Who Am I?

Just a quick post this morning as I have found myself, yet again, with a bit of time to spare before work (seriously, who am I? This is such a weird feeling). I thought I would show you two yummy eats from recently.

Grilled Oasis garlic sourdough bread with Earth Balance stuffed with Tofutti cheese singles, sliced tomato and red onion. A little bit of comfort. On the side, lettuce and tomato topped with a Costco veggie patty. These things are really good. They are sold in the deli section of Costco and are 100% vegan and delicious.

So, I'm sure you've all heard of peanut flour by now. I'm sure you've probably also heard the rumor that Trader Joe's is discontinuing this incredible product. Of course I discovered it right at the tail end. Se la vie.

My friend Rachel was making some cookies to give to some people at an event and I joined her to help bake (and steal goodies). Rachel does not eat 100% vegan but is very open to vegan food and often makes it on her own. In addition, she eats mostly gluten free which is something I haven't really experimented with much. One of the cookies she made that night were Averie's Vegan GF Peanut Butter Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Flour.  Name is a mouthful, taste is unbelievable. I went right home (after Trader Joe's) and made a batch of my very own. Seriously, you have to try these. I took them to a family event and everyone raved about them and one person even asked for the recipe. Now if only I can figure out how to grind peanuts into peanut flour without making peanut butter....

Foods! Omnomnomnom

I'm going to give this to you with relatively little commentary.

Lunch at People's Co-op.  Kale salad, tofu and the best "tuna" salad ever.

Banana Hammock in honor of Chocolate Covered Katie.

Really yummy bean dip I made for my mom for Mother's Day to go along with this:

Carrot Cake.  How cute is that carrot!

One day I was feeling a little like I was getting sick so I used the oranges from my CSA and made blood orange juice.

I had a couple of weeks where I didn't get to eat the apples fast enough and so they got a little soft.  I used them to make muffins.  These turned out remarkably well considering I misread apple cider for apple cider vinegar.  They were a little tart but delicious regardless.

Taco salad.  This is from a while ago but along the lines of what I ate all week.  This one had steamed broccoli, frozen peas and corn, salsa, black beans, lettuce and tortilla chips.  My salads of late have added avocado.

Waffle with strawberries and some maple syrup with a little cocoa powder mixed in.

This was sad face was actually a delicious dinner.  I had some everything bagels in my freezer.  I toasted and then topped with spaghetti sauce and some meatless balls.  Most of the time my boyfriend does not care for my dinners.  This one he was envious of.  Not the toast with lentils though.  That was another great combo.  Toast with earth balance topped with cold lentils that had been cooked with garlic and onions.

Speaking of lentils.  Familiar meal.



And to round off this yumminess, Sipz Vegan Caterpillar Roll.  Teriyaki mushrooms, sweet potato and I think cucumber.

And some imitations.

Mine has meatless balls and bbq sauce in it.

As does my boyfriend's.


Thinking: but that's not sushi...

How about this one??

That's vegan pepperoni.  I say, if it has rice and is wrapped in nori, then it's sushi.

And finally, I leave you with a message presented to me upon entering the farmer's market one weekend.

 





Thanks for listening.

Mmmm

I don't recall at this point which recipe I used to make the brownie (I believe I have it written somewhere in my kitchen) but these were some of the best brownies I have ever made and that includes the beet brownies which were darn good.  I topped this one with some vanilla coconut milk ice cream and some cocoa powder mixed with agave and water.  I may or may not have had this for dinner 2 nights in a row.

I don't feel so bad about that because I also had this delicious salad somewhere in there.

 Again, can't remember the specifics, but avocado, kalamata olives, spinach, tortilla strips and a dressing probably made of tahini and lemon juice.  Yum.  Now I wish I had eaten that for dinner.

I also made this delicious refrigerator soup using up the last of my veggies.  Red cabbage, chard, fresh corn, carrots, onion, a couple of potatoes and some fresh dill.  Man was it delicious.  I ate it with avocado and some rye toast with earth balance.  All in all I recreated this meal 3 times in 3 days.  Once with guacamole instead of plain avocado.  Yum.

 

Simple Tacos

And finally some really simple tacos and an easy salad.  These tacos are so delicious and they are just refried beans and rice warmed in a corn tortilla and filled with avocado.  I expected them to be sort of bland since we were out of salsa, but they were delicious.

The salad was even easier.  Spinach, shredded carrots and radishes, kalamata olives and peperoncinis.   No dressing necessary.

There are also some date nut balls and some broccoli to round out the dinner.  Nom nom.

That's it for now.  I need to upload the pictures I took today.  Brownies.  Coconut milk vanilla ice cream.  Chocolate sauce.  Dinner solved.

 

Thanksgiving

Not going to get into too many details, but in the end I got to have homemade, vegan mashed potatoes, stuffing and cooked carrots (the butter version having been my favorite part of Thanksgiving for the past ?25? years...)

Here is a picture of the leftovers with a salad for lunch the next day.

Yum.  I wish I had some of that right now.  I'm kinda hungry.

And here is a different take on leftovers

I love this picture!

Dinner and a smoothie

Today at the farmer's market I got some brussel sprouts which I thought would be nice for dinner.  I used the recipe for Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Toasted Garlic from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I also threw in some cauliflower to satisfy my other half who is not the biggest fan of the sprouts.  I thought that these along with some nuggets would be a pretty good dinner.  Then I got to thinking that a salad would be nice as well.  I bought tons of lettuce today but not too many things that I wanted to add to a salad.  In the end I decided on a strange to me combination of lettuce, walnuts, raspberries and balsamic vinaigrette.  After I had the salad assembled I kept looking at it and trying to figure out what I could add to it to make it seem more appealing.  I decided to just try it as it was and surprise, surprise, it was delicious! 

After I finished eating this I didn't feel quite full.  I was tempted to smash up some raspberries and eat them with another one of these cinnamon rolls but since I had already had 2 for breakfast I didn't think it was very appropriate.  So I thought.  And I thought.  And I went into the kitchen with the intention of making some sort of a smoothie.  I pulled out some frozen cherries and some soy milk and continued to think.  I tried to figure out what I could include with those two items to make something yummy.  Then it struck me.  I had a little bit of a package of chocolate pudding mix left and so I would make a chocolate, cherry shakey, smoothie, puddingy thing.  I added some arrowroot powder for thickening though I think the pudding mix already had a bit of a thickener in it.

And voila

This was sooo good.  Everything balanced really well.  I had just enough pudding mix left to not overpower the cherry and the soy milk made it so creamy.  It was quite a lot like a milkshake.  I only wish I had enough to make more!