concobhar13thevegan

[concobhar13thevegan]

Baby blanket

Found the picture online (I think https://pin.it/4DYkxZpKu) and digitized it using Stitch fiddle

Tree of Gondor Drawing with Stars | How to draw the white tree of gondor, White tree of gondor drawing, Lord of the rings tattoo

Check out this intricate drawing of the Tree of Gondor with stars. Perfect for any Lord of the Rings fan! | Aragorn, Hobbits

Stitch Fiddle is an online crochet, knitting and cross stitch pattern maker.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Bernie Sanders amigurumi

Pattern from Tobey Time Crochet (https://www.etsy.com/listing/933832118/bernies-mittens-crochet-doll-pattern-pdf

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Human Centipede amigurumi Amigurumi pattern: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1583251405/amigurumi-crochet-doll-body-pattern-boy

[concobhar13thevegan]

Got a bunch of oils from the local Middle eastern grocery, so it's time for some more soap. Many of them aren't in the soap calculator, so I'm not quite sure how I'm going to deal with that one. This one was: Coconut (30%), corn (10%), hemp (10%), jojoba (10%), rice bran (10%), sesame (10%) and shea butter (20%), with the normal 5% superfat. The hemp oil I got actually calls itself hash oil, but I can't imagine it's actually hash oil since I bought it in a regular store. It's what made everything green. I decided to heat the oil first, and when I added the sodium lactate (2T + 1t), the oils started boiling over again. Not exactly sure why that happened. There was some old something in the metal straw I was using for the lye, so that probably messed with something. The lye solution also only got to 120*, and I did the oils first, so they had cooled to 120* by that point. Took about three minutes to get to medium trace, but by the time I'd dolloped out the maybe the 4th one (second row from the top in this picture), it was looking pretty liquidy again. So then I put the blender back in, and it immediately got to thick trace, so I'm not sure what happened there, but I think my lye is certainly old, and maybe reacted a bit with the brown mystery debris in the stirring straw. Ha 39, Cl 20, Co 48, Bu 20, Cr 19 Lo 19 Io 72 INS 126

I got some feedback that the last soap I got didn't clean very efficiently and didn't lather well, so I'm excited to see how this one compares.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Sauerkraut, take 2

This time, I still went for a 2% solution. It’s was I think 932g cabbage and 202g red cabbage, I ended up adding 26g salt, which is like 2.2%, but I’m sure it didn’t all end up in solution. I crushed up the cabbage and let it rest maybe 30 min before crushing it some more before bottling it. Didn’t find the red cabbage till later, so it probably only rested 15 min after the first crush.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Banana bread

I used the cookbook recipe:

4 overripe bananas

4 overripe avocados

3/4 c sugar

1/2 c oil

3/2 c flour

1/2 c cocoa

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 Schluck vanilla

1/2 bag vegan dark chocolate chips

Baked @350 in butter’d and sugar’d pan for 80 minutes

Taste like cocoa to me, but not bitter. I think I’d like it a little sweeter, so I might try more sugar or less cocoa next time. Pretty cakey still, and I wonder if more banana would make it fudgeyer. Pretty pleased that it doesn’t taste like avocado.

[concobhar13thevegan]

As always, Dumpo blessed us with many bananas, so I wanted to make Banana bread. But I wanted it to be chocolate.

I based it off this recipe: https://theamazingfood.com/mouthwatering-dairy-free-banana-bread-44992/

I doubled it and used probably 8-10 black bananas. I used olive oil as the oil. I substituted the flour: 4/3 c cocoa powder, 5/3 c AP flour, 1c almond flour. Also didn’t really bother separating the wets and the drys (so confused why it had sugar among the drys, but I digress). The coca powder made it a little bitter, so I ended up using a total of 1.5 c sugar. Finally, I added 2/3 bag of chocolate chips. Baked at 350* for 1 hr 20 min. After cooling ~40 min, I've tried it. It's certainly baked all the way through. Very cakey, which makes sense given the almond flour and amount of leavening it has it. I also think it's kinda a lot of flour vs banana. It's still pretty cocoa-y to me, though not overly bitter. Perhaps the 1/3 cocoa : 2/3 flour ratio in my mind isn't quite right. Maybe next time I'll try 1/4 : 3/4.

Mouthwatering Dairy Free Banana Bread - theamazingfood

I didn't grow up eating banana bread without butter or milk—those were staples in our kitchen. But when my son developed a dairy sensitivity

[concobhar13thevegan]

Dehydrated onions!

Chopped up 50# of onion (sliced, diced and blended into a chunky paste). Dehydrated maybe 36-48 hours, forget the temperature. Blended the dried paste into a powder.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Dumpo blessed us with some onions, so I dehydrated a bunch (~50#) and I’ve pickled some. I packed 4 mason jars with onions, added bay leaves to one of them, then weighed them, then filled with water. Poured out the water, added enough salt to make a 2% solution (maybe should’ve weighed it with the onions?), put in a pickle weight and sealed the jars (added dill to one of the jars). Now the plan is to let them ferment for about 1 week, then I’ll check them.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Tried to make a pie, but ran into a couple road blocks along the way. I used this recipe for pecan pie:

Irresistible Pecan Pie Recipe for the Perfect Dessert

Delight in this Pecan Pie Recipe that offers a gooey filling and crunchy pecans. Bake it today and satisfy your sweet tooth!

We didn’t have pecans, so I used a mix of roasted pistachio, almond and chopped walnut. I used the wrong setting on the blender, so it was a powder instead of a chop, and it burnt some while I was toasting them. I substituted imitation maple syrup for corn syrup and white sugar + molasses (3/4c : 1.5 T) for the brown sugar, and chia eggs for the eggs (1T:3T ground chia : water).

I couldn’t find AP flour, used 2.25c bread flour instead. Oil was olive, butter was salted country crock. Came together ok, tho definitely more sticky and very yellow. Rolled out fine all things considered.

It was still liquid after an hour of baking, so here’s hoping it’ll solidified as it cools. Welp, after cooling for 1 hour, it wasn't really set in the center. The edges were, so I think it would've set if I'd baked it longer. Wonder if that's due to using a chia egg or the Dumpo syrup (which is pretty watery).

[concobhar13thevegan]

Omg forgot to write about this when I made it (1/1). In this next act of fermented pickles, im trying my hand at sauerkraut. As I recall, it was 745g+630g of cabbage and 30g of salt, shooting for about 2% salinity.

I gave it a rough chop, added the salt and then crushed it up with my hands. I didn’t let it sit at all before adding to the mason jar, so it wasn’t very liquidy. I topped it with a ziplock full of of water to try and keep at least the bottom layers submerged.

It’s turning a little browner now, and it’s been really bubbly every time I go to check on it. It seems that there’s enough pressure to push liquid out, cause there’s bubbles on the outside of the bottle. Tried some after a week and it tastes like mild sauerkraut, but hasn’t yet reached the same level of fermented goodness that the pickles did. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bottom layers were more fermented at this point.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Dehydrator adventures: tomato flakes

Dumpo also blessed us with much tomatoes, so I tried to make tomato powder. I used 4# tomatoes, cut into 6-8 pieces each. I pressed them dry with a towel, which had the effect of removing most to the seeds. Dehydrated at 40* C for probably 20 hours. They tasted like diy fruit leather, blended up with a coffee grinder, which left a powder with some chunks of tomato.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Adventures in dehydration, take 2: bananas

We were blessed with a bunch of bananas, so I decided to try firing up the old dehydrator again. I used probably 4 bunches of very ripe bananas, sliced thinly and dehydrated @50* C for 8 hours. The first bunch was too think, and the latter ones were dry but still chewy, so not completed chip-worthy, so maybe needs to go for longer next time.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Currently in-between jobs, so I decided to continue down the path of my food preservation, I decided to try lacto-fermentation. I've only ever made quick pickles as far as I can recall, but we've a lot of cucumbers. I was expecting more steps, because I think I confused pickling and canning, which the internet tells me is a common mistake.

I followed these instructions: https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/the-easiest-way-to-make-homemade-pickles-from-all-those-extra-garden-cucumbers/

I used 2.5 cucumbers which filled 3 drawers. I measured the water+cucumber weight from one of them (~465g) and then tripled it to make the 3.5% saline solution. I combined 1/3 tap water and 2/3 filtered water for it. I made one just plain, one with dill and one with bay leaves. I'm going out of town for a couple days, so I'm going to try to leave them a little opened so that they don't explode, planning to check on them in 5 days.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Using up some bananas that were going bad, and I'm going to a square dance later that includes a cookie exchange, so I made them into cookies. I used this recipe: https://linacorner.com/banana-chocolate-chip-cookies/ I doubled the recipe, and used 3/4c salted country crock instead of the butter and salt, and a packaged egg replacer (basically a flax egg with potato and tapioca starches instead of flax). Didn't have any vanilla, so used imitation maple syrup instead. They baked up real quick, and the oven doesn't heat evenly, so they're a little burnt, but taste fine. Not super sweet, very soft, kinda like a banana pancake. Wish they weren't burnt, but that's ok, and I'm sure they'll still get eaten. The very last batch of them (made 33 total) I put on the top shelf, and they came out unburnt, but did need an extra 1 minute. I'll have to remember that for next time, lol.

[concobhar13thevegan]

Dumpo blessed us with avocados and lemons, so it was clearly time for pie. Crust was from the same batch as the pumpkin I made the other day, filling was based on: https://veggieangie.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/avocado-lemon-pie/ When rolling out the curst, the whole bottom stuck to the parchment paper, and I can't remember the last time that happened. I patched it up with the trimmings from the edge, then blind-baked like normal (20 @ 425*, 20 @ 375*, 3 @ 375* with the edges uncovered). Got just a touch too brown for my liking, but I'm sure it'll be fine. I ended up using juice and zest of 3 lemons, 1/3 c imitation maple syrup, and 3 bags (maybe 20-25) small avocados (all from Dumpo). Tastes interesting, but kinda just like avocados. The citrus really does a lot for brightness. I'm going to a potluck tomorrow, so hopefully it will get eaten.

[concobhar13thevegan]

I’m running out of soap, so finally got around to making more today. Don’t have a whole lotta faith in this one, cause there was more winging it than I’m used to, lol.

I didn’t have any coconut oil and only a bit of red palm, so it’s very shea butter forward, lol. It ended up as: 47% shea butter, 11% red palm, 7% each almond, avocado, grape seed, olive, peanut and rice bran. Over poured the olive oil, so probably actually more like 9% olive oil, 5% rice bran oil. The lie didn’t all dissolve in the water, so i added another like 100g of water (aka ~30% increase) to get it all.

I tried melting the oils first to give it longer to cool, since the lye is always like 30-40* cooler when I do the lye first. But this lye didn’t really heat up at all beyond 100*. The oils were probably 190* when I gave up and combined them. I had to step away for a sec to plug in my immersion blender (made this soap outside to avoid getting lye in the kitchen), and there was like a central core that seemed to saponify like instantly. Got to medium trace pretty quick.

It made 12 bars, and there was enough for at least 1 more full bar, even though I told the recipe to make 12 x 100g bars (normally i do 6 or 12 x 110g bars). Idk, maybe that’s not enough to make a difference.

According to soapgenie, it’s Ha 34, Cl 0 (the internet tells me it’ll clean, but not strip the skin), Co 64, Bu 0, Cr 34, Lo 34, Io 74, INS 113. I hope it’ll last better in the shower, but we’ll see.