutes before you try to scoop it!

Annivalentinese New Year Celebration

Happy (day after) Valentine’s Day, all! Kyle and I aren’t big Valentine’s Day people so we combined our half year anniversary, Valentine’s day and Chinese New Year into one big celebration!

Kyle hasn’t had much experience with Greek inspired cuisine, so that was his cuisine choice. I planned the menu, sent him a cute little Evite invitation, bought the ingredients and, come Sunday morning, got my booty to work on creating!

The first course was taken from Angela over at Oh She Glows. I saw her post for Garbanzo Bean Soup and knew it would make the perfect first course for this meal! The only change I made to the recipe was to substitute some sesame oil for some olive oil since I had no tahini in the house. This soup was mega-tasty and I will definitely make it again!

The main course. The big kahuna. This beauty was taken from the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook I checked out from the library last week. I’m not sure how the reposting thing works with cookbooks so I’ll just say: you MUST, MUST find the book and try the recipe! It’s a quinoa pilaf flavored with celery, red pepper, zucchini, basil, mint and lemon rolled up in delicious collard leaves. Oh man.. this was delicious. My favorite dish I’ve made in a while. Kyle raved about it all night!

Of course, a celebration wouldn’t be complete without something sweet to top it off. This dish wasn’t Greek inspired, but I’ve been planning it for almost a month! Themed meal or not, it was making it to the table! I based my recipe on one I found over at Baking Bites. I subbed in 1/3 cup brown rice syrup for sugar and used SO Delicious unsweetened coconut milk. To top off the delicious ice cream, I decided to make some dark raw chocolate. 2 tablespoons dark cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon brown rice syrup and 1 tablespoon coconut milk mixed until uniform, rolled between wax paper and frozen makes a yummy bittersweet addition! It was a little soft for my liking, so next time maybe I’ll use something other than brown rice syrup to sweeten. The flavors, though.. spot on!

Served up in my "vintage" Garfield mugs!

All in all I would say the menu:

Quite a hit!

I hope your celebrations were filled with fun, good food and love!

Satisfying my latest craving

For weeks I’ve been craving chocolate peppermint cookies. Weeks. I’ve been searching for a recipe that had simple ingredients, cinch-like to pull together and TASTY! Of course, my craving is only part of the reason for the delicious morsels I’m about to share with you today. My friend out in Virginia is due for a Christmas package! What better to send at this time of year than chocolate peppermint crinkles??

I found this recipe a few nights ago online. I didn’t save the webpage, but I wrote down the name of the site. Well, I wrote down “love in the oven”, so I’m assuming that’s the website! When I went to search for it again today, I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere on the site! So if you’re the owner of the recipe and you happen across my blog, let me know and I’ll totally link your webpage here.

Back to the cookies:

Delicious. Sooooo good. Mmm, mmmmmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Throw some together today and chow down!

Chocolate Mint Crinkles
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3 teaspoons powdered sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon sea salt for “dusting”

Preheat oven to 350. Combine cocoa powder, sugar and oil in a large mixing bowl. Beat in egg and extract. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix until well combined. Roll heaping teaspoons of dough into balls and roll in powdered sugar mixture. Place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake 10-12 minutes. Makes about 18 cookies.

Mint Marinade

So a few nights ago, I was experimenting with some marinades for some eye of round I was cooking for dinner. My friend Amanda had dropped off some fresh mint leaves from her mom’s garden. I’ve been using it in everything from my coffee in the morning to crushing it for my lemonade. I figured I’d give it a shot with the beef! I chopped up a half of a jalapeno, some fresh garlic, a handful of the fresh mint and a few tablespoons of pomegranate balsalmic vinegar I had on hand. I marinated the steak, after cutting it into bite sized pieces, in the fridge for a day. I then seared it in a pan on the stove using a bit of extra virgin olive oil and stuck it in the grits I whipped up for dinner. Aside from salting the grits a bit heavily, the dish was pretty tasty. I mean, who doesn’t love steak flavored grits??