Carrot Cake

For our first third month anniversary Hannah and I went went out to Manhattan to go ice skating at Bryant Park. It was the first time either of us had been skating in a real long time, and was so much fun. After we finished ice skating, we went to a little diner to get something to eat. While we were there we marveled over their desserts and cakes. We both specifically drooled over the carrot cake, so moist and delicious looking, chalk full of walnuts and raisins. Hannah sighed, saying that she missed eating cake, all thanks to her egg allergy.

Here was my chance to show Hannah that I really cared for her. I would make her a carrot cake that she could actually eat! And to make it even better I would make it for her right before she went on her epic train trip cross country. So that her last memories of me before her trip were of my amazing culinary skills.

My first step was to ask my co-worker, notorious for making some of the most delicious vegan cupcakes and other delicious vegan foods for some ideas. He provided me with some of his tricks and even a carrot cake recipe. But I wasn't satisfied just going off of his advise alone. So I went to work looking up carrot cake recipes and egg substitutes on the Internet. I found hundreds of carrot cake recipes both vegan and not vegan along with hundreds of ideas for egg substitutes.

I never knew there were so many ways to substitute an egg. You see an egg is soo important in many of the food we as Americas eat every day. Think about it, what do most Americans eat for breakfast? Either cereal or an egg in some form or another. There's scrambled eggs, fried eggs, hard boiled eggs, french toast, and so many other ways to eat an egg in the morning. And then you have eggs in baked goods and dinners to boot. Eggs are everywhere!

The reason eggs are so important in baked goods and many other American dishes is because of the special properties that only an egg can have. An egg binds such as in meatloaf, leavens (makes light and airy) for soufles and cakes, thicken for sauces and custards, glazes for breads and cookies, and adds moisture.

Because of the eggs many special properties, there is no one other ingredient that will replace it. What follows is a list of different ingredients which will replace and egg depending n the property needed.

• Half a banana or 2 TBS of apple sauce will add moisture
• 1TBS of vinegar plus 1tsp baking soda will add leavening properties
• 1 tablespoon flax seed meal plus 3 tablespoons water replaces one egg (combine ingredients and let stand for 3-5 minutes, or until it becomes gelatin like) will bind and add leavening properties

In my search to find the perfect egg substitute for my carrot cake I eventually went with Banana. After all it was the most accessible of the alternatives and might even give it an interesting flavor.

Here's the recipe I went with, originally found on vegweb.com, picture also found on vegweb.com (i didn't take a picture of the original cake... :(  )

Carrot Cake

    2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
    2 teaspoons baking soda
    2 teaspoons cinnamon
    1 teaspoon baking powder
    1 teaspoon salt
    3/4 cup light brown cane sugar
    3/4 cup cane sugar
    3 egg equivalents (e.g., Ener-G Egg Replacer)
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    1 cup vegetable oil
    2 cups carrots, finely grated
   
preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a bowl mix flour baking soda cinnamon, baking powder and salt.
In a Larger bowl mix sugar and banana until creamy then add vanilla and vegetable oil.
Mix wet and dry ingredients together stir in carrots.
Grease a 9x9in pan and smooth batter into pan.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until knife comes out clean.


The cake came out good. Not quite to my standards. And becuase I sustituted the eggs in the recipie with banana it turned out more like a banana bread than a carrot cake. I was also not able to make a frosting for the cake becuase I did not have and vegan cream cheese.
It was not a total fail but not the best thing I had ever eaten. I swore that I would make another cake, a better cake and a cake that had vegan frosting!

Thanksgiving

Hannah and I started dating the end of October which meant that one of the largest eating holidays was right around the corner, Thanksgiving. I decided to invite her to the Thanksgiving dinner put on at my community. But I had a problem, what was I going to feed her. I knew all her food allergies, and from the choices I had left there was not much I could make.

One thing came to mind, a staple in my family which we always make for the holidays, squash biscuits. But I was a little concerned that she wouldn't even be able to eat them. Firstly the biscuits used a lot of butter and milk, both of which contain whey which she would not be able to eat, even if they were cooked in. Next I wasn't sure that she could have squash or yeast, two of the most important ingredients in the recipe. And last was a purely vane concern; would she even like them?

My family had never deviated from the recipe before; it has been the same since I first tried them as a small child. I wasn't even sure that they would taste decent if I changed them. In the end I decided to change just two things, substitute the butter with margarine and the milk with almond milk. I chose to keep the rest the same, I was pretty sure that she could eat all the other ingredients; salt, flour, yeast and white sugar.

The day of Thanksgiving my community was running around cooking and baking and decorating the convent. I had told all of my community members to try as much as possible to not use dairy, eggs, or corn in their food. In then end Hannah could eat only a few things on the table, my bread, which she quickly found out was delicious and devoured half of the rolls, some roasted brussel sprouts, and some rice.

The dinner ended well. There were many good people in attendance, the food was delicious and almost completely devoured, there was good wine and beer and many laughs. I was also able to introduce Hannah to a bunch of my community members for the first time. All in all it was a great evening and I boosted my confidence towards making food for my girlfriend to boot.

Squash Biscuits 


5c Flour
1/2 c Sugar
1 t Salt
1 can squash canned or frozen (more is better)
1c scalded Almond Milk
1/2 c Vegan Margarine
1 packet of yeast or follow directions on container in 1/4c luke warm water
2 9x9 in Pyrex pans

Place packet of yeast in luke warm temperature water until all the yeast has dissolved and there are little bubbles at the surface.
Using a microwave safe container place margarine and milk in the microwave for one minute thirty second in order to scald the milk and melt the margarine
In a large bowl combine the squash, salt, sugar, yeast, milk and margarine and mix until completely combined, when combined add the flour and mix again until all ingredients are combined.
When done cover bowl with a clean towel and let rise until doubled in size
Preheat over to 375 degrees
Grease both 9in x 9in glass pans
Grease hands and roll dough in 18 rolls placing 9 in each pan
Cover with towel and let rise again
When doubled in size place in oven for 18 minutes
When golden brown take out of the over and enjoy. :)

The Beginning

From the beginning of our relationship, food was an issue. More for me than for her. I would stay over at her place get up in the morning and scrounge around for something to eat. Of all her foods in her kitchen there was nothing that I would eat on a regular basis. In her whole kitchen I could only find; rice squares, almond milk, granola, apples, apple sauce, bread, rice noodles, pretzels, broccoli, carrots, soy beans, soy sauce, tomato sauce and peas. Seems like a stalked pantry, but no. Of all the items in her pantry I could't think of more than a couple of combinations for meals. For breakfast I guess I could have cereal, but what about the rest of the meals.

This of course meant that the first meal was up to her, really I just needed her to show me what she would do with her selection. She fed me a really delicious stir fry. Which at least told me she could cook. The stir fry became a problem when the next time couple of times we had a meal one of the suggestions was always stir fry. It seemed as though her entire repetoire of meals included a couple of different combinations of stir fry. Don't get me wrong, I mean stir fry can be really good for a little while, but if I'm only eating that every time I go over to her place, it could get a little tedious.

After we had been dating a couple of weeks she'd ask me what I want to eat, I'd be like... "ah... well I guess we could have stir fry..." It was always the same. I was getting a little anxious. Stir fry with rice noodles, stir fry with coos coos, every time stir fry. I mean it was really healthy, but I needed diversity.

Every once and a while she would throw in a curve ball, rice noodles and tomato sauce, but this was more like stir fry than pasta, and I was always hungry afterwards.

I seemed to be stuck. What else could we both eat? There seemed to be nothing unless I started pressuring her to introduce new foods. Thus starting my mission to diversify her pantry.

Introduction

Greetings blog readers!

I like millions of other people on the internet, having been inspired by reading blogs, have decided to start yet another blog of my own. Yes, I am not new to this phenomenon. I have had a variety of blogs in my short life so far. Most of which were simply melodramatic public journals, where as a lonely high schooler and later college student I felt I could express myself without getting caught up with actually letting someone really into my own person struggles.

Thank goodness those stages in my life are over. This blog is something completely new, although definitely inspired by many of the blogs I have been reading over the last couple of months.

So with no further ado, I am now writing to keep a record of my attempts to feed my girlfriend. You see she is not your average girlfriend, she has food allergies galore! It’s actually a lot more complicated than that but for now you can just believe that she has food allergies.

A list of things my girlfriend cannot eat:

• eggs
• milk products, aka whey (No Cheese!!)
• citrus
• corn or corn syrup
• alcohol and anything that involves fermentation which is a lot!
• meat products, this is not an allergy but merely a choice to not eat red meat, therefore she makes an exception for chicken
• too much soy, she does eat soy but she doesn't want to eat a lot of it which means for me not very much cooking with tofu
• things with high fat content such as avocados or various nuts
• fried food, due to her lack of a gallbladder 
• any caffeinated beverage or chocolate

Now this list only includes the various food items which she knows for certain she will never be able to eat. Since she discovered her food restrictions four years ago she has been slowly reintroducing food. This too has been part of my adventure, trying to have her introduce new foods without having allergic reactions. Good thing she carries around and epipen. 

Now you might be asking yourself how I got into this predicament in the first place. I started dating Hannah about four months ago, well actually it was six months ago but that's a different story. On our first date we went out to my favorite dumpling place in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. I was so excited for her to try the dumplings, as they are the best in the whole wide world. When we finally get to the place all she orders is edemame, I was a little heart broken. We get back to the park where we are going to be eating and she informs me of her food allergies, of course, like I gave you all, she also gave me the condensed version. 

Luckily I was not thrown off by her food allergies, allowing us to make it the last four months. But that’s not to say that there were not a few obstacles to pass. The one main obstacle for me was that I could not cook for my girlfriend. You see I really like to cook, a lot, and especially cooking for other people. I also have certain things that I like to cook for people, but with Hannah I just couldn't continue cooking my staple dishes, unless I wanted to spend a lot of time in the hospital. 

Needless to say food became one of my favorite things to talk to her about. I would often spend an entire date asking what she could or could not eat. I quickly found out that all her food restrictions made her an unintentional vegan. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would find myself dating a vegan, not even an unintentional vegan. Here's the problem. I have no problems eating meat, I think it tastes good and can really make a meal. I also really really like dairy products, how could I live my life without cheese or butter or milk? It seemed unthinkable. But if I ever wanted to cook for my girlfriend I was going to have to seriously change the way I cooked.

Bringing me to where I am now, experimenting with veganism. I have been to every vegan cooking blog, checked out hundreds of vegan cookbooks from the library, and bought vegan ingredients. Feeling prepared I set off cooking for myself and my roommates in order to prepare for feeding Hannah. 

Thus started my adventure to feed my girlfriend. Over the next however long I keep up with this blog I will attempt to record my attempts and hilarious antics which may occur at any moment while trying to provide diversity to my girlfriend’s diet.