Veritable Vegan

Well, I did it. I signed up for VEGAN MOFO. You all know what it is.
I am moving at the end of the month and my gas may be turned off on the 19th so this will be a challenge but it will be possible and hopefully it will be fun for everyone. I hope this wasn't a bad idea.

Anyway, here's dinner and dessert from yesterday. Dinner was amazing. I still had a bunch of leftover chard that I really didn't want to have go bad so I steamed the bunch of it, made some mashed sweet potatoes in the meantime, and served it up, drizzled with what was an attempt at recreating Annie's Goddess Dressing: tahini, lemon juice, soy sauce, garlic, thyme, black pepper, and a little maple syrup. It didn't really taste like Annie's but it was DAMN good on top of the veggies. Delicious Magic Hat HI.P.A. in the background AND a proof of Julie Hasson's upcoming (Mar. 2011) Vegan Diner!


Dessert was a pumpkin scone. Tasty, if I do say so myself.


Let's hope for more deliciousness in the month to come.

STRANDZIG Bake Sale #5

Like I've said before, G and I put together a arts+literary zine at work of all the employees' genius. To offset printing costs and general stress (on my part mostly, maybe. I think beer should definitely be part of our production costs), we hold a bake sale and hope people will be nice. I also like to have an excuse to bake alot.
This time around I made pumpkin scones, from Two Vegan Sisters. Mine came out SUPER dry (those measurements look a little weird) so I added a little bit of hemp milk. Oh and I burned the bottoms. Mine have white chocolate chips in them, and I added a glaze after they were done (not the one on their site) in hopes they would be moister. I haven't tried them, but Greg said they were good...



I made Hearty-Spiced Cocoa Muffins from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Joy of Vegan Baking.

They had chocolate chips in them AND cayenne pepper among the spices! I've always wanted to bake cayenne with chocolate. I had originally planned to make mint brownies instead butt...
These look like they came out okay but two didn't come out of the muffin tin and I got angry and then they fell on the floor. I opened the beers after that.

I made Lemon Drops from Kris Holechek's 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes.

This kind of isn't a great picture, but they taste really good. I've made them before for work and my boss couldn't stop eating them. They're tiny but powerfully lemony and coated in confectioner's sugar. I put them three to a bag; that's what you see in the background.

AND lastly: another veganized Martha Stewart Cookie Book recipe (not that there aren't millions of already vegan recipes) for Iced Oatmeal Applesauce cookies.

I had fun icing these.

So, that's the sugary run down. I'll let you know how the sale goes.

Fancy Feast

Breakfast brought to you by Trader Joe's:


Oats in a Jar with Cranberry-Apple butter, oats (duh), almond butter, apple rings, and a little apple cider. This was tasty, but OIAJ are always a little dry. I COULD add more liquid, which I was trying to do with the apple cider, but I reaaally hate mushy oats. It's hard to gauge how much of anything to put in when it's all packed vertically...Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? Ahhh stop complainin'.

I snacked on some carrot sticks with baba ganoush and went grocery shopping at TJ's again and spent 53 buckaroos...oy. It's so easy to spend unnecessary money there.
Anyway, I ate a salad topped with hummus
and read Catholic Girls, a collection of prose and poetry about...Catholic girlhood. It's interesting. I didn't go to church today.

Instead, I set about making dinner, a Chard-Fennel-Onion Tart, which G was not originally thrilled about but ate and seemed to enjoy. I liked it a lot and had TWO slices with tomatoes on the side. This was my first time working with either fennel OR chard! The base is tofu, nooch, soymilk and a few other things...I adapted and veganized this recipe from The New Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas (included eggs) and The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (only onions).



I think I may make this for Thanksgiving, with a little more tweaking..

Calm before the Storm, Food before the Fast

Breakfast was boring. Same thing as yesterday, so no photo. Also I was sleepy, so no photo. However, it WAS notable in that while eating, I was browsing your blogs and realized that today was NYC VegFest!, held right up the block from where I work, and whooo but Terry Hope Romero was presenting?!
And! She was presenting (doing a trivia game from what I gather) right around the time I take lunch.

I sat off to the side of the park a bit, to avoid the crowds and ate:

Broccoli, FYH cheddar, greens, beets, carrots, pepper, tomato, and zucchini with a mustard-red wine vinegar dressing with hemp seeds from Jenny!.

Then I hustled on over to the VegFest but appparently missed Terry and her trivia, so I just wandered around the farmer's market and picked up more beets, broccoli, and peppers for tonight's dinner, as well as an apple to snack on. VegFest was a bust for me, I guess, but if anyone from NYC was there, let me know how it was.

For dinner, I had another salad and rye bread with the pesto and a slice of tofu. Dessert was the last cupcake, with cinnamon cashew cream raaahhhther than chocolate icing. Same idea.
Also, G and I will probably be doing a three day fast next week. Any suggestions? I was thinking, 1)raw foods, 2)one raw meal and juices and 3)juice fast. We'll see though because we're going to see The Corin Tucker Band play!! Yay!!

White, Orange, and Green

What can I say, I'm Irish. Looking over the day's meal photos, I realize that everything looks exactly the same! Boring for you, tasty for me.

Breakfast was another Whole Wheat wrap, this time with pumpkin butter, a banana, and almond butter.

At 12ish I had a Gala apple and around 2, I had another damn Apple pie LARAbar.
When lunch rolled around, I wasn't too hungry, but ate my salad like a good little girl:

Spinach, zucchini, and FYH Cheddar added on top of the last of our slowly oldening salad.

Annndddd dinner,

This was really tasty. Yet another WW Wrap, topped with garlic hummus, mashed sweet potato, and spinach! So good.

Um then G went out and I made his "birthday cake," which is actually recipe I veganized from a Martha Stewart cookie book for Apple-Cherry Crumble Bars.

Man-o. Veganizing the recipe really only meant subbing Earth Balance for real, unsalted butter, but it was stressful since Madame Martha is so perfect in all of her presentations and everything. I almost felt her looking over my shoulder at the mess I was making in my tiny, butter-free kitchen. Also I played around with sugars and moisture since Earth Balance has salt in it. Sorry my phood photography skills are not up to par...
They're okay. Could be moister and sweeter both. Oh but here's Greg's drawing of the cake he REALLY wishes he got.


What he DID get as a present is these (sort of) food-related grossoid magnets: ABC Gum! As seen in the Seventeen Magazine gift guide Kind of cute, though, yeah?

Quick Vittles

Breakfast:

Whole Wheat wrap with Cranberry-Apple Butter from Trader Joe's and almond butter with bananas Lady French Press in the background.
I was super excited about the Cranberry-Apple butter, considering my obsession with TJ's pumpkin butter. This is much less sweet, which is a good thing taste-wise, but texture-wise, I expected it to be thicker. It might be a better addition to oatmeal than as a spread, but this was still pretty tasty.

Lunch:

THIS was a master of all salads, topped with sweet potato, black pepper and baba ganoush. I really like this baba if you can't tell. It and the sweet potato clumped the salad nicely together, even though that doesn't sound tasty - it means I got a good mouthful of everything in each bite. The only problem was that cold sweet potato is much less flavorful than it is when heated, but that's okay.
Also, the LARA bar. Good, as usual, but I should probably stop eating so many bars.

I was surprisingly hungry by the time work was over, but G and I saw Charles Burns speak at work about his new comic book, X'ed Out. It was really cool. Then, it being G's BIRTHDAY we went out to dinner to a vegetarian place, Quantum Leap. I got a Middle Eastern falafel burger with hummus, olives, and roasted peppers and grilled vegetables on the side. It was a lot of food, and I had to eat it in two shifts. But it was tasty.
I had another cupcake when I got home, too.
Lots of fiber, let me tell ya.

Menu Planning

Do you guys menu plan?
I'm a bit of an organizational freak and I love to make lists, so menu planning makes sense to me but I didn't do it until recently, because now I know better what I'll be doing on a given night, or where I'll be. Plus I have more leftovers since G and I cook together more often and I know he'll eat some and I can have some at leisure without having to eat lasagna everyday for it to not go bad. Although I did end up having to throw out some lentil loaf yesterday because it was getting weirdly rusted in the loaf pan. I hate wasting food but eek. Parts of the top looked okay but I didn't feel like loading my bloodstream with metals. It may be time for some higher quality loaf pans.
Anyway, I still only menu plan about three days in advance because "the best laid plans," you know. I plan to not plan. But it makes things really easy, I spend less on frivolous purchases, and it helps with portion control.
Tonight, I was sort-of-almost-but-not-really planning to go see a talk (hear a talk?) but I punked out at the last moment but was still able to come home and know what I was going to eat without standing around wondering for half an hour. Which is good. Because I was hungry.

Here's what I had planned for today.

Coffee with soy milk, oatmeal with pumpkin butter and almond butter, and a banana. Vitamin not pictured, although if you look closely, you might actually be able to see my menu plan underneath the banana!


Lunch was a big salad with tofu and baba ganoush. It was tasty! I also had a few dried apricots.

I had a Gingerberry Synergy Kombucha right before I left work, which held off the hunger some. This was also the first time I tasted that flavor and I really liked it. Ginger and this one are probably my favorites.


Dinner was quick and easy, Rye bread with pesto, FYH Cheddar Cheese, and cherry tomatoes with a Spinach-zucchini-tomato salad, topped with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and red pepper flakes.

Oh and this vanilla cupcake with homemade chocolate icing from VCTOTW. Of course I only ate it to make room in the refrigerator because it's SOMEone's birthday tomorrow (did you know? I hope you're all prepared) and there MIGHT be some other baked good that needs some space.
Yum yum.

Oh and! Oddly enough, I posted about Jae Steele's baba ganoush recipe yesterday and then today, when checking the events schedule for the talk I was thinking about attending (on zining and libraries) when I realized that she's going to be talking at the same bookstore on Sunday!! I punked out today but I WILL be there on Sunday! I might have a little crush on her. Apparently she has a new cookbook coming out that I had no idea about. I'll let you know how it is!

Recuperated

So, like I said, I was pretty nauseous this morning so I didn't eat much until late in the day. Around 2 I went to Trader Joe's to get some things, and had another Toasted Nuts and Cranberry LUNA bar around 3. When I got home, I ate the last of our wilting salad and some mashed sweet potatoes with pesto I had made Monday night.




I don't make pesto often but I really like it. I added nutritional yeast into this batch (usually it's just basil, walnuts, and olive oil) and I think it made it taste really good.
Apparently I'm all about the dips these days because I also made some baba ganough. I used Jae Steele's recipe from Get It Ripe, which is a cookbook I like a lot but rarely use.

I didn't really taste much of it, except to test for seasonings and thickness. I'll have some tomorrow, I guess.

Finally, dinner. G and I made a fresh salad (Organic Girl 50/50, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, beet, carrot, zucchini, broccoli), so I had that topped with balsamic vinegar, nooch, and black pepper and a farmer's market tomato with more pesto.


Obviously my stomach is feeling better. No beer tonight.

Illin'

Yuck. I had a bad night yesterday involving beer, too much beer, too much sugar, and too much food in general. And a weird nighttime outing which lead to another beer. Oy. So I'm a big baby and I'm staying home today. I took two aspirins and still have a headache, maybe because I didn't finish my coffee?

Here's a pathetic photo that really explains it all:


Yah, there's one of the many empty beers, half-finished coffee, advil, and...pickles. I had two because I heard they're good for upset stomachs. It is sort of helping.
Maybe I'll eat some real food later and show you that when I stop feeling sorry for my stupid self.

Breakfasts

Breakin' the fast, breakin' the fast oh yeah.
G is good for many reasons, only one minor one being that he enjoys good food and we like to make good food together. One Sunday morning we made a full-on vegan feast brunch with, what else, Isa's Vegan Brunch.

Pumpkin French Toast and Tofu scramble with spinach, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes. Coffee of course. The pumpkin french toast was not perfect but has promise. They were a little soggy and not really pumpkiny, but we cooked them a short time in the oven and it helped with the texture. We conferred with his dad, who is apparently a FT (French Toast) pro (both vegan and not), and picked up some tips. There WILL BE a next time.
That is when we're being fancy. On any given day, especially now that it's getting chilly, I'm more likely to eat something like these pickins:

My first Oats in a Jar! Banana, oatmeal, raw almond butter

On top of a new cookbook! Rose Elliot's The Complete Vegetarian Updated

Or an almond butter and jam sandwich with banana

Sometimes just an easy fruit with almond butter Hmm...what do all these have in common?

This morning was applesauce with raisins, chopped walnuts, and cinnamon. It wasn't really all that good.



Maybe tomorrow I'll eat something more exciting and less monochromatic for breakfast.

Been a Break

But I'm back. What better place to restart than exactly where I left off?
I've been cat sitting again for Barack and Joe. Here they are, eating.



And me? I've been overeating, as I do when I'm away, (ahem whole bag of Trader Joe's Sweet Potato Chips) and so ate a light breakfast that morning. I couldn't have fit more if I tried.

I generally don't eat LUNA Bars anymore, but if I do, I only eat this flavor. I was thinking the other day how far they've come in taste since I first tried them back in 2002.
Toasted Nuts and Cranberry bar, dried apricots, Earl Grey tea (which just doesn't hold a candle to coffee but I didn't have access to coffee at the cathouse.)
Lunch that day, with a huge Honeycrisp apple, which I actually couldn't even eat. Just the cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots with Roasted Red Pepper Hummus


And dinner tonight. Greg and I made the tofu-spinach lasagna from The Vegan Table for the third time, and here it is with some sliced squash on the side.

Don't tell anyone but I also ate a bunch of chocolate chips after this for desert. A BUNCH.

I have a lot of old photos to show you, maybe I'll get some of those up soon.