Turmeric Milk

The idea for this milk came from My Edible Sunshine's Instagram one day. Turmeric has great anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Since I had been feeling sickly (too many cookies + freezing cold weather during December), I figured I would give this tea a try. You can definitely taste the turmeric but it's surprisingly subtle, and the honey balances it out nicely.

Fast forward to Vietnam!! I discovered that my grandpa also drinks turmeric tea! By turmeric tea, I mean he just mixes the turmeric with water. He also eats bee pollen (like me!) and bird's nest water (ew). I promise you, my version is a lot tastier.

The practice of medicine is dramatically different here and it has taken me awhile to get used to it. I agree with the practice of Eastern medicine (herbs, acupunture, and food as medicine), but I can't agree with the rampant use of antibiotics plus other drugs. Then again, it's a third world country. What can I expect?

On the other hand, the people here know so much more about food than I do. It's just common knowledge on what foods cure which ailments. Sore throat? Drink some aloe vera. Stomach pains? Tapioca+water. In that way, the pharmacist here has been teaching me so much. Lastly, there's a lot of focus on what foods make you hot (mango, longan, rambutan) or cold (coconut water, avocado, watermelon, and green mango). If there's an imbalance, then you're more susceptible to sickness. It's a pretty cool system that teaches you to be in tune with yo body! So now you know!

 

Turmeric Tea (one serving)

1 1/4 cup cashew milk
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon
1-2 tsp raw honey

Warm up the cashew milk in a little saucepan until lukewarm. You don't want it to get too hot since heat destroys the awesomeness of the enzymes in the raw honey. Meanwhile, mix the spices with the honey in the bottom of a large mug. Once the milk is warm enough, pour into mug while stirring to incorporate all the goodness. Add more honey if desired. Drink up first thing in the morning.
An alternative is making cashew cream to store in the fridge and then mixing it with the spices and honey. Then adding some warm water to the mix.

Ricotta Cake

This is a lot like a normal pound cake but with a delicious secret ingredient - ricotta! The ricotta flavor is definitely noticeable but it's hard to guess what you're tasting. I made this loaf to bring to a morning meeting at work, and it was all gone by the end of the meeting. I love pound cake, and this is a surprisingly great variation.

Ricotta Cake

Slightly adapted from Sweet Bites

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2½  teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup (1 1/2  sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1½  cups fresh whole-milk ricotta

1½  cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs (at room temperature)

1 vanilla bean

1½  teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Cookies and Cream Cake

This is a seriously late post, but I seemingly misplaced my recipe somewhere in the Highland Park house. Things are a little slow nowadays in the pharmacy, so I had time to dig up a recipe from online. The photo credit goes to Kate, who took great pictures at the wedding. They're the only documentation I have of the cakes! My sister and I made about 7 cakes total, most of them vegan. I will be posting more cake recipes from the wedding in the future.
Anyways, my duties have been shifting to English teacher here! Lots of people want to talk to me to practice and I've taken on 2 students so far. I don't feel I'm qualified to teach although I'm perfectly willing to chat. In exchange for my time, I get fed. The ladies here cook me lots of food (vegan!) and pick up fruit for me from the market. I'm really grateful because lately I haven't been into eating meat. The hospitality here is phenomenol. Today I got coconut water and some apple-like fruit. Nick also gets food just because he's my husband and the ladies think he's cute. In fact, everyone that we have met has decided Nick is the nicest person ever. Our co-workers infer this via his mannerisms as he can't actually speak to anyone. As for me, everyone has decided I'm nuts which is about right. I get a pass because of my Vietnamese blood, though. Haha.

This recipe is from the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe and made it twice. Then I added oreos to the batter. Can you believe I could not find a single vegan vanilla oreo cake on the internet?

	1	cup almond milk
	1	tsp. apple cider vinegar
	1¼	cups all-purpose flour
	2	Tbsp. cornstarch
	¾	tsp. baking powder
	½	tsp. baking soda
	½	tsp. sea salt
	⅓	cup canola oil
	¾	cup pure cane sugar
	2	tsp. vanilla extract

10 Chocolate Newman-O's

Directions

Prepare 2-8 inch round baking pans by greasing them, lining the bottoms with parchment paper, and greasing again. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Measure out the almond milk in a liquid measuring cup. Stir in the apple cider vinegar and let sit for 5 minutes to curdle whle measuring other ingredients.
Place the Newman-O's in a large freezer bag and go to town crushing the cookies. You don't want them to turn into crumbs, more like small to medium chunks depending on what you like.
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a small mixing bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until uniform. Then fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until no streaks of flour remain. Do not overmix! Then fold in the crushed cookies.
Pour the batter into one of the prepared baking pan. Bake for about 20 minutes until a toothpick can be removed from the center cleanly.
While the first cake was baking, I made the batter for the second cake. I did this instead of doubling the recipe because the cake was on the smaller side so I decided to turn it into a layer cake. Bake the second cake and let both cool completely. Then remove them from the pan by turning onto a cooling rack and removing parchment paper.
While the cakes are cooling, make the frosting. There's really no exact recipe. I think I used vegan margarine (you can also use flavor neutral coconut oil), powdered sugar, vanilla, and almond milk. My sister was in charge of the frosting. We were trying to re-create that sugary Oreo filling. She just played around with the ingredients until they reached a perfect consistency.
After frosting and layering the cake, we froze them on little cardboard circles covered in aluminum foil. After 20 minutes or so, we wrapped the cake with plastic wrap and foil until the day before the wedding. It was a lot of work and without my sister I couldn't have done it!

Pumpkin Buckwheat Pancakes

This week, we celebrated our friend Hiến's birthday (it was his first big birthday celebration, ever). I also learned how to do accents. And the squiggly Spanish one? We have that too!! I've been making some bulletin boards for the pharmacy. I know, glamorous work. I'm actually enjoying having an office job for once. Since I'm here and I'm basically extra labor, I might as well make the place look nice. Anyways, birthdays are not a big deal here! Since we're American, Nick and I decided to throw a birthday party complete with pizza and cake. Some friends threw in some fried rice and papaya salad so it had a nice Vietnamese touch. Oh and plenty of Saigon 333 beer (which you don't ever want to drink too much of). Not sure what's in that beer.... I rode on the back of a motorcycle for 3 miles clutching a large strawberry cake with one hand and praying I wouldn't drop it. It survived! Our friend, Trinh, got to try pizza for the first time too. She was not a fan, haha.
Valentine's day is also this week, which does exist here because- commercialization. Nick and I went to a French restaurant owned by a chef from Avignon. It was adorable. Provencal tablecloths and lots of olive oil. The chevre chaud salad was phenomenal.
For actual Valentine's day, we're going to go eat with a bunch of our cousins and possibly watch a Vietnamese horror movie. Movies here are $3.50, and that's for the weekend. Because of the low ticket price, we can splurge on kettle corn (my cousins love it) and butter popcorn (I ate the whole box by myself). They also have Vietnamese root beer here!!! The things we have in common. 
 My sisters and I made these pancakes from Food for Life for our Christmas morning breakfast. To tell you the truth, I actually mixed up the batter while yelling at my sisters and Nick to come help instead of watching Dr. Who. By the time they got up to help, the batter was mixed and ready to fry up. It was kind of a group effort. I upped the sugar content for my sisters.

Pumpkin Buckwheat Pancakes 
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Pinch of salt
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup pumpkin puree

Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl with a wire whisk. Make a well. Add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. Fry in a saucepan until golden brown. As pancakes are cooking, place the finished ones on a baking tray in 200 degree oven to keep warm. Serve with butter and some maple syrup. Maybe some cinnamon sugar too.