Survival Food

Kale donuts.  You heard it from Esther at A, B, C, Vegan first.

Not only did I make shelf-stable breakfast treats for the work conference at which I will be working when this is posted, but I also made these to weather Frankenstorm!  The weather’s a birthday present, I guess.  The past six or seven years I have seen snow on my birthday; this year it’s a hurricane.

When I read how Esther compared these kale donuts to green juice, I knew I had found my green juice stand-in for a few days while away from home during the National Forum on Character Education.

Kale Donuts

Original here http://www.abcvegan.com/have-your-cake-and-eat-your-greens-too/, my modifications below.

I began by soaking the dates and pecans in the 3/4 cup hot water for about 10 minutes while I assembled the dry ingredients

Substituted 1 tablespoon chia seeds and a scant 1/4 cup hot water for the flax egg

Omitted the zucchini since it’s not summer anymore

Increased to 3 cups of chopped kale

Decreased the agave to 1/2 cup

Increased the apple cider vinegar to 1 teaspoon

Used 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil

Flour: replaced with

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup teff flour

1/2 cup King Arthur Flour Ancient Grains GF blend

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

I omitted the glaze since I need all the stability I can maintain at the Forum and sugar would not help with such.

The procedure is the same except I soaked the dates and pecans and sifted the flours.

I baked my donuts at the same temperature, 400 degrees Fahrenheit, in a greased 12-well mini-donut pan and 12-well mini-waffle pan for 10 minutes.  I let them cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

I put them in lidded containers with waxed paper since we were out of room in the fridge due to my baking and cooking bender on Sunday.

They are mucho-tasty!  Though I used no lemon, they had a bright bite that enhanced their agave-level sweetness.  Fun-coloured food is totally Halloween-apropos!  Permeable times of year, like Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day and April Fool’s, call for such fun with food.

My Forum-fare also included microlunch, Pacific Natural Foods soup in tetrapaks, homemade kale chips, 8-ounce soymilk tetrapaks, dried fruit, nuts, tea, fruit, and chocolate gingerbread.  I’ll be looking forward to fresh food afterwards.  Remember, food-sensitivity/non-SAD (Standard American Diet) folks, harsh as this sounds, few people will look out for your nutritional needs.  I’m here for ya, working to figure out how to pack shelf-stable, nutritious, and delicious vegan and gluten-free noshies.  While more and more brands of travel vegan food are turning up in Whole Foods, I can’t afford to blow half my food budget on 3-ounce containers of kale chips at $8 a pop.  Let’s keep it budget-friendly.

Jon and Robin Robertson's book, Vegan Unplugged, contains fantastic advice for how to survive a storm, vegan-style.  I highly recommend you pick yourself up a copy, but don't be like me and save reading it until you're in a power outage situation.

Please don’t let this scare you when I often say no one will take care of your nutritional needs if you’ve decided to choose a diet that’s against the norm (by diet, I mean eating pattern, not “reducing diet”).  As a health coach student, I’m learning how to turn my experience in navigating a vegan and gluten-free diet, using the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (R) framework, into a customizable program for people who want to change their lives through nutrition or who need to learn how to embrace food allergies and intolerances in order to experience their best health.

And if you haven’t been reading along with Gothic Granola (formerly Screwfoot Q), you get to eat new treats along the way!  Videre licet, cinnamon coconut cheezecake with walnut-coconut crust!