Tis the season to bake vegan pumpkin cookies!

Today, after eating an amazing piece of vegan apple pie that the fabulous Anna Foster had baked last night for breakfast and spending lunch with her at the food coop, I went to class and decided that today is the perfect day to bake cookies. My reasoning is that I love pumpkin (especially since its almost Halloween) and because I feel that this ceramics class I am taking Monday and Wednesday mornings is a support group for vegans (while eating Anna's crazy delicious baking). So today was the day to make Vegan Pumpkin cookies! I would just like to add that my neighbor and friend, Drake, ran over to my house because she read on facebook that I was baking...yeah they are THAT good! Here is the recipe for all of you to enjoy!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of shortening

1 -1  1/2 cups of sugar

1/4 cup of soy yogurt (vanilla or plain...I use plain)

1 can of canned pumpkin 

1 tsp vanilla extract

2  1/2 cups of flour (whole wheat or all purpose)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

a pinch of salt

1 tsp ground nutmeg

2 tsps ground cinnamon

1 cup of vegan (or regular) chocolate chips

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F  and grease cookie sheets.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening ad sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the soy yogurt, then stir in the pumpkin and vanilla.

3. In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon.

4. Gradually stir into the creamed mixture.

5. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips.

6. Drop dough by teaspoonsfulls onto the cookie sheet. (they expand)

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

8. Cool on wire racks

9. EAT AND ENJOY!

* This recipe was an adaptation from a recipe I got from vegweb.com ... but I think mine is better!

Autumn and the Farmers Market

AUTUMN IS HERE! I love autumn in Ann Arbor for so many reasons. First of all, all of campus looks so beautiful and all the streets look dressed up. The other main reason I love autumn, is because the farmer's market is FANTASTIC! I have become an avid shopper of local and organic produce. Since I have been traveling almost every weekend, I have missed my out on my weekly Shabbos walk and shop at the farmer's market. However, they are also on Wednesdays! So I go in between classes for my veggies. Here are a few pictures of all the goodies that are sold  and the beautiful trees in the neighborhood where I live.

Haircut?

I spent this past weekend in St. Louis at the Olshan residence (Yonit Olshan = roommate and best friend). It was really great to fly back and have Monday and Tuesday off (THANK GOD FOR FALL BREAK!) so today feels like Sunday. Yesterday, Lucy and I decided to get haircuts and mine got chopped off! I thought it was time for a change. Now that I am not scared of people other than my family "hair cutter" ,Elise,  I thought "why not?". So this is the result.

Vegan Cupcakes!

On Tuesday I was notified that my teacher was sick and cancelled class and I wasn't expected to go to my other class so I did what any hungry college student would do, I baked! Some of you know that I have very strange dietary restrictions due to my extremely high cholesterol, so I have become a vegan by default. Tuesday morning, I baked vegan chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting! They were moist, tasty and delicious... everyone loved them and so would you. That is why I am going to give you the recipe.

Cupcakes:

1 cup soy or rice milk

1 tsp vinegar (I used apple vinegar)

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and prepare a dozen muffin cups  in muffin tin/pan.

2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the soy/rice milk, vinegar, sugar, veggie oil and vanilla extract. In another bowl, stir the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Sift the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and make sure to get rid of all the large lumps.

3. Pour the batter into the cupcake liners until they are about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes or until you poke the cupcake with a toothpick and it comes out clean.

4. Cool for 10 minutes -THEN ITS FROSTING TIME!

Frosting:

1 cup margarine

4 cups of powdered sugar

2 tbsp vanilla

4 tbsp soy/rice milk

1/2 cup of cocoa powder

dash of salt

1. Margarine should be at room temperature when placed in bowl.

2. Blend until mushy and then add powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, chocolate and soy/rice milk.

3. Spread on each cupcake!

I should warn you all that I had a lot of frosting left over so if you want to divide this recipe in half you might get by with enough for each cupcake. 

* I found these recipes from the New York Times and VegWeb.com

A mini adventure to Chicago

This past weekend I headed to Chicago for two reasons. One of my best friends, Josh, was running the Chicago marathon, and because I knew that eventually this semester I needed to visit Benna, my long time/childhood Yiddish friend. The weekend started off with a car ride with Josh's roommates and they dropped me off at Benna's apartment. Benna and I caught up on life and played bananagrams until we crashed. In the morning we had a quick breakfast before heading to the north side of Chicago. We were invited to eat in the sukkah of my friend Leana's parents. After stuffing ourselves with loads of food and the Yiddish language, Benna decided to take me to Andersonville, Chicago. She told me it was a quirky neighborhood that is also known for the large amount of lesbians in the area, but when I got out of the train and onto the street, something else caught my eye. In the distance I saw a water tower with the Swedish flag painted on it Swedish flags were waving everywhere! A smile was slapped onto my face as I began to have flashbacks to this past summer in Scandinavia. Every store window there was something about Sweden; It was either a bakery, delicacies, imports, clothing, restaurants...etc.  We even found a Dala horse statue with Stockholm painted on one side and Chicago painted on the other side. We ended up eating Indian food at a vegetarian Indian place. The next morning I left Benna :( really early in the morning and headed to Chinatown to stake out a great spot to see Josh run. My goal was to watch him at mile 20 and then rush to the finish line and watch him finish, but as I watched all the runners zoom by, I apparently missed him and ended up getting in touch with his sister because I thought he got hurt. Thank got he didn't get hurt but instead he ran right by me and I didn't even see him. Sad story, but I met the whole family and friends at the end, got to congratulate and celebrate with dim sum and then headed back to Ann Arbor. 

Interview with Lucy

In my previous post, I wrote about Lucy, one of my housemates and photographed her latest project. This is an interview I conducted with her about it.

Shif: "What was the assignment for this project?"

Lucy: "Good question...find a cultural significant wearable item and either use it as a starting point for what was supposed to be a small, quick project, but I don't do small quick projects. If I wanted to do a small quick project I could do that on my own time, but I like to over achieve as you can see (she is currently on the floor of her room making a 3D structured collage)"

Shif: "What was your inspiration?"

Lucy: "So my particular project, I had a really hard time thinking of something to do cause I usually over think my projects. So during my sophomore review, Ed West told me that my projects that are more successful were the more fun and silly than conceptual and profound. For this project I decided to work off the idea of Native American head dresses, which were never a traditional part of their garb and instead were made for the public eye. So I decided to make a birdcage hat that was over the top and glittery and not functional and the cages aren't made for any use or purpose. It was really fun to do and I don't usually work in 3D mediums so I kinda was just winging it and it worked out really well actually. Its the most stable thing I ever mad and it smells like Michaels."

Shif: "How did you go about creating this piece?"

Lucy: "Well, at first I wanted to make the cages circular, but soon realized you cannot make a circle out of something flat or in sheet form, which was kind of like a "duh" moment. I should have thought of that first. Instead, I decided to make a tube shape, which makes sense, and they are the shape of cages that they made in the colonial times to catch animals and show what they have caught ... and then I struggled with the hat part. I had purchased a fishing hat which I would cut the brim off and hope it would magically work but it didn't. So I made a band of fabric and sewed it onto my hat, sewed the cages to my hat and wired the cages together which makes it way more stable. Then I put the glitter foliage on the hat, actually while it was on my head. I went into the unisex bathroom and just attached it. And used what Sam Hanson taught me about hot glue. If you get hot glue on your hand, just put it in your mouth and it will stop hurting isn't that cool?"

Shif: "Haha, really? Thats crazy! So it was a big hit in your class?"

Lucy: "Yeah it was a huge hit and I actually wore it in class during the critique. Surprisingly enough, they figured out what it was and its a shame we didn't have more time to critique it but it was really fun."

Meet one of my roommates, Lucy.

I would like to introduce one of my roommates and a fellow second floor dweller, Lucy Engelman. She is also an art student at the University of Michigan and is currently taking a course called "Arts and Bodies". This class discusses different cultures and how what they see as normal or important to their own culture or upbringing is seen differently through the eyes of other cultures and nationalities. I will conduct an interview with Lucy regarding her last project in this class, and post it for all of you to read. Until then, here are a few photos of her birdcage hat and the lovely model is Lucy herself.