vegancore

5-Day Core Report

2007-05-25T19:49:00.000-04:00

So it's been 5 days on Core, and things are going... mostly well. My usual routine has been oatmeal for breakfast, leftovers from dinner and an apple or some other fruit for lunch, some more fruit for a snack when I get home from work, dinner, and then a sweet snack/dessert. For the last two days I've found myself hungry just an hour or two after my oatmeal, which is weird, but I think it has more to do with, erm, upcoming female events than anything diet-related.

I like not counting. Or, you know, limited counting. It makes me feel less like I'm "on a diet" and more like I'm just making better choices. What I don't like is the complete and utter ban on bread. You can have it, of course, but you have to spend your points on it. Most of the time I'm okay with that, but it limits my lunch options a little bit. I can't just throw together a sandwich or take a pita and hummus, because I'd rather not spend my discretionary points on bread when I could spend them on, say, a delicious bowl of the carrot cake rice cream that is calling my name from the freezer. But then you have a situation like tonight, when I decided to make flatbread, have one, and put the rest away for use over the next few days. I ended up eating two, for a total of 6 points, because I was really hungry and I'm running low on veggies and I didn't feel like making a big effort for anything else. And now my stomach kind of hurts. Bleh.

So basically, I wish one serving of some wheat bread-like product was on the Core list. It would make my life easier. Also, this plan is much better for people who earn a lot of activity points. There was a time when I was exercising every day and getting 3 or 4 extra points, but right now I'm getting up at 6 am and spending 8 hours a day painting murals outside in the very hot sun, and when I get home I want nothing more than a shower and a comfortable chair in a cool room. I don't know if it's the heat or what, but I've had very little energy of late. Everything takes a lot of effort. It's a little distressing, but I'm too tired to do anything about it.

I'm going into the weekend with less than 5 flex points, and I'm having dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant tomorrow night. I'm not sure how I'm going to swing that. I may just get something bean-based and call it trying my best. On Flex this would probably send me into a spiral of junk food and badness. What's nice about Core is that even if I don't have any flex points left, I can still eat. And even if I go out to eat and I'm eating stuff that might not be Core, I'm not trying to count points for everything I put in my mouth, so I don't feel like a failure if I can't assign a number to something. So far this plan has led to much less obsessing about food and points and more enjoyment of my food. I like it.

And now, some pictures:

Lemon-Herb Seitan (the tofu recipe in Vive le Vegan, but with seitan instead), brown rice, sauteed yellow squash, steamed broccoli. Delicious. After reducing the oil a bit, the lemon-herb seitan is Core enough for me. Meaning that there's a tiny bit of agave (seriously, like 1/2 tsp), I'm not worrying over things like that. Seriously, it's 10 calories worth of agave spread over 2 servings (I halved the recipe). Not a big deal. The seitan is the last of Joanna's awesome chicken-style seitan that I had frozen; I'll have to make up another batch soon.

Joni's 50/50 Flatbread. Easy, and really tasty too. I halved the recipe and made them larger; I got 4 instead of 8. In retrospect, I wish I would've stuck with the little ones, because then eating two wouldn't have cost me so many points. But otherwise, the only downside is that I set off my fire alarm while making these and couldn't get it to shut off for like 3 or 4 minutes, during which time I thought my eyes were actually going to start bleeding. Awesome.

the state of the blog address

2007-05-21T19:35:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it's been well over a month since I posted. A lot has been happening in my life in the last few months.

My boyfriend of 6 1/2 years and I broke up about 2 months ago. I think it was the right thing to do, but it was still the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life. So now I'm cooking for one and looking for a smaller, cheaper apartment. My emotional state is perhaps not the best it's ever been, and while for the most part I'm okay, I've had little motivation to cook extravagent things when I'm just going to eat by myself in front of the tv. Also, I'm totally guilty of "eating my feelings" over the last few weeks. As if stuffing my face with junk will somehow make me feel better. Yeah, okay. In reality it'll just make me fatter, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, is less with the cheering up. It's a vicious cycle, really.

On the plus side, I started a full-time mural-painting internship almost immediately after school let out 3 weeks ago, in addition to some other freelance work that came my way, and some work that I already had lined up. It's been a good year for me, art-wise. I had a piece make it into the Society of Illustrators student competition; it hung in the gallery show there for most of this month. Another piece was chosen to be the poster artwork for this year's Lancaster Art Walk. It hung up all over the city, which was pretty freakin' sweet. All of this is wonderful, of course, and I'm very thankful for it all - but it's keeping me pretty busy. Which, given the current state of things, is probably good. But it does get in the way of all things food bloggy.

The basic gist of things is that some shit happened, and is happening, and life just keeps marching on, and I'm trying to keep up. And in doing that, I've neglected this blog terribly. Which I feel pretty bad about, I'm not going to lie. I don't like to see things sit and stagnate. But I'm sort of at a crossroads here. I'm not focused so much on cooking new things anymore. I still do, every once in a while, but I can't remember when the last time I opened a cookbook was. So I have no food to blog about, really.

My focus in life has shifted, and in an attempt to keep this blog relevent, I'm going to shift focus here as well. I need to get my eating and my weight under control. It's a source of a lot of negativity, stress, and depression for me, and I'm tired of doing nothing about it. Today I started following the Weight Watcher's Core program. I am going to blog about it. In an odd twist, this will make my blog name actually match the subject for once. Neat. I'll still post about food, and recipes, and I'll still do candy reviews occasionally. But the scope of the blog, if it's not completely different, has effectively shifted.

(I was going to say "expanded," but it reminded me too much of how my ass is steadily expanding, and I'd like to start this new endeavor on a positive note.)

Chili, Cupcakes, Cake, and a Cat!

2007-04-15T23:40:00.000-04:00

Joanna's Better Than Basic Veggie Chili, a tester recipe. It's pretty fantastic. I made some cornbread to go with it, and the combination made for several days of enjoyable meals.

Pink lemonade cupcakes! Well, that's what they were supposed to be, anyway. I pinked up the batter, but it didn't bake that way. Very annoying. The cupcakes are the basic golden vanillas from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World with some lemon extract thrown in, and the frosting is the lemon cream cheese recipe from the same book. That frosting is AMAZING. Seriously, it's worth typing in all caps for. I took these to my family's easter shindig and they were a big hit. Even my dad liked them, and he's been known to have heart palpitations at the mention of soy.

A pink lemonade mini cake made from leftover cupcake batter and frosting. For some reason these little cakes baked up a lot pinker than the cupcakes. Maybe because I used silicone pans? Who knows. Either way, it was cute and tasty. Forgive the shoddy frosting job. I was pretty tired of it at this point and there wasn't enough frosting left to do it up right.

And finally, this my kitty getting her stare on. Obviously she is not food, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Her eyes stare directly into your soul. Can you feel it? I know I can. What you probably can't get a sense of from this picture is how damn annoying she is. For real, she drives me crazy. Crazy, I tell you! It's a good thing she's cute.

life interferes with blogging, and ABC cookies suck

2007-04-04T00:37:00.000-04:00

So you may have noticed that the candy review hasn't been posted this week. It's terrible, I know. I'm such a bad blogger. But I have 3 weeks left in the semester and the proverbial shit is beginning to hit the fan, if you know what I'm saying. Things are getting hectic, with deadlines and projects and tests and trying to line up internships and whatnot. Plus I don't have any fun candy at the moment, which I can assure you is more disappointing for me than it is for you.

As soon as I get a chance I'm going to get a few different things and I'll post several reviews at once to make up for my blog neglect. So if you have any suggestions, give 'em to me now!

One thing I can say is that Alternative Baking Co.'s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are not good. At all. I went in wanting Liz Lovely's mochadamia cookies, which are delicious pieces of heaven wrapped in cellophane, but when they weren't there I settled for an ABC cookie. It pretty much tasted like peanut butter-ish playdough with the occasional chocolate chip. I still finished it, because let's face it, I'll pretty much eat anything where the primary ingredients are sugar, fat, and flour. I'm basically a sweets-whore. And I'd been craving a cookie all day. But it was bad. Really bad. In fact, the only ABC cookie I've ever liked is the pumpkin spice one. I'd be willing to give the lemon poppyseed a shot, but otherwise I think I'll hold out for the Liz Lovelys in the future.

Candy Review Monday: Mazapan De la Rosa

2007-03-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

This week's candy is Mazapan De la Rosa, described on the package as "the authentic Mexican-style marzipan candy." And the candy is indeed made in Mexico. I found it at Wal-Mart, which I know is evil and I shouldn't shop there, but whatever, I've accepted the fact that I'm a horrible person sometimes.

The package contains 8 little individually-wrapped circles of candy. Each one weighs 1 ounce. The plastic wrapping has a rose on it and the whole thing is really quite pretty. I like that they're individually wrapped. If they weren't the whole thing would just be a mess of peanut crumbles.

Mazapan has just three ingredients: sugar, peanuts, and the ever-nebulous artificial flavors. The candy itself is in a smooth circle, and each one I've eaten has broken in half when I opened the plastic. It's very dry and crumbly overall, and the texture is a bit paste-like when you dissolve it in your mouth. There are little flecks of peanuts every once in a while, which is nice. It's very sweet and peanutty, but not like peanut butter - it actually tastes like peanuts. It reminds me of a dry peanut butter fudge more than any kind of marzipan I've had. However, like peanut butter, it sticks to the roof of your mouth like crazy. This candy requires a beverage to go with it.

I like it. I bought it on a whim because it was cheap (I think $1.99) and vegan and kind of pretty. And because I love peanut brittle, peanut butter, peanut butter fudge, peanuts themselves, and any derivative thereof. I'm going to give it an 8/10, because it's a unique product here in the states, and because it's something I'd actually buy again. Each little circle has 134 calories, 5 grams of fat, 2 grams of protein, and 14% of the RDA of calcium. I thought the calcium part was especially interesting. Not bad for candy.

Belated Candy Review Monday: Simpsons Fruit Snacks

2007-03-20T23:27:00.000-04:00

I was at Five Below a few weeks ago, looking for interesting candy, and I had to get these. I love me some fruit snacks, but often they have gelatin in them. Plus: Simpsons! And only a dollar. You can't lose.

Or so I thought.

Straight up, these are foul and disappointing. First, they aren't shaped like Simpsons characters. I totally thought they would be, and that made me pretty sad. I wanted to eat a little vegetarian Lisa. What they are shaped like is fruit. There are six kinds: orange, lemon, cherry, grape, green apple, and strawberry.

They taste like waxy nothing. Honestly. Here's the run down:

Cherry: It's like someone put a single drop of cherry cough syrup in a vat of fruit snack mix and called it a flavor.
Green Apple: The best texture of all of them. It's plumper, softer, and not as waxy. However, it tastes like a watered down jolly rancher.
Lemon: Lemon things are always my favorite, so I was hoping this one would be okay. It's not. Before I went vegan I used to get those honey-lemon cough drops, and I guess this kind of tastes like that. If you're tasting it from 3 months ago.
Orange, Grape, and Strawberry: These should all be shaped like some kind of magical nothing-fruit, because seriously, they are so non-flavored that the only reason you can taste any difference at all between them is because you brain sees something shaped like a strawberry and tries desperately to create a strawberry taste for you so that the universe doesn't collapse into itself

I'm calling it a 2/10. I'm throwing the box away. And I totally wasted that dollar. The only reason these don't get a 1 or a 0 is because I wasn't actually dry heaving afterward.

Candy Review Monday: More Ritter Sports!

2007-03-12T11:01:00.001-04:00

Ritter Sport Peppermint

I've heard so much about these, but I could never find them anywhere. So after last week's review, when Lindsay from vegan chai offered to send me one, I jumped at the chance to try it. And now I can say with complete convinction that this is the most fantastic chocolate mint bar I've ever had and that it's a damn shame it's not widely available in the US.

Inside those little squares of chocolate is a smooth, fresh, delicious minty paste of some kind that I would like to eat entire bowls of. It's a generous amount, too; when I broke the bar apart and only saw those little stripes of white, I was a little disappointed. But then I bit into one and found a big well of the stuff, so I was happy again. Honestly, it's just like a peppermint patty - only so much better. Whoever is responsible for importing Ritter Sport products needs to remedy this situation, stat.

This one gets a 10/10 from me. I may cry when I finish this bar, just for lack of being able to get another one. Plus the german name is really fun to say. Pfefferminz!

Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate

This is a really mild dark chocolate. It almost tastes like milk chocolate to me, actually. It's very smooth and sweet, but still has more depth of flavor than the milk chocolate that I remember. I don't have much else to say about this bar; it's simple and very good. It would be a good "starter" dark chocolate for people who aren't crazy about the really dark stuff, because it's not bitter at all.

This one gets a 10/10 as well, because even though it's not breaking any new ground in terms of flavor or novelty factor, it's a really good, highly munchable chocolate bar that I will definitely get again.

I am officially a big fan of Ritter Sports. They rock. They're cute and delicious, and the square shape and little chunky nuggets of chocolate make me feel like I'm playing with edible blocks. Go Ritter Sport!

Cupcakes x 2

2007-03-09T00:06:00.002-05:00

These tasty little morsels are rootbeer float cupcakes, and they're actually surprisingly true to life as far as the flavor goes. I don't drink soda too often, but when I do I love rootbeer - so these were awesome for me. The cake is moist and a little airy, and the frosting is sweet and creamy. Yum.

The recipe is here, courtesy of the ever-awesome Bittersweet. I sent most of these to work with my boyfriend last week and they were a bit hit. I followed the recipe for the most part, with just a few changes. I subbed applesauce for some of the oil, halved the frosting (I still had plenty), and left off the ganache drizzle because I was feeling lazy. Mine didn't rise too high, but they didn't sink, either - always a plus. I think I under-filled my muffin tins a little bit, though, because I got 15 cupcakes instead of 12. No one complained about the extras.

These are less exciting but just as delicious. Golden vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream, both recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made them to take to class today, because college students are excellent for getting rid of excess baked goods. These were excellent, and well-loved by all. We are by and large a bunch of geeks, so the Spiderman wrappers went over particularly well.

Recent Joanna Tester Recipes

2007-03-06T20:25:00.000-05:00

Lemon "Butter" Rice and Roasted Roots. The rice is really nice and flavorful and goes perfectly with a lot of things. The roasted veggies were a nice change from my standard method and re-heated well too.

Chana Masala! Oh, how I love pretty much any incarnation of this dish. Joanna's recipe is super easy and really tasty.

Sesame Green Beans with leftover Roasted Roots and - yes! - hoisin-glazed baked tofu. I ate tofu! For real. And I didn't hate it. We're making progress. Those sesame green beans are SO good, and I don't usually care for sesame-flavored things.

Candy Review Monday: Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate with Marzipan

2007-03-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

Before Friday I had only ever seen Ritter Sports online. These square German candy bars aren't available at any health food or grocery stores in my area, but while I was at the farmer's market I spotted them in a display case at a German deli. I'd never even given the place a second look before, since they mostly sell meat and other extremely non-vegan items. But the lure of bright red packaging and the promise of chocolate covered marzipan were too much to resist; I plunked down $2.50 and then ran back to a produce stand to try and get the meat smell out of my nose.

Of course yesterday I was at Target and I saw the very same bar (and the plain dark chocolate variety, which I'll review another time) for less than $2. Damn.

It's a nice-looking bar. I like the square format. It's chunky and cuter than the standard rectangular bar shape. The little squares snap apart easily and without much mess. The chocolate is glossy and smooth, with a nice little Ritter Sport logo stamped into the top of each square. The marzipan is a creamy color that contrasts nicely with the dark chocolate.

But the real question is, of course: how is it? Quite good, I have to say. The chocolate is creamy and pretty sweet for a dark chocolate. It melts nicely on your tongue. The marzipan itself is a bit crumbly and not terribly sweet or overwhelmingly almondy. When you pop a square into your mouth you mostly taste chocolate, but as you chew the marzipan flavor becomes stronger. I'd say it lends more texture than any pronounced taste, though. My favorite squares were around the edges, where the chocolate to mazipan ratio was a little skewed toward the chocolate side of things.

I'd give this bar an 8/10, because it's very tasty and pretty unique as far as candy bars go. I liked it enough to pick up another one at Target. But I like marzipan; when I had my boyfriend try it, he didn't care for it very much. I think it goes without saying that if you don't like marzipan, you won't like this bar. But if you do, definitely give it a try.

Whole Wheat Bagels

2007-03-04T13:49:00.000-05:00

Earlier in the week I tried my hand at making bagels. I used to work in a bagel shop and I have a pretty deep love for the big, doughy, carb disasters we call bagels. I never buy them, though, because they're always insanely high in calories and full of white flour, which I try to avoid when I can. But when I ran across this recipe for homemade bagels while sorting through my bookmarks, I had to give the whole wheat variation a try. I followed the recipe pretty exactly, except I'm out of agave so I just stuck with sugar.

They were fun to make - boiling bread dough is a weird experience. Next time I make these (and there will be a next time) I'll knead the dough in my bread machine, because I really am not a fan of kneading and I don't think I did it quite long enough. Even so, they turned out pretty well. I made four plain and four with an everything topping (poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried onion and garlic, and sea salt). They were nice and soft right out of the oven, but the next day they weren't as great. There's a reason bagels are made fresh every day. They don't stand the test of time very well. Next time I'll pre-slice and freeze them the day they're made.

Potato-Leek Soup

2007-02-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

This is the easiest soup ever. Seriously, five ingredients counting water and salt. And it produces a soup that tastes so much better than these five simple ingredients have any right to be. It's magic soup.

Potato-Leek Soup
Recipe originally from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

2 tbsp earth balance margarine
1.5 lbs leeks, white and light green parts only, washed and chopped
1.5 lbs potatoes (yukon golds are nice), sliced into thin, bite-size pieces
7 c water
1.5 tsp salt

Melt the margarine in a large pot over medium heat; add the potatoes and leeks and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add water and salt and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for about 30 minutes. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

Makes 6 large servings.

Nutritional Info: 179 calories, 4 g fat (1.2 g sat fat), 664 mg sodium, 36 g carbs, 4.3 g fiber, 6.6 g sugar, 4.8 g protein, and 3 WW points per serving.

Candy Review Monday: Ricemilk Choco

2007-02-26T13:08:00.000-05:00

Something you may or may not know about me: I love sweets. Candy, chocolate, cake, cookies, whatever. It's my big food weakness. I love eating it, I love reading about it, and I love reading about people eating it - so I love Candy Blog. But most of what she reviews isn't vegan. And it's with that in mind that I've decided to start doing a Candy Review Monday. Every week I'll try some kind of vegan candy or sweet and post a photo and review. For this review I just pulled the shots from Terra Nostra's website, but from now on I'll have shots I take myself.

Ricemilk Choco with Almonds

I've tried the plain Ricemilk Choco bar once before and liked it, but I had to order it from Veganessentials because my health food store doesn't carry them. They still don't, but the last time I was there they did have two other varieties - almond and truffle.

The ricemilk choco is smooth and sweet. It's very reminiscent of milk chocolate, at least from what I remember. It could be almost too sweet for some people, but I've never met a candy that was too sweet for me so I like it. There's a good amount of almond bits in this bar, and it adds a nice crunch and offsets the sweetness of the bar a bit. I like this one better than the plain.

Ricemilk Choco with Dark Truffle Center

This bar is the same ricemilk chocolate with a darker chocolate center. The dark center really mitigates the sweetness, moreso than the almonds in the first bar. It's still sweet, but there's more of that dark chocolate smokey flavor that most of us are used to. It's a good bar, and very rich. Overall I still prefer the almond variety over the plain and this truffle bar, but all three are delicious and will definitely satisfy any lingering milk chocolate cravings.

Pineapple Coffee Cake

2007-02-25T17:02:00.000-05:00

I think I've posted a picture of this before, but I don't care. I made it again recently and it is SO good. Plus the picture came out well. This is Susan V's recipe from the Fatfree Vegan Blog; the recipe is here.

The only thing I did differently was to use a flax "egg" in place of ener-g. It didn't cause any problems.

Food Porn Overload, Part II

2007-02-24T16:42:00.000-05:00

Oatmeal-banana-raisin waffles from VwaV. I made the usual "healthification" adjustments - whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose and applesauce for most of the oil. Very tasty. Waffles are probably my favorite of the Breakfast Trifecta (pancakes, french toast, waffles).

Double chocolate chip cookies (recipe is here). These were just alright for me. Not bad, but I won't make them again.

Joanna's tester spinach dip. SO good. I love it.

The holy grail of oatmeal cookies. Crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle. Amazing. I could pretty much die happy now. The recipe is here. Make them and thank me later.

Joanna's tester alfredo sauce over whole wheat spaghetti. This stuff is pretty fantastic. Her cookbook (!!!) is going to be awesome.

Food Porn Overload, Part I

2007-02-23T13:56:00.000-05:00

I got out of class super early today, so I thought I'd take advantage of this bit of free time and catch up on posting photos here.

Here we have Joanna's chicken-style seitan, breaded and sauteed, with mashed potatoes and broccoli on the side. This seitan is the first simmered seitan that I've actually liked. Joanna and her recipes are fantastical. (It's a tester recipe, so I can't give it away. Sorry!) The breaded and sauteed bit reminded me of this pan-fried chicken my dad always makes. Very tasty. The seitan, I mean. Well, the chicken was tasty too, but that was a looooong time ago.

More Joanna porn. This time it's her sun-dried tomato cream sauce over whole wheat penne. Broccoli and bread on the side. This stuff is awesome. I love sun-dried tomatoes.

Lemon poppyseed muffins from the Candle Cafe Cookbook. Good but dry and not nearly lemony enough. Of course, I used whole wheat pastry flour and subbed applesauce for most of the margarine, but I do that to all the muffins I make and they're usually quite a lot better in texture than this.

More breaded seitan. This time I used a cornmeal coating and baked it; it wasn't as good as the sauteed stuff.

Fire-Roasted Quinoa and Black Beans, except with a small can of fire-roasted tomatoes and two cans of beans, one black and one garbanzo. This was my first time cooking with or eating quinoa. It's good stuff.

More tomorrow! Also coming soon: the rest of the Lightlife reviews.

Daily Food Photo Journal

2007-02-21T23:49:00.000-05:00

As you can see, the old layout is back. I have a new one in mind, but that will have to wait for another time. A time when my blog is not in shambles, perhaps. The photobucket images are still broken; they should be back in a few days. In the meantime I've gotten myself a Flickr account; I've been uploading food pictures to it for about a week now. I'll post them all here in due time, but right now I wanted to mention another thing I've started doing: keeping a daily food photo journal. Inspired by Joanna's daily eats project, I am taking pictures of everything I eat and compiling them into neat little mosaic of my daily consumption. It's really interesting to see it all together like that, big as life. And on the diet front, it really leaves no opportunity for plausible deniability. So if you want to check that out, it's here.

And if you want to check out the food porn that's on deck for blog-posting, those pictures are here.

Template Stuff

2007-02-18T23:27:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm working on a new design for the blog, and I should have it up within the next few days, but until then I switched back to a tweaked blogger template. The old design was a big mess with all the images broken and it was really annoying to look at.

As soon as I get the new design up, I have a bunch of pictures to post. I've been cooking more lately.

Picture Problems

2007-02-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

Apparently I've exceeded my bandwidth limit on my photobucket account, so all of the images on the blog are broken for a while. So that's awesome.

Tester Sauces, Rice & Beans, VwaV Casserole

2007-02-12T23:05:00.000-05:00

Whole wheat penne and broccoli with Joanna's Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce. She's putting together a vegan cookzine and I'm lucky enough to be one of the recipe testers. This one is fantastic.

Rainbow Rice & Beans from VeganYumYum. Excellent recipe. I've made it twice now. It freezes beautifully, too. This batch has both black and kidney beans in it. Also pictured is a metric ton of broccoli (I really love broccoli) and Joanna's nacho sauce (sans jalapenos), which is another tester recipe - and also my new favorite nutritional yeasty sauce.

Last but definitely not least, we have the Chickpea and Broccoli Casserole from VwaV. I was skeptical about this one. It has so few ingredients and no spices - it's just chickpeas, broccoli, carrots, onions, salt, olive oil, breadcrumbs, and vegetable stock. But of course Isa came through with another winner. I reduced the oil from 3 tbsp to 1 and added a little extra broth to compensate, and I left out the chives because I didn't have any, but otherwise I made the recipe as written. I'll be adding this one to the rotation for sure. It's creamy comfort food that you don't have to feel bad about eating (with 1tbsp of oil, it's 4 points per serving for 6 servings).

Soup and Cake

2007-02-09T17:05:00.000-05:00

Sensational Sun-Dried Tomato and Chickpea Soup from The Garden of Vegan. I never use that cookbook, but I saw this recipe posted at Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit and decided to give it a try. It's really tasty. I'll make it again.

The cake I made for Adam's birthday. It's simple vanilla cake with orange "buttercream" frosting. The frosting was a variation on the fluffy buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. This cake was fantastic, if I do say so myself. Yum. Plus it was perfectly shaped. No sunken tops or anything.

An inside shot.

Playing Catch-Up

2007-02-03T20:53:00.000-05:00

I never seem to have the time/motivation during the week to update, but I have been taking pictures of the more interesting things I eat. So here's a whole bunch that have been collecting dust on the harddrive.

Chickpea and Spinach Curry from VwaV. Seriously delicious and very low in points if you reduce the oil. I was low on spinach so I only used half the amount that was called for; I'm looking forward to using all 10 cups next time. I love me some spinach.

My second attempt at seitan. Based on this recipe, but with onion and garlic powder thrown in. And some nutritional yeast. And twice as much gluten flour, because the texture was weird. I wrapped the seitan log in foil and baked it that way instead of in a pan with broth. It turned out much better than my first attempt at seitan, but I'm still going to keep trying new recipes.

The seitan, sliced and sauteed with bbq sauce. Pretty tasty.

Flax-Berry Pancakes from Vegan Planet, with crushed pineapple in place of the berries. I always use whole wheat pastry flour for these.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal from Peanut Butter Planet. This was interesting. I'd try to make something similar, but I wouldn't make this exact thing again. I like the idea but I didn't love the recipe, basically.

Corn Muffins and Stormy Black Bean Soup

2007-01-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

Early last week I felt the urge to bake, but seeing as how it's still Junk-Free January for me, I didn't want to make sweets at all. So I turned to a perrenial favorite of mine: cornbread. I wanted to try out my mini-muffin pan, so I made 24 mini-muffins and then 5 regular-sized ones. I have to say, the mini ones are cute - but the big ones taste better. They have a better fluffy interior to crispy exterior ratio.

And aren't those square baking cups adorable? I got them to hold food in my bento, but I haven't had occasion to use them for that purpose yet. They make excellent square muffins, though. I love them.

And of course you can't have corn muffins without soup or stew, so I made Sunsan V's Stormy Black Bean Soup. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I only used 3 cups of broth and I pureed a few cups of the soup to get a thicker texture. I just prefer it that way. It's a really excellent soup with quite a bit of a kick from the chipotle and spices. I'll definitely make it again.

Today I'm attempting seitan for the second time ever. Fingers crossed.

First Bento Lunch Ever!

2007-01-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

One Wednesday I finally got to take my bento to school. I packed Susan V's shiny happy hummus, a wheat tortila (alas, I was pita-less), a fuji apple, and orange segments. It all fit, and it kept me nice and full - so there you go. The box may be tiny, but if you work it right you can fit enough food inside. I took it on Thursday and Friday as well, but I didn't take pictures. Friday was a repeat of this box, except with mini wheat pitas instead of a tortilla and a soy yogurt on the side, and Thursday was a mini tempeh sandwich and fruit.

I love my bento. It makes me happy.

Lightlife Reviews, Part II: Smart Strips Chik'n Strips

2007-01-22T22:24:00.000-05:00

Another one of the goodies in my Lightlife box were these Smart Strips. Now, I love these things. They were the first mock-meat I ever tried after going vegetarian lo those 10+ years ago. I loved them then and I love them now. They're the perfect sort of chewy and a bit juicy, but not in a gross way at all. The flavor is salty and savory and just... well, really damn good. But it's also subtle enough that you can use these in just about any type of dish.

Plus they pack a nice hit of protein and fiber - 14g and 4g, respectively - with no fat and just 80 calories. They work out to 1 WW point per serving.

My final rating for these is a 10/10, plus two thumbs up. I love them.

The chick'n strips adding their awesomeness to my stir-fry with peanut sauce.

The representative from Lightlife also sent along a link for $1 off coupons - check it out here if you're interested.