Aimee and I met in college and became even closer friends
when she started seriously dating my friend Matt. We lived together as roommates for a few
years after school until she got married and I consider her one of my best
life-long friends. I can’t believe we've now been friends for a decade; the years just keep flying by!
Aimee is a 30-year-old housewife/stay-at-home mom. She is also an artist who sews, knits, draws
and creates mixed media pieces when time and a lack of procrastination allow.
Painting her nails is a favored activity as well as
spending way too much time on Pinterest, reading blogs, and Instagraming
pictures. She is married to a crazy-talented creative guy with whom she
has had 2 children, a daughter who she holds in her heart, and a son who she gets
to hold here on Earth.
As far as her culinary pursuits, she is obsessed with
baked goods – usually baking something 2 -3 times a week, sometimes more!
She is a vegetarian and cooks vegan (no meat, dairy, or eggs) at home.
Aimee has been a vegan for about 11 years, making the choice to be vegan
during the summer of 2002, right before her sophomore year of college. Making the choice to eat vegan was based on
an effort to eat what she saw as the healthiest diet.
Although, she wouldn't call her college diet 100% healthy
(too much vegan-based junk food!), Aimee made many positive changes in regards
to healthful eating in 2007 when she hopped on the raw food bandwagon. Key components of that change were daily
green smoothies, zucchini pasta, and a major decrease in her white flour
intake.
Aimee’s diet has ebbed and flowed through many vegan
stages. She now has settled on an
importance of whole foods, adequate water intake and daily raw salads and or
smoothies. She is not a total purist and
loves desserts (which she does bake with white flour as well as a variety of
other flours) and has her guilty pleasure for potato chips, which she indulges
in fairly often.
Aimee’s husband, Matt, is not vegan but he has been very supportive
of her cooking vegan at home and enjoys it as well. She’s even turned him
into a green smoothie and carrot-juicing convert! Along with the birth of
her son in 2013, she decided to ease up on her strict vegan diet to allow room
for enjoying the occasional doughnut, pancake breakfast, and playdate
cookie. Her main reasoning behind that decision is to be able to be flexible for her son and so that he would not miss out on
some of the special memories that she looks back on from her childhood.
Aimee believes that good memories often go hand-in-hand
with good food, such as surprise doughnuts, or piling in the car with the family
to get waffles for breakfast. Her happy
childhood food memories mainly consist of hotcakes from McDonalds! They were so big and she could never eat more
than one, but she got them every chance she could. Perhaps more than her son missing out on
those times, she was worried that she would be the one missing out enjoying
those moments alongside of him. And let’s face it; chocolate croissants from
French bakeries are incredible, even if they aren't vegan!
Motherhood has definitely changed Aimee’s time in the
kitchen. Before either of her pregnancies, she loved to create recipes
and even dreamed of authoring a cookbook. She’s not completely sure a
cookbook is in the cards for her future, but you never know! She still
gets the “create a recipe bug” from time to time and her husband is notorious
for coming up with amazing recipe ideas that she sometimes sees if she can pull
off on her own. Sometimes his ideas are
so good, she wishes he was the family “chef”, but she’s also not sure she would
want to give up her hard-earned kitchen street cred!
These days her passion in the kitchen is to make good
food to enjoy with her family and friends. She loves baking for others
and for herself; one of her favorite things to do in the kitchen is to “veganize”
recipes. She mostly focuses on
converting baked goods, but sometimes experiments with main dishes as
well. With baking, eggs and dairy are
fairly easy to swap as long as you don’t have something like pavlova in mind!
Aimee isn't sure how her (or her family’s) diet will change
in the coming years, but her constant wish for us is for them to eat mindfully
well, and to also create a life of moments around the table that will become
cherished memories.
Q&A With Aimee
Why do you cook at home? I think the pay-off of
cooking at home is one of its charms. The pride you feel when dinner is a
success and then adding that recipe to your dinner arsenal is truly a good
feeling. The joy that comes from your
children eating and enjoying healthy food that you made for them is
fantastic. Or in my case, if it gets into
my one-year-old son's mouth and he willingly takes another bite with no head
shaking (this solid food thing has not been the easiest), I consider it a win.
Cooking sometimes becomes more work than play, and honestly I will jump at most
chances to eat out or to pass the dinner duties onto my husband. However,
I truly love trying new recipes or cooking a favorite meal and reaping the
rewards of my family and friends enjoying my food and the pride I have in
serving a winning dish.
What is your favorite ingredient to work with and why?
Coconut products are some of my favorite ingredients when it comes to
baking. Coconut oil is a great
substitute for butter and I love the slight coconut flavor that the unrefined
oil gives to my favorite scone recipe (check out the recipe below!). I am really excited about attempting to
create croissant dough using coconut oil instead of butter. Just this past week
I have started using more coconut milk (the kind in the carton) instead of the almond
milk I usually reach for. The deep
creamy flavor has really shown through in the cakes and pancakes I've made. I
also love that I can make a thick cream out of canned coconut milk that we have
enjoyed with scones and with other recipes.
If you could travel anywhere in the world just to try
that country or city's cuisine, where would you go? Indian food is my favorite cuisine and it
would be amazing to try some absolutely authentic dishes. My husband and I
often watch foodie shows that are specific to Indian cooking and we "ooo
and ahh" the whole time. I would also love to go to France specifically
to eat pastries and drink coffee in their cafes. That sounds like a dream,
right? As far as American cities go, there are so many I’d like to visit
just to experience the cuisine. Our family bases vacations around the
food we will get to eat, so we often talk about going to New York City,
Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas to try different vegan restaurants and
bakeries.
This
scone recipe I'm sharing below is really versatile and is a great starting ground for any flavor
of scone you may want. I want to try oatmeal chocolate chip with a
bit of peppermint extract soon. Raspberry
and dark chocolate is also a yummy combination!
The scones look great and sound easy! I always thought making scones would be difficult but perhaps I'll give these a try this weekend. I'm not really in to baking because I feel like my product never turns out as good as most other people's and I feel like I can't just dump ingredients like I do when I cook. I have to measure...ugh, so daunting! Maybe Gwen and I will give this a try this weekend! Thanks for sharing, Aimee! Miss you!
ReplyDeleteI used to be really intimidated by scones too, but they turned out to be so easy! They're almost as easy as a "dump" baking recipe ;). The real key is just not to overmix so they stay tender. Good luck trying the recipe!
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