A Visit to Eastern Oregon

Sorry for the long absence folks... I've had quite a busy last 10 days or so. Most notably, I went up to Camp Sherman in Eastern Oregon to visit my wonderful, wonderful great aunt. She is 92 and just absolutely amazing - so much heart and humor and grace - she's got it all! We had a lovely visit, very quiet... eating, fireside chats, sitting on the deck, telling stories...

Here's the view from her back porch - for reals!! Isn't that just astounding? It's so peaceful. The stream, the mountain, the animals... we saw so many different kinds of birds, deer, baby geese.

I didn't take pictures of all the food I made, but I did get a few nice pics. It was a fun cooking project. She had her fridge and shelves all stocked with vegan goodies and produce, and I just got to make up recipes based on whatever I could find. This was a sandwich made with some delicious Greek pita bread. I cooked up some chickpeas with some red bell pepper & tomato and a variety of nice indian spices. Then I mashed them up, and put them on the bread with some avocado, cilantro and tomato slices. Very yum!

This was a delicious apple crisp (well this is the last lonely piece), that we made for dinner with some friends one night. It turned out great! We used 6 or 7 huge apples, and didn't bother peeling them. We used some brown sugar and maple sugar as sweetner. Earth balance, spices, oats, flour, sugar in the topping. Mmmm. It was a bit hit - another score for vegan desserts!

I don't think you can see in this picture how huge and wonderful this cookie is! My aunt's friend made a batch of these vegan almond thumbprint cookies - they were huge and had crunchy bits of almonds, and a big dollop of local raspberry jam. MM, they were perfection!

One night we had her friends over for dinner, so I got some tofu marinating early in the day, for maximum flavor absorbtion. I baked the slices, and as you can see - they turned out great.

Look at her beautiful bowl. This is a big batch of onions, morel mushrooms, and cremini mushrooms - cooked with a little bit of olive oil and some veggie broth, slowly for about 30 minutes or so.

To go with the mushrooms and tofu, I took the marinade and turned it into a gravy. I just added some water, some flour, and heated until it thickened. It turned out amazing!!

For dessert, I made a delicious and beautiful little chocolate cake. This is the recipe for the vegan chocolate cake from the Joy Of Cooking. It was served with a lovely raspberry coulis made with some frozen raspberries - mmmm! I made the powdered sugar decoration with a paper snowflake:

Here's the paper snowflake for the design.

In case you want to make one, I folded it back up and this is the pattern. I just used a basic 8.5x11 piece of typing paper.

Here's a little golden mantel squirrel visiting with us on the back porch. So cute I can hardly stand it!