Meshuga

       

This past weekend I found myself at The Vegetarian Food Festival, tasting my way through a plentitude of healthy options: probiotics, quinoa bars, milk substitutes, candida busters, soy butters, vitamins A-Z and natural energy boosters, strong enough to send me on three more laps of the joint. Is there such a thing as ingesting too much healthy? After the ancient mushroom tea that sent me running to the bathroom, I thought possibly so.

Over the past few months I have been navigating my way through a cleaner and healthier lifestyle, experimenting with recipes and buying only products with ingredients I recognize on the label. It evolved into me cooking mainly vegan meals in the house. My visit to The Vegetarian Festival inspired me to experiment with the sweet loaf family, adding a daily dose of vegetables and to make things even more interesting put the challenge of vegan on the table.

Banana bread is a binge inducing food for me so I try not to make too many, as the average life span is 12 hours post bake. Lots and lots of tiny slivers. I know you know what I mean. I put my Banana, Chocolate Chip Bread recipe aside and started drafting a new one: Vegan Zucchini Carrot Banana Bread. 

Ingredients:

• ·      2.5 ripe mashed bananas
• ·      1 cup of zucchini grated and drained
• ·      1 cup of carrots grated and drained
•  
• ·      2 tbsp of ground flax
• ·      6 tbsp of warm water
• ·      2 tbsp of coconut milk
• ·      1/3 cup of agave
• ·      2 tbsp of apple sauce
• ·      1/3 cup of olive oil
• ·      1 tbsp of coconut oil
• ·      1 tsp of vanilla
• ·      1 cup of white flour
• ·      ½ cup of whole wheat flour
• ·      ½ tsp of baking soda
• ·      ½ tsp salt
• ·     1 tbsp cinnamon
• ·      ½ tsp of baking powder

Directions:

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or line loaf tin with parchment paper

In a bowl combine ground flax seeds with warm water. Let stand until it becomes like a gel. 

In another bowl, combine your dry ingredients (you can sift), flours, baking powde, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Once flax seed has gelled, add other liquid ingredients and mashed banana and stir until well combined. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and begin to stir until mixture starts to combine. Stir in grated carrots and zucchini and mix until all flour is absorbed and mixture is thick and viscous. 

Pour batter into a prepared load tin and bake for 45 minutes to one hour or until a cake tester (toothpick) comes out clean. I found that even after an hour the toothpick was still a bit sticky, but if you let it cool for 30 minutes it becomes less sticky. The reason for the sticky inside is because its a very moist bread.

MESSAGE TO MY READERS: Do not be alarmed, I have not strayed from butter for life, but during this short break, try out this recipe and find that there are so many incredible sweets and meals you can eat without sugar and butter!