Think Thin Tuesday: Vegan Rice Crisp-easies
Do you burn potatoes in the microwave? Do you know the difference between a rolling boil and a simmer? Does even the act of cracking and separating an egg mystify you? Is your idea of making breakfast putting the cereal box next to the milk? Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. When women left the kitchen and entered the workforce we got fat, lazy and lost generations of cultural kitchen knowledge.
No I’m not currently the victim of an alien abduction. I don’t actually mean to blame this epidemic of culinary ignorance on moms; certainly not with mother’s day approaching. I once had a professor who blamed our overweight, convenience food culture on women’s lib. This wasn’t a soapbox about forcing women back into the role of housewife mind you. He was just trying to grab our attention and demonstrate how a shift in family structure created the opportunity for the fast food market, also known as the fat food market, to gain a stronghold. Prior to the 40’s, women stayed at home and family meals were a daily job. Food was made from scratch, at home, and generally was more nutritious as a result. It wasn’t a matter of grabbing a box of processed junk from the drive thru window while juggling teleconference calls. Don’t go rushing off thinking your shrink is right and that all your problems are rooted with dear old mom. There’s no reason Dad can’t stay at home instead and make those meals for the kidlets. Sadly in today’s world having either parent out of the workforce just isn’t really a possibility even when/if a parent wants to.
As a result we’ve got a whole generation to whom seeing Mom or Dad in the kitchen is an anomaly—and as a result we’ve got kids who aren’t learning how to cook at all. Heck even stay-at-home moms are so busy with their kids overloaded schedules that cooking is still likely to fall by the wayside when we have so many convenient options for pre-made meals. It’s all about prioritizing and if someone else can do it then delegate, delegate, delegate…right?
Never let it be said that I don’t try to accommodate even the busiest of lifestyles. I have stretched myself even thinner than usual so I definitely understand the need for something easy to make that takes little time, little effort and little cleanup. One party dessert popular amongst soccer moms for this reason is an American Classic: the Rice Krispy Treat. You can make these with almost no kitchen training whatsoever. The hardest part is melting the marshmallows and this can be done in a microwave—no stove needed! They are also traditionally pretty low in calories and thus folks like them as a more diet friendly dessert. The only problem?
Diet food that’s low on calories is usually low on nutrition too. That’s because foods high in nutrition usually package those vitamins to be absorbed by our bodies—meaning fats or sugars. My theory is that dieting isn’t really worth it when the calories you’re consuming are totally empty. Since Rice Krispies are really just fat, sugar and empty carbohydrates I wondered: could I make these slightly healthier at all to justify them as a diet dessert?
The first step was to eliminate the “Crispy Rice” of a certain name brand cereal well all grew up snapping along with. Instead of using fried bits of white rice, high in fat and low in nutrition, I went for air puffed brown rice instead. You can buy for cheap at Whole Foods. This substitution reduced the fat content of each square by 60% and introduced some fiber. The benefit of airpuffing also means that the brown rice retains most of the vitamins and minerals; one cup has 1/3 of your daily B vitamins. I actually made these during my vegan week so in addition to being low calorie, gluten free they are also totally vegan…and yet still manage to taste like what they are. Thus instead of using butter I used a flax based butter substitute which cut the calories from fat AND reduced the saturated fats. As for the marshmallows…well you can’t replace that sugar but if this were 100% healthy I don’t think I could call it a proper dessert right? Mine do have a little more sugar probably because of the brand of marshmallow but since they also have more B vitamins, zinc, potassium, fiber and less fat and fewer calories…I think I will let that slide.
One last tip: if you aren’t worried about gluten free try using puffed whole wheat, puffed kamut grains or puffed barley instead. You’ll get even more vitamins and fiber from those!
Vegan Rice Krispeasies
An Olivia Original
- 6 cups puffed brown rice cereal
- 1 bag of vegan marshmallows (I used Dandies)
- 3 Tbsp Smartbalance with Flax (this product does contain some soy)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or any flavored extract you like
Prep a 13×9 inch cake pan with lining or a small rubdown with buttery spread.
In a microwave safe bowl heat your marshmallows and butter substitute on high. Watch these carefully and stop periodically to stir and continue heating. Once entirely smooth remove from the microwave. Stir in the extract if you want to add a little oomph of flavor to these treats.
Mix the puffed brown rice cereal into the melted marshmallows. Spread into your prepped pan and let cool for at least 1 hour before slicing and serving.
Vegan Rice Krispeasies: (1 serving – 12 total) 128 calories | 1g Fat (<0.5g Saturated) | 28 carbohydrates (17g sugar) | 1g protein
TraditionalL1 serving – 12 total) 140 calories | 4g Fat (2.5g Saturated) | 28g carbohydrates (14 sugar) | 1g protein
Then I thought about it some more and realized that if you consider insects “people too” you basically have to desist from eating anything manufactured. In fact even growing a backyard garden and employing some organic tricks for pest control would mean impacting and killing the insect population should be disallowed. At what point do you draw the line? In a normal day any plant processing your vegan agave nectar is going to kill a thousand insects simply as a side effect of running the plant. Bugs get in the gears; bugs get in the food; bugs get everywhere and they get filtered out. So I can’t really get on board with the anti-honey vegans. The issue of animal-cruelty hypocrisy has been pretty prescient lately when PETA was exposed for “putting down” up to 
I accept that in the natural order of things some animals eat other animals—and that I am one of those predators. That doesn’t limit my desire to see these animals raised humanely and slaughtered as painlessly as possible. I think of this way: torture is often seen as something worse than death. Keeping someone in a state of constant pain and agony until they desire to no longer exist is horrible and overall we tend to object to torture more vehemently than even death itself. I accept this because, as with the honey issue, finding a way to eliminate any negative effect of our human need to eat on other living creatures is impossible. I’m not convinced that honey farming, especially the small scale local level, is particularly harmful to the mental state of the insects. I do buy locally sourced honey and not just because I try to be a locavore, but because eating local honey has been demonstrated to help with allergies—local pollens and all that.
‘So it is,’ they answered, ‘But we call it lembas or way bread, and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.’
With summer finally starting to peek its head around the corner it’s time to start thinking about planning those wonderful summer cocktail parties. Or at least in my imaginative world where I’m a Manhatten socialite I’m planning those parties. You know the kind. Music. Women in summer dresses. Men in linen suits. China twinkling. The sort of Audrey Hepburn fairytale life that a lot of silly girls like to daydream about. I swear I never was one to imagine the details of my wedding but boy did I ever day dream about my ideal apartment and social gatherings in some upper-east side version of paradise.
At one point in my life I would become essentially paralyzed by these problems and that fed into some nasty anxiety and depression. Now I’m at least able to function day to day without falling to pieces. Yet again another thing I attribute to…Bikram yoga. I know I know I promise this post isn’t about that AGAIN. But I do have to say that it’s the one thing that’s helped me learn how to better manage these situations. After all you have to learn how to refocus when you are trying to balance on your tip toes in a room that hot.
dumbbell was two weeks ago. Just to provide a source of reference. The reason no one ever believes that yoga can build muscle is because most Americans are more familiar with a fairly passive, meditative yoga. Bikram is nothing like that. It is 90 minutes of stretching and compression postures utilizing isometrics in a room heated to 105 degrees with 40% humidity. You ever try doing squats, holding your arms out in front of you, and holding it for 3 minutes? Now do that in a HOT room. It will kick your yoga mocking butt. There’s no staring into crystals and sighing “Ommmmm” in that room.
This show was essentially like an X-files for the 21st century—and in my humble opinion, had many one-ups that came from learning what worked and what didn’t work on the previous paranormal series. Where the X-files underlying theme was the existence of extra-terrestrial life, Fringe followed the concept of the multi-verse i.e. alternate realities. While simultaneously embracing some of the harder elements of sci-fi it also was a show about a much simpler concept: love. While there is a romantic relationship between the pretty people on the show (Joshua Jackon’s Peter Bishop and Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham) the real examination of love is actually that of a Father and Son. It’s a beautiful story that begins with the estranged Dr. Walter Bishop and his son Peter Bishop…and it resolved in a serious tear jerker end.
Dr. Walter Bishop : It’s one of the inherent pitfalls of being a scientist – trying to maintain that distinction… between God’s domain and our own. Sometimes, I forget myself.
Every day I feel like I find another slew of products themed around various fandoms that I absolutely have to have. (Except I don’t and I don’t buy many of them) With geeks becoming “cool” it seems that a number of these products come with high price tags. Sometimes this is because it’s genuinely cool, unique technology that warrants a high price tag. Sometimes it means a hoodie with a flimsy piece of fabric to make a ninja turtle mask for a 20 dollar mark up. There are even high end fashion options running away with my theoretical money. Take for example a line of particularly awesome leggings that come in a variety of geeky flavors and also run at 80 bucks a pop.
A hallmark of what made geeks so awesome in the past was our “do-it-yourself” tricks and projects and so I’m going to encourage my friends to do that this holiday season for gifts. After all if you don’t do anything but gather up old, unwanted things, scribble a star trek quote and hand them out, someone is bound to love it and immortalize it in a collection.
