A cookie with a twist: Chocolate, PB&J Cookies

Here are some cookies I made yesterday before heading off to a potluck get-together with my missionary girls from Rizal missions. Been hanging around the kitchen during my spare time (when do I not hang around the kitchen?) and wanted to make cookies... Not typical oatmeal / chocolate chip cookies, but something different. So I did some research in my cookbook library and found "You Got Peanut Butter in my Chocolate Cookies" from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton.

I love that Dreena Burton's cookie recipes don't use specialty egg replacers including flax meal and tofu (I think?). Instead, she uses liquid sweeteners such as maple syrup to help with the binding. Well I don't live in maple syrup country... I'm not a honey-eating vegan and I try as much as possible not to use the fake HFCS crap. I got an AHA! moment when I was daydreaming of a PB&J sandwich and thought that perhaps jam could stand in for the syrup.

If you've got Dreena's Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan cookbook, head on over to page 215. I used all purpose flour instead of the barley / spelt and 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp strawberry jam for the maple syrup and agave nectar. As jams are usually chunky, I recommend sticking all the liquid ingredients in your trusty food processor and give it a good pulse til everything's nice and non-lumpy. After mixing the ingredients all together you may notice that the dough's a bit stiff; I added 1 tsp oil apart from the 1/4 cup called for in the recipe.

You won't notice the jam flavor much but it's in the background. The cookies were nice and chewy :)

Curious about the recipe? Let me know if you want a copy.

Pililla Eats

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent Holy Thursday and Easter morning doing missionary work in Pililla, Rizal, a rural poor town about 50km north of Makati. Before I start talking about some of the local food I just wanted to share this picture.

St Mary Magdalene Parish Church in Pililla is 425-years old and made of stone. It’s been preserved and restored amazingly well and I’m sorry I didn’t get to take a snapshot of it. But this is a photo of the Virgin Mary in the Church’s courtyard. It’s a pretty huge statue, probably 6 ft tall or so? The church takes care of 4 dogs and I found this scene after having dinner with my co-missionaries and parish priest. The dogs really know whom to seek for shelter!

Anyway, here’s some local food I came across in the Church parking lot.

I love love love peanuts, especially local ones. Planter has nothing on Pinoy roasted garlic peanuts, and I’m not talking about the junky MSG-laden nuts too! A 1-1.5 oz bag of roasted garlic peanuts was P10 or 21 US cents which was a nice distraction from falling asleep during Christ’s 7 Last Words (sorry Jesus). When I take the bus home from my real job (okay I’ve done it twice only) I love buying the same paper bag full of joy. Yum yum.

You can find this happiness-on-a-stick anywhere in the country but it was especially wonderful in Pililla as we trudged through one of the 3 processions we attended. The tindero didn’t skimp on the brown sugar, thank God. I think it was also P10 for 2 saba bananas.

This cart is owned by a man I like to call Green Mango Guy. His cart is attached to his bike so he can pedal wherever he pleases, peddling his awesome green mangoes.

You can tell he’s a skilled green mango connoisseur – he knows where to cut in the right places and how to carve out the skin.

He lays each green mango in a plastic bag on egg crates for easy display to the salivating customers. I recommend getting the green mango that almost looks yellow / ripe.

Didn’t I say he was an expert? He isn’t like us regular folk who cut out mango skin piece by piece. He carves out the skin in one piece, which looks very octopi-like.

This is one thing you won’t find anywhere else, I tell you. Green Mango Guy makes his own ultimate green mango topping: chili salt. He pounds rock salt with sili labuyo / bird’s eye chili until the chili goodness melts into the salt. He then sieves off the chili, leaving this perfectly orange-hued spicy salt (the other topping option was bagoong or fermented salted shrimp paste that smells like the death of the ocean).
The perfect merienda: ripe-ish green mango topped with chili salt. Bliss for only P7 or 15 US cents. I miss this already!

I love love love Green Mango Guy’s chili salt. I think other variations that would work well with green mango are
[1] salt + chili + sugar, and
[2] salt + chili + fried garlic

Overdue post about stuff I've made + out for Holy Thursday - Easter

Wow, seems like it's been awhile since I've blogged... Hmm, I reckon it's been 2 weeks? And 5 weeks since I've talked about actual food! Truth be told I've been busy with actual baking, actual work (i.e. my real job), and catching up on my favorite shows. I've been watching marathons of The Office, which is my absolute favorite TV comedy. I can watch that show all day everyday and not get bored... My new favorite obsession is True Blood. Well I love the Dracula legend and anything that stems from it.

I am also currently watching The Godfather for the very first time. I got around to readind the book end of last year and I loooove Mario Puzo. Been pining to watch the movies and am glad I'm finally watching them.

Anyway, on with the food.

My last food-related blog was about indoor grilling which I utilized in making this dish -- a toasted couscous salad with chickpeas, zucchini and bell peppers. This was my second time to make couscous, I love it! It's easy to make and people who look and eat it are easily impressed, since who in this country makes couscous in their home? I was going to make a separate blog post about this but I've been lazy -- I mean, busy watching my shows. It basically has toasted cooked couscous, chickpeas (canned), lemon zest, caramelized shallots, basil chiffonade, and grilled zucchini and peppers. The dressing is just lemon juice, olive oil, grated raw garlic, and salt and pepper.

This is a picture of the first savory dish I sold back in mid-February. It's a farfalle and black bean salad with yellow peppers and tomatoes, with a mango-cilantro vinaigrette. A big hit! Wish I took a more appealing photo...

Vanilla cupcakes with lime buttercream. Remember how I would sometimes bake a cake to get rid of excess frosting? Well I do the same (getting rid of frosting) by baking mini cupcakes. Again vanilla is a perfect neutral flavor to any kind of frosting (usually).

Err... This is a vanilla cupcake with chocolate buttercream. Unfortunatley it looks like crap on a cupcake, hence the attempt to make them look more festive with the nonpareils. What do you think -- fail?


I'm a so-so fan of chocolate chip cookies. However I am a big fan of coconut chocolate chip cookies. Here they're made extra-coconutty with virgin coconut oil and muscovado sugar. Heaven.

New favorite cupcake -- the banoffee cupcake. Essentially, a banana cupcake topped with coffee buttercream and encrusted with homemade toffee bits.

Random cupcake porn -- red velvet cupcakes and carrot cake cupcakes.

And, favorite cupcake #2 -- banana cupcakes with peanut buttercream!

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Last year during Holy Week I did some missionary work in Tingloy Island in Batangas. This year it's not a whole week but rather Thursday to Sunday, and not in Tingloy but somewhere in Rizal. I am going to miss the Tingloy kids :( But, I hear they switched to Rizal because it's easier to reach via car while with Tingloy one has to take the bus to the Batangas deck then take a wooden banca to Tingloy. Apparently some parents are still too queasy to let their "little girls" ride a boat to a different island. It was an amazing experience, am hoping this time it'll be amazing as well. I'm planning to subsist on canned chickpeas, cereal, soymilk, and bananas.

For the record, I'm no saint... I mean, I try my best to be a good person -- being vegan is definitely a part of it. I am not super religious, but it's Holy Week and I'm Catholic, so I look at it as an opportunity to do some sacrifice and spend time with my poor countrymen. Wish me luck!

Funerals and spreading the vegan love

Hopefully I don’t sound (too) offensive when I say that funerals and other death-related gatherings (sorry already!) are the perfect venues for spreading the vegan love. I’m serious. At least in Filipino culture, death is a reason for families, distant families, close friends, and friends you last saw 10 years ago to come together. It’s also a reason to promote veganism and dispel the myths that [a] veganism doesn’t exist and [b] vegan food tastes like crap.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my lola / grandma passed away. While my mom and her siblings were busy fixing certificates, cremation, obituary notices, etc etc, my siblings, cousins and I took care of running the thing. Someone took care of the slideshow of old pictures and documentation of the wake; another took care of getting a priest to celebrate mass (and playing the organ during said mass); another took care of flowers and I-love-you-Lola poster.

My sister, cousin and I headed the food committee and I very well made sure there was always something vegan for EVERYONE. My lola’s wake lasted for 3 full days, with the 4th day being the interment in the afternoon. So for 3 days we had to provide food for merienda / afternoon snack and dinner, for about 50 people each day. It was like a 3-day party with unlimited food.

Tips on veganizing funeral / wake food:

1. The easiest thing is provide vegetarian junk food. Roasted peanuts, oreos, Oishi’s Pods, Boy Bawang / corn nuts, salted potato chips, you get the idea.
2. For coffee – none of that instant 3-in-1 stuff! Even though a non-dairy creamer claims to be non-dairy, that devil’s powder contains milk derivatives. Brewed coffee is best so vegans can take it black. If you must cater to drinkers who can’t let go of the white stuff, have the creamer on the side.
3. Bake something and make sure it looks pretty. No one will care that it is, God forbid, vegan. If something looks good, people will eat. Then tell that person that the food he/she just ate is vegan and let them marvel at your ingenuity. I baked a coffee cake, banana bars, cookies, and mini cupcakes. Make sure to serve desserts in finger-friendly bite-sized forms. Slice the cake / bars into squares, make your cookies and cupcakes tiny.
4. Make sure you are in good terms with siblings, cousins, and aunts / uncles so they can help spread the vegan love, whether or not they’re vegan. I love that my family is supportive with my vegan baking business. They endlessly pitched the stuff I made to their relatives and friends. My goal wasn’t to promote my business but to promote veganism awareness. Now people know what veganism means and that vegan chocolate cupcakes exist in this world!
5. In terms of savory food – pasta salads are good. Fried tofu too. Vegetarian pizza.
6. Hummus is your best friend. Serve these with tortilla chips.
   

So I jumped on the bandwagon...

and joined Flickr.


I was skeptical at first but my cousin who's really into photography convinced me to be more active. Honestly I joined a few months back just so I could comment on a few photos. I uploaded some of my food photographs a couple of days ago and am floored by the image quality! Seems like my desserts really come alive in Flickr!

Anyway, add me as your contact if you've got a Flickr account. My name is "kitchen activist".

Thanks for the push in the right direction, Rafa!

Oh yeah, just trivia. I love perusing Flickr for food porn and tattoos.

I ♥ Lola Amy

Dear Lola / Grandma Amy passed away yesterday (Saturday) at 5:15 pm. Almost everyone in my maternal clan were present praying around her as she breathed her last breath. It was a beautiful peaceful death -- I don't think she felt any pain. Her breath and heart rate just slowed down steadily.

This is a photo of her back in her younger days, probably in her 20's. She is 83 and pretty much has the same skin complexion with very few (practically non-existent) wrinkles, I kid you not.

She had a pretty rough time growing up. Her mom died from cancer when she was just a kid; her dad married a woman who could've been her older sister. Her stepmom ended up being an evil stepmother I'm sorry to say. She was destined for finishing school but was too hard headed to follow her parents. She ended up leaving home and supporting herself through college, which was pretty unheard of back in her days in the late '30s. She had only 1 sibling, my Lolo Ben, whom she took care of all this time.

She had such a passion for music. She was my piano teacher when I was a kid and she used to have 3 pianos and 1 organ in her house. She played beautiful music way until 2005 when she had a bad fall that made her bed-ridden up to yesterday.

Dear Lola Amy. I will miss you so. You were such a warm, fiery, heroic, and simple woman. I am proud to be your granddaughter. I'm going to miss our conversations. Rest well.

My heart is breaking for the pigs :(

It's been a sad sad couple of weeks for the pigs over at Bulacan. I've blogged about the Ebola-infected pigs issue here and here. Six thousand pigs are set to be slaughtered all throughout this week. About 2,600 have been killed as of today (according to this article) and the government is targetting the killing spree at 1,000 a day. The killing's been slow and everyone's pressured to up the number of carcasses. I am so so sad, particularly because:

1. The pigs have not been given food and water for several days and prior to their deaths they have been crying and wailing all day and night. Farmers say they can't afford to feed them anymore (!!!). Government (Bureau of Animal Industry) says they're doing the best they can. PETA and PAWS have made their sentiments known that this is not the humane way for pigs to be treated before they die. In fact, it violates the Animal Welfare Act (Republic Act No. 8485). But of course, who cares about the animals right? They're just dumb creatures God created for us to abuse and eat.

2. The slaughter method of choice was to stun gun the pigs between the eyes to render them unconscious before piling their bodies into a pit to be burned. Naturally the stun gun wasn't 100% effective. Police men who were present had to shoot the pigs themselves -- several times at that, because their 1 shot wasn't enough. Can you imagine being conscious with a bullet through your head, while someone else is ripping your body apart with other bullets??

3. As if it were the pigs' fault that they had the Ebola virus! Not only are they living a miserable life of a food animal -- they were infected, starved, then killed in a most gruesome manner. No remorse from their farmers and National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc. at all, except that they lost out on sales.

Last Monday the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that pictures of the actual slaying would not come out in the papers; however pictures indeed came out in yesterday's and today's issues. One of the reasons for the photo ban was that PAWS did not want the public to see the slaughter. While I respect their decision of honoring the animals (I think this was their reason? I may be making this up. It could also be protecting the public from the gruesomeness), I have to disagree. I think the public SHOULD see the actual kill. They should be obligated to see it - after all, pigs would not have been raised if not for public consumption. We need to konw where our food comes from and how the consequences look like when we screw around with nature.

Holy hell, it's only Wednesday and the week's been so heavy with this news.

A little thought exercise for the omnivores out there -- how would you feel if it was your pet that got Ebola? How about a loved one? What if the government set out to exterminate your pet / loved one because of the disease?

#4 reason why I'm so sad: really, no one gives a shit about farm animals. Let's put purebred dogs and cats on pedestals, let's forget about the other animals. Pigs are smart creatures too (not that intelligence is a factor for one's compassion over animals) -- they are as smart as 2-year old kids! Let's not forget that they are sentient beings -- they feel pain and emotions just as we do.

One article pointed out that the some of the pigs mourned the loss of their compansions who had just been killed -- they trotted around the corpses and cried :(

NB Just something worth mentioning... some of the slaughterers suffered from hypertension after 1 day of killing. Surely being a slaughter house worker is the worst job ever... Why do people support an industry that is cruel to animals and to its workers?

Heavy heavy stuff.