Dough Balls & Tempeh Bacon

I am so relaxed now and that’s a good thing. It’s been a great productive, but relaxing day and I’m ready for another day off tomorrow! I had time today to check in on my indoor herb garden which is growing like crazy.

Can’t wait for the fresh basil. I also got outside to do a little maintenance on our compost bin, turning all the glop and checking on the earth warms.

Too graphic? This is our first year composting and using it in out garden come spring, it will be an experience! The compost bin is actually a whole eco-system in itself with worms and plenty of other bugs living in it, kind of fun watching everything I chuck into it daily compost down quickly.

I also got time to deal with my hair roots with my new favorite dye.

I’ve tried Tints of Nature demi-permanent dye with disappointing results, but I’m having much better luck with the permanent stuff. I used to get my hair professionally dyed and highlighted. But, that’s expensive and it always left my hair feeling fried and my scalp feeling icky and ichy for a few days after as well as my hair smelling funny. To save money and my hair, I started doing it at home trying various demi and ammonia-free dyes and this is my favorite. For someone in my early thirties, I already have plenty of gray hairs. I’ve toyed with the idea of going natural, but my hair is naturally dark and the grays look awful, I just can’t do it yet. But this medium blond color does a great job of disguising them as strawberry blond highlights while adding a pretty, natural reddish color to my blah brown. I’ve used it three times now and touching up roots is very easy and blends perfectly with no noticeable build up. And it does not bother my scalp, dry my hair of leave it smelling funny for a few days. The only draw back is it has to be left in for about an hour to bond or sink in. No biggie, I used to spend longer than that at the salon and a lot more money too.

I also spent some time cleaning out my fridge and freezer and found another blob of almond milk pulp, about 3 cups worth.

I immediately thought of Ashley’s post this morning with an awesome recipe for dough balls and started thawing the blob in the Excalibur dehydrator to make my own using what I had in the kitchen.

It’s a handy tool for defrosting just about anything and getting rid of excess moisture as it does. Frozen almond milk pulp takes about 3 hours to turn into something like almond flour. When it was ready, I concocted my dough balls using:

• 3 cups almond milk pulp
• 1 cup agave nectar
• 1/4 cup cacao powder
• 1/4 cup lucuma powder

I threw just the pulp, cacao powder and lucuma powder into my food processor to thoroughly blend.

Then poured in the agave nectar as it was running to make a gooey, sweet, fudge-like heaven.

To add texture, I pulsed in about 1/2 cup of pecans.

Then rolled them into little dough balls/doughnut holes.

They’re wonderful with a moist, fudge-like texture, crunchy nut chucks and a rich chocolaty caramel-ish flavor. A wonderful chocolate splurge and fun way to use up almond pulp.

I also got creative with tempeh for dinner using up more collard leaves since my fridge is stocked with them from our farm box. I found this recipe for tempeh bacon that I decided to try in vegan bacon wraps even though it required quite a spice line up.

Slicing tempeh super thin without breaking is not easy, my slices were a little thicker and I was okay with that.

I let the slices marinate for about 30 minutes before sauteing.

Then cooked them for about 4-5 minutes a side in olive oil over medium-high heat letting the sides get crispy.

I placed them in a collard wrap with Veganaise, mustard, cucumber slices, carrot slices and sprouts for a sandwich wrap.

I can’t say if they were exactly like bacon, but the slices were great with a sweet, garlic flavor and crunchy texture that went perfect with the mustard and wrap texture. It was a fun dinner and I would do this recipe again.