A Little Food Feud Action

Happy Monday Tuesday (I started my post on Monday, but didn't get to finish...CRAZY day yesterday)!  I took full advantage of the extra hour that daylight savings time gave us Sunday by doing a little baking.  First let me tell you where one of the fabulous recipes that I made came from.  It came from one of FoodFued's zines called Marmalade Umlaut.  I have to say a a couple of things about her zines before I go into the food.  I bought 5 a while back and they are great.  Maud is a so funny.  You can't help but laugh out loud and some of the things she says and talks about. Then there is the serious side of Maud giving up some of her great knowledge and wonderful recipes.   There are a lot of recipes that I plan on making from her zines soon, but what I made Sunday was at the top of the list!  If you haven't checked out Maud's zines, you really should!  :o)   I'm waiting patiently for the new to come out....

I made the Pumpkin Pie Brownies from Issue 9.  I've been wanting and meaning to make these for the last couple of weeks, but just couldn't seem to find the time.  I'm glad I finally took the time, because they are awesome.   They have a rich brownie layer on the bottom and a creamy pumpkin layer on top.  I was going to be fancy and grate some dark chocolate to put on top instead of chocolate chips, but that didn't work out very well.  Since the chocolate slivers didn't work, I melted the chocolate, so I could drizzle it over the top.  That didn't turn out how I wanted it to either, but the taste is what mattered the most here.  Here's an example of Maud' humor.   She made a note beside the recipe saying " I made this.  Oh, and ruined it....sorry".   Then she wrote "Better luck to the rest of you, and do NOT sub a 7" pan for the 9" one...."    I couldn't help but giggle when I read that.

I also made HH's glazed pumpkin biscuits Sunday morning.  I added some cranberries to mine.  Cranberries just seem to pare well with pumpkin for me.  I thought I got the recipe off her website, but I didn't see it there.   I was going to post the link, but I can't seem to find it now....sorry.   They were good and pretty low in calories.  I'm not counting but someone else is.  :o)

I was off work Friday, and as most of you know we took a road trip to whole foods, so I could get some things that I was out of and of course get new things.   We left the house around noon, so by the time we got to Memphis we both were about to starve.  I suggested we go to P.F. Chang's, because we don't have one in Jackson.  I've only been wanting to try it for what seems like forever.  For starters we got a couple of veggie spring rolls (yum). 

For my main meal I ordered the Coconut Curry Vegetables, which was Stir-fried vegetables, crispy silken tofu and peanuts in a mild curry powder and coconut milk sauce...very good.   I no longer have to be jealous of Shen's P.F. Chang's meals, because I have now tried it and know that I like it... and, I will go back.  :o)  Well, I say I won't be jealous...It could be worse now that I've actually tried and liked it!  Thanks for posting those delicious meals Shen!

Here's one shot of some Whole Food's loot that I got.  I know it's nothing new for you guys, but for me it was like hitting winning the lottery.  The mint candy bar and B-12 are for Tony.  I finally decided to buy a can of Artichoke Hearts.  Now I need some help in finding the perfect recipe for them.  Any suggestions on a recipe for a person who's never tried them before? 

Here's some more goodies that I finally remembered to get and some new things that I found that I just had to try.  I finally found Honey Crisp apples...yay...and they are so good!  Tony found the soy pudding (I totally over looked it), so I had to get that to try, you know, since he pointed it out. :o)   I also found the stuffed grape leaves that VaVa and Shen have been eating.  Thanks for telling me where they were Shen.  And I FINALLY found Miso....thank goodness!

It was such a beautiful day on Sunday that we decided to get out and ride around.  We ended up stopping by Tony's sisters farm for a little donkey love.  Her name is Bashful.   She used to be bashful, but she's not anymore.  She is such a sweet heart!

She is so loving....I really wanted to take her home with me!

She loved on Tony a lot more...I think she thought his cologne smelt good.  :o)



I hope everyone had a great weekend!

~Peace~

Smoothie, Quiche, Brownie Balls, and Saturday Pictures

Happy Tuesday!  I hope everyone had a great weekend.  I did, but it just wasn't long enough.  Of course it never is.  First up on my food list is Happy Herbivore's Neapolitan Smoothie.   The Neapolitan ice cream used to be one of my favorites when I was growing up, so I was really anxious to try Lindsay's smoothie.  It was amazing.  It taste like the original stuff.  Makes for a great frozen dessert..  It's really good for breakfast also.  :o)  This recipe can be found on her website here. 

Sunday night I made HH's Quiche with Greens.  I used spinach in mine and I also added some red bell pepper.  Another very yummy dish!  If you like quiche, this was very good and very easy.  I'm all about easy meals.  This recipe is also on HH's website and it can be found here.  Yes, I am on the HH kick.  Everything that I have made from her cookbook has been fantastic and so easy to make.   Sorry my food pictures are so dark.  We are minus a light bulb or two in our lighting fixture in the kitchen.  I keep forgetting to stop and pick light bulbs up.

This is the red pepper that I used in the quiche.  It came out of our garden.  :o)

Okay, here's something that I made last night that did not come from the HH cookbook.  Are you amazed?   These are Double Chocolate Brownie Dough Balls and they are delicious.  I got the recipe from Oh She Glows, which can be found here.   Tony was even amazed at how good they were.  These are going to be perfect for that mid afternoon chocolate craving that I get sometimes.

Next up today are some random pictures that I took Saturday on our bike trip to Patti's.  This place is known for it's 2 inch pork chop, so you know that I didn't have very much to choose from.  Not a vegan friendly place, but they were very willing to help me out.  They had a chicken portobello sandwich on their menu, so I asked if I could order that with out the chicken.   I figured the lady would think I was crazy, but she said sure and that she has had other people to order like that before because they didn't eat meat....like me...ha   It was very good, but they could have put a little more mushroom on there for me, but I didn't complain.  I had that and some of their homemade chips...delish!  I took a picture of it with my phone, but it was so dark that you couldn't tell what it was....sorry.

Since I love dogs, I just had to take a picture of this sign.

This was the side of one of the gift shops. I thought all the bird houses were so cool.

Here's a close up of one of the bird houses.

I felt so sorry for this Turkey.  I so wanted to set him free.  Obviously he has been very stressed, because he has pulled out all the feathers on his chest.   He looked at us and made some little noises as if he were saying please help me.  Just broke my heart!

He/She was napping when we first came upon him.  He was standing on one leg with his head buried into his back...so pretty.  We woke him up by mistake though...oops

 A cute little wedding chapel.  Someone was getting married there last year when we went, so we weren't able to go inside.

It was open this time though.  :o)  It might hold like 20 people, and that would be very crowded!

Two angels were right outside the wedding chapel.  A friend of mine took this picture, so I stole it from her off  of her facebook page...ha   I thought it was so cool.

This was the sail boat harbor right across the street...so pretty!  Have you ever been sail boating?  I haven't and would love to go.!

We had to make a pit stop on our way to Patti's to put on our rain gear.  It came a down pour on us.  We rode in the rain for about an hour I guess....it was still fun though.

Yep...ridding with out a helmet.  There's not a helmet law in KY.  I think we were the only rebels.  Everyone else kept their helmets on....probably the smartest thing to do.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Baked Apple Crostata

Happy Friday everyone!  Last night when I got home from work I whipped up this Baked Apple Crostata before cooking supper.  I adapted this pie from the Cran-Peach one that I made a while back. While the filling was different, I did go by the original baking directions that can be found here.  I had some baked apples in the freezer that I had made back in the fall, so I thawed them out to use as the pie filling.  I rolled out my pie crust and added the baked apples, topped it off with some chopped walnuts and pecans (Tony's idea), and then folded the crust up around the filling.  It turned out to be VERY good.  Tony and I both thought it was better than the Cran-Peach one from a while back.  A cup of coffee made this the perfect dessert.  :o)

If you don't have a frozen pie crust then you can easily make your own.   I found a great pie crust recipe the other day online.  If you don't already have a homemade pie crust recipe then you should check this one out at http://www.vegfamily.com/vegan-recipes/desserts/vegan-pie-crust.htm.

I hope you have a great weekend!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Weekend Eats and Treats

Happy Monday!  I hope you had a great weekend.  My thoughts and prayers are going out to all the people who have been affected by the tornadoes over the weekend.  It's so sad to see all the devastation that the tornadoes have caused.  The weather has been so crazy this year!

Friday, I picked Maggie up from the vet.  It was her spa day.  I was going to take her picture and send it to Tony telling him that his daughter was on her way home.  This is the sassy pose I got from her...lol



Yesterday we stayed home and watched movies and relaxed. I actually got some cooking/baking time in also.  I finally got around to making some hummus, so I can have some wraps for lunch this week.  I used the hummus recipe out of my Veganomicon cookbook this time.  The only thing that I did different to the recipe was that I added a roasted red pepper, because I love...love...love roasted red pepper hummus!

Around noon on Sunday we were trying to figure out what in the world we were going to do for lunch.  Neither one of us wanted to leave the house, so Tony came up with the idea to make our own personal baked spaghetti's again.  We used a store bought mushroom pasta sauce to speed up the process, cause we were starvin! We used whole wheat spaghetti, and I added some asparagus to mine before putting it into the oven. I topped mine with vegan mozzarella, and Tony used the real stuff.  Turns out my hubby had a great idea for lunch.  :o)

Yesterday afternoon I pulled out my Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World cookbook and made the Simple Vanilla and Agave Nectar Cupcakes.  Tony loves vanilla cupcakes, so I thought these would be a great starting place for my first go at making vegan cupcakes.  It's hard to believe that I have been a vegan for almost 15 months and this is my first time to make vegan cupcakes.   I made a simple strawberry icing to go on top, but my strawberries were all mushy from being in the freezer, so it made the frosting thinner than what it normally is.  The cupcakes were awesome though!  They were so awesome that Tony ate 3.  :o)

Oh, I'm going to skip around here, because I was about to leave out breakfast.  Have you ever used this pancake/waffle mix?  It's not bad.  You just add soy milk and a mashed banana to the mix to make the batter.  I did add some cinnamon and pecans to the batter though.   They turned out pretty tasty.  They aren't as good as when you make them from scratch though, but still good.

It made 4 full size waffles and a partial 5th one.   There's a waffle missing from the plate though, because I was so hungry that I added some maple syrup to the waffle and ate it before I even thought about taking a picture. 

Ok, so now I'm skipping on to the later part of yesterday which would mean supper time.  I made the Herbed Home Fries from The Happy Herbivore.  These were delicious!  They were so full of flavor.  These would be perfect with some tofu scramble.   Also on the menu was sweet corn out of the freezer, black eyed peas, and  some bok choy that I got at the Farmers Market Saturday morning.  I used this recipe for the bok choy, and man was it ever so tasty.  I really liked the addition of the ginger.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

A Week Later.....

Happy Thursday....what a crazy week it has been!  :o)   I just realized that it has been a week since I posted.  I've been so busy that I haven't even had the chance to read your blogs, which stinks!  Hopefully after this weekend things will be back to normal and I can get back into my routine of seeing what your up to. 

I did want to write a quick post though to share my goodie pack with you that I received from Carissa over at Coffee & Sunshine.  She sent me a jar of harvest nectar truffles, a bag of organic rose petals, two stickers, and a very sweet card.  I won this in a giveaway that she did, and I am so glad that I was the lucky winner!   I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful the truffles are.  I will definitely be ordering of these.  I've never had anything like these truffles.  They are so creamy and full of flavor.  Tony and I both only ate one...they were pretty rich, so we thought one should do us.  I really could have eaten the whole jar though (they were that good), but I figured it might be a good idea to spread them out over the next few days and share.  Yes, Tony loved them as much as I did.  :o)



Check out UliMana's website if you want some really good raw truffles.

Here's a close up picture of the yummy truffles.  

To Carissa - Thank you so much for the goodies!  I can't wait to put the stickers on my truck, and the rose petals smell so good!!!   I'm just sad that the truffles aren't going to last very long!  :o)   Thanks for the sweet card too. :o)

Hopefully I will be back in the next few days with some good eats and treats.  :o)   I hope you all have a great rest of the week and weekend!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Happy Hump Day!  I made these chocolate chip (chunk) cookies Monday night.  I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  I used dark chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips, since that's all I had.  I also put some pecans in them.  This was my first batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies to make, and they were great.  I can't seem to get enough chocolate here lately for some reason, so I whipped these up while I had supper (spaghetti) cooking.   They were fast and oh so very good!  Tony even gave them a two thumbs up.  They were very moist and soft, which is the perfect chocolate chip cookie to me.



In my pre-vegan days I was a HUGE chocolate chip cookie dough fan.  I'm totally serious!  Chocolate chip cookie dough was like crack to me.  I had rather eat the cookie dough than make cookies out of it.  With that being said, after I added the chocolate chunks to this cookie dough, I just had to take a bite to see how it compared to the original stuff.  The taste was very close to what I remember eating.  I couldn't believe my taste buds.  It was very hard to stop eating the dough, but I thought Tony might like to have some cookies.  So, into the oven my little dough balls went.  :o)

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Crescent Cinnamon Rolls

Happy Tuesday!  I started this post yesterday around lunch time, but didn't get very far due to bad storms coming thru our area again. More tornadoes and flooding.  I don't ever recall seeing so many tornadoes like this.  We are expecting more through out today and tonight.  I just pray that everyone will be okay.  I'm off work today due to power outage at my workplace, which is a first.  There's a lot of damage all around me, but we are safe with no damage.  There are so many people less fortunate....it's so sad to see.  I hope you aren't in the line of these storms!  If you are, I pray that you and your family will be okay!

I wanted to start out with a picture of one of my first roses to appear this year on my grandmothers rose bush.  My mom dug it up from my grandmothers house years ago and transplanted it at the side of our house.  It usually only puts out a few roses, but it looks like it is going to be loaded this year.  It is full of buds.  Yay!!!!  I don't have much of a green thumb, but most of that is because I always forget to water the plants.  I have vowed to do better this year and give all my plants water and love. :o)



Next up is a nut milk bag that I won from The Daily Raw Cafe.  The first thing that I am going to use the bag for is to make some almond milk.  I can't wait till my store bought almond milk is gone.  I've always wanted to make my own nut milk.  Have you made any kind of nut milk that you just love?

Saturday morning I made some cinnamon rolls out of crescent rolls.   They were so easy and very yummy.

First you separate the crescent rolls into their triangle shapes.

Next,  melt some vegan butter in a small bowl and brush a light layer of butter on each triangle.

Then, sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over the melted butter.  Press the brown sugar and cinnamon down onto the dough a bit, so it doesn't fall off while you are rolling them up.

Next, you want to roll the crescent rolls up as you would when you make normal crescent rolls.
Place the rolls on a non stick cookie sheet, and bake at 375 for about 12 minutes.  Just as you would for plain crescent rolls.

As the rolls are cooking, mix some powdered sugar with a little almond milk to make some icing to drizzle over the rolls.   The icing needs to be thin enough for drizzling.  It doesn't take much milk at all.  I probably used about 1/4 cup of powdered sugar with 3 or 4 tablespoons of milk.  I'm just guessing at that, because I didn't measure it.  I'm so used to just whipping the icing up that I didn't think about measuring. 
Let the rolls cool for about 5 minutes before drizzling with the icing.

I used to make these all the time for Tony, but hadn't in a couple of years.  I wanted something sweet and fast for breakfast Saturday, and I just happened to have crescent rolls in the refrigerator.  I wanted waffles, but seemed to be out of an ingredient for every recipe that I wanted to make...go figure....ha

Since I'm home today, I have time to get caught up on reading your blogs. Yay!!!  :o)

I hope everyone stays safe and out of harms way from these storms over the next few days!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Some Weekend Foods....Let the Goals Begin

Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend. It's hard to believe that it's already come and gone. Why do the weekends fly by? I had all these things planned that I was going to do, but didn't get half of them accomplished. Now that it's Monday, my goals that I posted on Friday are running through my head and I am determined to stick to them this week. Below are a few things that I had to eat over the weekend.

First up is Viva Vegan's Zesty Orange Mojo Baked Tofu. The first time I cooked baked tofu, I wasn't that crazy about it. It was okay, but not my fave. Of course now I always try something again, but this time I used a new recipe. This is the first recipe that I have made from Viva Vegan. If the other recipes in this cookbook are going to be anything like this one, then I am going to LOVE this cookbook. This is by far the best tofu that I have cooked. It was perfect in every way. My husband even commented on how good it looked. Oh course that as far as he went with that....no taste test for him. The marinade consisted of olive oil, soy sauce,
orange juice, lime juice, orange zest, garlic cloves, oregano, cumin, salt and pepper. I can't wait to try more recipes from this cookbook!

I made a salad to go along with the tofu, which was perfect.

For breakfast Saturday morning we had oatmeal. I, just about all the time, add dried cranberries to our steel cut oats when I cook them. I had cooked some apples on the stove, so I topped my cranberry oatmeal with some of the apples, some slivered almonds and a sprinkle of coconut. I took one bite and wondered why in the world I hadn't done this before. I promise the cranberries are hidden under the apples. There's some cinnamon and maple syrup in there also. I wish I had the time to make this my breakfast every morning.

Okay, Saturday night was pasta again. No more pasta for me this week! We had been out shopping all afternoon Saturday so it was fairly late when we got home. Neither one of us wanted to stand up and cook so we decided on "his and her" baked spaghetti. We whipped up some pasta sauce while the whole wheat spaghetti cooked. Once the noodles had finished cooking, we put them in single serving size dishes and then added some sauce and topped it off with cheese. We then put the spaghetti in the oven for about 15-20 minutes.

This is Tony's with real mozzarella. Why does regular cheese look so much better when it melts than vegan cheese. He drizzled a little olive oil over the top of his and sprinkled some basil over that before his went into the oven. Looks pretty huh?


Here's mine....not near as pretty as Tony's, but I'm sure it tasted better. :o) Oh yeah, we had left over onion rings from Red Robin with our spaghetti. Red Robin's onion rings are the best!

Here's my spaghetti all mixed up....very tasty!

I also made some more of Alicia Silverstone's Oatmeal, Walnut, and Dried Plum Cookies yesterday afternoon to take to church. We were supposed to bring snack for a gathering that we were having. Her recipe can be found here. I made a couple of changes though, because I was out of walnuts and dried plums. After I had the batter mixed up, I divided the mixture into two bowls. In one bowl, I added slivered almonds and chocolate chips, in the other bowl I added dried cranberries instead of the chocolate chips. Both were yummy, but oddly enough I think I like the one with cranberries in better. I would have never thought that I would have liked a cookie with dried fruit in it better than one with chocolate. Anyway, guess how many cookies I brought home. That's right....ZERO! These cookies have been a hit wherever I have taken them.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~