Addicted to Results 4/20

Workout - 30 on treadmill running intervals
Spin

Smoothie

Breakfast - Smoothie made from fresh orange juice, banana, soy protein powder and chia seed

Hot Plate from Everlasting Life

Lunch - At the Kale A Rama Vegan Festival.  I had the hot plate from Everlasting Life which is a vegan soul food restaurant in Capital Heights.  The plate consisted of Mac and Cheese, Orange Chicken and Collard Greens. The Mac and Cheese was very good. The sauce was thicker than the one I made. It had been baked the way traditional macaroni and cheese was before the days of Kraft and its orange colored cheese sauce.  The Orange Chicken reminded me of something from a very cheap Chinese restaurant.  The seitan 'chicken' was chewy and stringy. I wonder if that is what the chicken is made from at some of those places?  The sauce was not very orange but it was sweet.  Way too much sweetner.  The collards were cooked with onions and tomatoes and were very good.

Mini cupcakes and an Almond Cookie

Snack - Almond Cookie and a taste of Chocolate Kale Ice Cream.  It was good. Tommy had a couple of mini cupcakes that were quite suitable for the non vegan.  Everything at the festival was vegan regardless of the name given the food.  We met four friends at the festival and settled in at New Deal Cafe. I had a glass of white wine and a hard cider.

Dinner - Chuckwagon Stew, roasted potatoes, and garlic collards with a Mango Salsa.  All of these were leftovers except for the Salsa.  I made a batch using mangoes, onion, garlic, and jalapeno.  All of the ingredients were sauteed before canning.

Mango Salsa

Snack - Banana Cake with Fudge Frosting.

Chilling with friends and wearing my Collard Greens necklace

Ice Cream

Imagine this in royal blue

One of the vegan items I have tried in the past are the faux ice creams sold in the grocery. Because of my lactose intolerance, I thought they might be a good substitute since the products were becoming numerous in the freezer section.  Every one that I tried whether it was soy or rice based was awful.  There was too much sugar and a chemical taste to  the product.  It has been several years since I had one, but I am not really interested in venturing into that part of the freezer section again. I have made a lot of ice creams in years past that were quite yummy.  I had a Cuisinart Ice Cream maker that really churned out a good product.  However, the quality control for Cuisinart is not that good these days.  While my original food processor lasted 25 years, the  newer products seemed to have a 5 year expiration date.  So one day the engine on my ice cream maker just died.

My preferred chocolate

Kitchen Aid now makes a freezer bowl attachment for the stand mixer.  I have only used it a few times, but the results were not good for either ice cream or sorbet.  But I wanted to try a vegan variety of ice cream.  I found a traditional ice cream recipe for Caramel Ice Cream with Chocolate and Pecan from the Barefoot Contessa and decided to try and adapt it.  Sugar and water are cooked until it caramelizes then I added a mix of rice and almond milk.  The sugar hardens, then you cook the mix until it dissolves.  The batter is then chilled.  After it cooled I added it to the freezer and churned for 30 minutes.  When the churning was done, I added the chocolate and pecans and froze the mix. The batter did not have the ice cream consistency I was looking for. This is what had happened before when I used real cream. I went ahead and froze the mix over night.  The next day, the resulting product reminded me of an Italian Granita.  The taste was very good, but the texture was not the creamy one I was looking for.

I am not sure in the difference was because of the ice cream maker or the use of non dairy milks.  I did some internet research and found two procedural errors in the creating of the ice cream. First, I should have allowed the batter to chill for 24 hours in the refrigerator.  Second, I should started the mixer and added the batter to the moving paddle.  Next time I try an ice cream, I will do that.  After all that, the product was very good tasting and we had no problems finishing it off.

The ice cream was a great dessert after the Avocado Tomato and Lettuce Sandwich with tofu mayonnaise that I had for dinner.  I used a sprouted 7 grain bread.