Celebrations and Richa Hingle's Vegan Diwali Sweets eBook Giveaway

HAPPY WORLD VEGAN DAY/MONTH, HAPPY KANNADA RAJYOTSAVA DAY, HAPPY DIWALI AND HAPPY MOVEMBER!!!

I love November! There are so many things to celebrate this month. It's World Vegan Month and 1st November is World Vegan Day. It's also Kannada Rajyotsava Day, when we celebrate the formation of our state, Karnataka. Certain awesome people are born in November. *ahem* And November is Movember, a month long celebration of mustaches. And yes, much to the chagrin of my hubby, this year too, I'm going to be sporting a mush on various profile pictures. bahahah :{D

Then, there's Deepavali (also called Diwali) coming up tomorrow and the festivities will go on for 3-4 days. Deepavali falls in the month of October or November depending on the Hindu calendar and moon cycles. I'm glad it's in November this year. It adds yet another reason to party during this month of celebrations. Yummy sweets and snacks, here I come! Wheeee!!!

In all my years of being vegan, I've found certain Indian Sweets to be quite tricky to veganise. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Jamoons and Bengali Sweets! After finally managing to get Jamoons fairly right, I wrote a long blog post about it last year. But sadly, no amount of effort led to good vegan Bengali Sweets. Over and over again, I tried to make Rasgullas, Rasmalais and even Sandesh, but all attempts only led to frustrating little rubbery balls which stubbornly refused to soak up the delicious sauces and syrups they were dunked into. Grrrrr.

So imagine my thrill when Richa of Vegan Richa started to share photographs of GORGEOUS looking Rasmalais on her Facebook Page! I was totally jealous that she's managed to get the recipe right, but I was also filled with gratitude and happiness and generally a lot of "SQUEEEEEEEES" because recipes for delicious, vegan Bengali Sweets had *finally* come into existence.

To be honest, it comes as no surprise to me that Richa was the one to crack the Rasgulla code. She is the mistress of Indian Sweets! :) It also doesn't surprise me that her first eBook is one filled with Vegan Diwali Sweets.

This book is filled with gorgeous pictures and recipes for a bunch of much loved Indian desserts. You can clearly see that Richa has put a lot of time and effort into creating it. And she's so generously giving away all the sales generated from the eBook sales to two wonderful animal charities.

You can read more about the book and buy it on her blog. You can also win a copy for yourself right here on Veganosaurus by entering the giveaway below. The giveaway will be open all weekend and a winner will be announced on Monday or Tuesday.

Do spread the word about this wonderful eBook and this giveaway. Thanks for entering! :)

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Veganosaurus Raw Food Theme Full Recap - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 17

It's the last day of the Vegan Month of Food! I'll miss having something awesome to look forward to on the blogosphere each day. But I definitely won't miss the freaky stress associated with having to post every single day. Ha! In fact, I'm taking a break from my blog for the next week (at least). A well deserved holiday.

Over the last month I've shared a series of raw, vegan dishes here. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do 20+ recipes like I'd intended to. :( But I'm glad that at I'm getting at least 17 posts done for MoFo this year.

It's been a really good challenge to create these raw recipes. I've enjoyed it so much, I think I'll be creating raw foods more often. :)

Thank you everyone who has visited me here and at my various social media spaces (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest) throughout this month. Your supportive comments about my recipes, HowDo clips and time-lapse videos have been really encouraging. :)

I think I've had as much fun participating in Vegan MoFo this year as I did last year. Here's a link to my Vegan MoFo album from 2012 if you want to see what I did last time.

I am highly inspired by all the wonderful recipes I've been seeing on my fellow MoFo blogger's spaces! I'm going to spend the next few days just blog hopping and drooling over the goodies. :) Ahhhh bliss!

I'll leave you now with a recap of all the Vegan MoFo posts on my blog throughout this month. Enjoy! :)

Day 1 - Raw Almond Mylk

Day 2 - Healthy Green Smoothie

Day 3 - Fruit Sweetened Almond Mylk Ice Cream

Day 4 - Making Sprouts and Green Cilantro-Mint Chutney(chutney recipe by Dr.Nandita Shah)

Day 5 - Raw Almond Mylk Pulp Vadai/Cracker Sandwiches

Day 6 - Stuffed Bajji Menasinakayi (Banana Peppers) with Walnut Cilantro Pesto

Day 7 - Creamy Tomato Basil Soup (guest post by Manasa of Cure yourself with Food)

Day 8 - Raw Zucchini Fettuccine and Sun Dried Tomatoes in Cashew Sour Cream Sauce

Day 9 - Raw Cinnamon Apple Crumble with Date Almond Sauce

Day 10 - Melon Mustard Gazpacho

Day 11 - Mid-MoFo Recap and Giveaway

Day 12 - Ruby Smoothie

Day 13 - Fermented Cashew Garlic Cheese

Day 14 - Noochos Gracias Raw Soup

Day 15 - Frozen Basil Seed Pudding

Day 16 - Lemon Lavender Spoon Cream (guest post by Ashlee of The Little Foxes)

Lemon Lavender Spoon Cream - guest post by Ashlee of The Little Foxes - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 16

I thought my Frozen Basil Seed Pudding recipe would be the last one on my blog for this year's Vegan MoFo. Then, the lovely Ashlee Piper sent me this delicious Lemon-Lavender Spoon Cream recipe as her guest post and suddenly I have a post #16 for all of you. :)

I normally write out a little introduction about guest bloggers so you can get to know them better. But Ashlee here sent me a neat bio about herself and made my work easier. She even sent me these photographs of herself to share. Just look at that beautiful, warm vegan glow! :)

I'm sharing her recipe first and at the bottom of this blog post, you'll find her very impressive bio. Make sure you visit the various links she's shared. Especially her blog, The Little Foxes.

Thank you for being here today, Ashlee. I am very happy to have you as a guest blogger at Veganosaurus. :)

Now, on to Ashlee's post...

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Many thanks to Susmitha for having me on Veganosaurus today!

This recipe is a romantic take on a popular Sweet Vegan Ricotta recipe I debuted a while ago. It’s like the sexier, exotic cousin. Lavender and extra lemon make this mixture a little more viscous and luscious – the perfect complement to ripe, juicy fruit and buttery vegan croissants. I call it “Spoon Cream,” because that’s exactly what you’ll want to do – enjoy this lush dessert or snack by the delicate spoonful.

Lemon-Lavender Spoon Cream
Vegan – Refined Sugar-Free – Soy-Free – Palm Oil-Free – Gluten-Free

Yields: About 2 cups
Prep Time: 30 minutes, including soaking
Cook Time: None! Praise be!

Ingredients:

2/3 cups raw cashews
1/2 cup raw almonds
5 dates, skins on
1 cup of water
2.5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp dried lavender buds
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp fresh vanilla bean

Assembly:

1. In a medium sized dish, place the cashews, almonds, and dates, and cover with 1 cup of water. Allow to soak for 30 minutes.
2. Once soaked, add the entire mixture (soaking water included), lemon juice, lavender buds, vanilla bean, and vanilla extract in to a high-speed blender. Blend until creamy and thick. The consistency doesn’t have to be completely smooth, but feel free to add more water or almond milk to make the mixture more viscous.
3. If you really want to take this recipe to the next level, pour a generous dollop in to a vegan pastry cup and top with balsamic strawberries. I make this regularly for catering gigs and people always go nuts (pun intended) for the creamy, sweet, sour, and juicy mixture of it all.

Bio:

Ashlee Piper (MSW, MSc, HHC, AADP) is a former governmental strategist turned plant-based health and lifestyle expert (you can read about her professional transition here). She is the owner of All Is Wellness, a boutique holistic health consultancy that assists busy individuals, families, and workplaces in giving their food, routines, and lives a gorgeously green makeover. An award-winning vegan cook, Piper also runs a popular food and style blog, The Little Foxes, and her recipes and writing have been featured in Reader’s Digest, Earth Balance’s Made Just Right, Ecorazzi, TOMS Shoes, Girlie Girl Army, Vegetarian Times, and Our Hen House. Her blog was recently named among the “Top 9 Food Blogs to Watch” by Refinery29 and Ashlee was recently featured on a Fox News segment where she discussed cruelty-free fashion.

She also writes guides on plant-based topics for Vegucated, manages the Vegucated Schoolhouse Community, a free resource where she shepherds over 1,700 in their transition to a plant-based diet, and is the “Vegan for Life” columnist for Cheeky Chicago. Think a cruelty-free, vegan lifestyle is hard? Ashlee delights in showing people that living la vida compassionate is every bit as tasty, stylish, economical, simple, and fun as the status quo (hint: it’s way more fun)!

When she’s not coaching clients or whipping up mouthwatering vegan feasts, Piper enjoys taking her two rescue dogs to the beach, getting bendy at yoga, singing karaoke, and wearing red lipstick and listening to Morrissey with sassy abandon.

Be sure to follow The Little Foxes on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest to get the latest deliciousness.

Frozen Basil Seed Pudding - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 15

I'm not a flake. I swear! There's a reason I haven't been blogging this whole week. A very valid one. I got bitten/stung by something. I don't know what. A spider, I think. And I have been feeling neither friendly nor neighbourhood-y.

All kinds of crazy, painful stuff happened to my leg, which thankfully is recovering well now. I will not bore you with the morbid details. Pus has no place in food posts. Unless of course, the recipe involves animal milk, in which case there's *plenty* of pus in there. :P

Don't mind me, that's just a little insider vegan joke. You know why it's funny? Because it's TRUE! And yes, it's true in India too.

On hindsight, there's *nothing* funny about those facts. But it is knowledge that is definitely worth sharing. Everybody has the right to know what they're putting into their bodies.

Aaaanyway...moving on to more cheerful things, here's a nice dessert recipe I created a few days ago. It's a healthy, nummy pudding I made out of sweet basil seeds.

I started out with the idea of making a layered parfait but halfway through the process, I decided to blend the gelatinous seeds into the creamy part and ended up freezing the whole thing.

Though it's frozen, it isn't exactly an ice cream, that's why I'm calling it what it is, a frozen pudding. :)

Sweet basil seeds are a locally available superfood cousin of Chia. They are a powerhouse of nutrients and have been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years.

While we were growing up, we always had these seeds in stock at home. My mom and grandma used to soak them in water for us as a home remedy for ushna (high body heat) during the summer months. Sis and I loved to mix sugar into the gelatinous soaked seeds and ate it by the spoonfuls. It was a soothing, dessert-like snack for us everyday.

We used to call this mixture isamboosa (which is totally incorrect). It wasn't until recently that I even knew these were a variety of basil seeds and that they have all these other beneficial properties.

If you live in India and have no idea what seeds I'm talking about, you're probably more familiar with one of the local names - sabja, falooda seeds, kama kasturi, tukmaria.

You can use chia seeds in case you can't get your hands on basil seeds. They are really similar to each other.

Frozen Basil Seed Pudding
Serves 2

4 tsp Sweet Basil/Chia Seeds soaked in 1 C Water
4 Dried Figs soaked in 1 C Water
1/2 C Cashews
1 Banana
Agave Nectar to taste (optional)
Cinnamon powder for sprinkling

*Grind cashews into a powder
*Add the figs, along with their soaking water and blend into a cream
*Add the basil seeds (they would've soaked up all the water) and blend for a few seconds
*Serve into two individual bowls and swirl in the agave nectar (if using)
*Slice the banana and divide the slices between both bowls
*Sprinkle cinnamon powder on top
*Freeze for 2-3 hours
*Enjoy! :)

Noochos Gracias Raw Soup - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 14

All raw soups are very enjoyable when the weather is hot, but during the cooler seasons it's a great idea to blend some warming elements into the concoction.

Keeping in mind the cloudy/rainy days we've been experiencing, I added tulsi, radish, cinnamon and a few other naturally 'spicy' ingredients while creating this soup. They have a certain kind of heat to them, so the soup generates a warm, toasty feeling as it down the throat.



Noochos Gracias is a soup that is bursting with so much character that you'll be saying many thanks with each spoonful you slurp. Though there are all kinds of delicious flavours in there, the lead role is played by nutritional yeast, more lovingly referred to as nooch. See what I did there with the soup's name? :p

As I mentioned in my Zucchini Fettuccine post, you can currently order nutritional yeast in India from i2cook. You can also try making this soup without the nooch. I'm sure it'll be yummy in a different way. You'll just have to call it No-Noochos Gracias and be a little less thankful for it. hehe



Noochos Gracias Raw Soup
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Serves: 2

For the soup:
5 Naati Tomatoes (or any other tart, juicy variety) - cubed
1 medium sized Radish - roughly chopped
¼ Cucumber - roughly chopped
1 inch piece Onion
½ inch fresh Ginger
1 clove of Garlic
Handful of Tulsi/Indian Basil Leaves
8-10 Cashews
3 T Nutritional Yeast
1 tsp Tabasco Pepper Sauce
Splash of Lime Juice
Salt to taste
½-¾ C clean, filtered Water

For the topping:
1 Tomato
¼ Cucumber
Handful fresh Coriander/Cilantro

* Place all the soup ingredients, except tomatoes and water, in a blender jar and grind well.
* Add the tomatoes and water and blend into a creamy soup.
* Pour into large serving bowls.
* Finely chop the topping ingredients and stir into the soup.
* Slurp and enjoy! :)



I wanted to have the Raw Almond Pulp Crackers with this soup but totally forgot! I'm sure it'll be a a great combination.

This recipe has been entered in the Virtual Vegan Linky Potluck 4. Visit the link to check out more awesome recipes that have been submitted by various bloggers.