Saturday Snack: peanut butter and jelly pockets

For the duration of VeganMofo, I'll feature some of my favorite snacks on Saturdays! I'm a big snack person. I get hungry often throughout the day and am always on the lookout for healthy, hearty snacks to bring to work or to slip into my purse. Whole Wheat Peanut Butter and Jelly Pockets from the Kitchn sounded right up my alley. Peanut butter and jelly inside whole-wheat-peanut-butter dough? Yesssss. While the linked-to recipe isn't already vegan, it is very easy to veganize: I swapped agave for the honey and soymilk for the milk. The non-peanut inclined can use any other type of nut/seed butter.

The recipe was delicious, but the steps for forming the pockets seem unnecessarily involved. I do not have the time or interest to thinly roll out 32 separate tiny sheets of dough! I followed the recipe's steps exactly for half of the pockets and decided it was 1.) a lot more complicated than the recipe makes it sound and 2.) a huge amount of work that whose only purpose is to make the pockets look cute. So I gave up on that, and instead shaped the second half of the pockets into mini PB&J calzones. It saved me a lot of work, tastes the same, and actually makes for less jelly leakage during cooking! So the recipe is a hit with me, though next time I'll use it only for the ingredients list, and I'll make up my own steps as I go along.

On the left, the shape you're supposed to make. On the right, my easier, much-recommended "calzone" shape.

This may seem obvious, but I didn't think of it for the first few: when you're applying the PB&J to the dough, start with the peanut butter. Trying to spread peanut butter on top of jelly on top of a soft dough was pointlessly messy and difficult. Also, a full tablespoon of jelly seems like a lot when you're making it, but the jelly sort of absorbs into the dough while it bakes, so anything less than the full amount will get lost.

Sugar kick!

I went out for falafel last night with some friends, which meant I had no leftovers to pack for lunch today. I was running late this morning, so instead of being inventive I threw together a peanut butter sandwich.

But my boss took me out to lunch today! We went to a thai place called the Brown Sugar Cafe, where our waitress was really helpful in regards to figuring out what menu items were vegan. (I had spring rolls and a thai basil stir fry, in case you're wondering, with the best tea EVER... it was orange in color, but I have no idea what it was.)

I finished work STARVING and with no idea what to make for supper. UNTIL I remember my poor dejected sandwich. I stopped at Whole Foods for some fruit - just fruit, I told myself, and ended up splurging on the long-coveted temptation strawberry soy ice cream. I mean, it has fruit in it, right?

Got home and threw together:

Grown-Up PB&J with Red Fruit Salad

DELICIOUS... I couldn't stop myself from taking a bite out of the sandwich before I took a picture ^_^; I'm not going to post a recipe, because all I did was grill the sandwich and add more peanut butter... and strawberries! The fruit salad is pomegranates, strawberries, and banana, with a dollop of strawberry soy yogurt on top.

I definitely prefer to eat pomegranate straight from the fruit, rather than have to pull all the seeds out myself. So much work!

As if that wasn't enough sugar, I wanted to try that ice cream. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed. When I tried it, I tasted more Peach than Strawberry. At first I thought my tastebuds were screwy, but then I read the ingredients... natural peach flavors. gah... I don't really like peach-flavored things. So this flavor was not a big hit. (The Cookie Dough one is really good, though.)

I melted some dark chocolate and soymilk together to make a quick fudge sauce, which made all my problems go away:

It started to melt into the sauce, so I had to eat it quickly!

tomorrow my mother's coming to visit me, and she doesn't really like sweet things, so I'll be healthier then.