SRC: Colourful Salad by Chocolate & Dreams

This was my first month of participating in the Secret Recipe Club! I was paired with Rituparna of Chocolate & Dreams, who is a food blogger who lives in India. She has lots of beautiful desserts and yummy looking Indian food!

I decided to make a half batch of her colourful salad. (I really wanted to make something delicious like these whiskey balls or one of her cakes, but given that me, sugar, dairy and coconuts are having a love/hate relationship at the moment, it didn’t seem like the wisest idea. Hopefully another time!) I didn’t have any peas or salad dressing that I could eat, so I left out the peas and created a tasty vinaigrette with equal parts of honey, oil and apple cider vinegar.

This salad was spectacular and very pretty – I almost didn’t want to let Mr. Bean eat any because it was so good! The honey really took the edge off the red onion and hot cabbage – something I wasn’t expecting but made the salad that much better! I would definitely recommend giving this salad a try.

I really enjoyed the secret recipe club – it was a great experience being able to look through someone elses blog and at all their tasty looking recipes. After looking through Rituparna’s blog, it makes me want to find a store that sells Indian food ingredients to be able to make more of her recipes!

Also shared at Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays,  Hearth and Soul Blog Hop, Traditional Tuesdays and Gluten Free Wednesdays.

Memories Edits

I want to share with you the edits I did of the shots I shared earlier in the week of my friend’s kids plus a few more! B is just so cute that I couldn’t resist! (I think that basically predicts what kind of parent I am going to be – one who posts 50 billion photos of their kids because they are SO CUTE. haha.)

You can see the rest of the “Memories Edits” over at Ashley’s blog.

Helping Create Memories

I mentioned that I had a bunch of photoshoots last week. One of these was my friend D and her two kids G and B (who was 5 weeks old!) I was so happy that I was able to get and capture this moment in time for them as B will only be small for such a short time!

We first headed out to the park, where I took some shots of G. He was pretty cute as he would either run away from the camera or smile “like a monster.” (Basically a fierce variation of cheese.)

You know what else was super cute? How much G loves his new baby sister. He was quite content to sit with her, hold her hand and snuggle a bit with her.

I hoped that once G went down for his nap after lunch, we would be able to take some newborn-esque photos. It’s funny because she was really sleepy and calm all morning but once I tried to take photos of her sleeping, she refused to pose and was quite fussy. I guess that’s why they recommend taking photos before 4 weeks and doing it when the babies are sleepiest. Maybe she knew that I needed to leave before 3:15 so I wasn’t caught in traffic? Who knows?

I think that’s my favourite photo of her as she’s actually kind of sleeping. I thought that she would have enjoyed not being dressed a bit more (as I thought most babies liked that,) but maybe she was too cold despite it being SUPER hot in the room? Live and learn!

Have you ever tried to take Newborn photos before?

These are my Straight Out Of the Camera shots  for this week’s Memories themed Good to Wow: Shoot and Edit. See the rest of the SOOCs over at Jill’s blog.

Fall Leaf Edits

I don’t have much to say except that I’ve been very busy in the last week and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up for a while. I did these edits quickly – mostly playing around with split toning and doing clean edits. You can see my original photos here.

To see everyone else’s edits, please head over to Ashley’s blog!

Gluten Free Vegan Zucchini Pumpkin Loaf

After making a paleo pumpkin pie for the Thanksgiving dinner with Mr. Bean’s family (the crust was a variation of Elana’a Coconut Almond Crust from her Almond Flour Cookbook and the filling was from This Primal Life), I needed to make some kind of egg free for the dinner my brother hosted the next day. I didn’t want a pumpkin pie repeat, although if I had I would have made this one with an almond flour crust, and I wanted it to be relatively healthy (given the whole trying not to eat so much sugar thing.) I got thinking: since I love pumpkin loaf and zucchini loaf, why not put them both together? So I did and it was tasty.

Since the loaf is egg free, it takes a lot longer to cook than its egg filled counterpart. It’s also a lot harder to tell whether it is fully cooked our not, but the good thing is with egg replacer made with pureed fruits is that if you over cook it a bit, it is still pretty moist. I slightly under-cooked mine (oops), but I didn’t hear any complaints and it still disappeared very quickly at dinner!

I really liked the flavour – the combination of the spices, pumpkin and zucchini were quite delicious and the raisins added just a little hint of sweetness. Personally, I enjoyed it the most plain, but it also tasted fair good with a bit of margarine or earth balance spread.

Gluten Free Vegan Zucchini Pumpkin Loaf
Adapted from the Joy of Cooking

1/2 c. almond flour
1/2 c. tapioca starch
1/3 c. rice flour
1/3 c. millet flour
1/3 c. sorghum flour
1 tsp. xathan gum
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 – 1/4 tsp. cloves
1/8 – 1/4 tsp. allspice
6 tbsp. vegan margarine or butter replacement
1/3 c. sucunat (I grind mine in my magic bullet first so it’s nice and powder-y)
14 oz jar of canned pumpkin
1 egg replacer
1/3 c. agave nectar
2 tbsp. almond milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 small – medium zucchini, grated with excess water squeezed out.
1/2 c. raisins

1. Preheat your oven to 350F. Grease or line a 9×5″ pan with parchment paper.
2. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
3. In the bowl of your mixer, cream the fat and sucunat together until fluffy. Add in the pumpkin, egg replacer, agave nectar, almond milk and vanilla extract and beat until combined.
4. Add in the dry ingredients and beat until almost smooth.
5. Mix in the zucchini and raisins on low speed until evenly distributed.
6. Bake in oven for at least one hour (mine took about 1 hr 15 minutes) or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
7. Remove from oven and let sit in pan for about 5 minutes. Remove from pan and let it cool. You can serve it warm, but it cuts a bit better if it is cooler.
8. Enjoy!

What’s your favourite kind of loaf?

Recipe Submitted to: Gluten Free Wednesdays.