This past weekend was loads of fun. Kevin Smith was in town doing one of his Q&A sessions. If you are a Kevin Smith fan, you’ve GOT to get into one of these. He’s very down to earth and HYSTERICALLY funny! Anyway, Rick and his best friend from the Navy are huge fans, so I bought us all tickets to the show and asked his friend to fly in for the weekend. I was SO excited when he said that he could come, but then I remembered… he’s vegan! GAH! What am I going to feed this guy?!

I understand the vegan diet, but it can sometimes be difficult to acomodate in a major meat-eating place like Texas. My regular grocery store didn’t have any eggless egg substitutes and only a couple of choices of non-dairy milk. I did some homework and found a better place to shop. I also spend days cruising the net for delicious vegan recipes. It’s actually not as difficult to find great recipes than I had expected. I found this one and KNEW I had to make it! It was a HUGE hit! It’s SO healthy and easy to do, I don’t see any reason not to throw it into the dessert mix and cut back on one of the more unhealthy options.

The recipe called for eggless egg substitute, which I still never wound up finding. After a little research, I found that people were using mashed bananas in baked goods to replace egg, so I decided to try it. It worked PERFECTLY, and made the bars so moist!

Tessie’s Vegan Chocolate Chip Bars
•1 ½ cups flour
•¼ cup oatmeal
•¾ cup brown sugar
•1 t baking powder
•1 t cinnamon
•½ cup olive oil
•½ cup applesauce
•1 banana
•1 tsp vanilla extract
•½ tsp almond extract
•½ cup non-dairy chocolate chips
•¼ cup coconut
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Check this out! A friend of the site sent this along to me first thing this morning, it’s pretty cool! Probably works best with a very thick skinned potato like an Idaho or Texas potato.

So I know that this time of year, folks are looking for fish recipes so that they can follow common Lent traditions. This is an older article, but I wanted to re-post it because I think that a lot of people may be looking for this kind of information right now. Buying fresh fish is crucial. Bad fish is a terrible experience all around, and you can avoid it all together.

A lot of us are used to buying frozen fish filets at the grocery store. I do it myself, because it’s easier and often cheaper. Recently I have found that the prices at my grocery store do not compare to those at a small local fish monger. That may not always be the way, but especially if you live on or near the coast, I recommend you go online and try to find your local fish shop.

One of the best things about finding a fish monger is that they are absolute professionals in the fish business. They are much more likely to be able to tell you where the fish in their windows were caught, and will know when they were brought in. A good shop will have freshly caught fish in the morning, and some keep them coming all day. Finding a local specialty shop doesn’t usually jump to the front of our minds because this is the age of the big box store… Support local business and find new options.

The key to finding a fish monger is your nose. The shop should not stink to the high heavens. Of course, it may smell a bit briny, that’s to be expected. If the place reeks, just leave. It’s the same with your grocery store. Do NOT buy fish from a place that really stinks.

Fresh fish are wonderful, but many fish mongers also sell some frozen fish, and frozen shrimp. Just because they are frozen, doesn’t mean they aren’t wonderful. The point of building a friendly relationship with your local fish seller is so that they can help you understand the quality of your purchase.

Finding the freshest, best fish is pretty easy, even if you choose to shop for them in your grocery store. Here are some tips you should always follow:

Whole Fish

When shopping for whole fish, look them in the eye. A bright, clear eye should be staring back. As a fish sits waiting to be sold, his eye will cloud and turn dull and gray. Fish with dull eyes are not necessarily “bad”, but they are past peak freshness.

Look at the fish’s scales. Are they shiny and metallic, or dull and discolored? You want a shiny, good looking fish.

Smell the little guy. If he smells like “fish”, toss him back. A fresh fish should smell of clear water, or a little briny, but not “fishy”. You may need to get used to the sometimes fine line between “briny” and “fishy”.

Check his gills. They should be bright red. The longer the fish sits, the more the blood oxidizes and darkens in color.
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hah ha! I totally screwed this one up!! Rick’s company does a months worth of fund raising every year for the United Way. There are lots of ways to participate, but they do a week long bake sale, so I thought that’d be a perfect way for me to contribute. The folks in Rick’s office benefit from my cooking rather often, so I wanted to make something new and different. I am a TREMENDOUS fan of Foodgawker.com. I am ALWAYS on it looking for new ideas… and I came across a recipe for these Coconut Lime White Chocolate cookies. I thought “oh man, that sounds SO good! I’ve GOT to try these!”, so I put together my grocery list and went shopping.

The first sign that something was about to go wrong was when I got home with my ingredients and could not find the recipe again. I looked through my favorites on FoodGawker, then I searched all of their listings… What happened?? Maybe… I didn’t find it there? I get so many emails full of recipes… I went through everything I could find and couldn’t find that original recipe I fell in love with. There were other Lime Coconut cookies on FoodGawker, but something made me decide to try to go it alone. I decided to use one of my favorite cookie recipes and just add Lime, Coconut and White Chocolate to it instead of it’s typical flavors.
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