Vegan Plate - again.

My family loves this place. Zoe, being a veghehad, is in heaven and even my Dad, who likes meat, loves the food here.

They have a good variety of food there. Not just great Thai food. They have burgers and wraps that are way better than I thought they could be. The fries are crispy and tasty.
Not pictured here are the Kamut pancakes which are surprisingly good.
Tonight, I had a big bowl of Tom Kha Gai soup with a little brown rice and papaya salad to share. Yum

More bread by Zoe

More bread from Zoe. She is getting really good at this and it's causing problems at home.







The problem is we can't stop eating her bread. My parents and I are paying a HEAVY price for her success. hehehe.

Dan Dan Cookies. aka 醜餅乾

OK.. The time came again to try and make up my own cookie recipe. This one was pretty good.
I felt a bit playful when dropping the dough and laying the toppings. I made one that I like to call Mr. Bill. See him in the middle???

Anyway, I laid the dough with a dimple in the middle so I could add some filling or toppings. For some, I used an almond butter and brown sugar filling then added a couple nuts or chocolate chips. On others I used apricot jam, nuts and dried cranberry.
The dough went like this:
3/4 of one stick of unsalted butter.
1/2 cup of pure maple syrup.
1 tsp vanilla.
1/2 tsp baking soda.
1 cup whole wheat flour.
1/2 cup all purpose flour.
1/4 each of corn meal and almond meal.
1/8 cup oat bran.

First soften the butter and whisk until fluffy. Then add the syrup, vanilla and baking soda and whisk well.
Put all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix well, then add to wet ingredients and mix well.
There you have the dough.. Simple, eh?
Now put table spoon sized scoops on a greased cooking sheet and use the round side of the spoon to make a dimple or well in the dough. Lay your filling of choice in there.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake in center or upper rack for 10 to 15 minutes (when edges turn a nice golden brown).

These little darlings are not totally unhealthy either. As long as you are not allergic to almonds, that is.
If you like it, let me know. Also, if you change something or use a different filling and it works nicely, let me know... Please.
Ahdoga.

First attempt at Pretzels...

Well, this was my first attempt at making pretzels. After the great pretzels we had in Poland, I wanted to try.. I am sorry to report that they were nothing like the ones I had in Poland. I tried to do them multigrain and used too much whole wheat flour and corn meal. They were OK, but not great. I count this as an edible failure. Luckily Zoe made a strawberry tart that was great. So, we did ok as a team. (hehehe).

I did some with black sesame and some with cheddar cheese. The dough was a little different than I thought it would be and we tried to make pretzel shapes with little success.

The final product had a nice color and the texture was fairly chewy. Something just wasn't right about them. They weren't bad heated with butter, though.