What a Weekend!

I finally transferred over, fixed up and named all my pictures from this weekend and last.  I have 56 pictures I want to blog about!  Oi, what joy to have so much to talk about, but I am not the wordiest of people.  I think I will leave you with a picture of my bounty and let that be it for the night.  Plenty of explaining and describing to follow in the coming days.  Meanwhile, if you were to check out this blog and get as excited about it as I did, you might find a couple of the recipes to accompany these pictures.

 

 
 

  

Oh, and definitely say hello to my new seagull friend.  I am calling him Fred.

Today's overly ambitious game plan

Farmers market to join CSA

Purchase storage containers as yesterday's baking/cooking marathon depleted my cabinets.

Purchase a candy mold in an attempt to make something that's probably outrageously bad for you.

2 kinds of waffles (1/2 check.  Doubled one recipe for waffles from Joy of Vegan Baking.  ZOMG this is the best waffle recipe ever!)
Banana muffins
Sopapillas (decided against these since they had shortning in them)
Chapati (dough resting on counter as I type)
Bean burgers (1/2 cooking on stove right now.  No recipe needed!)
Veganroni (I can't believe how well this turned out!)
 (didn't have ingredients to make caramel)
Blueberry Muffins (nixed this for bran muffins with a jelly center!)
Granola (Completely forgot about this one.  Think I might leave it for another day.)

I don't think I forgot anything... (Did in fact forget I was going to attempt seitan.  2 recipes in progress)

We'll see how this goes!

Accomplished!

Made tonight:

Banana Everything Cookies x 3

Hummus x 2

Yummy veggie salad!

Puppy Chow

Black Eyed Peas (possibly for burgers)

Pequinto? Beans

Brown Rice

Brown Rice and Brocolli Caserole

Ground Flax Seeds

Washed:

huge bag of spinach from Costco
Kale
Swiss chard
Lettuce
Tomatoes

Major props to my assistant in the kitchen.  Work goes so much faster with a sous chef.

I am also going tomorrow to sign up for a CSA and today I joined the People's Co-Op in OB.  My goal is to not have to step into a grocery store for the next 3 months.  We'll see how that goes.

Got tons more planned for tomorrow.  Stay tuned for pictures and maybe some recipes.

All Vegan in San Diego

This is a late extension of xmas post!  I know, xmas in February?  Procrastination and neglect have lead to this moment.

For xmas my mom got me a whole bunch of things from All Vegan in San Diego.  I had never been to this store but my mom got some good advice from a friend with a vegan daughter to go there for some great gifts.

Upon opening my gifts on xmas day I was ecstatic to find that she had gotten me all kinds of vegan goodies.  These included some chocolate covered cherries, peanut butter filled chocolates, a cookbook and a tee shirt. 

Unfortunately the shirt was a little big and the cookbook she got me was The Joy of Vegan Baking which...I already had.  For the next month she attempted to find the receipt and I procrastinated calling the store to find out if I could make an exchange without a receipt.  Last weekend I finally called and the owner told me to come on down. 

I exchanged the shirt for a smaller size and exchanged the book for some things that will probably make me regret getting the smaller size.

 

I used to be a huge candy fiend as a youngin.  To some extent I still can be.  Luckily I have found restraint to go along with my mostly healthy ways and this haul should last me a fair while.  My favorite chocolate used to be a See's  that was caramel and marshmallow dipped in chocolate.  I think I am going to use these marshmallows to try to recreate those.  I have been on serious sugar overload lately though so I do believe it will be a while.

The smore was decent though it wasn't quite as good as I was expecting.  The graham cracker was interesting but not incredible. 

The box is filled with caramels.  I have had a couple so far and though they are supposed to be different flavors they all seem relatively the same.

And that my friends is my trip to All Vegan.  I would like to go back there sometime when I have some real money to spend and consider their shoes which of course are All Vegan.

A Bit of a Let Down

I ended up pausing the dehydrating last night so that I could go to bed.  I resumed this morning with much anticipation but was a little disappointed at how hot the dehydrator seemed to be running.  Last night I watched a Good Eats video on youtube about dehydrating an Alton Brown said that it should take about 24 - 48 hours to dehydrate fruits at a temperature of 115 - 120 degrees.  I know that for food to be considered "raw" it is not supposed to get above 118 degrees.  This dehydrator said apples would take 6 hours and bananas 12.  I decided to finally put my old meat thermometer (from my pre vegan days) to use and see how hot this thing was actually running.

 

Over 150 degrees!  I don't believe this is really dehydrating.  I think it is cooking at a very low temperature.  I still have bananas and kiwis in there but I have now taken the apples out.  They turned out decent.

 

 I am going to let the bananas and kiwis finish and then I think I am probably done with my adventures into dehydrator land for now.  Over the summer I might like to experiment with using the sun and glass to dehydrate.  For now I am happy to stick to fresh fruit in a city where I am lucky enough to get local produce year round.

Dehydrator Love

After expressing my appreciation for the dehydrated bananas my friend Lacie gave me this week, she offered to let me borrow her dehydrator.  I didn't realize that meant she would be bringing it to me today!  I was caught quite unprepared for having this piece of equipment in my kitchen.   Luckily I knew right where to look for some inspiration.  Green and Crunchy makes some delicious looking fruit in her dehydrator and I broke down and bought some fruit to try my hand at dehydrating.  And by some fruit I mean that I used my newly aquired Costco card to buy enough food to feed an army. 

The apples are actually from the farmer's market which makes it just slightly worse that I went to two different places to get this haul.  Even worse than that is that this isn't all I bought.  I got a huge thing of pistachios that come in a reusable container, dates for potential dehydrated cookies and boca burgers that are specifically vegan!  I had no idea Costco carried these, or that they even existed. 

But back to the dehydrating.  So this is the beautiful dehydrator:

 

It runs a little loud which was sort of disappointing and  runs quite a bit warmer than I expected it to but I am excited to experiment.

Here is what is (un)cooking away in it as I speak type:

 

Plain sliced kiwis

 

 Cinnamon coated apples

 

 Half a tray of plain bananas and half a tray of my attempt to recreate Green and Crunchy's yummy flax/cocoa/agave bananas.  I coated the bananas in a little honey and then poured on the ground flax and cocoa powder.  They were a little sticky but I think they will turn out fantastic.

I didn't plan very well and started them at about 7pm which means I may be in for a long night.  Luckily the thought of dehydrated yumminess is enough to keep me going for quite a few more hours.  Look forward to more dehydrator posts as my current plan is to dehydrate all weekend.  Muahahaha.

A Week of No Groceries

Being that I love cooking and baking, I have a tendency to go a little overboard with my weekly grocery shopping.  Sometimes I end up with a pantry and freezer full of food that gets neglected while I meanwhile spend all of my spending money on even more food.  This week I decided to give my wallet a break and not even visit a grocery store or farmers market once.  As luck would have it, this happened to coincide with some unusual events.

First, a lady in my office started bringing in pomelos to share.  So I took a couple.  Then she started bringing in pomelos and oranges.  So I took a few.  Then today she brought in oranges and tangerines.  I now have a bigger stock pile of fruit than I did when I started the week.

 

Next, I was going to try to use up some frozen fruit by making smoothies every day for breakfast but we only had one banana.  Since my boyfriend eats a banana for breakfast almost every day I asked him to pick some up when he worked yesterday (he works at a semi healthy grocery store).  Let me lay it out there that my boyfriend does not grocery shop.  We met when I worked at the same store he works at now.  Almost every day when I worked there I would have at least one or two items if not a whole bag of groceries I had picked up throughout the day to purchase.  The only thing he ever bought was bananas.  When he came home yesterday he had bananas, and this:

 

This can only mean two things.  First, I have been neglecting my job of keeping a well stocked tupperware of hummus at all times, and second, I may never make home made hummus again.  I don't know why it is, but I can never get my hummus to turn out as smooth and creamy as store bought hummus.  I can see why this hummus is the talk of the vegan blogger world.  I think my boyfriend might be onto something.  And I don't have to make everything from scratch, do I?

Then today, my most awesome friend Lacie who works in my office brought me a present!

 

Dehydrated bananas that she had made herself.  These things are addicting but I am trying to figure out how to get the most mileage out of them.  Trailmix?  Some sort of baked good?  Cereal?  Oooh, I wish I had some cereal.  I'm sure I'll figure something out.   

Meanwhile, my boyfriend came home from work today and had another tub of Sabra hummus.  This time it was roasted red pepper.  And to top it all off, I bought him a digorno pepperoni pizza last week, so he bought me an Amy's vegan pizza.  What a sweetheart.  

Plus, I still have tons of food left.  I'm thinking I might try one more week without shopping.  My wallet is loving me.

I think I hear some hummus calling my name from the kitchen.  It might be asking to be added to some salad I have mixed up to go along with spaghetti for dinner.  Yum!