Tap, tap, tap....

Is there anyone still out there? I can't believe it has been 4 months since I posted anything here! So much has happened since I posted last! I joined the SDSU Marching Aztecs as an alumni and played cymbals in the drumline for the last 4 months. It was a crazy busy time at work as well which lead to my not cooking very much. I relied on a whole lot of farmer's market tamales, canned soups, boca burgers and a ton of granola bars. Now that the marching season is over though I am slowly getting myself back in the kitchen but still haven't made it back to many whole foods. Case in point; tonight's post.

Vegan California Burrito

If you've never been to San Diego you may have never heard of this wonderful creation. In my high school days this was a staple of my diet. A couple of friends recently reminded me of it and it made me want to create a vegan version. The staples of a California burrito are:

Carne Asada
Guacamole
French Fries

In addition, they usually include cheese and tomatoes and can sometimes have sour cream.

Here's what I started with:

 

• Alexia salt & pepper crinkle fries

•  Daiya cheddar style shreds

•  Smart Strips chick'n style

•  Guacamole (I generally would make this myself but this guac is made by a little    start up company run by a guy I used to work with so I thought I'd go with that)

•  Roma tomato

•  Tortillas (disclaimer: I love La Fe tortillas and they do make vegan versions that I buy and eat most of the time, but the burrito tortillas unfortunately have whey...but I let it slide when I really want a burrito)

While the oven preheated for the fries, I marinated the chick'n strips in some bragg's liquid aminos to hopefully turn them into more of a carne asada than a pollo asada.

Once the oven was preheated, I cooked the fries. When they were done I put the tortilla on the hot pan to soften it and I added the cheese in hopes it would melt but the tortilla was soft before it had a chance.

While the fries were cooking I heated the carne asada in my tiny cast iron skillet (I wish I had a picture of that...oops. Rusty I guess). It browned up quite nicely and looked quite a bit like carne asada.

Next I added the fries, carne asada and tomatoes to the tortilla and cheese.

Finally I topped the whole thing off with guacamole.

Rolled the thing up, took a bite and died and went to heaven. This may have been one of the greatest things I have ever veganized. Try it. I dare you not to! Only, make sure you ran 5 miles at the gym before you got home so that you do not feel one ounce of guilt for the ungodly amount of calories that is probably in this thing.

I hope you all enjoyed my first post in a long time. No guarantees that I'm back regularly but as inspiration strikes it's nice to have an outlet!

So there is this one thing I made....

I had still have a bounty of zucchini from my garden this year. One recipe I have fallen in love with is this chocolate zucchini bread. The recipe said it was brownie like so I took a chance and cooked it in an 8 x 8 pan and let me tell you, that is one of the best brownies I have ever tasted. Ever. Uuuuunfortunatly, despite their deliciousness, they do not stay together very well and you end up with brownie crumbles. Not that I'm complaining. I am going to experiment with baking them in muffin tins to see if they hold up better to travel that way. As soon as I work through the 2nd of two batches I baked and froze about a month ago. Zucchini, by the way, picked fresh from the garden, survives remarkably well in the fridge unwrapped.

So this was all leading to a picture, and a description of what I did with the frozen brownie bits.

That's right, I ate it with ice cream. Sometimes I warm the brownie first and other times I eat the whole thing cold. It reminds me of Coldstone where you get to mix in whatever you want. I love So Delicious coconut vanilla ice cream because I can mix in whatever I want. I usually only eat a small portion and mix in whatever sounds good. Last week I had frozen cherries. Yum. This ice cream you may notice is a bit green. While I wish I could say that it was spinach in that ice cream, it's not. It is however matcha. The flavor was a little strong for me to eat by itself, but mixed with the brownie it was very good.

Busy Busy

Good morning everyone! Sorry to have disappeared for so long. Life has been quite filled lately. The accounting office where I work recently had our largest client acquire another company and thus double their size. This led to increased work loads and promotions. I gained a new position at my company (one that involves mostly solving puzzles and reconciling bank accounts which I find fun because I am a dork) and also was given permission to log on remotely from home and work some overtime. A number of people ended up working some 55 hour weeks for about 4-6 weeks. Luckily, the worst should be over and we can all resume our normal lives. And thank goodness, as an extra 15 hours of work a week means that there is a trade off somewhere. For me it was working out and cooking. I ate a lot of tofurky sandwiches, quick salads and simple no fuss roasted veggies over the past month. Not to mention some super quick breakfasts, which is actually the first thing I want to show you. Last weekend I went to Costco and purchased a large container of kiwis that smelled super ripe. One day genius struck and I put some berry jam on a piece of toast and topped it with a sliced kiwi. Since then, I think I have eaten this for breakfast just about every day.

Throughout all the chaos, I did take some time at the end of May to have my family over for dinner for my dad's birthday. I made a whole soft taco spread complete with spanish rice, refried beans, taco seasoned tvp, lettuce, guacamole, tofutti sour cream, olives, tomatoes, salsa, chips and a tiny bit of cheese. It was a delicious dinner and a great time. In addition to dinner, I attempted a vegan version of my dad's favorite birthday dessert, a sheet cake. My mom's mom used to make this cake for my dad and so I had some high standards to meet. Luckily I found this recipe and it turned out fabulous! Not only did everyone love it (and go back for more), they said that it might be closer to my grandma's recipe than the version my mom makes. Win! Admittedly, it's pretty hard to dislike a cake with as much sugar as this has, but since it was my dad's birthday I didn't want to go all crazy health foodie on him. I used all purpose flour and made no substitutions.

I still have a piece in my freezer which is the only reason I haven't jumped into the kitchen to go make these Fudge Daddies from Chocolate Covered Katie. How yummy do those look?



And finally, I'll leave you with a teaser in hopes that it will get me to write up another post tonight or tomorrow:

I bought a Vitamix!

Do you have one? What's your favorite thing to make with it?

Vegetarian Cooking Class

Good morning yet again! I think I have determined that daylight savings, mixed with needing to get up and water my garden, with a pinch of going to bed at a reasonable hour are all coming together to bring you (almost) daily morning updates. Weird.


About a month ago my mom surprised me by taking me to a vegetarian cooking class at this cooking store called Great News. She had told me about this store filled with cooking gadgets and also that they often held cooking classes. I was slightly disappointed when I learned that the class was not going to be hands on, but it turned out pretty great regardless and I had a lot of fun. Everything had the option of being vegan and we got to eat samples of everything made. The class was a little high on the tempeh and seitan levels but all in all, pretty good vegan food (especially for non vegans). I would love to find another vegetarian cooking class that focuses more on fruits, veggies, beans, grains and nuts. Now that would be cool. Sorry for the fairly low quality photos as I was a bad food blogger and forgot my real camera (and had to use my phone). In addition, I also forgot to take a picture of the first dish until my mom reminded me and my bowl was already cleared.

 If you can read that, it lists the menu and the venue. The first dish was a coconut milk curry corn chowder. It was really good considering how few ingredients it contained. They served it with tempeh bacon which was not a winner in my book.

Next up was fried falafels in warmed pita bread with tahini sauce and smoked paprika tomato onion relish. This was so good. And convinced me to buy smoked paprika.

Tempeh reuben with vegan cheese and spinach, mushroom and..and...something else. Can't remember now. This was just all right.

This was the star of the show. Seitan risotto bolognese with portabello mushrooms. My friend Rachel and I recreated this that week with brown arborro rice and leaving out the seitan. A lot of work, but if you have a friend in the kitchen (especially one who likes to cook) it isn't really that hard. And it is mighty delicious.

And finally, coconut pudding with crushed pineapple. Really simple and really delicious. I recreated this at home but failed on the cornstarch front and had lumpy pudding. It was salvageable though since it was sort of like rice pudding.

I did also try the coconut curry corn chowder at home but I wasn't as impressed.

Alrighty, I am off to work now. Have a great day!

Have you ever been to a cooking class?

Dessert Hummus

I know what you're thinking. But hear me out. Today I read a tweet from @mama_pea about having to make the choice between grocery shopping and making dessert hummus. I was hooked instantly. I had everything at home except something to dip in it. I went to the store and got some graham crackers and I was ready.

Once home I rinsed the garbanzo beans, pulled out the food processor, tossed in some peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla and a pinch of salt and started that baby up. Minutes later I mixed in some mini chocolate chips I conveniently had on hand and tasted one of the most intriguing foods I have tried in a long time. It wasn't oh my goodness love at first bite, but after a few bites I was hooked. Luckily my desire to produce a great picture for all of you stopped my boyfriend and I from devouring the whole batch in one sitting.

This is currently chilling in my refrigerator. Can I have dessert for dinner?

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Dessert Hummus. This guy's a genius.

A Jalapeno Kind Of Dinner

Tonight's dinner (which took me a good 2 hours in the kitchen to make) centered around farmer's market finds. Last Sunday I bought a basket of jalapenos and a basket of tomatillos with absolutely no plan for them. Over the past week, a plan was formed. I give you:

A Jalapeno Kind Of Dinner

I have a couple more things I'd like to get done tonight so I'll leave you with only a short description, some links to recipes I used as well as two more pictures of kitchen basics.

Back during MoFo, Vegan Eats & Treats did a post about pupusas. I was immediately intrigued but forgot all about it until Wednesday when I went to the Ocean Beach farmer's market and my friend and I started discussing the pupusas they were selling on the side of the street. I googled Viva Vegan Pupusas and found this recipe. I may have to look into actually buying this cook book because these were (apart from some minor trials and tribulations) delicious and fairly easy. I stuffed the pupusas with a veggie mix that contained roasted jalapenos, garlic, onion and sauteed chard, bell peppers and more onion. For my boyfriend I stuffed his with refried beans and a little cheese. Note: I do not recommend refreid beans for stuffing. Use only solid foods for ease of preparation.

Next, I made jalapeno cornbread from this recipe. Oh! And while I'm thinking about it, I have to thank reader Becky who suggested that I try google bookmarks for keeping track of the recipes I'd like to try. This was exactly what I was looking for! I hit bookmark, change the name, add a category if I choose and then there is an app on my phone that I can click on to bring them right up. Genius! But back to the muffins. I left the roasted jalapenos out of half of them for my boyfriend and used whole wheat flour because that was all I had on hand. These were really good topped with a little Earth Balance.

The main goal I had when I set out 3 hours ago though was to use up the tomatillos by making a green salsa. I roasted garlic, tomatillos, jalapenos and onion and here's where you get kitchen tip #1 and #2.

Roasting your veggies in muffin tins is super easy and convenient!

An oven thermometer (even a dirty one) can really help when baking to show you whether or not your oven is really at 400 degrees or not.

But back to the salsa. I roasted everything and then took the seeds out of all the jalapenos. I threw everything except for about half the jalapenos, a quarter of the onion and one of the heads of garlic into the food processor with some cilantro and lemon juice and blended it up. I used no specific recipe for this and it turned out delicious!

Finally, I made a wild rice blend that I seasoned with lemon juice and salt and pepper after cooking.

Plated, I added refried beans and the veggie mix to the top of my pupusas and drizzled with the salsa. This was way too much food but was definitely delicious. Now that I know how all the ingredients go together I think I will be making these more often.

Sorry for the detour from Portland. Probably one more post before I get to it as well as I have one more food I am dieing to tell you about!

Portland: Saturday

I'm still here and I haven't forgotten about the rest of my trip. I'm sure you are all on the edge of your seats waiting for the rest of the story (or at least you were 3 weeks ago when I posted Friday's recap). Without further ado, I give you: Saturday in Portland.

As when someone learns the fact that I am vegan is so often met with the question "Where do you get your protein?", so too is the fact that I want to live in Oregon often met with the question "You know it rains a lot there, right?". I patiently explain that I am well aware of this fact while I roll my eyes in my imagination. My mom and I were pleasantly surprised to find that it did not rain once on Friday. Of course, we joked, it would rain all of Saturday when we had plans for doing things outdoors. Boy were we ever right about that. One of the major things I wanted to check out while we were there was the Farmer's Market at PSU. So we set out Saturday morning with the plan to go there and to the Saturday Market which is a sort of art market. When we left the hotel it was already raining. But, if I was to ever move to Portland I would definitely not let a little rain stop me.

We headed out once again across the Willamette and easily found the market. We also managed to find a parking space pretty close. The market was mostly deserted but was filled with so many beautiful stands of fresh vegetables and fruit. We made our way around about 3 times just to make sure we didn't miss anything before I decided what to get. Since we were staying in a hotel there was very little I could do with vegetables, but fruits I could bring home with me. The only thing I hated about the rain was that I didn't want to have my camera out and get it all wet, so there are no pictures of the actual market but I do have some I took later of my finds. This was especially sad because on my 3rd trip around when I had stopped once again at a stand filled with vegan baked goods, I ran into the fabulous Sayward of Bonzai Aphrodite and her beautiful family! At this point though I was totally drenched and freezing so we didn't stay long and chat.

And when I say drenched, I mean drenched. I had an umbrella and what I thought was a rain proof jacket. I gave the umbrella to my mom as I had a hood and said jacket. This did nothing to protect my legs and as I learned later, really no part of me. My pants were soaked all the way down and my hands were frozen. We left the market after a fairly short time and headed to the Saturday Market.

My mom had suggested the Saturday Market and I am so glad she did. I dried up only a tiny bit on the way there and then we were back out in the rain but with so much to see. There were hundreds of artists of all kinds selling their handcrafted work. I ended up buying some gifts as well as some artwork for myself.

I got this hanging glass art for my boyfriend's grandma as well as a rainbow necklace for his sister that I neglected to get a picture of. I also neglected to get a picture of these totally awesome earrings I bought for her that were made with this metal that changes colors at different thicknesses.

I got these two pieces of art done by artist Sienna Morris. They are drawn entirely with numbers of the clock. There is not one line drawn. If you have the time, I highly suggest checking out her site.



Walking out of the Saturday Market we were even more soaked than before and I suggested we stop in some place to dry off a little bit before getting back in the car. We happened upon Kell's Irish Restaurant & Pub and our initial thought was possibly some Irish Coffee but then my mom asked what kind of soup they had and would you know, it was vegan! 

Hot apple cider, Irish soda bread and kale and white bean soup! This was so delicious and clean and warming and I absolutely couldn't wait to get home to try to recreate it. I am pretty sure it was just vegetable stock, kale, carrots and white beans but it was sooo yummy. I have recreated it since then and mine turned out a little too oily (I don't think oil was even necessary). This restaurant was great though, they took our coats and we attempted to dry off at least a little. This was when I learned that my jacket was not rain proof. Oops.

After we left Kell's we headed out with no specific agenda. We drove around a lot that day and the heater in the car managed to get me almost 100% dry. We went to a couple of used clothes stores but nothing was too great. We went to Bridge City Comics which was a very nice store.

We drove past my Aunt's old house.

I studied the street structure of Portland. There are little inlets on each corner where water flows and stays instead of an underground sewer system. Also, many, many houses had raised gardens in their frin yards! I absolutely love the look of the older houses in Portland.

We traveled to a Trader Joe's that is right across the street from a 24 hour fitness. We didn't go inside either but the Trader Joe's had to have been 3 times as big as the one I shop in.

For a late lunch we ended up at the most awesome block I have ever seen. On the left was Sweet Pea Bakery, then Herbivore Clothing and finally, Food Fight Grocery. All vegan! If I could move in right across the street I think I'd be the happiest vegan on the planet!

At Sweet Pea Bakery I got a seitan filled sandwich. I can't remember what it was called or exactly what was in it, but it was delicious.

My mom and I also got a slice of carrot cake to split after our leftover Thai food back at the hotel. Sorry for the horrible picture. Bonus points though, the container was compostable. And according to blogger, compostable is not a word....Get with the times blogger.

Back at the hotel I was finally able to take some pictures of the days goodies away from the downpours

Delicious gingerbread spice cake with lemon ginger icing.

Peanut butter & chocolate crispy treat.

Hot pepper marionberry jam.

Apples and Pears.

And that takes us pretty much to the end of Saturday. It was a wet but wonderful day and I felt like I got a true taste of Portland.

Hopefully it wont take me three weeks to get back to you about Sunday and Monday.

Thanks for reading! Also, please pardon the formatting of this post. I am tired and do not have the energy to figure out why I can't get the spacing right.

Oh My Yum!

Before I started my dinner tonight I already knew it was going to be a winner. Sometimes you just know. I took a bunch of pictures because, I just knew. And sure enough, it was out of this world. I got the recipe from Busy Vegan Mama and since I had some spinach leftover from my CSA I thought it would be the perfect dinner for one of these nights right before Xmas and end of the year when I am so uber busy. Without further ado, I give you:

Spinach Pesto Pasta

Sorry for the super up close picture. I have yet to master taking pictures of certain things. Bowls of food being one of them. But don't let that detract from the beauty of this bowl. I followed Sara's recipe to a T except for adding a few extra vegetables to my pasta so check out her site if you'd like to get yourself over to her site and try it out for yourself.

Spinach

Pine Nuts

Garlic

Salt

Chili Flakes

Olive Oil

Blend

Stir & keep blending

Perfect!

Add pasta to boiling water per package directions. About 3 minutes until the end, add all veggies except tomatoes. I used zucchini, green beans and red pepper. Add tomatoes when there is only one minute left on the pasta. Seriously, they only need a minute.

Toss together gently and try to master the art of taking a picture while simultaneously blowing steam away from the camera.

Go back for seconds.

Seriously, if it hadn't been for trying to take some artistic photos and posing my ingredients, this dinner would have taken me 15 minutes to make and that includes boiling the water and cooking the pasta. It helps that somehow I managed to buy whole wheat pasta that only took 4 minutes to cook. Ok, but really, go make this. Right now. You are only 15 minutes away from a delicious dinner.

Now I'm off to wrap presents!

Portland: Friday

My entire life I have dreamed about moving to Oregon. I think it's the blackberries. Or maybe the creeks. All I know is that every summer my family used to travel from San Diego by car to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Oregon and ever since then, I have dreamed of living there. If you'd asked me what stopped me from going there for college I wouldn't have an exact answer for you. If you asked why I didn't go after college I'd say a number of reasons. I have recently gotten to a point in my life where I feel that the time might be right. And by that of course I mean probably 3 more scouting trips over the next 1-3 years before making any actual plans. Personally, I could probably up and move tomorrow but my boyfriend is not so quick to upend his entire life. That's ok though, I have patience (sometimes). This first scouting trip to my hopefully someday future home town was taken not with said boyfriend but instead with my Mom. My mom is anything but vegan, and in fact made her living as a manager of meat departments all across San Diego Vons stores but she hardly complained at all that in 4 days we went to only one restaurant where she ate meat. She did however want it noted that we did not encounter one vegan restaurant that served Diet Coke. This post is not planned to be super in depth as it is the weekend before Xmas and I still don't even have my decorations up from the garage, I have biscotti to make for a gift and a gift or two to try to track down but I wanted to share with you all the amazing things I saw.

We flew into Portland at 9:40 on Thursday night. We had rented a car and our hotel was the Phoenix Inn in Beaverton. I would have liked to have stayed a little closer to Portland and I would love on my next trip to try and take the public transportation for most of the trip, but this worked well for my mom and I. The main things on my scouting list were:

Grocery Stores
Comic Shops
Restaurants
Farmer's Markets
Saturday Market
24 Hour Fitness
Places to Hike
Resale Stores (Clothes, Furniture, Cookware, etc)
Getting a feel for which part of town I would look on Craigslist for a house

We succeeded on all fronts. Except maybe the comic shop, but I will get to that. The car we rented was a Chevy Aleo, which I had never heard of. Turned out to be a totally cute car that got about 25 miles to the gallon driving all around Portland.

Friday morning we woke up bright and early and headed out to explore. First on my list was the People's Co-Op not to be confused with the OB People's Food which is also a Co-Op.

Ever since I heard about this place at Bonzai Aprodite I couldn't wait to check it out. As a result of this being the first place we visited, it became my main point of reference. We used my mom's GPS and had plotted out a list of places to check out before we left. Let me tell you, a printed map with everything roughly plotted goes a long way towards understanding the roads you are driving. I loved the GPS but it was difficult to get a feel for the streets. We drove all over the city that first day, back and forth. I think we crossed the Willamette about 6 times, each time across a different bridge.



At the Co-Op we got lunch (we had eaten breakfast at the hotel. Not so great but not the worst.). I went a little crazy and bought some Gingerbread beer that sounded delicious and festive along with some Theo chocolate bars that I had just seen Hungry Hungry Hippie talking about and my favorite eat of the entire trip:

Vanilla Creme with Karmal & Chocolate. Oh my god. Coconut, cashews, cocoa, maple, maca, mesquite, lucuma, vanilla, salt, soy lecithin. Vegan, raw, local and oh so decadent. We went back right before we went to the airport so I could get one for the plane, but they were out. And I was sad. In case you have delusions that this is all I would eat for lunch you are oh so wrong. I had a raw mock tuna salad wrapped in chard. It was decent but not the best thing ever.



Friday we also went to:

Excalibur Books & Comis (ok)
Gilded Closet (ok)
Seams to Fit (really expensive and not my style but very nice)
Village Merchants (freakin awesome shop!)
Vintage Pink (not on my list but I am soooo in love with this shop)

In fact, I found this coffee table there that I really want to find someone to recreate for me. It had the perfect size display coves for comics.

In our search for one place (and due to our GPS's lack of knowledge that Burnside St and Sandy Blvd become one way at one point) we got turned around and ended up at Voodoo Donuts. I had written their downtown location on my list and then crossed it off. I had heard that they had vegan donuts but that the lines were long. I figured we would be going to enough vegan restaurants and bakeries that I wouldn't need an extra donut. Who am I to argue with fate when we stumbled upon a second location so easily? Besides, who doesn't love a maple bar?

This is not a maple bar but is instead, a voodoo donut. It is shaped like a person (sort of) and then it has a pretzel stick stuck in it like a pin. The kicker?

It's filled with "blood". Mmm vegan blood. That makes me smile. We may or may not have hit this place up before the airport to take home some vegan donuts.

The other comic shop we visited on Friday (please note, this is all still the first day there) was Bridge City Comics. I liked this store quite a lot. It was well stocked and well set up. It was a little more north than I would have loved, but travel for good comics is not the end of the world. Oddly, I happened upon one other comic shop on our way to the airport that had not been on my list. It is called Future Dreams and it was in the basement of a building that looked to be making furniture. I only got a chance to glance inside but we will definitely be checking out these two locations when we come back. One of the reasons that we feel Portland is the right sort of city for us is that my boyfriend is working towards being a comic book writer and Portland seems to be the west coast comic creator central. Comics are quite an integral part of our lives.

So day one, as it started to get dark, we were debating what else to do. I didn't want to go back to the hotel but we weren't quite hungry enough for dinner. We ended up at one of the resale clothes shops (I can't remember if it was even on my list or which one it was) and decided to go across the street to this little bar and get a drink. I got this oh so yummy cocktail of vodka infused with strawberries (made by the bar) mixed with soda water and lemonade. It was delish! 

Afterward, we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. I ordered a mostly mediocre stir fry with tofu and my mom got a curry bowl. We took the leftovers home in the tupperware that I had brought my plane food in. (Just a note, tupperware is great for saving the throw away to go containers, but make a note to get a hotel with a real sink rather than just a bathroom sink. It was a pain washing them and I think I may have clogged the sink a bit). Finally we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

And with that, I think I may have to extend this trip into more than one post if I hope to get everything done today that I need to. Please join me again next time for Portland: Saturday.

So Much Time, So Little To Do!

Wait, strike that, reverse it. While being sick gives me a whole lot of time to spend not doing the things I would normally do if I was feeling better, there are always books to read, movies to watch and blogs to read. It is the later that leads me to the conundrum I am in today. Whilst scouring the internet looking at delicious food and recipes, I collect links to try at a future date. I copy the link from my desktop computer and then put it into an email which I send to myself so that I can pull up the recipe on my phone in the kitchen and not have to waste paper. This results in the majority of my inbox being from myself. Not to mention how full it's getting up in there. So I thought today I would post all those links that I have yet to try in one place so I can clean out my email. And if anyone has a better way of organizing recipe links online I would love to hear about it!

Sweet

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Pumpkin Pancakes

Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Ginger Cookies

Pumpkin Ginger Snaps

Chocolate Banana Brownies

Pumpkin Butter

Almond Milk

Almond Pulp Oatmeal Cookies

Oh She Glows Energy Truffles

Chocolate Chipotle Sweet Potato Pie

Coconut Whipped Cream

Black Gingerbread Bars

Coconut Banana Flax Waffles

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

Home Made Powdered Sugar

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Baked, Yeasted Doughnuts

Caramel Bon Bons

Hot Fudge Cake: Two Ways

Almond Biscotti

Cranberry Almond Biscotti

Gingerbread Biscotti

Beet Chocolate Cake

Reduced Fat Brownies

Fried Doughnuts

Orange Scones

Savory

Sausage Patties

Process for Fried Tofu Cubes for Stir Fry

Seitan Christmas "Turkey"

No Knead Bread

Black Bean Burgers

Vegan Dad's Tofu Stack

Moroccan Carrot Salad

Moroccan Harira

Green Onion-Garlic Flatbread with Creamy Spinach-Chickpea Filling

Russian Black Bread 

Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf

Gooey Grilled Cheez

Tzatziki

Spanakopita

Mock Tuna Salad

Whole Wheat Chapati

Crispy Seitan for Stir Fry

Vegan Deli Slices

Need to Veganize

Doughnut Muffins

Cauliflower Tots

Already Made But Want To Keep Handy

White Fluffy Dinner Rolls

Flourless Chocolate Almond Butter Cookies

Zucchini Pancakes!

Fruit Nut & Energy Bites

Banana Loaf

Refrigerator Pickles

Eezeee Cheeze I haven't made this one in about a year...

Veggeroni

Maple Chocolate Chip Cookies OMG I had it the whole time! This is my go to choc chip cookie recipe.

Sweet & Sour "Chicken"

Blueberry Banana Bread 

Banana Bread

Peas and Thank You Brownies 

Can you see why I don't do much other than bake, cook and work out? I think, after compiling this list that I will probably never get to even half of, I really should look into a career in the kitchen. Too bad I already have a degree and a career. Never too late to switch, but would it really be worth it?

Breakfast of Sick-o's (and a Thanksgiving Recap)

I have been feeling really sick with a sore throat for about 24 hours now. This may or may not have something to do with running myself too thin on Thanksgiving day and being a little dumb. We'll get to that in a few. Meanwhile, here is the breakfast I am currently enjoying to combat the illness in my throat.

Thank goodness I had some chamomile tea in my cabinet. I had 2 cups last night and I am on my first today. It is the only thing making my throat feel better. Next up is some iced tea to combat the stupid caffeine headaches I have been getting on days I don't work and thus do not drink coffee. I am in the process of weaning myself off coffee because I do not like being a slave to caffeine and having it ruin my weekend if I don't get it. And finally, Naked juice in the flavor of Power-C Machine for a dosage of Vitamin C. 8 oz doses of these three things should get me feeling right as rain immediately, right? Here's to wishful thinking. I'm not sure if I have any soup in the house so I may drag my butt to the kitchen long enough to make a small pot. I'm thinking some lentil soup might be yummy. But onto why I may have gotten sick.

For Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncle's house, I had offered to bring rolls and pumpkin pie. They were going to make me a Tofurkey roast along with some roasted vegetables. I had attempted to make Oh She Glow's Fluffy White Dinner Rolls when she first posted the recipe but had a major flop on my hands. I tried using all whole wheat pastry flour and for some reason the dough just didn't come together right. I had to keep adding flour and by the time they made it into the oven they were almost like biscuits. Delicious, but definitely not fluffy. Just to be safe I bought some rolls from the store and set out Wednesday night to attempt them again. I decided to try half whole wheat pastry four and half high gluten bread flour and this seems to have worked wonderfully. Let me tell you, most times I try to make anything with yeast I end up practically never wanting to touch the stuff again, but these turned out very yummy.

When they came out of the oven I didn't know what to do because I wanted to try one to make sure they turned out but I didn't want to mess up the presentation. In the end, a reassurance from my boyfriend after feeling their fluffy tops led us to the conclusion that they would be delicious and I left them as is.

Thursday morning I woke up bright and early to get a start on my pie. I also had lofty intentions of climbing a nearby mountain while the crust chilled, but I quickly ran out of time. The only other time I have made pie crust is last Thanksgiving and it turned out incredibly well for my first attempt but for some reason I was terrified I was going to mess it up this year. The crust and the pie recipes both come from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I love this book for baking for people who eat the S.A.D (Standard American Diet) and who are not as adventurous in the food they eat because the recipes are not exactly healthy and just try to recreate foods that taste good.

I gathered my crust ingredients:

And my 2 page long recipe:

And got to work. Using a food processor, I have found that this recipe is really not very difficult but both times I have made it I have had to add extra water. I think it is because I use whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose.

Once the dough came together, I divided it and wrapped each half in plastic wrap as a thin disk and refrigerated for at least 30 minutes. Here's where my day may have taken a turn for the worse. Actually, let me take you back about 45 minutes before the disks came together. The recipe calls for everything to be chilled for 30 minutes before beginning; the flour, the water, the sugar, the shortening. This was good since I started the day with a sink full of dishes from the night before. After putting everything in the freezer I set to work on the dishes. I finished in about 20 minutes and debated what to do with my remaining 10 minutes. I had been listening to the radio and someone had mentioned bloody mary's while cooking and I thought, hmmm, I have some champagne in my fridge and a bunch of citrus that is getting rather old, maybe I'll make a mimosa. And so I did. I squeezed some oranges, limes, lemons and grapefruits and made myself a little mimosa.

And it was delicious. I sipped on it while I made the crusts and felt all kinds of jolly holiday spirit. After the crusts were in disk form and chilling in the fridge, it was about 10 o'clock and I decided I'd really like to get a workout in. So I changed my close and jogged to 24 hour fitness. That's about a 20 minute slow jog. Then I did resistance training and weight lifting for 35 minutes and headed home, another 20 minute jog. It was on this final 20 minute jog that I realized the silliness of my ways. Have you figured out what I did wrong? In my business in the kitchen and wanting to get in a workout, I had been up for 4 hours, worked out for 1 hour 15 minutes and fueled my body with only....a mimosa. Yeah, I hadn't eaten anything. I was going to eat when I got home and I had just been so intent on getting the pie crust done that I had neglected food to fuel my workout. When I got home I was in a weird sort of place. I was super in need of food but I was so worked up that I didn't want anything. I had a tiny bite of an energy bar but found it was way too sweet. I tried a slice of bread and that was ok. I smeared some peanut butter on it and that did the trick enough to let me get in the shower and cool down. I am the sort of person who gets really rosy cheeks just running for a minute, so 20 minutes of jogging really gets me worked up. The shower cooled me down and then I proceeded to make a real breakfast. I made a wrap out of a tortilla, tofu scramble, tofurkey slices and salsa with a Trader Joe's hash brown on the side. And I felt much better. Mind you, this was now 12:15 on Thanksgiving when we were having dinner at 3, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Do you ever work out and over do it and then feel the effects the rest of the day? I get this a lot. If I work out too hard I feel a bit of a headache and just a little off the rest of the day. I tried to fix myself by drinking tons of water but to no avail. This coupled with the aforementioned caffeine withdrawals led to a headache the entire day. Fortunately it did not ruin my mood and I was able to finish the pie with only 15 minutes to spare before I left the house.

If you managed to read all of the above, you are my new best friend. To reward you, here is the finished pie and my Thanksgiving dinner.

Tofurkey roast, cranberry sauce made by my mom, roasted yams, shallots, brussel sprouts and carrots, roll with earth balance, roasted potatoes and tofurkey gravy. Yummy! Just about everyone tried the tofurkey roast and was quite impressed, even though they are all omni's!

Pumpkin pie with Soyatoo whipped cream.

And finally, I leave you with a poster in my Aunt and Uncle's kitchen that I am madly in love with. It is from World War II I believe. I wish more people lived like this.

Not to mention how great it would be if the FDA could still say things like this. Can you imagine the FDA putting out posters saying to eat less meat? They would be crucified!

Thanks for joining me on my Thanksgiving and I hope yours was fabulous!