Laundry "spiders", cookies and other life detours...

When I started this blog it was with the intention of showing you, dear readers, what it is that I love to do and how that love affects my daily choices, especially regarding my eating habits.

What I love to do is bake. I love to bake vegan sweet goodies that people are surprised about and utterly melt over.

This blog isn't very old and yet I already have a plethora of tags that aren't at all related to baking. This, for me, is a bit annoying but completely not surprising. I've always had many "layers" in my life and having begun to share more of them here seems, now, like a natural progression.

I'm sorry if you came here wanting only vegan goodies (sweet or savoury) and aren't that entertained by the rest of me. I wish you well on your own personal journey but this is a journey that I must make and, therefore, am taking the wheel and consciously deciding that it shall be reflected in this blog. All the layers. All the Me-s I have to offer.

If you don't mind and/or enjoy seeing more of my layers; welcome! We're in for a strange and wondrous trip, indeed!

Since it's been so long since I last posted I have a few things I'd like to share today so stay tuned or tune out. Either way I've numbered them so you can skip topics (or refer back to them) as you like....

1. Laundry "Spiders"

I have long hair. Very long hair by some standards, though it's not yet as long as I'd like it (and yet, simultaneously, I wish I could sport a chic, shorter style that better befits my physical age but alas, the build of my body makes longer hair aesthetically necessary *sigh*).

Because I have long hair I end up with it everywhere. On the floors, in the shower drain, on MrB's back as he's leaving for work, worked into a knitting or crochet project. That part's a nuisance, certainly, but OK as they're in small numbers and easily contained and removed.

What utterly annoys me, however, is the little balls of hair that I find in the laundry. Every. Single. Time.

I call them Laundry Spiders and toss away several of them every time I do a wash. (The record for one load is 7. SEVEN! from one load of mostly socks.)

Am I the only one who gets these?? Surely I can't be!

What do you call them?

Do you have any hints, tips, tricks for getting rid of them? I'd LOVE to know!

2. Baking

And now for something you may or may not have been waiting for. My original Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

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Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

1cup dairy-free margarine, at room temp
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (when I mix it up a little I use 1 teaspoon vanilla and one teaspoon almond)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose/plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or vegan carob chips)
3/4cup vanilla soy yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 F

Cream the margarine and sugar with a hand mixer until fluffy

Add the molasses and vanilla and incorporate. Add the dry ingredients to this mixture and mix until a dough forms. Fold the chocolate chips into the dough.

Drop by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets or an ungreased, unlined cupcake tin. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes (my oven is -definitely- 8 minutes) until lightly browned. (Two notes: Due to their vegan status and chemistry, the cookies will not spread as much as normal cookies but that's good! Also, Don't worry about under cooking them as there's no raw eggs to worry about, though, the 8-10 minute rule, for me, leaves a cookie that's gently soft-crunchy on the outside and wonderfully soft and gooey on the inside!)

Allow to cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling rack. (At this point baking sheets can be rinsed under cold water to prepare them for the next batch.)

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I know there are a ton of other good, vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes out there and respect that they are probably very good. I only decided to invent my own recipe when I realised that most of the better recipes which yield a softer cookie contain flaxseeds/linseed and I know a lot of people have seed allergies so wanted to avoid them if I could.

If/when you make these, please do let me know what you thought of the recipe. I live for feedback and won't necessarily know I need to change something unless you tell me. Yes, you.

3. Life

Just recently (last Thursday, to be exact) I went to see a psychiatrist who has diagnosed me with Adult (Inattentive) Attention Deficit Disorder and my life has been quite strange since that moment.

I went to him thinking I had it or something akin to it (Would it really be me if I had gone to a doctor without investigating the jeepers out of something first?! I thought not.) but when he confirmed that I do, indeed, have it I can't accurately describe what I was thinking or feeling.

There was some relief, some disbelief, some shame, some anger, some fear, some impatience... gosh, the list is virtually endless.

At the suggestion of a dear friend I purchased some books by Edward M. Hallowell (Driven to Distraction and Driven from Distraction - both can be purchased from Amazon.com/.co.uk) and from what I've read so far I truly believe my life will change for the better with this diagnosis. I'm almost through the first book and it's almost as though this book was written specifically for me. Mr. Hallowell certainly seems to understand the condition (as he well should, he suffers, too).

I'm sure there will be a lot more written on this blog about ADD in the future so I'm going to stop here now that I've introduced it.

4. AOB

Stay tuned because in the next few days I'll be introducing a Tomato "Soup" recipe!

Experimentation

Firstly, I must tell you:

I finished my Saroyan and I love her.

She's blue and cotton and oh-so-lovely...

Secondly, in a major fit of jonesing for Chocolate-Chip Cookies (and I'm talking the US-style cookies, not biscuits, not crunchy, crispy or hard English-made things at all) I decided I had to make (or attempt to make) these Vegan-friendly.

This is when I was met with another challenge (as if I had already thought the first bit would be a cake-walk)... The "good", reputable recipes for chewy cookies contain flax seeds. Because I am allergic to oh-so-many things, a lot of various seeds being just a portion of them, I decided to try to make my cookies without them.

But where to start??

What, on earth, can I use to replace flax seeds to give me the "chew" I wanted in my cookies without adding any animal-derived products? Asking this question on a Vegan forum sparked a LOT of debate.... One poster suggested adding more molasses but it was argued that because of the sugar content it would actually -crisp- the cookies.

Someone else suggested using banana or apple sauce, but as was later pointed out; these act more as binding agents than chewiness-givers (yes, that is an official baking technical term *grin*).

This debate went on and on and on among people who have been eating and cooking Vegan-friendly goodies a LOT longer than I have so I left them to it and began experimenting.

After all, what could it hurt to get it wrong a couple of times, right? It would mean I would have a place to start, a template, if you will, of a great cookie "blank" that I could then amend, chop, change the recipe(s) for as I saw fit based solely on the results I was getting from actual cookies.

I took some of their advice (I added a little more molasses, about 1/2 - 1 tsp more) but the mixture was very, I don't know.... grainy.

Because I'm relatively new to Vegan-baking but have been baking for decades I decided that -I- knew best and that I needed a more cohesive cookie dough than this particular recipe had produced.

Oddly, thankfully, luckily even, I had something in my baking arsenal that would (hopefully!) fit the bill.

I measured, made notes, mixed, shaped, balled, pressed, baked and prayed. My cookies didn't -spread- the way I wanted them to, the way I -needed- them to. I watched. I waited. I prayed some more. I even turned up the heat, hoping that I could -melt- the little beggars.

What I got first was the cookie on your left. A hard, little hockey puck of a cookie. A little nugget much like the cookies I have earlier explained I -didn't- want. Damn.

Back to the baking-board. Clearly I wasn't meant to leave them in for -that- long. Oops. What about actually -timing- the little beggars, Tanya?! Baking them for about as long as normal cookies bake, perhaps?

Well, lo and behold! Timing, baking at a slightly lower temperature and viola! A cookie to be proud of!

These cookies have been Vegetarian- and Omnivore-approved! (I don't happen to yet know any Vegans so I can't say they're Vegan-approved but the people who -did- eat them said they tasted just like (or better than) the cookies available with milk and eggs and allsorts inside them.

Meet the Mrs B bakes Chocolate Chip Cookie.

P.S. I must confess that these cookies, and the reception of same, have made me immensely proud. I managed, with my severely limited Vegan-baking knowledge, to make a -good-, a damned-good cookie, if I do say so myself (and if I listen to the semi-official Mrs B bakes taste-testers).