Banana "froyo"

Do you own a food processor?
Do you like bananas at all?

If you answered "yes" to both of those you should seriously try this.  Not only is this delicious, it's also healthy and vegan!

Ingredients:

• Bananas

Optional Ingredients:

• Peanut Butter
• Cocoa Powder
• Chocolate
• Caramel syrup
• Nuts
• Anything else you can think of

Directions:

1. Wait for your bananas to get brown spots.
2. Peel the bananas and break them into 1.5" (ish) chunks and put them on a wax paper lined plate in the freezer.
3. Once frozen, transfer to a bag until ready to make banana "froyo"
4. Put the fully frozen bananas in the food processor
5. Turn the food processor on
6. Wait
7. The bananas will turn into little bits that are about dippin' dots size.  This is a good time to turn the food processor off and add any mix-ins
8. Scrape down the sides and turn the food processor back on
9. The bananas will form a giant glob and barely touch the blade.  When this happens, take a break from processing and smush the blob down to sort-of evenly distributed around blade-level
10. Process some more until fully blended and froyo-like consistency
11. Eat immediately

The banana "froyo" stores ok but not great so it's best if you blend this up when you are about to eat it.  You can try re-blending the frozen froyo too but it won't be quite the same.

Brown bananas are best since they are sweeter than the yellow and green ones, also the nearly mushy consistency that makes them less desirable for regular snacking is what makes them blend so well.

Don't skip step 2.  Bananas are way easier to peel and cut before they are frozen.

The result tastes like banana flavored froyo.  Some people will tell you this doesn't taste like bananas at all but they are lying. 

Vegan "Shepherdess" Pie

I'm vegan for lent this year (as I have done before) and this is so far my favorite vegan dish of all time.  So good in fact that you can serve it to your non-vegan friends.  Brian even said it was "really good".  If you're not vegan and not feeding vegans you can substitute the soy products with their dairy equivalents.

Ingredients:

• Mushrooms (I used 1 to 1.5 of the 10 oz cartons of both "white button" and "cremini")
• Onion (I used a med-large yellow onion)
• Garlic (3 cloves?  depends on how much you like garlic)
• Carrots (I used 2-4 handfuls of baby carrots because that's what I had.  Full size is fine too)
• Peas (frozen is fine, I used between 1/2 and 1.5 cups)
• Potatoes (a potful of any mashable sort)
• Soymilk (PLAIN!)
• Vegan butter substitute (I used Earth Balance which tastes just like butter)
• Mustard
• Red wine or vermouth (I used sweet (red) vermouth because I didn't have any wine open)
• Rosemary and maybe Thyme
• Salt/Pepper

Directions:

1. Set a pot of water on the stove and peel your potatoes.  If you're smart you'll do this part first.
2. Add your potatoes to the pot of water and turn it on to high.
3. Cut up your mushrooms, onion, and garlic.  I cut my mushrooms to pretty small dice to kind of mimic ground meat and I cut the onion to about pea-sized bits.  Do the garlic however you want, some people are smashers and some people are mincers and some people use a garlic press.  Whatever.
4. Add all that stuff to a pan with some olive (or other) oil.  I did this in my cast iron skillet and it was lovely.  A regular frying pan should do just fine though.  You will most likely need to do this in parts, allowing the mushrooms to cook down a bit.  I just added them as I chopped but if you're slow at chopping you might want to get a head start.
5. This is probably a good time to preheat the oven.  350 or 375 is good I guess.  I'm not very good at this.
6. Cut up the carrots while all that is cooking down.  I cut my baby carrots into 4-5 cylindrical pieces each)
7. Make a well in the center of the pan and add the carrots.  Put some of the mushroom/onion mixture on top.
8. Check on your potatoes and see if they are done yet
9. Mix the vegetables up again and make another well in the center for the peas.  
10. Add the peas.
11. Add a generous sprinkle of rosemary (thyme would probably be good too but I'm out). Add some brownish kind of mustard.  I made some circles and called it art.
12. Mix it up.
13. If your potatoes still aren't done, just put your veggies on the lowest setting and stir periodically until the potatoes finish.
14. Drain your potatoes and mash them up with your soymilk and fake butter (I promise these are very convincing mashed potatoes)
15. If you used a cast iron skillet you can just plop your mashed potatoes on top of your veggies, if you used a pan that isn't oven safe, put your veggies in a casserole dish and put your potatoes on top.
16. Put the whole ensemble into the oven for 20 minutes or so
17. Eat.