i decided to make a post since today is the last day of vegan mofo and eric and i spent most of the day in the kitchen. i wanted to get together some easy foods to take to work with me, and first up was bran muffins.
these are from "how it all vegan", and really easy to make.
earlier this week i saw some vegan pumpkin raisin scones and knew i had to make them. except replace the raisins with chocolate chips!
they turned out really good and it is taking a lot of willpower not to eat a second one.
we also cooked brussel sprouts for the first time. eric was a fan, i was not.
and finally i made some peanut butter cups. i don't have any pictures right now, but hopefully tomorrow!
i hope everyone has a happy halloween! we just finished carving pumpkins and plan on watching the phillies game then going out and doing something. eric and i have an awesome costume, so hopefully the rain stops and we go out.
as most of you know, back in june i left my job at a magazine to move to philadelphia with my way awesome boyfriend. since then i have been on a massive job hunt (who quits their job in a recession?), so i am excited for that to be over with. this new job is working at a children's book publishing company and i am really excited but also sad that i won't be working with photographers and at a magazine. oh well.
and i need to thank eric, my parents and his parents SO MUCH. they have all been amazing in their support and encouragement throughout this entire thing.
I got money in the bank (yea) shawty what you drank
i'm sad that vegan mofo is almost over, even though i didn't post vegan stuff every day, it was fun, and made me blog a lot more. but here are some random things eric and i have been consuming.
salads. lots of salads. we actually ate all of our produce in three days, produce that normally takes us seven days to finish. and i was excited to see that whole foods had single beets you could buy. i don't think i had ever had a beet until eric and i went to san francisco last december. but beets were on everything! when they arrived on my first salad i just pushed them aside and pretended they didn't exist. the second time beets arrived on my plate i decided to try them, and really liked them. i haven't tried them cooked, just been eating them raw.
i have a dark chocolate problem. i usually buy a few bars and my favorite has always been green and black's dark chocolate. i bought a bar last week, and just as i was about to open it up, something on the ingredients caught my eye. milk powder was now listed there. my heart broke a little. about further investigation it seems like they now list milk powder as an ingredient for allergy reasons from cross contamination from the production line. i decided to start trying out new dark chocolates and chocolove was my first. it was pretty good and i definitely plan on buying another in the future.
the other night we made eggplant fries. eggplant is a vegetable that i really wish i liked. i try to, but just can't seem to like it unless it's fried. so while this is not the healthiest way to eat eggplant, it is delicious.
and finally, the dessert of the week! this week i made pumpkin chocolate chip brownie cake from have cake will travel. i don't know what it is about pumpkin desserts, but i am never sure if i like them/if they turned out alright until my second or so piece. so while i had my doubts about this dessert, i can now safely say it is delicious and almost gone.
i felt like the days were reversed because saturday we stayed home and were lazy, and sunday we were busy.
i ended up cleaning the stove and refrigerator saturday morning. how exciting.
and eating bowls and bowls of popcorn, thanks to the whirly pop.
and making whole wheat tortillas, which turned out great.
and sunday we woke up early because i ran the lupus loop 5k! eric is awesome because he woke up and came with me.
i was pretty excited after the race because i set a new PR for running a 5k. not that i am fast or anything, but still.
and then we did something we have wanted to do for weeks, go pumpkin picking! after searching around we found a place in new jersey. but when we got there, we thought we had made a bad decision. the place was so crowded, and full of screaming kids everywhere.
but once we got on the hayride to the pumpkin patch it got better.
we spent some time walking around, picking up pumpkins and carrying them till we found a better one.
and eventually we settled on two, that we will carve up this week.
after the pumpking picking we went to my favorite store, the container store.
we made a really awesome dinner sunday night, but none of the photos turned out well. i am bummed. all the food was local and it was delicious. we had green beans with fingerling potatoes and onions. it was delicious, and my first time trying green beans in years.
Sorry I was late on posting. Been busy as of lately but will have more to post later on this weekend.
Anyways, I picked up some new Orchid shoes at my friends bumex/skateboard shop 2x4 First pair of shoes Ive bought in a long time... guess since Wiz gave me about 20 pairs a few years back.
Then Grissom wanted to test out the shoe box for stability... it passed. He also approved of the shoes.
if you know me, then you know i love potatoes. no seriously. they are delicious. they keep you full. and best of all they are cheap. and recently i have developed a love affair with kale. so i started mixing the two and deliciousness occurred!
after i slice the potatoes i throw them in the iron skillet with a little bit of olive oil. when the potatoes are almost finished i throw the kale in let it all cook till the kale starts to char. then i season and serve. this time i added some leftover brown rice that i needed to eat.
i wanted to make a dessert before my parents visit, but i was starting to feel lazy from all the cleaning i was doing. when i found out they were coming a day late i figured that was a good opportunity to bake something. i was fresh out of ideas so i asked eric what he wanted and he wanted gingerbread cookies. after some googling we settled on this recipe from PPK.
the dough was easy to make and didn't take very long, minus the chill time. i'm definitely going to bake these again for the holidays.
i wish i had some cute cookies cutters, all i had were stars and hearts. i remember growing up my mom had so many different shapes to choose from. it was slightly overwhelming to figure out what kind of cookies you wanted!
i ended up putting some chocolate chips in a few, because DUH, chocolate chips make everything better.
i never got around to taking a proper after photo, and the cookies are pretty much gone.
my parents came to visit over the weekend! this trip had a lot of bumps before they even got here. first, my parents missed their flight. i'm not sure how, and they say the got to the airport on time, but who knows. so they ended up catching a flight to philly friday morning. so everything seemed to be going alright, and i left for the airport, and then i hit traffic. i figured no big deal, i'm not THAT far from the airport. well about 1/2 mile in front of me there was a wreck. i ended up sitting on the highway for two hours. for two hours i did not move. at all. no seriously, my car was turned off. thank god for my iphone because i ended up watching a movie while i waited. and then there was the weather. it was rainy.
well the weather on saturday ended up being alright. it was cold, and slightly drizzly, but we were still able to tour the city.
my dad got a big kick out of being able to order a lager everywhere.
we did all the tourist stuff all day saturday. i am becoming a great tour guide!
i did get to use my new winter jacket that my grandmother bought me!
my mom liked all the pretty leaves.
and we ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of good beer.
it was great having them! i hope they can come for a few more days next time and we can do stuff at a slower pace.
as much as i love this time of year, i hate that it gets dark early. i like photographing my food in natural light, and flash just won't do it. last night we were trying to figure out dinner and i had an intense craving for cornbread. i ended up using the cornbread biscuit recipe out of vegan brunch, but made mini muffins instead.
these are awesome! i like that they are bite size, but it's also a bad thing! i had snagged 3 before we even sat down for dinner. they remind me of some mini cornbread muffins i used to eat when i was a kid. it was at a restaurant, but i can't remember and it's been driving me crazy. mom? dad? do either of you remember a restaurant that served mini cornbread muffins?
speaking of mom and dad, they are coming to visit tomorrow! i don't really have set plans because i am waiting to see what the weather is going to do (looks like 40 and rainy, ugh). but i do need to figure out some things to bake before they get here.
i really don't have any photos to show from our weekend except these three. saturday it was raining and we spent most of the day cleaning up the apartment. for dinner we made veggie burger, french fries and onion rings. it was all amazing, but whoa, a lot of grease and a lot of heavy food. eric made the veggie burgers, i'm not sure his exact recipe, but he combined a bunch of different nuts, quinoa and rice. they didn't stick together very well, but they were still delicious. i think they would make a great crumble on a salad. and the onion rings were amazing. we coated the onions in soymilk, flaxseed meal and tabasco, then put them in a plastic bag with flour, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper. i wish they had been spicier though!
i felt sick all day sunday and pretty much hung out on the couch. still not feeling that great today.
it's friday and it's so pretty outside! last night i made probably one of the quickest dinners ever, besides a sandwich. eric and i had gone out for drinks and we were feeling tired and lazy and had the office to watch (such a good episode!). we were also starting to run out of food.
i put on a pot of couscous. then i drained, rinsed, and dried a can of chickpeas and put them in the iron skillet with a little bit of oil. once they started to brown i threw in some swiss chard and once that started to brown i threw in some pinenuts. the couscous was finished cooking by this point, so i combined everything, added some salt, pepper and lemon juice, and had a nice healthy easy dinner!
So lately after my 30mi. daily bicycle commute, I like to enjoy a green monster. Lauren had found some recipes online so I took that idea and went with it. I usually use a handful or two of spinach, almond milk, and whatever fruit we have around. Since we froze a lot of watermelon that we could not finish, I usually use that.
I have been reading Brendan Brazier's book, Thrive Fitness: Mental and Physical Strength for Life, which Lauren bought me. I haven't made it too far since I am not much of a reader, but really enjoy it. He explains how the less energy the body uses to digest food, the more energy the body has at its disposal. He has many recipes for smoothies since they are easy to digest and pack a great deal of nutrition into one drink.
The other night we were looking to something a little bit different and had picked up some rainbow chard at the head house farmers market. We ended up making some white sweet potato and chard enchiladas. They turned out alright, but we have better plans for them next time. Lauren went with a simple sauce of Chalula, and I used a tomatillo salsa that I had made a while back.
these cookies are interesting. they are good, but definitely interesting. the outside is crisp and the inside is very, very chewy. i based my recipe off of these pumpkin oatmeal cookies, but i made a few changes.
pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies this recipe made so many i didn't even bother to count 2 cups flour 1 1/3 cups rolled oats 1 teaspoon baking soda 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 tsp cinnamon a dash of ground cloves 1 2/3 cups sugar 2/3 cup canola oil 2 tablespoons molasses 1 cup canned pumpkin 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon flax seed meal 1/2 cup walnuts 1/2 cup chocolate chips
preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. mix together flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices. in a separate bowl, mix together sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin, vanilla, and flax seeds until very well combined. add dry ingredients to wet, folding to combine. fold in walnuts and chocolate chips. drop by spoonfuls on a greased baking sheet and bake for 16 minutes. it made 4 trays of cookies.
i'll probably be eating these the rest of october there are so many.
the weather looked like it was supposed to rain all weekend, so it was a nice surprise when it didn't. friday night eric and i walked through old city and all the first friday mess to the seaport museum.
we met up with some friends for a showing of hori smoku sailor jerry. it was pretty good, and had a lot of funny parts. i don't know much (or anything) about tattoo history so that was cool. there was also a tattoo exhibit going on.
after that we went to belgium cafe for awesome food and awesome drinks. i am so happy bars are starting to have fall beers.
saturday morning eric made me vegan ginger pankcakes. they were awesome. pancakes have become our fallback breakfast meal when we have no other food.
a few weeks ago we noticed that yard's brewery was really close to our apartment, so we decided to hit up the free tour.
i think the coolest part of the tour was they showed you the bottling and packaging, which i had never seen.
i really like their beer, but all the ones they had out i had already tried. oh well, it was still good.
later on we went to a few bars around our place.
i decided to try an apple for the first time in about 12 years.
yep, still don't like them.
sunday morning i made vegan french toast! i'd never made french toast, and hadn't had it in a while, so i really had nothing to compare it to. we used ezekiel bread, that i toasted lightly. i think if we had different bread it would have been better. but it wasn't bad.
we hadn't been to the farmer's market in a while and decided to ride our bikes down there.
eric is taking an online driving course, so we just hung out at the apartment the rest of the day, watching a bunch of true blood.
grissom has started an annoying habit of getting in my lap all the time. anytime i do anything, he has to be right there. so i ate dinner with him in my lap.
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