The Smell of Fresh Baked Bread & Cinnamon

Yummy!  Yummy!  Yummy!

School started.  And so many things went right!  My room was ready.  My students were wonderful.  We kept busy.  It was good.  Mostly.  It was over 100 degrees every day!  Ants not only invaded my kitchen they invaded the TV room.  (I'm not sure what they were after, they just seemed to be wandering all over the place!)  My shower head broke off.  My window fan stopped working.  (In fact, it was making noises like someone had put rocks in it.)  I broke an entire jar of homemade chipolte dressing and it poured all over me and all over the stove and floor. (This was after the ants so that isn't what brought them in the house.)  I started to think I was cursed.  And then I thought of something that would break any curse.  The smell of freshly baked bread and cinnamon.  Really, nothing bad can survive the delicious sweet smell of homemade cinnamon rolls.  So that's what I made this weekend.  I don't know if they broke the curse but I do know they were delicious!  Soft!  Sweet!  Easy to pull apart!  Topped with a light vanilla glaze.  Pure yumminess!  I veganized what seemed to be the standard recipe on the Internet.  (At least they all seemed very similar.)

Cinnamon Rolls Using Bread Machine

½ plain almond milk

½ cup water

¼ cup vegan margarine

½ cup white sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 TB egg replacer mixed with 1 TB oil + 2 TB almond milk

½ tsp salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2¼ teaspoons yeast

Softened vegan margarine

Brown Sugar

Cinnamon

Directions for Making Dough:

• 1)   Heat milk, water, margarine, sugar, & vanilla in sauce pan until margarine melts and steam rises but milk does not boil.
• 2)   Place warmed liquid mixture in pan of bread machine.
• 3)  Add egg replacer, salt, flours, and yeast.  (Follow the directions of your bread machine.  Mine calls for liquids first and then flours, and finally yeast)
• 4)  Press dough setting and if you are lucky – go and read a book.  If you are me, go and grade papers.

Directions for making Cinnamon Rolls (I did not measure the margarine, sugar, or cinnamon – I just put what felt right to me at the time.)

• 1)   When dough is ready, roll into a large rectangle.  (I rolled mine until it was the size of my cookie sheet.)
• 2)   Spread the dough with a layer of softened vegan margarine.
• 3)   Sprinkle (Sprinkle is too delicate a word), Cover the margarine with a layer of brown sugar and then sprinkle liberally (really sprinkle this time) with cinnamon.
• 4)   Roll the dough so the sugar mixture is on the inside and you have a long log.  Carefully cut the log into ½ inch rounds.  (I was able to get 15 nice fat cinnamon rolls out of the one recipe.)
• 5)   Place them on a baking pan, leaving space between each roll as they will continue to rise.
• 6)   Set them aside to rise for about 1 hour.
• 7)   Bake in 375-degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes.  (I tend to take mine out on the early size because I like them very soft.)

Light Glaze (If you want them even sweeter!)

2/3 cup powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla

2-3 TB almond milk

Mix together and drizzle over rolls when you first remove them from the oven.

There are many other things in my life that break the curse of a bad day (or week).  Talking to a friend.  Getting a massage.  Holding a purring cat.  Reading a good book.  What breaks the curses of your life?

Lavender is another curse breaker. It's beautiful and it smells great!

Vegan Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Soft biscuits, creamy country gravy, and yummy breakfast sausage!  And all VEGAN!

It's the Saturday before the first week of school.  And I'm thinking about the teacher I hope to be this year.  I've been thinking about compassion and leadership and equality.  In a classroom, there has to be leadership; and the teacher has to be the leader.  But I've been playing with the idea that leadership isn't the same thing as importance.  The teacher is no more important than the student.  It might not seem like a 'vegan" idea but my thinking began with the vegan diet.  Am I more more important than the other living organisms on this planet?  Do my needs outweigh their lives?  No!  Is the person who makes more money more important than the person who doesn't make that much money?  No!  Is the person with more education more important than the person with less education? No!  I think this way of thinking changes the way I live my life and the way I treat others.  In means that everyone deserves the same respect, whether you are the superintendent, the principal, the teacher, the janitor, or the students. 

And speaking of equally important, when making biscuits and gravy, every part is equally important.  You need a nice fluffy biscuit, like my version of sour cream biscuits.  But you also need a nice creamy gravy with big bites of sage-y sausage .  I've used the Country Gravy Recipe from the New Start Cook Book as my base and then made changes and additions to make it perfect for us.

 Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

(Based on Country-Style Gravy from NEWSTART Lifestyle Cookbook)

2 cups hot water

½ cup clean, raw cashews

3 TB cornstarch or arrowroot

2 TB Bragg liquid Aminos

2 teaspoons onion powder

1 teaspoon yeast flakes

½ teaspoon salt (optional)

½ teaspoon Mrs. Dash Table blend

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper (or more to taste)

1 cup plain vegan milk (I used almond milk)

¼ cup finely diced onion

2 TB vegan margarine

1 TB flour

1 Roll of Gimme Lean Sausage

1 Recipe of Vegan Sour Cream Biscuits

Directions:

1)   Make 4 large patties using the entire roll of Gimme Lean Sausage.  Bake in 375-degree oven for about 15 minutes while preparing biscuits.

2)   Prepare sour cream biscuits.  Remove sausages and place biscuits in oven.  Allow sausages to cool.

3)   Process cashews in about 1 cup of the hot water in a blender until very smooth.  Add additional cup of water, cornstarch, Aminos, onion powder, yeast, salt, Mrs. Dash blend, and pepper and continue blending.  Add in 1 cup plain vegan milk and blend until very smooth. 

4)   Sauté minced onion in 2 TB vegan margarine in large frying pan until onions are soft and translucent.  Add 1 TB flour and cook for a minute or two.

5)   Pour blended gravy from blender into pan with onion and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Cook until thickened. Crumble sausage patties and add to gravy.

6)   Biscuits should be done.  Take them out of the oven so the smell of freshly baked biscuits wafts throughout the house

Putting It All Together

These are BIG biscuits!

Step 1:  Place big biscuit on plate!

Split biscuit so the gravy can soak into all the nooks and crannies.

Cover with creamy sausage gravy.
Be generous - It's biscuits and gravy!
It isn't diet food.

And the great thing about this sausage gravy - an intelligent pig did not have to give her/his life so I could eat a yummy breakfast.

One of the pig's at Farm Sanctuary in Orland California that I visited this summer.
Pigs are actually very intelligent animals with long memories.
Pigs are also very clean, although this gal had been cooling in the mud
because it was nearly 100 degrees on the day we visited.