Better Late than Never......

 Happy Monday!  I know this is a little late, but hey....late is better than never....right?   Here's the recap of my Thanksgiving.   I was a little like this after we ate our Thanksgiving meal. 

I made this Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherds Pie from Fat Free Vegan to take for Thanksgiving.  It turned out great.  I'm sorry, but I don't have a picture of it.  I got in such hurry to get out the door that I forgot to photograph it.   After I realized that I never took a picture, I decided that I would take a picture of my Thanksgiving plate, but I left the camera out in the car.  I was about to starve, so I didn't go get it....sorry.  I had planned on taking some roasted veggies, but was told there would be plenty of veggies that I could eat, so I didn't make any.  After glancing over everything I asked about certain dishes to make sure they were vegan, and dug in.   Later on that evening my niece commented on how good the green beans were.  Then, out it came...the green beans were cooked in beef brother.  WHAT?  At that moment my little niece looked at me and said "you ate green beans didn't you?"  Yep, I sure did, because I was told they were okay for me to eat.  Apologies came from my SIL, and she said that she never thought about that not making them vegan.   Again, I explained what a vegan was, and explained my diet and what it did and did not consist of. Of course, I'm not the type of person that just blows my top, but I was very upset.  I felt like throwing up and my insides felt all dirty and violated!  After that I found out that several other dishes that were there were not actually vegan either, but was told they were.  I didn't eat those though...thank goodness.  From now on, I will for sure be taking my own meal to any family function that we have.  Shen, I know.....  It's not just family though , no one here in the South understands the full meaning of what a vegan is.  They all seem to think it just means that you don't eat meat.  No matter how many times you explain it, they just don't get it.  I have to admit, I debated about whether I should blog about my Thanksgiving or not, because I have family that reads my blog, but I decided that I wanted to and I hope that it doesn't offend anyone.   

So with all that being said, we all did a lot of this over the remainder of the long weekend..  I started to blog several times, but just couldn't bring myself to it.   :o)

I did take a little time to make Isa's Marbled Banana Bread.  I think I swirled the batter a little too long though.  It almost looks like plain ole chocolate banana bread.  Sure did taste good though.  Tony suggested adding walnuts to it the next time.  I think that would be a great addition. 

I also made some granola.  I've been wanting to make some for a while now, but just haven't done it.  I finally got around to it Saturday morning.  I used oats, hemp seeds, walnuts, shredded coconut, dried cranberries, dried apricots, wheat germ, safflower oil, brown sugar, rice syrup, and vanilla.  I used Alicia Silverstone's recipe in The Kind Diet as a guide to go by.  If you don't have her book, you can find the recipe here.

 I didn't have anything to take for lunch today, so I went to the cafeteria in hopes to get a salad.  I was a little too late though.  They were all gone.  I lucked up though, they had some steamed veggies....yay!

Anyway, I have a lot of catching up to do on my blog reading.  I do hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving weekend and I hope you aren't as behind at work as I am.  :o)

~Peace~

A Pumpkin Kind of Morning and Vegan Care Package Swap

This morning when I got up I wanted to try out a Pumpkin Spice Latte recipe that I found a while back.  I changed the recipe up a bit and it was delish!  Here's how I made mine.

3/4 cup almond milk

1 cup brewed coffee

2 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 tablespoon maple syrup (may need more if you like it sweeter)

Combine milk and spices in a saucepan and bring to a boil on the stove.  Remove and pour into a blender and blend until frothy.  Pour into a large mug and then add the cup of coffee and stir.  I sprinkled a little apple pie spice on top to make it pretty.  :o)

Saturday morning I made The Best Pumpkin Muffins from Isa's Vegan with a Vengeance.  I swear these are my most favorite muffins.  So this morning I had a left over pumpkin muffin and a pumpkin spice latte. YUM!!!!

I was off again Friday, so I took my mom shopping and spent the day with her. When I got home I had box sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me.  I tore into it right away.  I knew what it was.  Look at all these goodies that were in it.  This was from the care package swap that Cook Vegan Lover put on.  This was my first year to participate in the swap, and it was so much fun!  I was matched up with Hally from The Odd Couple Eats.  I enjoyed getting to know Hally thru email.  It was so ironic that we got paired up.  Her husband is an Omni just like mine, and she also became a Vegan after reading The Kind Diet.  Okay, on to all the awesome goodies that I got.  I got some cinnamon crispies and a cherry chocolate candy bar from One Lucky Duck.  I tore into the chocolate yesterday and OMG...it is soooo good!  There was a jar of Montmorency Cherry jam and Harissa from Le Pain Quotidien in the box.  The funny thing is that I have been wanting to try Harissa for some time, so I am so excited about that.  I can't wait to spread that cherry jam on some toast or maybe a bagel with some cream cheese...mmmm    She also threw in a Primal Strip, a meatless vegan jerky for my hubby (Texas BBQ flavor).  Now how sweet and thoughtful is that.  Also in the box were a couple more candy bars (which I am dying to dig into), spicy pumpkin seeds, Funky Monkey pink pineapple crunchies, some wasabi flavor Healthy Seaweed snacks, and for an extra she threw in a bar of soap that she got at a wedding that she went to.  Now that's a lot of stuff!  We've been so busy that I haven't had time to try much of it yet.  As you can see I did manage to try some chocolate.  I love my chocolate!  :o)

The Harissa and jam

cinnamon crispies, pink pineapple crunchies, and spicy pumpkin seeds

CHOCOLATE!!!!   :o)

Tony's Primal Strip that I'm sure he will let me sample.

Some HOT seaweed snacks....very good though!

The bar of soap that I can't wait to try.

I love that I have a new friend in Hally.  She lives in NYC and Tony's sister lives in NJ, so I'm hoping that the next time we go to visit his sister that maybe..just maybe Hally and I will be able to meet up.  I look forward to keeping in touch with her.  As I sad, this was my first vegan swap and it won't be my last!

I won't be around this week, because I am on vacation and I'm outta here.  :o)  I'm going to take some very needed time away, so I will see guys in a week.  :o)  Hope everyone has a great week!!!

~Peace~ 

Another 3 Day Weekend Recap

 Happy Monday!  I had another three day weekend and it's still hard to believe that Monday got here so fast.  I feel like Maggie in this picture....Huh...Monday already?  :-)

Saturday night I made HH's Mock Meatloaf and Brown Gravy.  Lucky for me these recipes were on her website, because I still haven't gotten my cookbook back from my co-worker yet.  I let a man that I work with borrow the cookbook after him and his wife watched Forks Over Knives.  His wife has really been enjoying the cookbook.  Tony enjoyed this meal as well.  He said this was the first mock meat anything that he had eaten that didn't weird him out...ha   I did make a change though.  I didn't have any Gimme Lean Hamburger style.  All I had was Gimme Lean Sausage style, so I used that in place of the hamburger style.  It turned out just as good.  I also made some mac and cheese out of the left over nut cheese from our pizza night last Thursday, which turned out very good as well.  I used some brown rice pasta this time.  This was a first with the brown rice pasta for me, and I liked it.  :o)  We also had fried okra, and I made some more fried green tomatoes....yum!



Here's a picture of just the "meatloaf" after we had cut into it.

Saturday for lunch I made a "meat loaf" sandwich which was out of this world.  Tony's sister gave us some bread that they used to make sandwiches out of at their coffee shop, which they just closed, because they are moving to Cincinnati.   I don't know what kind of bread this is, but I will find out.  It's fresh like the Ezekiel bread with no preservatives, so we have to keep it in the freezer.  I know it has flax seeds in it and it is awesome!  I toasted the bread in a skillet with a little Earth Balance Buttery Spread, then added the meat loaf, that I had warmed up in another skillet along with a little gravy.  I then toasted it a little more.  This was so good!  It's strange to think back to when the thought of a meat loaf sandwich grossed me out.   I sure don't feel that way anymore!    



I was about to forget about my Friday night supper.  It was quickie.  I had curry veggies and rice.  I took a pack of frozen veggies and cooked them as the package stated, then added a cup of coconut milk and a tablespoon of curry powder. I let the mixture sit on very low heat for about 5 minutes then spooned some over the top of Basmati rice.   So yummy for such a quick dinner.

Saturday morning I made the Cinnamon Coffee Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  Oh boy was this ever so yummy!   I had forgoten all about having this cookbook.  I was browsing through my book shelf searching for recipes that I thought Tony would enjoy, and there it was.   There are so many good looking/sounding recipes in this cookbook that I want to make.  You'll be seeing more goodies made from this cookbook....that's for sure.

Saturday we worked in the yard all day trimming shrubs and all that fun stuff.  I picked the rest of our peppers out of our garden too.  Our pepper plants have really been producing over the last month.  There were way more left on the plants than what I thought.  Here's our pepper bounty.  I did leave a few small ones on the plants, so maybe they will continue to grow before it gets too cold.

Last night I made Quinoa-Stuffed Bell Peppers, since we had so many peppers.   I used a recipe from Vegetarian Times that can be found here.  These stuffed peppers were way better than the stuffed bell peppers that I made a few months back.   I had a lot of the filling left over though, so I put some of it in the freezer.  I thought it might make a good soup before long.  I hope it freezes well.

That's my recap for the weekend. :o)  Again, I had planed on blogging over the weekend and not getting behind on reading your blogs, but that didn't happen.  I just couldn't bring myself to get on the computer.  I'll be catching up today though and checking out what you're doing for Vegan MOFO.

~Peace~

A Little Bit of Everything......

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a great weekend and survived the heat.  Smoothies are really hitting the spot with me on these hot mornings.  This morning I had a green smoothie made with pineapple coconut water, which was delicious!

2 stems of kale (minus the stem)

a dash of cinnamon

a dash of ginger powder

1 cup pineapple coconut water

1/2 frozen banana

a handful frozen mango chunks

2 tablespoons hemp seeds

You know the drill...throw it all in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy....very yummy!



Sunday morning I made Happy Herbivores Apple Crisp Muffins.   These muffins are great!  They were so moist and and the chunks of apples in the muffins really made them the perfect muffin.  In case you don't have Lindsay's cookbook, the recipe can be found here  http://happyherbivore.com/recipe/apple-crisp-muffins/ .  I really suggest you try these.  :o)

Saturday night we decided to grill.  Tony grilled eggplant for me, which was out of our garden.  While it was on the grill I rubbed some Italian dressing on each side as Tony flipped them...very tasty!  We also grilled some asparagus, fresh corn, jalapeno poppers, and even a sweet potato.  I did cook the sweet potato half way in the microwave though.  I then wrapped it up in some aluminum foil and threw it on the grill.  It was awesome!  We also roasted some bell peppers on the top rack of the grill.  I have a yummy bell pepper in my plate below that we roasted.  He didn't get roasted as much as the others, but it was still good.  These little peppers are so sweet.   On the jalapeno poppers, Tony stuffed them with cream cheese (of course mine was vegan) and wrapped bacon around them (again...vegan bacon for me)   These were awesome!  Tony did scoop out the seeds because I can't handle all that heat.  :o)  It was great to not have to turn on the oven for once.  Every thing we ate Saturday night was cooked on the grill.

Here's some veggies out of our garden.

Roma's out of our garden...my favorite kind of tomato.

Yummy bell peppers.  I love that they are so tiny and sweet.

 Here's one one of our bell pepper plants.

Yellow squash...of course.

The squash bugs destroyed our squash plants this year.  After they had infected out plants the squash plant still tried to produce some squash but could only make the little squash balls.  At least we did get a few squash of the plants before they got infected and died.

This was the first bell pepper that we pulled off our plants...It was huge!

 Here are a few pictures of our little garden that we took several weeks ago.

Our garden has about produced all it's going to this year.  It's been so hot that the plants are dying.  They just aren't able to hang on any longer. Oh, has anyone ever made freezer pickles?  I picked the last of my cucumbers over the weekend and found a freezer bread and butter pickle recipe.  I didn't really have enough cucumbers to can more pickles, so I decided to give the freezer ones a try.  The recipe says to wait at least 2 weeks before trying them, so I'll let you know how those turn out.  :o)  I hope everyone has a great week!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Sunday Already.....

Hi everyone! I can't believe it's Sunday already. The weekends just seem to go by way too fast. I mentioned the other day that I didn't even want to think about eating out, because we had been eating out so much the first part of the week. Friday afternoon my husband sent me a text saying "Casa Marina" our newly favorite Mexican Restaurant. So, I guess you know where we went Friday night. I really think that I could eat at this place every night. :o) This time I got their veggie taco dinner. It was very good just like everything else that I have gotten there. The only thing was that the tacos had a little shredded cheese on them that I had to take off. No problemo though.

Here's a close up of the veggie soft shell tacos. They had squash, zucchini, red onion, carrots, pico, and lettuce in them.....YUM! I got a side of guacamole...they have the absolute best. If you ever come to Jackson, TN and you like Mexican, you must go to Casa Marina. You will NOT be sorry.

Saturday after I got home from running some errands and visiting my mom, I put the ingredients in my bread machine to make some flax wheat bread. The past times that I have used my bread machine, my loaves always turned out short and dumpy. I decided to use the regular bread setting instead of the rapid setting this time. Yes, it took longer but the bread turned out to be the perfect loaf that I have always hoped for from the bread machine...Yay!

Here's a the recipe and a picture of the slice of bread that I had with my supper.

11 ounces of water

1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons black strap molasses

2 1/4 cups unbleached bread flour

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon vital wheat gluten

1/4 cup ground flax seeds

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Put all the ingredients into your bread machine. Follow the directions for your bread machine. Mine calls for all the wet ingredients first, then the dry and the yeast last. I added the above ingredients in order into my bread machine. The bread turned out perfect. This is by far the best loaf of bread that I have made in my bread machine.

Next up is the Blueberry Breakfast Cake that I got from Happy Herbivore's website. It was total yumminess! The recipe can be found here. It was very moist and not too sweet. It was perfect with my cup of Kona Coffee this morning.

That's all the baking I did Saturday, but I have something else that I am going to make this afternoon that I have been wanting to make for a couple of months now. I did whip up some dressing for our salad that we had for supper last night. I made the Thousand Island dressing from Vegan Comfort Food. It was awesome! Way better than any store bought kind that I've ever had. Tony even loved it. :o) The picture doesn't do the dressing justice.

Here's my Saturday night salad that was followed up with a piece of blueberry breakfast cake. I think this was one of my better salads too. I added some sun dried tomatoes for the first time. OMG...why haven't I done that before? I think the thousand island dressing and the sun dried tomatoes are what made the salad so good.

That's all for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

TGIF.....Orange Cranberry Muffins

Happy Friday from me and Maggie! I took this picture of Maggie this morning as we were sitting in the car waiting for the door to be unlocked at the vets office. Maggie is having a spa day (bath and toenail trim) today. This is her look of excitement, or I guess I should say her look of "momma, please do leave me here". I don't think she really minds going though. I honestly believe they treat her like a princes there. They seem to love our spoiled baby! :o) However, she is always very happy when we pick her up. You would think that she has been there for days the way she carries on when she sees us. :o) Of course her excitement to see us always makes us feel loved.... Last night, Tony had to leave right before supper time to go show a house, so I whipped up Isa Chandra's Orange Cranberry Muffins while he was gone. These were amazing! They were so light and fluffy and so bursting with flavor. I used her reduced fat method by using 1/3 cup of apple sauce and 1 tablespoon of oil instead of the 1/2 cup of canola oil. The recipe can be found on line here. The only change I made was I used dried cranberries, because I didn't have any fresh. I can only imagine how good these would be with fresh cranberries. I thought they were great with dried cranberries, but I definitely want to try them with fresh berries. I took a quick phone picture of the muffin before I devoured it. The picture doesn't do the muffins justice....at all!

For lunch today I made a wrap out of some left over chickpea cutlets. As I was eating the wrap, I thought about taking a picture of it. That's the reason for the dark and not so great picture, but at least you get an idea of how good it must have been. I spread a little spicy pepper hummus on a whole wheat tortilla and added some lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, shredded carrots, and the chickpea cutlets....very yummy! I think the hummus made it. It gave it just enough spiciness to make a great wrap.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Looks like we have a busy one planned as long as the weather stays nice. :o)

Oh....Question....Does any one have any suggestions of a great beginner yoga dvd? I am totally NOT limber, so when I say beginner....I mean very beginner. I can't get anywhere close to touching my ankles! The tips of my fingers barely go past my knees. I know that's pitiful, so help me out with some suggestions....please. :o)

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Good Food for Everyone!

I hope you are having a great Tuesday. The snow melted off the streets yesterday, so I had to go back to work today....booooo. Since I was off work yesterday, I made Maggie some pumpkin pie muffins. I got the recipe from Molly over at Vegan Flower. You can find the recipe here. Maggie loved them. She was getting very impatient with me as I was tearing bites of the muffin off for her. I think she thought I was too slow. I think these are her favorite treats so far. I have to admit that the muffins looked so good that I wanted to eat them, so I actually took a bite myself. Hey, they are made out of people food, so I thought I should try them. Now I see why Maggie was all bug-eyed over them...they were very tasty. I did leave out the hemp seeds though, because I didn't have any.

For supper I made an Indian Lentil Pilaf that was out of this world. This was my first time in making a dish that called for garam masala. I haven't been able to find the spice where I live, but it just so happens that a friend of mine lives next door to an Indian family. This lady was so sweet in that she gave Amanda (my friend) a packet of it for me to try. She even told her that if I liked it, she would pick some up at the Indian market for me. I thought that was super sweet of her, especially since she doesn't know me. I've had this recipe sitting around for some time now. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to make it since I finally got some garam masala. The recipe can be found here. I didn't do anything different to this recipe, and I don't think I would change a thing.

Tony has been wanting some old fashioned beef stew, so he gathered up all the ingredients and put them into the slow cooker and let it cook all afternoon. To go with our meals I made some whole wheat beer bread. The best way for me to describe this bread is that it tasted a little like whole wheat sour dough bread. I thought it was very good! Tony on the other hand chickened out and wouldn't eat any. :o) The bread recipe can be found here. I've been wanting to make all the recipes on this post for the last couple of months. FINALLY, I was able to make them.

Now, it's time to hit my new cookbooks that I got for Christmas! There are tons of recipes that I am dying to make. I'll be sharing them as I make them.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~