Flax Your Baking Muscles Contest Starts Today

Time to "Flax" Your Baking Muscles!

If you bake with flax and have a great recipe, put it to the test to win a year's supply of flax from

FlaxUSA, the country's leading producer of ground, roasted and whole seed flax from America's flax heartland, North Dakota.

Never tried baking with flax? Well it's time you did! Flax is a great substitute for eggs and butter, not to mention the most potent plant based source of heart-healthy Omega 3s. Click here to learn more on how to bake with flax.

If you don't want to click above, let me give you a brief heads up on baking with flax from my experience:

5 tablespoons of already ground flax, or grind 3 tablespoons in a blender or spice grinder, mixed with 1/2 cup water substitutes for 2 eggs in baking. It works best as a binder, and not as well as a leavener. So no Angel Food Flax cakes -- yet.

Do not mix the flax long before mixing with other ingredients or you could end up with a very stiff, yet sticky mess.

Use golden, not brown, flax in lighter colored baked goods. Flax works well in cookies, cakes, muffins, quick breads, yeast breads, and more. Let's see what you come up with.

Your recipe must be original, or so highly adapted that you are not accidentally "stealing" some else's recipe. The recipes will be judged on use of flax, and most of all taste. Since this is a vegetarian blog, I prefer recipes without meat, especially in cupcakes. Your recipe can be for sweet or savory baking. So thinking out of the box (but not too far) is encouraged.

Entering is easy. Just post the title of your recipe here on this blog in the comment section (so that this blog doesn't get clogged with recipe text) and send a copy of the actual recipe with your email address, blog URL, if you have one, a photo (optional) to flax@crierpr.com. All recipe submissions become property of The Veggie Queen and FlaxUSA.

I will test the recipes with Stephanie Stober, the "Flax Queen" of North Dakota (and co-founder of flaxUSA). Grand prize is a 12 month supply of flax (ground or whole seed; you choose). Three runners up will win three 12 ounce shakers of Ground Flax Sprinkles and three packages of Roasted Golden Flax Seed Snacks.

The contest starts today, February 24th and ends March 11th, so get cracking - or baking as it were.

Winners will be notified on March 16th. If you have any questions, please email me or post a comment.

Looking forward to reading about your wonderful creations. Good luck.

The Veggie Queen Makes More Raw Pie and the Delight of Ripe Fruit

Since the local cherry season has concluded, my next raw pie is likely to be nectarine or peach. Today I bought the slightly bruised fruit, which means that it's really ripe and ready to eat, to use for slicing, freezing and making more raw pies. Funny how the fruit was in fairly decent shape when I bought it but by the time that I got it home in my plastic bag inside my big farmer's market bag, it was kind of squishy. So, I had to do a lot of quality control to be sure that the fruit was still edible. OMG, it was so good that I think that I ate a lot of it in the process.

What I want to remind you is that your food will never taste better than what you started with, and this seems to be most evident with fruit. You cannot likely purchase really ripe fruit at your supermarket so find a farm stand, a farmer, farmer's market or CSA that can provide ripe fruit in season. It can't be beat. You don't even have to make raw pie with it.

But if you want to make the pie you can get some almond flour from Angie at http://www.nutnother.com. Imade a small pie and used 1 cup almond flour and 2 tablespoons agave syrup. I mixed it and pressed it into my pie shell. I then made cashew cream. Don't ask for specifics at the moment, at my computer is still indisposed. Top with the fresh fruit and a drizzle of lemon juice (which was unncessary with the cherries as their cut sides were down). I would also like to try this with halved apricots.

I have go now as I am getting ready to drool on the keyboard. Oh boy, do I love summer fruit.

Raw Cherry Pie, Vegetarian Summerfest in Pennsylvania and A Crashed Computer

As I prepared to leave town, I had an abundance of cherries so I made raw cherry pie. You would see the photo here but my tale of woe, in Pennsylvania, is that right before my talk on Mushrooms as Medicine (wish that you could protect computers with mushrooms), my computer was attacked by a virus. But back to the raw cherry pie.

I made a crust with almond flour and agave nectar. Next I made a raw cashew cream with just a bit of vanilla extract and orange zest and spread that inside. Next came the sliced, pitted raw cherries with the cut side down. And that was it. It looked beautiful and tasted great. And I really did take a photo but that has disappeared into the ether, at least for now.

I headed off to Johnstown, PA on a Tuesday night and arrived very early Wednesday morning. But my suitcase took a detour to Phoenix and Omaha (now why would you want to go there? I asked). It arrived at 2 a.m. 1st lesson learned -- always pack what you might need for the rest of day in your carry-on bag. I survived just fine, as I bought a toothbrush.

Everything seemed to be going great at the conference, which I will post about separately later, until Saturday when the aforementioned computer crash occurred. And still, it's not been the end of my life -- just a big bump on the current path.

People ask why I'm still smiling when a big chunk of my work (My mantra now involves the words "back up") seems as if it might be nonexistent? My answer, "What are my other choices?" So, I am smiling and enjoying life to the best of my ability. And I am very able.

The Veggie Queen in New York City

I was in New York City recently where I had a chance to meet my friend Fran Costigan http://www.francostigan.com/, also known as The Dairy-Free Dessert Diva, on a cool, rainy early Spring day. But seeing Fran certainly brightened things up. And the fact that we were both completely engaged and chatting away while having a pot of tea in a tea salon at The Chelsea Market made the time fly by.

Fran took me on a tour of the market which is an old building filled with food-related shops and The Food Network Studios. While we were there someone was conducting a food tour of some of the shops, similar to what Fran and I did but ours wasn't structured.

Judging from what I saw, most New Yorkers are living on white flour and sugar -- there were at least 4 bakeries and a candy shop within a short distance of one another. My favorite stop, other than the expensive tea shop ($6 for a pot of tea), was Amy's Bakery which makes bread of many yummy types. I got a pumpernickel rye sunflower raisin breadstick that was truly delicious. The bread was dense but not heavy with a thick, chewy crust. I bought 2 of them and was actually pleased that I hadn't bought a loaf for I surely would have eaten it all.

The saddest part of meeting Fran was that we had so little time together but we'll meet again at Vegetarian Summerfest in June in Johnstown, PA. I would have loved to have tasted something that Fran baked. What she suggests is: Eat clean, green, whole and save room for good desserts! I concur.

Wild Fermentation and More

This has been my week of learning and meeting allies in the movement to help people eat better food. I met Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau and Sandor Ellix Katz, fellow authors.

Miyoko and Colleen are fellow McDougall program http://www.drmcdougall.com/ teachers. Miyoko taught Japanese one day and holiday dishes the other. Miyoko's books are The New Now and Zen Epicure and Japanese Cooking--Contemporary and Traditional. Colleen just released her first book The Joy of Vegan Baking and has a great website: Compassionate Cooks http://www.compassionatecooks.com/ on which she features her weekly free podcast on vegan issues.

It was great fun to watch both Miyoko and Colleen, as it gave me a new appreciation for what it takes to present to a group. Sharing food tips and samples invites people in but you also need to capture their attention.

The day following those 2 meetings, I was a participant in a fermentation class with Sandor Ellix Katz, the author of Wild Fermentations and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. Sandor is a fascinating fellow, I don't think eccentric truly captures his spirit, and an article about him and the class will appear in the future on Jason Wyrick's website http://www.veganculinaryexperience.com/. (Jason occasionally teaches the McDougall program.)

Katz embraces the Weston A. Price philosophy and is likely not a big McDougall fan but I do know that we can agree that eating fresh, local vegetables is good, especially if they are fermented. Everyone needs to embrace their own philosophy and eating style. If it works well for you, then do it. If what you are doing doesn't work, try other methods.

Learning how to ferment vegetables is quite easy. Check out http://www.wildfermentation.com/ for more information about it. If you've heard of probiotics and prebiotics, these are the original forms -- they occur naturally, no pills, capsules or liquids needed. Also, you don't really need special equipment such as fancy crocks. I do my fermentation in wide mouth quart or larger canning jars set in a bowl to catch the liquid. If you want to know more about this from me, please feel free to email me at jill@theveggiequeen.com.

This is a very busy time of year but I hope that you will take the time to nourish yourself in a very caring and loving way with lots of fresh food. Busy often translates into not eating well and grabbing things on the go. Keeping healthier foods around helps with that issue.

I know that I tend to eat what I've got (since it's incredibly difficult to eat what you don't have) around. Lately, I've had lots of wonderful leftovers from classes -- things like Fruited Wild Rice, Indian-Spiced Root Vegetable Soup, Mediterranean Greens, Red Rice, Braised Tofu and Vegetables and more. Taking the time to cook for yourself, as if you are an invited guest, will actually turn you into one. This is my gift to you -- treat yourself like a queen (or king). It's what I do, and it works.

Dairy-Free Dessert Diva Makes Vegan Twinkies on Nightline

My friend Fran Costigan will be my roommate at the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference in Chicago in a few weeks. The most exciting part, other than the fact that we like each other, is that she was just filmed for news show Nightline demonstrating how to make vegan "twinkies". Her new website http://www.francostigan.com also looks great.

I met Fran at an IACP conference in Phoenix where we ended up sitting next to each other at lunch. We both pulled out our special tags so that enable us to get vegetarian meals at these conferences. Really nice of them to think of that for us foodies who prefer "real food". The sad part is that often the food is prepared by hotel or convention center catering services and what they offer to feed us is woefully inadequate, especially if you are a vegan.

My sister just told me about a lunch that she went to where all the other people got sandwiches with fillings such as roast beef or turkey with bags of chips but what they had for the vegetarians was a plain salad with tomato. No bread to go with it, nothing else. I told her that it must be a plot to starve the vegetarians and maybe they'll go away. She said what she thinks is more likely the truth -- they just don't think about it. One of my hot buttons.

Why don't they think that vegetarians care? Maybe it's because most meat eaters don't care as long as they get their food, be it lousy sandwiches or not. This is not truly the case since there are conscious meat eaters but it's almost an oxymoron. If they were really conscious, wouldn't they choose not to eat meat? (I do realize that I am being a bit judgmental but I can be since I am the writer here.)

Back to Fran... She's wonderful and I love what she does to make truly tasty vegan desserts that anyone wants to eat. Too bad that we won't have an oven in our hotel room. Oh, but she is teaching a cupcake class immediately before boarding the plane. Maybe I could talk her into saving one and bringing it for me -- in case it's one of those instances that there isn't much for this vegetarian to eat.