fava beans

Have you ever had fresh fava beans before? I have had them in restaurants, and have had canned fava beans (which are brown), but until last month I never had them fresh. My friend Michael at the Dazed and Infused blog and I split a CSA share from Waltham Fields Community Farm, a great organization in our city, and they had pick-your-own fava beans for a while. So I decided to try them! They turned out to be more labor intensive than I'd thought.

First, you pick them and bring them home and wash them:

Clean and shiny. THEN you remove the beans from the pod (which is inedible unless it's really young):

But wait! You're not done! The beans have a thick coating that is not pleasant to eat, so you have to PEEL EACH BEAN.

Unpeeled, half-peeled, peeled. It is really hard to peel them raw, so you blanch the beans, then slit the skin, then poke each bean out. And only THEN can you actually prepare the beans.

I cooked them with some garlic, olive oil, and a splash of cooking sherry, then mashed them to top some toast (pictured below with a salad).

They're tasty beans, but I didn't think they were worth all that work! From now on I will probably only buy prepared fava beans, either at restaurants or in a can.

pasta salad with beans? be careful

When I want to make a meal that will provide enough leftovers to have lunch for the week taken care of, I usually pasta. Basically I make a warm pasta salad for dinner, then eat it cold for lunch over the next few days. To make it a complete meal, I usually toss in a generous amount of vegetables and either beans or nuts as some sort of protein.

Since I'm obsessed with chickpeas, they are my go-to legume. Unfortunately, sometimes I do not have any chickpeas, like the time I made this pasta dish:

It's za'tar-spiced whole-wheat orzo with pinto beans, broccoli, roasted sweet potatoes, and probably onions, since I love onions. It tasted great the first night!

Buuuut as it sat in the fridge over the next few days, the beans got this weird slimy texture. They weren't going bad or anything, they were just continuing to absorb moisture from the other ingredients, and getting increasingly mushy. The taste remained the same but by the second lunch of leftovers the texture was awwwwwwful, ugh.

So! a word to the wise: if you're making a bean-and-pasta dish that will result in leftovers, go for a firm-skinned bean like chickpeas, cannellini, or kidney beans. Because maaaaaan is it gross otherwise!

martha stewart and lima bean hummus

I didn't know what marmalade was when I first read the Paddington Bear books as a kid. I assumed it was an English thing. And then the first time I tried marmalade, I was blown away. It's like other jams/jellies, but it's A MILLION TIMES BETTER. I have tried many kinds of marmalade, but I have never made it myself.

UNTIL NOW.
(Pictured on homemade wheat bread)
I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, but I changed it (because I never follow recipes). I halved it, first of all, which I recommend because it makes so much. I also used different oranges: two "normal" oranges and two tangelos.* But also, the amount of sugar in Martha's recipe is astronomical, so I cut it down to 1/2 cup for every cup of goop. I still thought that sounded like a lot, but the mixture was really sour, so I went with it. And it tastes delicious. And while I will probably never make it again because it's rather tedious, I am really glad to have tried it once!

Um, by the way, I now have an absurd amount of marmalade, way more than I have toast. Any recipe recommendations?

I also relied on a Martha Stewart recipe for Valentine's Day!
These are her Pecan Linzer Cookies with Cherry Filling. Again, I halved the recipe, and to veganize it, I used soy yogurt instead of egg. Also, I didn't strain the jam because that was too much work. But I didn't alter anything else (no whole wheat flour, no agave--their point was to be decadent, not healthy). They were GORGEOUS and tasted like cookies I used to get at the corner bakery when I was little.

I don't have cookie cutters, so I used a glass to cut the rounds and a knife to cut out the hearts.
Sprinkling them with sugar was fun AND pretty.

But I do not rely on Martha Stewart for everything. For example, I had some dried (white) lima beans taking up space on my shelf for to long, so I cooked them up... and realized I have no idea what to do with lima beans. So I made up a dilly lima bean hummus! This will also work with any white beans, like cannellini.
Lima Bean Hummus

2 Cups lima (or any other white) beans
1/4 to 1/2 cup fresh dill, loosely chopped
3 Tbsp Vegenaise (if you don't have/like/want vegenaise, use olive oil)
1 Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar
1/8 tsp salt (1/4 if you use olive oil instead of vegenaise)
a few twists freshly-ground black pepper
1 tsp dulse flakes or ripped-up dulse (optional but delicious)
1 tsp nutritional yeast (optional but delicious)

Blend all ingredients. It will be gross and goopy, but such is hummus.

It's good as a dip or a sandwich spread. You can also water it down and use it as a sauce for middle eastern and/or greek meals (like tahini or yogurt sauce, but healthier).

*-I do want to remind you all to use organic food whenever possible, but especially when you are using a food's peel/rind/zest.

There's a reason I haven't been posting.

This.
And this.
And this. Boston has been bursting into bloom, and it's beautiful outside and while I am cooking as much as ever, I spend so much time at the computer while at work that I would rather spend my free time outdoors!

But I'll be better now. Probably once a week again! Thanks for sticking with me ^_^

I think all of us have our busy meals - the ones we make when we get home an hour later than we thought we would and are hungry (and therefore cranky) and want a real meal. For a while I was in a stir-fry phase: I'd make lightning-fast veggie stir fries and be done. I had a curry phase - one of my college roommates took advantage of this whenever possible. I had a mexican phase - beans and rice or guacamole and burritos whenever possible. So what's the newest phase?

HOE CAKES.
pictured here spiced with dill, over asparagus and pickled garlic.

Some of you don't know what hoe cakes are. This is because either you have no education in Native American lore, or you know nothing of rural white-trash foods. But I am here to educate you! Hoe cakes are simply cornmeal patties, similar to fried bread (a variant on hoecakes uses mostly wheat flour and is called Fry Bread). They have the texture of a slightly grainier polenta, and make a great base for savory meals or a tasty breakfast - they're basically cornmeal pancakes.

The recipe supposedly came from Native Americans, who made them by mixing cornmeal and water, forming patties, then cooking them on rocks at the edge of a fire. (I don't actually know if that's true, but then, didn't the Ingalls Wilder girls bake potatoes by sticking them in a fire?) White settlers took this idea and adapted it: farmers would mix the ingredients, then put it on the blade of their hoe (hence the name) and cook it over the fire - dinner without leaving the field!

Somewhere along the line some genius said, "Wait, what happens if we fry these in oil?" And someone answered him/her: "BRILLIANT!"
Hoe Cakes
(makes 10-12 hoe cakes, enough for 3-4 people)
2 C cornmeal
2 C boiling water
1 tsp salt
oil for frying

Combine salt and cornmeal; add boiling water. Stir well; it should be a stiff dough. Let it cool only enough that you can touch it without burning yourself and suing me.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat. Use your hands (put a little oil on them to prevent sticking) to form patties, a little smaller around than your palm and about the thickness of your pinkie finger. (If you have fat fingers, make the patties a bit thinner than your pinkie.) Fry each hoe cake until lightly browned on each side, 3-5 minutes for the first side and 1-3 for the second. Transfer hoe cakes to a plate with a paper towel on it to absorb any extra oil; serve right away or cover with a cloth to keep warm while the others cook. They should be golden but not too dark or they will dry out and get stiff. Fry in batches, adding more oil as needed, until all of the dough is used.

And you're done!

Sweet Beans (pictured above, recipe to follow) are my favorite topping for hoe cakes, but you can use hoe cakes in any number of ways. If you're feeling creative, you can toss in herbs and spices - I've made garam masala hoe cakes, curry cakes, fishcakes (dill, garlic, onion powder, and lots of seaweed flakes). Hoe Cakes also make great breakfast or desserts: a pinch of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, topped with ice cream, yogurt, maple syrup, jam or fruit:
Breakfast hoe cakes! Extra hoe cakes will keep in the fridge for 1-2 days, or in the freezer indefinitely, but you MUST reheat them (ie, in a toaster) before you eat them or they will be so chalky you will need to spit them out. Trust me.

As I said, my topping of choice is Sweet Beans. Sweet beans are actually only sweet in the way that barbeque sauce is sweet. I LOVE barbeque sauce but it usually has tomato in it, so this is my way of making up for it. This recipe goes well with Hoe Cakes, rice, toast, or on a bed of greens. It's super high in iron, and almost all of the ingredients save the molasses and vinegar can be substituted for other things with equally delicious results.
I love black beans, but feel free to substitute one of the cans with one of kidney beans, or both with black eyed peas.

Sweet Beans, serves 4
2 Tbs olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 celery stalks, chopped small
1 thinly sliced carrot and/or red pepper (optional)
1/3 C molasses
1/3 C water
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
3 1/2 C (or two cans) black beans (drain and rinse first, if using canned)
2 Tbs apple cider vinegar

In a cast-iron skillet, saute the onion in the oil on medium heat until soft. Add garlic, saute 2-3 minutes more. Add the celery and optional carrot/pepper. Cook for another 3-5 minutes. Stir in the molasses, water, cumin, salt and pepper. When the water starts to boil/bubble (about 2 minutes), add the beans and cook another 5 minutes, until heated through. Stir in vinegar It is ready to serve when all of the liquid is gone.
oh black beans. In order: Dried, soaked, cooked!

zombie pancakes! (aka sweet potato latkes)

Did any of you ever play the Sega Genesis/Super NES game Zombies Ate My Neighbors?*
It was a random spoof on almost every horror movie you can name, and it was a fun video game. My brother and I used to play it together. There was one level where alien meteroids crashed into earth and made odd purple plants grow all over the ground that can kill you unless you have a weedwacker to drive them off.
Not the best picture,* but those purple plant thingies were really frustrating.

A little while ago I found a sweet potato that had been hiding, forgotten, in a box. Strange purple growths?!
A ZOMBIE YAM! It was GIANT, too, which clearly means it had plans to take over the world.

Yes, I know, to follow to logic of the video game, it would technically be an alien meteroid (in fact, the meteroids were reddish orange... like sweet potatoes...?!), but I like zombies better than meteroids. So of course I had to use it in SOMETHING.

I fished through many cookbooks for a savory sweet potato pancake recipe, but I couldn't find any simple (ie, without a million ingredients), nightshade free latkes. So I made one up!

Zombie Pancakes (aka Sweet Potato Latkes)
(serves 2 easily, doubles or quadruples or does whatever you need it to do well [ie, does your bidding, like a true zombie])

1 small onion or large shallot
1 humungous zombie yam or two smallish yams
1/4 C chickpea flour (or normal flour - see note)
1/2 cup water
generous pinch each salt and pepper
1-2 Tbsp oil (for frying)

Chop the onion or shallot into tiny pieces. Be careful not to cut yourself, as once a zombie [yam] smells blood, you're toast. Wash the yam carefully, to remove any sort of dirt it might have drudged up with it from the grave. You don't have to peel it unless you want to remove undead growth. Grate the yam. It will probably fight back, or look at you poignantly to try to remind you that it was once a loveable yam, but it's all a ploy to stop you from eating it. Once you've grated the yam, you're safe from any zombie contamination.

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and mix well. If it seems too watery, add some more chickpea flour. It it seems too dry, add more water. Form into palm-sized patties.

Heat a small amount of oil (probably about 1-2 tsp per batch of latkes, depending on the size of your pan) over medium heat. Cook the latkes until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side.
You can serve these in multiple ways. The one in the back left has soy sour cream and dill (WAY recommended), the one on thr right has soy sour cream and garam masala - you could also serve them with chutney. Or gravy. Or ketchup. Or vegan tartar sauce. Some people like maple syrup on even their savory pancakes but that kinda grosses me out. People like that are probably zombies.

Note: You can probably use normal flour in place of the chickpea flour. I like chickpea flour because I wanted to make this gluten free, plus it adds a sort of "eggy" taste and binds better than wheat flour. But it's not necessary.

*- I do not claim any sort of rights to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I didn't create it or any of the images associated with it. I just played it a lot. Don't sue me. Or I'll sic my sweet potato on you.

other people's recipes

while I love to be creative and make up my own meals, I have too many cookbooks and too many amazing fellow vegan bloggers to go too long without making other people's recipes. This entry is a bunch of recipes I've stockpiled.
These little babies are the Acorn Squash and Black Bean Empanadas from veganomicon. They were deLICious, especially the dough. My only complaint was that by the book, they should be triangular. First of all, no. That is just not how I want my empanadas to look. Second of all, it is SO much harder to make a triangle than a half circle! Observe:

Also from veganomicon, the Pumpkin Saag:
It's a little mushier, I think, than it's supposed to be, because 1.) I used butternut squash instead of pumpkin and 2.) one of the friends I served it to is allergic to peanuts, so I skipped the peanut oil and added some coconut milk for extra flavor. Still delicious and a big hit.

One of my FAVORITE finds from this post: the chocolate covered vegan's Sauerkraut Salad.
Yum! I made it for my mother when my parents visited and we loved it. I left out the bell pepper (because I'm allergic) and tossed in a bit of chopped chard stem for the same effect. It got better as it got older, too (which, I guess, is the point of sauerkraut).

Curried Lime Tofu from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan:
Pretty, flavorful and not as much work as I find a lot of dreena's recipes to be.

And Creamy Chickpea Soup with Moroccan Spice Oil, from the voluptuous vegan!
The soup itself is very simple - it's pretty much hummus, but thinner, and being the chickpea fanatic that I am, I loved it. It was very plain, but the moroccan spice oil added a nice, warm, complex flavor. I was very proud of myself for taking the time to make it! I made a really tiny batch because I didn't know if I'd want to save any - but next time I'll make more.

Have I mentioned how I feel about the voluptuous vegan? I'm torn as to whether I like it... There are some good, simple recipes, but most of them are elaborate and time-consuming. All the ones I've tried have been tasty, though. I guess this would be a fantastic book in it if you have loads of time and are planning and ritzy-but-intimate dinner party.

That's it for the savory stuff. On to sweets!
Double Chocolate Pecan Chippers from the everyday vegan! I used agave syrup instead of sugar, so they spread out while they cooked. I ate too many.

AND FINALLY!
Chai Latte Cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world!

I'm not a big fan of refined sugar, even organic, so the mass amounts of confectionary sugar involved in making frosting scares me. Instead of making mounds of icing, then, I tend to use glazes or ganache. The Brown Rice Caramel Glaze worked brilliantly (although I didn't have soymilk powder; I improvised by decreasing the liquid in the recipe and just simmering down some soymilk for a while). It just took a little longer for the glaze to set:
I brought these to a small dinner party and all 12 of them disappeared.

I've decided to make every cupcake in vegan cupcakes take of the world. Green tea cupcakes are next!

christmas on the homestead

christmas in cooperstown (upstate ny) was pretty normal: my youngest brother woke us all up at 7 so he could open presents, mom and I planned and prepared the day's dishes, siblings helping with occasional chopping and stirring, dad running into town to our store for last-minute ingredients. The menu, all organic:

green beans (vegan)
potato-style sunchoke salad (vegan)
mashed sweet potatoes (vegan)
mashed potatoes (vegan, but nightshades)
mom's stuffing (vegetarian, contains eggs)
roast chicken (ew)
2 kinds of gravy (one vegan, one... not)
chickpea casserole (vegan)
2 kinds of whole-wheat rolls (one kind vegan, one with milk)
pumpkin pie (vegan)
some non-vegan pie

sparkling pear and apple juice

There will be some food preparation pictures later. But after everything was safely stewing or baking or boiling in the kitchen, it was time for what has become a holiday tradition (we did it last year, too, though it wasn't as festive): hauling wood.

For most of the winter, the only heat in my parents' house comes from our woodstove. We use wood from already-dead trees on our property, which means dad has to chop it all up and lug it to the porch to dry before it goes into the woodstove. It's a lot of work for one person, so when dad randomly decided to fell a dead ash at the bottom of our lawn on christmas morning... my sister Liz, my brother Rob and I decided to help. (Mom stayed in to watch the various foodstuffs on the stove, Danny stayed in to play his new videogame.)

Dad and Robby chopped wood:
Robby, ironically, bought me Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness for christmas, as he was so pleased by the evil dead reference in my durianomicon entry.
Liz and I hauled the wood in sleds to the top of our hilly lawn to load the wood onto the porch.
That's Liz, just before she tethered her sled to the porch, and here's your heroine, loading up the wood:
It wasn't all heavy labor, though. Liz and I raced down.
This is a race. I'm losing because she cheated.
This is me being a bad loser and ranting about unfair sled races. The chickens, smartly, stayed away from the wood-chopping and sledding.

But we came inside to delicious smells and quickly threw together this beeeeeeautiful spread:
It's at a weird angle because I wanted to cut out the chicken in the bottom right corner.

Here's the chickpea casserole. It's from christina pirello's cooking with whole foods. I really like that book, if you can' tell, because all of her recipes are simple, low fat, and nightshade free. The casserole has chickpeas, winter squash, carrot, onion and garlic. There's plenty of miso in it, too, and you grate mochi on top, so it's rather cheesy in taste and texture. Mom and I went crazy for it.

Vegan pumpkin pie! I'd never made it before. I've made sweet potato pie, but my sweet potato pie recipe is different from my mother's pumpkin pie... we replaced the egg with ground-up flax seeds - TERRIBLE IDEA. The egg in pumpkin pie is as much for texture as for binding/lift - and the flax seeds made it rubbery. The taste was awesome (especially with a little soy whip!), and my brother wolfed it down, but mom and I decided next time we're either going with tofu or a fruit-and-baking powder mixture (with sweet potato I used sweet potato baby food mixed with baking powder and it worked great) to replace the egg.

soyatoo's whipped cream tastes like a less-sweet version of store-bought whipped cream, the kind that my mother didn't allow in the house when I was a kid (she always made her own). I love it.

I hope you all had a happy christmas. Even if you didn't celebrate it, I hope you at least got the day off from work ^_^

kale soup. with no abbreviations.

I have a love/hate relationship with Rachael Ray. First of all, the gratuitous A in her name and her abbreviations ("EVOO") drive me crazy. But back when the only TV show she had was "30 minute meals," I thought she was pretty interesting. Here's this normal woman, I thought, with no culinary training, who makes quick, healthy (well, there's almost always a salad) meals. Some were vegetarian, many were veganizable.

Then she exploded. Travel eating shows, restaurant rating shows, Dunkin Donuts commercials (ugh!), her own daytime talk show. The love/hate business had ended. Rachael was the enemy. But last week I had some free time in front of the TV and (of course) Rachael Ray was on. And she's kinda adorable. And she made some really neat dishes for which, she kept saying, the recipes were posted on her website. So I went to the website... and came back with a treasure! OR SO I THOUGHT.

It was a kale soup that, once veganized, had no flavor (I have no idea what chicken broth tastes like, but I'm under the impression that even un-veganized this wouldn't've been great). So I changed it, and I present the result to you:

Better-Than-Rachael-Ray's Kale Soup

2 TB Olive Oil
1 medium to large onion, chopped
1 bunch kale, washed and chopped
1 15-oz can (scant 2 cups) cannelini beans
6 cups veggie broth*
1/4 Cup tamari/soy sauce*
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 cup whole wheat spiral or other pretty pasta**

* I use Rapunzel's no-salt-added veggie bouillion; if your broth contains salt, use half as much tamari. You can always add more later if it needs it.
**Gluten-free option: use rice noodles instead of wheat.

In a large pot, saute the onions in oil until translucent. Stir in kale and beans, saute 2-3 minutes. Add veggie broth, tamari, and pepper: bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Add pasta and cook 6-8 minutes, or until pasta is al dente. Add more pepper/tamari to taste. Serve with crusty bread, or, in my case, with salad and orange-glazed turnips.

chick peas are worth the time

Chick peas, garbanzo beans, channa, ceci beans: whatever you call them, I am obsessed with these beautiful little legumes. Think about all of the things you can do with chick peas: stir them in with pasta, sprinkle them into salads, fry them into falafel, simmer them in curries, boil them in soups, fold them into casseroles, roast them to eat like snacks, mash them into hummus or eat them right out of the can.

Wait. Right out of the can?!

While I have to admit that I sometimes take the lazy way out and eat canned chick peas, there is NOTHING to match the flavor of a chick pea that you have prepared yourself. Canned beans are inexpensive to begin with, but dried beans are laughably cheap and super easy to prepare.

I started with a one-pound bag of dried chick peas from my mother's natural food store back in NY:

Since preparing beans on the stove top takes a while, I figured I might as well do the whole bag.

Rinse them and check for debris (dried beans and grains can have pebbles, sticks, and other foreign matter mixed in). Pour into a bowl with water to cover by 2-3 inches.

Leave them for 4-6 hours, or overnight.

They get humungous! these guys were even poking up out of the water.

Drain, then in a large pot, boil chick peas with enough water to cover 1-2 inches. Once boiling, add a piece of kombu (optional, but it reduces bloating and gas for you bean-dreading types) and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 2 hours, or until chick peas are tender. Drain to use right away, or store the chick peas in the fridge in their cooking juices for up to 7-10 days.

Look how much bigger they get!


I didn't want to mask their deliciousness with a recipe, so I prepared the chick peas my faaaaaaavorite way: sprinkled with olive oil and LOTS OF SALT. I ate them right away for dinner.

I had the same thing for lunch today. (don't worry, I had salad on the side, I'm not entirely fixated on the chick peas...)

Fun fact: Roman politician/philosopher Cicero's name comes from the Latin name for chick peas (cicer arietinum)!

Dia de los Muertos!

Mexico's dia de los muertos is my perfect holiday. Lots of eating, particularly sugary foods; lots of skeletons decorating everything; lots of time with your family (living and dead); lots of hanging out in cemeteries. Um... IDEAL. It's also a nice way to extend the general joy I associate with halloween.

It's traditional to have tamales on the dia de los muertos, but I did not want to deal with corn husks, so I made:

Sweet Bean Tamale Casserole
Layers:
This bean recipe, with but with refried black beans, 1/2 cup kidney beans, and a generous sprinkle of cumin and garlic powder.
a thin layer of chopped spinach
1 1/2 cups corn kernels
1/2 cups each chopped green onions and sliced olives
1 cup cornmeal mixed with 2-3 cups water, boiled and stirred until it forms a thick paste. Mix in chili powdwer and salt to taste.
Serve with vegan sour cream and - if you're not allergic - salsa.

It does not come out of the pan very prettily. but it's muy delicioso.

After that, the traditional Pan de Muerto! Most translations call it "bread of the dead," but how much better is it to say Deadbread? So hardcore. Deadbread usually consists of one large loaf, with two strips in an X and a round ball on top. Somehow, this represents bones and a skull. It's FASTER to make rolls, though, so:

Deadbread Rolls

1/4 cup soymilk
1/4 cup earth balance spread (or other vegan butter)
1/4 cup sweetener
replacement for 2 eggs - see note
1 tbsp anise seed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 package (or 2 1/4 tsp) yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-4 tbsp maple syrup, to glaze

Scald (but don't boil) soymilk in a pan on the stove. Stir in butter, sweetener (I used agave nectar), egg replacement (see note), salt, anise seeds. Set aside.

Stir yeast into warm water until dissolved. Let sit 5 minutes, then mix into soymilk/seed mixture.

Gradually add the flour, mixing well until you have a stiff dough. Knead on a floured surface until it is uniform throughout. Roll into a ball, put in a floured or greased bowl under a dishcloth in a warm place for 60-90 minutes.

After that time is up, the dough will have almost doubled in size. Push it down (it makes a satisfying "poof" noise), knead it a bit, then shape into balls slightly smaller than a fist. Use dough to make long, thin snakey bits of dough that you can cross over each roll - these are the "bones" - and crown each one with a little ball - the skull.

Put on a greased baking sheet, then leave them alone again to rise for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Just before baking, glaze each one with a bit of maple syrup. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Mine were a little too golden because "the Office" was on.

Makes 8 rolls.

***NOTE: my favorite vegan replacement for eggs is a flax seed/water mixture. It works really well for binding and rising and is very simple: boil 1 tbsp flax seeds and 3 tbsp water (this is the equivalent of 1 egg) over medium-high heat until the mixture is the consistency of eggs (or boogers). Voila! The only problem with this is that there will be whole flax seeds in your final product - something I like but my father HATES. I hear you can also do this with flaxMEAL with the same proportions - and you don't even have to heat it up.

Here are our rolls, some marzipan skulls I made while waiting for the bread to rise, and brown-rice Horchata:


















Dia de los muertos: SUCCESS!