Roasted Peach Ice “Cream”

I don’t eat ice cream too often, but when I do I love a rich, flavourful variety.  In transitioning to veganism, I have found that soy or other non-dairy products often have an icy or synthetic feel/taste to them.  For a while I thought I’d have to give up ice cream all together.  But then my wonderful husband came to the rescue and bought me the ice cream maker attachment that goes on my Kitchen Aide mixer.  It is a wonderfully simple tool that makes small batches of yummy, flavourful and healthy vegan ice cream. 

Fast forward to this weekend.  Yesterday I was unable to walk past the crates of fresh BC peaches at the farmer’s market.  After a slow wobbly ride home – I somehow managed to load 50 lbs of peaches onto my bike and live to tell the tale – I was faced with trying to figure out what to do with them all.  Last night I was up late peeling, slicing and freezing loads of peaches.   I look forward to peach smoothies throughout the winter!  But I also I wanted to do something a bit more creative with some of them.  I have an ancient copy of Stocking Up by Carol Stoner that my mom used when I was a kid (I just checked and it’s still available on Amazon!) and thumbed through it.  I loved the idea of roasted peach butter, but didn’t really like the recipe in the book and so altered that and used the ones that were bruised from my bunch, and then I made roasted peach ice cream with some of it, using the basic pattern in most of the recipes in The Vegan Scoop by Wheeler del Torro.

I didn’t plan to post this, but it was too delicious not to, so sorry if the quantities are a bit vague – I promise to get better at keeping track of these things. 

Roasted peach butter

·         Peeled chopped peaches (I filled my 9 X 13 Pyrex about 2 inches deep – for the ice cream you’d probably be safe using about four cups).

·         1 T agave nectar

·         1 T canola oil

·         ½ t cinnamon

Stir flavourings into the peaches and roast in a 350 degree oven for about a half an hour, until the peaches are caramelized looking and the juice is a bit syrupy. 

Put entire mixture into a food processor and puree until mostly an applesauce consistency but leaving some peach chunks.  Taste mixture and correct for sweetness and cinnamony-ness. 

Return mixture to oven and bake until you reach a desired thickness stirring every 15 minutes.  This took me about an hour and then I turned off the oven and left the mixture to continue to cook as the oven cooled.

Roasted peach ice “cream”

·         ¼ cup vanilla soy milk

·         2 T arrowroot powder

·         1 container Silk soy cream (473 ml)

·         1 cup roasted peach butter

·         2 T of raw sugar, or to taste

Mix arrowroot powder with soy milk and set aside.

Bring soy creamer, peach butter and sugar to a boil and remove from heat.

Stir in the arrowroot and milk mixture – you’ll notice it thicken almost immediately.

Refrigerate mixture until cooled (2 – 3 hours, I left it overnight)

Make ice cream according to the manufacturer’s instructions on your ice cream maker, freeze for a few hours and enjoy. 

My husband has almost eaten the entire batch already!

A bit more about me...

So what do I want to write about in my blog.  I think that I need to start with where I’m at right now.  First and foremost, I want to eat in a way that is life affirming, for myself, animals and the planet.  I am currently striving to eat animal products no more than twice a week.  Using T. Colin Campbell’s guidelines, I hope to keep these quantities at below 10% of my daily intake.  While eventually I hope to be completely vegan, this seems more realistic for me right now.

When I talk about eating animal foods, I don’t differentiate between flesh and animal “products”.  If vegan literature has taught me anything, it is that eating dairy or eggs is no different from eating meat.  Animals die for both, but in eating animal “products” we are somehow divorced from this death, believing that we are somehow innocent of eating an actual dead animal.  In some ways I find it more honest to just eat the meat.

I do make every effort to ensure that the animals who I am consuming are treated humanely and live a life with little suffering.   Many websites and investigations will tell you that merely eating organic and free range tells us little about the quality of the animals’ lives.  So I dutifully go to the farmer’s market and buy from farmers who’ve been humane society certified.

But why eat anything that comes from animals at all?  While I do hope to eliminate them completely, I find this daunting and difficult.  And really, that’s the point of this blog.  There are several areas that I feel I need to become more comfortable in before I can be fully vegan. 

First, nutrition, while there are numerous people claiming that it’s easy to get all the nutrition one needs from a vegan diet, I believe that my intense cravings during pregnancy were a sign that I wasn’t.  I would like to better research and understand nutrition and how to get the most out of my diet. 

Secondly, my husband is not a vegan and has no intention of becoming one.  I have asked him to make a commitment to eating only bits of animals that were humanely raised and so agreed to cook these for him as part of that bargain.  This makes it difficult for me to never eat these myself.

Finally, I do find that there are times when my convictions go out the window and I find myself eating foods I wouldn’t normally eat.  It’s as though an inner rebel finds any dietary restriction too constraining and has to rebel.  I don’t know why, but I want to figure it out.  In the meantime, I find that permitting myself small amounts of animal foods prevents binges on foods that I really don’t want to eat, such as restaurant chicken wings (which I know come from factory farms).

So that’s where I’m at today.  This blog is my open journey to continue to improve my diet for the planet, the animals and my own well being.

Getting Started

I have been thinking about creating this blog for a long time.  I became a vegan about two years ago after slowly transitioning to veganism for about a year before that.  Three months later I was pregnant and craving first eggs and then chicken...  Well, let's just say that the veganism went out the window.  Now, after delivering a healthy baby and breastfeeding for 10 months (I'm still breastfeeding but it's slowed down enough that my diet's feeling back to normal), I feel like I'm in a place to move back to veganism. 

But I'm worried.  I have struggled with food in many ways for a long time.  I have a tendency to overeat junk food and while my meals are very healthy, overall my diet is haphazard. 

I have read books and blogs, listened to podcasts and found that there are few places for people like me.  People who want to be vegan, but don't find it as easy as those who, "Changed my diet overnight and never looked back."  I struggle with cravings, wanting meat or other animal stuff.  I struggle with fears about my health.  And I struggle with trying to cook for a myself and non-vegan husband and to create the healthiest diet for my growing baby.

In this blog I hope to openly discuss these struggles and the solutions and research that I find to them.  I also plan to post vegan recipes.