I made spiced pumpkin sauce & made my own pumpkin spice blended espresso drink. For the sauce, I did a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio of water, light brown sugar, and pumpkin puree. added the seasoning based on my heart (from most to least: cinnamon, ginger, allspice, clove, nutmeg).

Plant based crockpot chili :^) Plant based ground beef, garlic powder and onion powder. Bell pepper. Chili powder, cumin, paprika, oregano, s&p. Honey, homemade maple syrup. Tomato sauce, veggie broth. Diced tomato. Kidney beans, black beans, a banana pepper, a cayenne pepper, and a serrano pepper.

Chicken of the Woods picatta that I made last night. I loosely followed a recipe from Very Vegan Val, w a few subs: used regular butter instead of vegan butter, real parmigiano reggiano instead of a vegan alt; & I didn't have white wine, so I subbed in white wine vinegar diluted in vegetable broth.

Ur telling me a vegetable fried this rice?? 🤪
Chives are from my gardennnnn. 😏
Matthew grilled the tofu for me. I just lazy marinated it in a mix of the Japanese BBQ sauce, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and water. Basically a half-assed lazy man's teriyaki, really (just slightly less sweet). 🤣

Is it weird to add corn to au gratin potatoes? Maybe, but idc. 😂 I came across a crockpot au gratin potato recipe & one thing about me is that I love a crockpot recipe. They only listed salt, pepper, and garlic powder for seasoning, but I also added onion powder, rosemary, time, & basil.

BBQ smoked tofu. Coated in olive oil & bbq dry rub, marinated. Went on the smoker, then I added bbq sauce & maple syrup. Back on the smoker, covered. Turned out great. Matthew said he saw a vid of someone making this & he does "plant based smoking." I said, "I also do plant based smoking." 🤣

Yesterday, I pulled somewhere between 2.5 & 3 gallons of sap from my maples & boiled it down. I got about 1.5 cups of syrup this time. It's interesting how dark this batch came out compared to the first.
#SuburbanSapCollecting #SapSeason #MapleTrees #MapleSyrup #MakingSyrupInTheSuburbs

I built a makeshift brick oven out of some landscaping stones that were leftover from previous homeowner that I haven't used for garden beds yet. The pot is thrifted. I finished off the last hour in the house. We ended up with exactly 1 cup of syrup from 2 gallons of sap, lol. ~ 5.5ish hrs cooking.

Cooking sap in the suburbs ✨️

I pulled a half gallon of sap from my sugar maple. That gives me a total of two gallons of sap at the moment, which will probably give me about two cups of syrup once it's cooked down. 🤣

I transferred the sap from the bucket under my red maple. I got about 1.5 gallons. This might be the only good sap I get from this tree this year bc it's budding already??? 😭 I just noticed the yesterday... I haven't pulled the sugar maple yet, but that tree doesn't have any buds yet.

My strawberry cheong is complete and strained out! 🥰 It's so beautiful and delish, and I'm so glad it ended up fitting perfectly in this bottle!

#cheong #StrawberryCheong #EasyRecipes #fruit #syrup #FruitSyrup #JuiceConcentrate #StrawberrySyrup

We're rounding the end of our first winter in our house, and my mom gave me a couple of her taps and buckets so I could tap the two maple trees that we have! One is a sugar maple & the other is a red maple.

#maple #sap #TreeTapping #MapleTrees #MapleSyrup #SuburbanSapCollecting #RealMapleSyrup

She's so beautiful. I started making strawberry cheong. It's been going for about 4 days now, and there's still a very thin layer of sugar left on the bottom needing to dissolve.

We got vegan Ethiopian food for Valentine's dinner at Lulu EthioVegan Cuisine in Minneapolis! 😊 Started with sambusa to share, and I got ginger tea and a spiced pasta.

Girl Dinner™ at Fitger's in Duluth, Friday night. Vegetarian chili and a hummus platter. 🤣