Low Fat Vegan Apple Cake

I made an apple cake last weekend for Rosh Hashanah. I suppose the responsible thing to do would be to post it before the holiday was over, but it's a good fall cake too! It's dense, which I like in a bundt cake. The texture is great and it holds up well.



Low Fat Vegan Apple Cake
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 45 minutes

Serves 12-18

• 1/4 c. flax meal mixed with 1/4 c. water
• 3 c. all purpose flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1  heaping t. cinnamon
• 1/2 t. cardamom
• 1 c. applesauce
• 1/4 c. canola oil
• 1/4 c. maple syrup
• 2 t. vanilla
• 3 apples, chopped

Preheat oven to 350. In a small bowl combine flax meal and water and beat vigorously until well combined. In a mixing bowl combine flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, and spices. Add the flax mixture, applesauce, oil, syrup, and vanilla, stirring as you go. The batter will be very thick, so if you have a stand or handheld mixer, this is a good time to use it. Fold in the apples (I used two granny smith and one Gala and I didn't bother to peel them). Grease a bundt pan and transfer the cake batter to the bundt pan. Use a rubber spatula to pat it down. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Shana Tovah! And I won't judge if you eat a slice for breakfast... I mean, it is a holiday.

Greek Fest 5k

Oklahoma City has a pretty great annual Greek Festival. I've been before and there's dancing, art, tours of a Greek Orthodox church, but most importantly, food. OMG, the food. One of my favorite bloggers,  Jennie runs with a group called Running to Drink and I imagine I'm the lone member of a Running to Eat All the Hummus group. Anyone want to join a hummus fan club/running group? The bib fee for this race includes free entry into the festival (ie, hummus), so when I saw that I immediately logged into SignMeUp.com and registered.

The race started at 8:30, which seemed a little risky to me. Sometimes in mid-September Oklahoma is cooling down already, but sometimes it is still thousands of degrees, so I felt great anxiety about signing up for a race that started two full hours after my normal running start time. It turns out I was worried for nothing because the weather was great for running. It was 59 degrees and drizzly.

I woke up a little before 7, got dressed, gave the cats some ear scratches, and ate a banana spread with peanut butter. I got to the race site a little before 8, picked up my bib and chip, and milled around stretching. I met up with a guy from work, Robert, who runs a 5k just about every weekend this time of year. I jogged a little bit to warm up and then it was time to start! Robert and I started together, but he took off ahead of me around the half mile mark. The course ran down a main street into a neighborhood, so there wasn't much scenery to enjoy. Around mile 1.5 I caught up with Robert and then passed him. I knew I was pretty close to the front and passed a woman about my age who I'd been neck and neck with for about a mile. Around mile 2.5 I started to feel a little nauseous. This has happened to me before at 5ks. I don't know if it's from pushing myself harder than I'm used to, or nerves leading up to the race, but I knew I wasn't far from the finish so I backed off a little bit on speed and just concentrated on keeping my feet moving. The girl I passed earlier came out of nowhere and was ahead of me. With the way I was feeling I knew I couldn't catch back up with her and she ended up finishing just a few seconds faster than I did.

At the finish I looked down at my GPS and it said 24:13. A PR! I was surprised when the results were posted and it showed my gun time at 24:48. I would still be perfectly happy with 24:48, but it seemed like a big difference. Several people were complaining that their gun time was off their GPS time and everyone was saying it was by about 30 seconds. The race organizer blew it off at the time, but I got a call later from someone with the timing company who said that the person who shot the starting gun was using a watch without a second hand, so they just assumed it was at 8:30:00, but many people had come to them saying their time was off. They were calling people to ask if they had used a GPS and then used that the determine when the starting gun was actually fired. The results online put my time at 24:13, so that's what I'm sticking with!

I ended up as the third place women's finisher and won a $15 gift card to a local running store. I drank some water, talked to Robert for a bit, and then got in my car. The festival didn't actually start until noon, so anyone wanting to attend is supposed to wear their race shirt when they go back for free admission. Saturday is normally my long run day, so I planned to run again after the race. I drove to Lake Hefner, which is on my way home and has nice trails for bicyclists, runners, and walkers. On the way there I drink some more water and ate a pack of Justin's chocolate peanut butter. My first mile at the lake was pretty rough, but after that I got into a rhythm and the time flew. I intended to get in 5 more miles, but I didn't turn around soon enough so by the time I made it back to my car I had run about 5.6 miles. 3.1+5.6= 8.7 AND I get to go back to the Greek Festival this weekend and eat my hummus. Great Saturday!

24 Good Deeds, Days 10 and 11

18. Collect school supplies. I love school supply shopping. I think when I was in school it might have even ranked above back to school clothes shopping. I found a local organization that collects donations for a teachers' warehouse. Using their wish list, I headed for Target and picked up Kleenex, crayons, notebooks, and reward stickers. I missed the most recent drive, but I have all the supplies packed up and ready for the one in September.

19. Donate to Goodwill. I took a bag of donations to our local collection center.

20. Give to the homeless. The closest main intersection to my house is a gathering space for a lot our OKC's homeless population. We were even featured on The Lost Ogle recently. There's one guy who stands outside the 7-Eleven and asks for very specific amounts of money. On Tuesday I stopped for a drink on my way out of town and he asked me for $0.85. I went inside and bought my drink and gave him a few dollars when I came out. I hope the fact that it wasn't $0.85 exactly isn't an issue...

21. Deliver supplies to Wild Heart Ranch. My dad and I share a birthday, so the day before I went to the rural town where he lives so we could spend it together. One very cool thing about this town is that it's home to Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rescue that takes in orphaned, injured, or otherwise unable to care for themselves wild animals. They nurse them back to health and release the animals. Before I made the trip, I got our their website and looked at their wish list. My dad and I went to the feed store and each bought a bag of crimped oats (two good deeds for the price of one!) and delivered them.

22. Bake for the staff at WHR. The staff of Wild Heart Ranch has been working non-stop all summer caring for the orphans that come with spring and summer. I baked a batch of muffins and delivered them when we delivered the oats.

23. Bake for a bake sale. Remember when I said my main goal was to cook for as many people as possible? I baked muffins for the Light the Night bake sale at work. The sale ended up raising almost $500 for leukemia research.

24. Buy a drink for a stranger. This was the only time in my 24 good deeds that I really had to interact with someone and tell them what I was doing. Some of my good deeds were done anonymously and some, like donating to Wild Heart or Pit Bull Rescue, are things you don't have to explain. Sometimes people want to make donations, let's move on. This time I was at a convenience store getting a drink to last me for my drive back to Oklahoma City. There was a man ahead of me in line buying a bottle of soda and a slush.

"Excuse me?" He didn't hear me the first time. "Excuse me? I'm trying to do good deeds for my birthday and I was wondering if I could buy your drinks?"

He looked seriously confused. Nervous laughter. "What?" 

"She wants to buy your drinks," from the cashier. Thanks, dude.

"See, it's my 24th birthday and I'm trying to do 24 good deeds."

"I've never heard of that." 

When I got out my money to pay for my drink and his, the cashier informed me that my drink was on him and wished me a happy birthday. That's what I really wanted from my good deeds. Not a free Diet Dr. Pepper, although that was great. I wanted the people impacted by them to do something nice for someone else so in the end it wasn't just 24 good deeds, but maybe 36 or 48.