Holiday Baking

Today I had my staff over for a fun afternoon snack.  Last night I made Pumpkin Pie Bites with Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Chip Cashew Cookies.  Both recipes were adapted from Veg Web.

Pumpkin Pie Bites (based on Pumpkin Roll)

I realized after planning to make the roll that I didn’t have the proper pan.  So, I baked the cake in a square dish, cut it into squares, and topped it with pumpkin pie filling and cream cheese frosting.  These were a huge hit!

The Chocolate Chip Cashew Cookies (based on the Peppermint Chocolate Cookies)

Why no peppermint?  Forgot it at the store   So, wrong pan, no mint, meh!  It’s the season for forgiveness and giving up control.  Regardless, I had a happy clan that ate it all up…not a crumb left!  Here’s a few of the troops:

Now it’s on to closing the building!  T-minus 12 hours until we’re closed for the winter.  Ahhhhh…silent night.

The Big Apple

No, we’re not moving back to New York.  I’m now officially working from a Mac!!!!  My sister goes through computers like Grant through Richmond and gave me her “old” MacBook.  It’s fabulous and I’m thinking it’s going to make blogging even easier.  Great picture organization, less virus issues, and it looks super cute.  So, welcome to the Apple Age of my blog.

Being another Monday, we had my sister as well as our friends Justin and Jena over for dinner.  I made lasagna (which I put together last night and just popped into the oven when I got home from work) and ceasar salad.

The Lasagna:

I made tofu ricotta and added in miso and tofutti cream cheese along with plenty of basil, oregano, salt and pepper.  I then rehydrated some porcini mushrooms, reduced the soaking liquid and sauteed garlic, peppers and sundried tomatoes in it.  I then layered pasta sauce, lasagna sheets, yellow squash, mushroom mix and tofu with big ol’ slices of fresh tomato in a casserole and covered it for the night.  Bake at 400 for 30 minutes and you’ve got amaaazing dinner.

The Salad:

Homemade croutons – old bread doused in olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs de provence

The elements – romaine and sundried tomatoes

The dressing was a homemade Ceasar style dressing made with lemon and garlic.  This stuff is aaammmmaaaazing.  I might just have to sell it!

Non vegan tasted and approved (they even went back for 2nds!)

Chocolate for Breakfast

Katie!  I finally did a Chocolate Covered Breakfast.  Chocolate pancakes with craisins and pecans.  Ryan is one happy man today.

Tofu Taco Night

Another Monday night open door policy.  Tonight was super easy as far as prep as I had zero time to get things together.  Crazy 12 hour work day with no time even for lunch! 

Spicy Baked Tofu:  took frozen tofu, nuked it, drained it, baked it in a tomato/chile powder/Cholula/cilantro sauce

Salsa Rice:  Basmati rice with green chiles, miso and salsa

Beans:  Vegetarian green chile beans with jalapenos

Avocado Pico with Lime and Tomatillos

Served it up on sprouted corn tortillas

This was a very successful tofu.  I attribute it to properly draining the tofu and baking it for an hour at 325.  Great flavor.

These tortillas rock if you nuke ‘em for a second before serving.  Nice and pliable with my favorite corn texture.

Green Drinks and Liberty

This week I’ve been taking great care of myself.  Morning bike rides, lots of fresh fruit and veg and giant GREEN DRINKS!

This was the best one.  1 cup water, 5 large kale leaves, 10 frozen strawberries, 1 prune, a Tbs. agave, and the juice of 1 lime.  What a great way to start the day.  I also for the first time ever tried wheatgrass this morning.  Not the most delicious thing, but I’m a junkie for healthy stuff.  Mmmmmmm vitamins….

Yesterday Ron Paul was on campus at ASU.  Barry Goldwater Jr. and a variety of other Libertarian supporters were there.  Pretty good crowd was there.  Ron Paul Revolution!

Kombucha Round 2

Went for a ride with Ryan tonight.  As you can see in my nifty Twitter in the upper right corner, which is linked to my MapMyRide.com training log, we did a nice ride.  We stopped at Sunflower Market on the way home to get some more Honeycrisp apples.  They’re on sale and I’m eating them like a fiend.  But, of course we didn’t just walk out with apples.  I got avocados, some cool sprouted corn tortillas (will use on Sunday for dinner), Bigelow Eggnoggin’ Tea and another crack at Kombucha.  I got the GT’s brand again, this time the Gingerade.  Honest opinion, I like the first flavor I tried better.  But, hey, here’s to probiotics!

Meanwhile, Katie’s back at it with another giveaway.  Check her out.  Gotta love Coconut!

Monday Night Dinners

Ryan and I have started a weekly tradition.  Monday Night Open Dinners.  We’ve got a group of people on the list who have a standing invitation to come eat with us Monday nights.  Ryan’s friends, my sister, a few co-workers.  We’ll keep broadening the circle if need be.  But, it’s fun for us to have people over.  Too, it gives me license to cook whatever I want as it’s all under the explanation that “I’m not making anything other than a regular dinner with extra to share.”  So, I can be veggie crazy, experiment new things and have fun in the kitchen all to the amusement to our Monday night guests.

Tonight’s menu?  Pepper Cacciatore over Spaghetti Squash.  I made the sauce good and spicy with some simple carmelized onions, pepper flakes, 8 cloves of garlic!!!!, sun dried tomatoes and some of their oil, tomato sauce and a good hit of herbs d’Provence.  Last minute I threw in sliced green peppers so they’d cook but stay a bit crunchy.  I served that up over cooked spaghetti squash.  Gluten free, low fat, totally veg-o-matic!

The most difficult part of the meal was hacking the squash in half.  I like to halve it and bake it at 400F for 1 hour.  I guess I could boil the sucker, but I like to show my amazing feats of strength in the kitchen.

After I baked it, I hollowed it out.  It’s amazing how much “spaghetti” this little squash makes.  It was enough for 4 servings!

And here it is in all it’s tasty, spicy glory.  Me, Ryan and my sister ate it all up.

Meet the Natives

So, I was worried this show would just perpetuate a bunch of stereotypes.  I guess it does, sort of, but honestly, it’s amazing!  The first episode had these 5 guys from Tanna (near Fiji) come to the US.  Their first stop, Montana on a cattle ranch.  The Tannans are concerned about the farmer’s practices.  Feeding bad grass to the cows, shooting them with medicine when they’re not sick…the Tannans understandably question these practices…me too, guys!  The best part of the show is how these guys exhibit community.  Community is central to my life both in my profession and personal life.  What’s life if you have no one to share it with?  These men show how to be at peace and love together.  Best quote of the show, though, in response to observing America and what they saw as us having it all “It must be tragic to have all these cattle, machines and a fat wallet, just to die like everyone else.”  Talk about perspective!

Twilight

I feel like the only person in America who’s not into Twilight.  Haven’t read the books, seen the movies or even really know what it’s all about…other than vampires.  But, the Twilight I can sink my teeth into is the tasty candy bar by Go Max Go Foods. I read about them last winter while reading VegNews.  They still weren’t out yet at that time and then I just sort of forgot about ‘em.  Friday I was back into VegNews and saw the ad for the totally vegan candy bars that can fill that nougatty need I have.  I checked to see who was selling them in Tempe.  Hooray!  Whole Foods to the rescue.  I justified the indulgence by biking the 4 miles each way.  That would burn up the 250 empty calories.

I have to say these are pretty darn good.  The rice milk chocolate coating is much thicker and waxier than what you’d find on a regular Milky Way, but it indulged my sweet tooth and made me feel utterly fabulous.  What girl doesn’t deserve some cruelty free chocolaty treats every so often.

Because I was at Whole Foods, I ended up wandering the aisles and having a blast.  I haven’t been to Whole Foods in a while as Ryan and I are on a pretty strict budget and we can find our every day needs much cheaper at Sunflower Market.  But, I had a great time checking out new products I hadn’t seen, like the Coconut Milk Kefir by So Delicious.  I exhibited restraint, though, and will try that next time.  I have to limit myself to only a few fun new products when I step into Whole Foods.  I can go nutz in there!  But, I didn’t hold back when I saw GT’s Organic Raw Kombucha. 

I’ve been wanting to weigh in on the Kombucha phenomenon for a while.  I got GT’s Botanic No. 3.  First taste….ahhhh!  What the heck is this stuff?  But, as I sipped, I kinda sort of started to like it.  It’s one of those tastes, to me, that’s tasty because you know it’s good for you.  It’s sorta fizzy, sorta fermented flavor, really sharp, hits you in the back of the throat.  I’m not sure if it’s just this flavor that was sort of weird or if it’s specifically the Kombucha.  Guess I’ll have to put some more time in on the bike to get one of the other flavors.

Meanwhile, looking forward to Meet The Natives on the Travel Channel tonight.  Not sure if I like the title, but I’m a sucker for new shows on that channel.

Back to the Original Question…

…but what does she eat?  Well, this is what she DID eat today.  Mind you, today was a cleanse day of no alcohol, caffiene, sugar, animal products and gluten.  Pretty much all were easy except the gluetn.  I love bread!!

I’ve never been a big breakfast eater.  This Granny Smith with Viatnamese Cinnamon was a great way to start.

Lunch was a fresh salad with home made vinegarette dressing.  Note the pepperocinis.  Perhaps my favorite food in the world.  No joke!  At my bachelorette party I had a Chubby Bunny challenge with pepperocinis!

For dinner we had over our friends Gabe and Andrew.  They brought hummus, bread and tomatoes.  I made a soup in the slow cooker (to make it easy to have dinner ready while still being able to go on a bike ride) of garbanzos, tomatoes, rosemary, sage, soymilk, ground rice, water, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, diced peppers and pepper flakes.  I served it over a bed of spinach topped with more spinach and fresh tomatoes.  The soup was low key, but the fresh veggies really punched it up and gave a fun texture.  So did the rice.  I wanted to thicken the soup, but being gluten free for the next week or so, I needed something natural.  I threw some basmati in a grinder and then dumped the pulverized rice in.  It wasn’t obtrusive and was almost like a small orzo or couscous, but milder.