for the past few weeks eric and i have spent our monday nights at a restaurant up the street from our apartment.
why have we been there every monday night?
bingo! el camino real host a bingo night every monday and it's really awesome. the prizes are usually free food or drinks to either el camino or bar ferdinand.
el camino also has shiner as one of their beers! it makes me miss texas some.
we are sort of becoming bingo locals, and i was really excited when the bingo caller/hostess made me cookies this week! she ended up baking the carrot cookies from 101cookbooks.com, which just so happens to be my favorite cookie! it definitely made the night even better.
usually we both win a few times a night, but sadly last night it was only eric winning.
eric and i both worked out after work tonight and when we finished we were starving and ready to eat a lot of food. eric has been making burgers over the weekend and then keeping them in the refrigerator. it makes for a really easy dinner when you need some filling and fast.
eric topped his black bean burger with a coleslaw of julienned carrots, cabbage, onions, jalapenos, avocado slices, and bbq sauce.
i had a different burger mixture and i topped mine with mustard greens, carrots, radishes, jalapenos, pickles, hot mustard and red hot all placed on an ezekiel burger bun.
quite delicious!
well keep your fingers crossed that eric and i both have snow days tomorrow! we are supposed to get about 15 inches on top of the almost 30 we got over the weekend.
we survived snowmageddon! friday evening we decided to brave the beginning of the blizzard to pick up a few essentials.
we walked up the street to the foodery, which is an amazing beer store.
the foodery is awesome because you can build your own sixpack. it's a great way to try new beers.
i was really excited for more snow because i love snow, and i had bought new snow boots i wanted to test out. do you know how hard it is to find vegan snow boots?!
it was started to really come down and get windy, so we headed home.
but before we went inside i had to do some impromptu car modeling and snow eating.
here are our goods: unibroue chambly noire unibroue blanche de chambly bell's expedition stout bell's two hearted ale the duck rabbit wee heavy scotch style ale
we decided to try three friday night.
one time eric and i went to the saint arnold brewery in houston (which is awesome!) and we got these really cute small beer glasses. they are perfect for sharing beer.
snowy saturday mornings call for chocolate chip pancakes! i usually use the perfect pancakes recipe from vegan brunch, except add chocolate chips. this time i added white and dark chocolate chips.
we also busted out the juicer and eric made carrot juice and i had grapefruit juice.
it snowed pretty crazy till midafternoon.
so we prepped a few things to do in the dehydrator. we made crackers using juice pulp.
and i made macaroons. these were really simple and easy to make. it's just unsweetened coconut, almond flour (we just pulsed almonds in the food processor), agave, and a splash of vanilla.
we also saw this rare sight! kitta marie and grissom cuddling. it lasted about one minute before they attacked each other.
and then somehow, someway, eric convinced me to go on a bike ride.
we rode to the art museum with intentions of going sledding, except our friends with the sleds never showed up.
on our ride back we made a pitstop at the belgian cafe for some beer and fries.
and we made it home and decided to run and ride our bikes through the snow in our alley.
later on we decided to try another new beer. the name sounds really crazy, and it smelled pretty crazy, but it actually tasted really good.
and after that beer i fell asleep, at 8pm, on a saturday. i'm cool like that.
sunday morning i woke up and pulled the macaroons out of the dehydrator. i am happy to say they turned out delicious and taste exactly like real macaroons. i am already planning on making more this week.
eric was in the kitchen most of the day on sunday. he made homemade veggie burgers for lunch on sunday. he used black beans, almond flour, hemp milk, nutritional yeast, onions, peppers, jalapenos, roasted garlic, carrots, chickpeas, and some spices. he pretty much cleaned out our fridge making these.
and he made hummus. i love his hummus and think he makes the best. this one was roasted red pepper. eric roasted the red peppers, jalapenos, garlic and onions first, then in the food processor he added the cooked mixture to a can of chickpeas. then he added lemon juice, salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil.
and then he made his usual cookie, oatmeal chocolate chip! to make them healthier he used white whole wheat flour. obviously it's not as healthy as whole wheat, but better than white!
we ended up going to a friend's for the super bowl and stuffing ourselves, but no photos.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
So Lauren and I have been working on writing down recipes we make instead of just making hucking them as we go. It does take a bit more time, but we are going to make an effort to get some new meals together and start posting actual recipes… that’s the plan at least.
Last week I had made a big batch of my grandfathers marinara. I figured I had to put it to go use and made some lasagna. Unfortunately Lauren hates marinara/tomatoes/pasta/stuff like this, but oh well, I guess I will have to eat it all myself :) Overall I think it turned out pretty well. I want to make it again soon to try to get a better recipe together and I will post it once that happens. Next time I would like to heat up the "cheese" mixture before hand to make it easier to distribute. The majority of the "cheese" sauce was a raw soaked cashews cheese, some left over Follow Your Heart vegan cheese, and nutritional yeast.
For the cashews I unusually soak the cashews for two or more hours in water until they soften up. Then I blend in a food processor with a bit of onion powder, garlic powder, salt, paprika, lemon juice, and water to get it to the consistency that I want it. It is super easy and gives a nice creamy texture to whatever you need. Next time when making lasagna I think I will add some parsley to the mix as well. I didn't have a 9x13 pan so I had to trim the pasta a bit so I have some leftover pasta to try my new recipe on. Either way it was a tasty meal.
We have been on a kick of basil fried rice as of lately. Mostly because it's fairly fast to cook and also because we can't get enough. We had a good amount of vegetables laying around so I got to work washing and prepping them after some Jillian Michaels action. I cooked up a can of chickpeas beforehand to get started… yes, they aren't very Asian but it adds a good amount of protein and something different to our stir fry. Next on the agenda was the onions and red peppers, followed up by some garlic. After that we cooked up some kale quickly and added the brown rice. The rice was warmed up with a handful of basil, sriracha, tamari, some chili oil, and some snow peas.
To compliment the rice we had some cabbage wraps. Laurens was mostly raw veggies; carrot sticks, broccoli, ground flax seeds, sriracha, and basil. They were delicious like always and something fairly light after long workout. I seem to only crave non-heavy/mostly raw foods for the most part after a workout. We might have a lot more food photos this weekend if this "big" storm hits… I guess well see.
i feel like my weekend posts are becoming redundant. "it was really cold. so we didn't do much. except hang out with the cats. and watch a bunch of dexter. and bake some food." but whatever, because i like doing that stuff (it just doesn't make for very interesting photos or words).
ANYWAYS...it was cold this weekend, so we stayed inside a lot.
saturday morning i woke up early and hit the gym. AND I RAN SEVEN MILES. i'm only telling you that because this year i decided i am going to run some half marathons, but 13.1 miles scares me, so i am already starting to train for them even though they are months away. also, i could barely run 3 miles last year, so i am happy that 3 miles "aint no thang" now. so there might be some running posts coming up.
and then it started to snow. so i decided to get to dehydrating.
i made some cookies to put in.
some sweet potatoes.
and i made some raw corn tortillas.
that looked like vomit.
eventually we got hungry (and the dehydrator takes a few hours) and decided to make fried rice for dinner, thai basil fried rice specifically. we braved the snow (actually it was barely any snow) and walked to the chinese grocery mega store.
if you are ever in philadelphia you should go here. they have everything you could ever need. you just have to get over the fish smell.
eric told me to NOT put this photo up, so that is exactly what i decided to do.
the fried rice turned out amazing.
we wanted to make a winter-y drink, but couldn't think of one, so we made mojitos.
eventually we decided to brave the snow and rode our bikes to a party. and then we rode to a bar to meet up with eric's cousin who was in town. sadly i don't have any photos!
sunday was ANOTHER lazy day.
we made burritos for breakfast!
and took our stuff out of the dehydrator. the tortillas turned out SPICY! i need to work on the recipe a bit, but it's really just corn, red bell pepper and spices.
and our veggie chips turned out great too!
i'm going to end with these photos because it's kind of a miracle. like seeing jesus in your toast. it's kitta marie being cuddly.
ANYONE who knows kitta knows she is not sweet. she is not nice. she is not cuddly. but for some reason (maybe the cold?) she has become sweet, nice, cuddly. and she almost acts like a human baby and curls up on you, and will wrap her paws around you, and lays her head on your shoulder and it's creepy and i feel like she is plotting to kill us.
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