Yummy Blueberry Crisp and Notes on the New Challenge

Oh my! Both Brett and I agree that what we just had was perhaps the best brunch food we’ve ever tried. I made Linday’s (aka The Happy Herbivore) Easy & Fat Free Blueberry Crisp. It was simple, pleasing to both Brett and my tastes, did not contain processed foods (unless you consider whole wheat pastry flour processed, which I do not), and it was fat free.

There is a whole world of possibilities with this too, pretty much any frozen fruit I could think of would probably taste fantastic in place of blueberries, but blueberries rock, so I just followed the recipe.

It was seriously good; it had me when I smelled it coming out of the oven. I wish I had a picture of Brett, with blueberry sauce dripping down his face, mouth half full, saying ‘you can make this whenever you want.’ Hehehe.

I hope my pictures do it justice. Seriously everyone who reads this blog, go out and make this, it takes like 10 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes to bake, and your mouths will thank you for it, your partner will thank you for it (if you don't have one, thats just more for you! hehe). We ate the whole thing!

I thought I would explain a couple of things about my new personal challenge – trying to reduce my use of tofu and seitan (we don’t actually eat tempeh, but it is part of that ‘holy trinity’ so I had to include it), and get our nutrients from whole foods as much as possible. We have never actually tried most of the other faux meats or ‘meat alternatives’, and don’t plan to so those will not be found on this blog either.

I am doing this for a number of reasons, first off, I really like the idea of living as close to nature as possible for someone who lives in a moderately sized modern American city. This means if given the choice between getting my protein from tofu or a dried bean, I’m going to go for the dried bean. Secondly, tofu is a processed food, seitan is a processed food, tempeh isn’t as much, but still, even though there are far worse processed foods out there, and I don’t chastise anyone for eating these things, I am not truly a huge fan of any of them, and Brett is most definitely not. And besides, I will use them from time to time, there are certain dishes we like very much, in which tofu or seitan is an integral part.

This also brings me to another point, Brett is very interested in getting into whole foods, growing foods, processing our own foods, as am I, and I would like to nurture this. And he really likes the idea of getting more protein from beans and lentils. We will, as usual, be having a container garden on our modest apartment deck. But this year, we are also going to have a Community Garden Plot (I love little ‘ol Columbia, MO), so we can produce more of our own food, being able to garden in actual earth will open up possibilities beyond a wide variety of peppers, which is what our container garden is generally relegated to.

But I have to be honest; there is only so much I can do. I have a full-time job like most people, I do enjoy doing things beyond making food, and if I tried to make everything from scratch, well I wouldn’t have enough time to do it, that would be a full-time job in itself. And Brett's just not really into cooking, and I have no problem with that. So I will use some minimally processed foods fairly often, and even some very processed foods from time to time. What I define as minimally processed foods are things like non-dairy milks, pastas, whole grain tortillas, canned tomatoes in their various shapes and forms, jarred vegan pasta sauces, soy sauce, mustard, peanut butter, applesauce, premade granola bars, you get the point. The more processed items that I will still use on occasion will be things like picante sauce, flour tortillas (I’m still searching for a good whole grain burrito tortilla replacement), vegan cheeses, Veganaise (very sparingly), and Brett will probably never ever, ever let go of the Newman O's.

If I have my way and get the Uncheese Cookbook soon, you may see the processed vegan cheeses being used much less as well.

This may be a challenge as I’m going to have to stretch my comfort zone with reference to spices, cuisines, vegetables, etc. There are a huge variety of beans, lentils, and other legumes available to me at my modest Midwestern grocery store, many of which, I have never worked with. There are grains I have never worked with. I’m pretty excited, I love a good challenge.

'Til next time!