When not searching for treasure...

I've lived in St. Paul for over 9 years now, but until now I've never paid much attention to the St. Paul Winter Carnival Treasure Hunt. Actually, I've made fun of the folks out searching for their precious medallion.

Since Friday night, however, I've been one of the obsessed. When Mike, the kids, and I haven't been out searching (sporting flashlights and compasses) , we've been checking the treasure hunters' message board or discussing the clues. So my culinary adventures have suffered for want of time and motivation to do anything other than find the prize ($5,000 + over $1,000 worth of groceries).

To fuel my searching, I've resorted to things like cold cornbread smeared with Earth Balance or Chocolate chip oat cookies with gobs of peanut butter in between. Obviously food has been an afterthought.

Here are some things I made last week but haven't blogged about yet:

Dreena Burton's Peanut Sesame Hummus from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan
I followed the recipe almost exactly except I drizzled flax oil on top. Very tasty stuff.
This was a pretty quick chili and cornbread dinner. The chili was made in the pressure cooker with kidney beans, red beans, and black beans, canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, and spices. Simple, but good.

On top I put the Cilantro Lime Cream from Veganomicon.
Wow! I subbed 1/2 soy yogurt for the silken tofu because I hate silken tofu so much...and I only had 1/2 the amount of cilantro called for. Mine ended up tasting more like Garlic Lime Cream, but it totally rocked. It was great on top of the chili, on tortillas, on cornbread, or on my finger.
The cornbread was a basic recipe changed to use oat flour and cornmeal.

I've been really enjoying using oat flour lately. It tastes so rich and nutty. It's definitely ideal for cookies. Here are the Wheat free chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon that call for oat flour:

This is what they looked like before we ate them all.