it's so easy to be green, esp. when you're vegan

i'm totally preaching to the choir on this one, yes it is very important to get your green on. late plug for st. patty's day? no, i'm not really up on that holiday, but i do love me some green food. pictured above was an accidental outfit matching made by me and my boy. i love showing him off, isn't he just gnawdorable? he is such a tank. i can't believe i've turned out to be one of those mothers who love to show off their kids. then again, my spouse and i didn't know we'd be the winners of such an amazing genetic crap shoot. no worries, this child will not be entering any baby beauty contests.
now for the avocados. i love them. lovey-lovey-love-love them. what a superfood! packed with all sorts of good fat, vitamins, and flavor these emeralds are what vin likes to call "nature's cheese". true dat. pictured above is a creamy avocado dressing i made with 2 avocados, lime juice, fresh parsley (about a cup of it chopped), 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 c. chopped onion, sea salt, and a cup or so of water. i pureed it in the blender and kept it in the container with the seed. someone told me keeping the seed in guac or a dressing will keep the avocado green. i'm not sure if that is 100% fact, but my dressing was bright green for a few days. this stuff went really well with the tabbouleh pictured below:
tabbouleh is impossible to screw up. you just take soaked bulghur-(follow the instructions!), fresh parsley, mint-(optional, i didn't have it when i made this batch) olive oil, onions, cukes, tomatoes, and anything else that floats your boat. throw in some fresh lemon juice, sea salt, and ta-da--tabbouleh! i used the avocado dressing as a topping because i like my food topped with other food, but it is most certainly not a requirement.

what are your favorite green foods?

spinach a la rachel

hi everyone! i hope y'all have had a great weekend. it was a tad chilly in southern indiana, but that didn't stop me from cooking. i made spinach a la rachel. i'm sure it probably has a fancier name, but all i know it as "that awesome shit rachel makes."

maybe it's just me, but do any of you out there think chickpeas look like little butts? point in case is the one sitting over yonder on the left hand side of the photo. i think butts are adorable. anyway, here's the unmeasured recipe:

• fresh spinach
• olive oil
• garlic granules
• raisins
• chickpeas
• balsamic vinegar
• sea salt

*pine nuts are optional, but i did not have them on hand when i made the dish this time.

wash and chop yo spinach. now sautee it in olive oil and sprinkle in the garlic granules, raisins, and chickpeas. don't over cook or you'll end up with mush. sprinkle with sea salt and balsamic to taste.

i'm craving this

i'm out of food porn pics--d'oh! so i did an image search for vegan panang curry and this beauty popped up from the very awesome blog of sick of lettuce. i didn't have curry available so i had a bagel sammich instead. i'm full, but i still want curry. curry, curry, curry. brittany writes a fine blog. and like her, i'm on a search for the perfect tempeh reuben. first, i must get the curry.

pixie pine has an awesome entry on her favorite things and i thought i'd do that but i'm too lazy. do any of you facebook? is that even a verb? feel free to send me a friend request and you'll learn all sorts of heinous stuff about me.

uuuh, uh-uh me so corny, oooh me so corny!

i'm hoping some of you readers will get the reference. 2 live crew was undeniably a pretty awful music group, but a gem of the late 80's because they took on tipper gore and the pmrc to fight for their first amendment rights. this is the cornbread recipe from veganomicon that i punched up with suggested corn kernels and jalapenos to make it even more awesome. they went well with the vegan white chili that vinnie made last month-(and isn't pictured because we ate it so quickly).

better late than never: how i spent world meat-out day at work

yeah, yeah better late than never as my momma would say. actually she would never say that. she's known for other quirky quotes like "that man is a blowhard pus gut", "well isn't that just cuter n' owlshit!", and my favorite "pretty is as pretty does". no, she was not related to forrest gump's mamma. sorry to digress. i had a blast on world meat out day and these are my phone picture posts. it was a food miracle of sorts because only 3 of us brought food, but we had enough for both the mail order and retail department. shown above is chris's wheat berry and bean salad, shar's savory bread pudding-(it might sound gross but it was really good), and one of the sesame ginger peanut cookies i made. the bread pudding had soysage, spinach, tofu, and a bready crust. it was more breakfast casserole than bread pudding.
watch out, there's a bowl of chili with corn chip wings! my spouse vin made a double batch of vegan chili that i brought to the potluck and everyone happily nommed. everyone was asking "what's the secret ingredient?" the cheezy part of me would say, "love". vin would say "probably the msg from the kroger brand chili seasoning", which is vegan-(we checked). fun fact: the enzymatic process in making MSG can come from animals as indicated here.

a nice rawish salsa type thingy

i had three yellow tomatoes and went crazy by throwing them together with some chopped red onion, cilantro, cukes, green pepper, dried garlic granules, chipotle ms. dash, cinnamon, lime juice, and some sea salt. i think it's mostly raw, but not sure dried garlic and cinnamon count. close enough, right? what a lovely relish this is. perfect for topping a baked tater, sitting on top of a chip, or by the spoonful.

chocolate covered katie is always talking about her chocolate covered song of the day, and i thought of the following song when i think about my beautiful vegan life. it's by the barenaked ladies-(i'm not a huge fan of their work, but the song is awfully cute) and it's from their "snacktime" album:

The houses are built with leafy lettuce.
The light posts are all rubbery asparagus, in Vegetable Town.
The roads are paved with sautéed onions.
Community hall is a hollow pumpkin, in Vegetable Town.

Won't you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Won't you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Where we can ride the zucchini subway,
or watch the carrot planes land on the runway.
In Vegetable Town. In Vegetable Town.

Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
In Vegetable town. In Vegetable Town.
Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?

well, butter mah biscuits!

i crunked it up this weekend and tested bianca's biscuits and soysage gravy for her southern vegan cookbook. both were pretty divine. you'd think that it would be easy to make gravy, hence the catchphrase "it's gravy" but if you don't know what you're doing, gravy can turn out disastrous. this did not.
i can't release the ingredients BUT i can tell you i use WW flour because white flour is the devil bobby bouchay. couldn't resist a reference from the waterboy.

i will say it again: white flour is the devil.

can you see the steam rising?

do you see it? the steam? i took this picture not too long after this pizza was taken out of the oven. this is actually a repeat of a dish i made a while ago: cilantro pesto with black beans. i got the idea from aver's pizza. it's my fave place to get a pie, but is kinda pricey, and mostly so-not-vegan. so i decided to make it myself. i used pillsbury pizza dough-(chemical but vegan) and topped it with said pesto, black beans, roasted red peppers, green peppers, and banana peppers.

as usual i don't have a recipe for the pesto because i throw what i think will work in the blender and it comes out awesome every time:

fresh cilantro
1/2 onion
lime juice
cumin
your choice of nut (almonds work best) a handful
nooch
water
ms. dash chipotle blend
sea salt

blend together until smooth. pour on raw dough, top with veggies and bake according to the pizza dough directions.

btw, happy world meat-out day! we had a potluck at work. once again, forgot the camera, but took pictures with my phone. will post those pics later.

mayo i offer you a cupcake?

when i was a yungun' my aunt would make something called mayonnaise cake. it actually had miracle whip in it, but she called it mayonnaise cake anyway. imagine my surprise i found a mayo cake recipe on foodbuzz from dunkin cooking the semi-homemade way that i happily veganized. the recipe made 6 cupcakes and 4 individual cakes. i used my bunny shaped cake pans for the leftover batter.
i wish i had the equipment and the time to give these adorable wabbits faces. i was crunched for time so i made a quickie icing with some leftover store bought vanilla icing, tofutti cr. cheez, and some melted chocolate chips. i accented bunnies and cupcakes with sprinkles and dark chocolate squares.
i thought the recipe turned out too dry, which was odd because mayo is such a fatty condiment. i distinctly remember tasting a hint of mayo as a child, but couldn't detect it in here, and the recipe called for a cup of it. perhaps next time i'll add a banana or blended silken tofu to moisten it up. it wasn't chocolatey enough either. don't get me wrong, it was a good cake, just not stellar.

for now, the hunt for that perfect mayo cake continues. anyone have one?

that's how i roll: from the food porn vault

after reading vegspinz blog, i want to have a sushi party so bad. i never thought i'd like to eat seaweed so much until i was introduced to it back in 2000 by a former lover of mine. she took me to a very high end place and dumped over $100 on the meal, something i had only witnessed once before. fyi: i grew up fairly poor, so it always amazes me when people spend a ton of money on a nice meal. in my family, eatin' fancy meant going to the olive garden or red lobster. my other expensive adventure was with another ex of mine who took me to an ethiopian restaurant in detroit. i didn't even see the bill, but i know it was big when i saw how wide his father's eyes got when he opened that little black book. it was one of the best meals i ever had. i'll have to try making some ethiopian vegan eats in the future.


sorry i got sidetracked. anyways, i've always been fairly envious of people who could make sushi themselves. last summer my friends mari and tony had me, vin, and the bebeh over for a sushi rolling party and dinner. it was so much fun and so delicious to eat, way better than any restaurant sushi i've ever had. we had rolls with cuke, avocado, daikon radish, and seasoned tofu. i'm sure mari will kill me posting this pic of her with a broken leg, as it is clearly not the best picture of her. for the record, she's super cute--absolutely gnawdorable.

i learned the secret to getting good sushi is (duh) a tight roll. vin mumbled, it's like rolling a big doobie! and i had to chuckle b/c i don't know jack squat about that sport either. when it was my turn i did a good job, but i really had to take my time and focus. i was afraid of messing it up the whole time while rolling it.


here's the finished product. between the four of us, i believe we cleaned the plate. there was another plate left, but we divided that up for lunches the next day.

best played on random

my husband makes mixed cd's that are usually best played on random. when it comes to recipes, i get into a rut sometimes and make a rotation of the same shit: mujadara, hummus, babaganoush, a pasta dish, etc. well--i'm challenging myself by trying to make more new stuff and put those cookbooks of mine to good use, so i'm playing my cookbooks on random.

this is the asparagus quiche with tarragon from veganomicon. i picked it by closing my eyes and flipping to a page. unlike most vegan quiches that use nooch and tofu, this one is made of white beans, asparagus, and walnuts. lemme tell y'all, i was excited about finding another use for asparagus and beans. the flavors were nice and savory, but it wasn't anything i'd shout to the rooftops about. i didn't really pay attention to the prep/cooking time and spent the said hour and 2o minutes preparing this dish. if i made this in the future, i would have made the crust way in advance and prepped my ingredients to save time in the kitchen. yeah, wouldn't it be awesome to have time to do that? my fellow foodie moms-(esp. ones with toddlers) should know what i'm talkin' about.

do any of you get frustrated with getting really rad cookbooks, then another one comes out and you haven't even used the ones you have? i'm kind of on a cookbook ban of sorts for a while until i use the ones i have. then there' s the internet. there are a metric buttload of vegan recipes and others that are dying to be veganized. i get overwhelmed easily.

i'll end this on some random good news: vin bought me a kosher for passover cake mix that is vegan if you don't make it with butter, eggs, and milk. this gets a little tricky b/c soy is prohibited during passover if you follow ashkenazic tradition. i do choose to follow that, so i think i'll use ground flax seeds as my egg and a nice home made-(commercial nut milks have soy in them) nut milk for the milk. i'll sub the butter for canola oil and it should be good.

me want cookie!

so what if cookie monster can't get his grammar right? when you're eating these cookies grammar don't mean nothing. these are the sesame ginger peanut cookies from veganomicon. i was adventurous and just picked recipes at random by opening a page and going, "oh, i'll make that."

if you're like me, you know that if you get a lap dance from a stripper you know that you never ever get rid of the body glitter that gets rubbed on your face. why am i mentioning this? much like a visit to a strip club, these cookies were a chewy crunchy bit of heaven, but i got sesame seeds all over the place. i mean c'mon-- i had a cookie two days ago, brushed my teeth with the fervor of someone with OCD, and still woke up to find one on my tongue and pressed to the side of my cheek. so maybe they should be called erotic dancer cookies.

okay okay, you busted me. i've never been to a strip club, but i've heard stories about the glitter.

eggplant bacon? get outta here!

so i made some eggplant bacon. it was really good. no-no you don't understand. this was something i never imagined i'd do with an eggplant. eggplant is one of my favorite veggies, but never in a million years could you convince me i could make bacon with it. i took several baby eggplants and peeled them. then i took the best knife i had (because i don't have a mandolin) and sliced them very, very thin. i'm talkin' wah-fer thin. then i took those slices and let them bathe overnight in a mixture of tomato sauce, liquid aminos, liquid smoke, olive oil, granulated garlic, apple cider vinegar, and a T of turbinado. the next day i took the eggplant and baked them on a cookie sheet for 10 mins at 400 degrees flipping them for another 10 mins. until they were nice and semi-crispy.
the results? this was some righteous bacon although i think i would have achieved a better crisp by pan frying the slices in some olive oil. i'm sure the recipe will become more awesome every time it is made. the eggplant absorbed the marinade perfectly and the flavor was very savory and smokey. the texture was chewy and meaty--probably would make a bangin' jerky in the dehydrator. was it bacon? of course not, but i think this is a very good use for eggplant if you're sick of making babaganoush or moussaka. picutured above is an EBLT with a side of roasted veggies topped with the cheez sauce on page 69 of the ultimate uncheese cookbook. i had never tried this sauce before and it was rich in roasted pepper goodness. the recipe called for cashews, and i didn't have any on hand so i used hazelnuts instead. i think it made the sauce richer. perfect for topping veggies or as a dip.

from the food porn vault

i keep lots of pics of meals i've eaten, but i don't post them all just in case i don't have anything to blog about. pictured above is a fairly mediocre dinner of grilled tofu over a bed of mai fun noodles and a bag of those "asian style" frozen veggies you get at kroger's. the sauce is the firecracker sauce -(that they use on the firecracker tillapia) from chili's--they had frozen bags of it at my food bank. i called the HQ and asked them for a list of ingredients. accidentally vegan! the sauce was super spicy and like the rug from the big lebowski, tied everything together.

one thing i had to experience a harsh learning lesson in was cooking dishes with rice noodles. this is probably a big "duh" with the rest of you, but until going vegan i never really read directions on packaged food. so every time i made rice noodles, i cooked them and they ended up as a big sticky ball of goo. you're supposed to soak them in cold or warm water for a prescribed amount of time and add them to the dish last. that way they're firm and yummy. no comet of mangled rice noodles and veggies-yay!

breakfast for dinner

yep, the sky is green, the grass is blue, and i'm havin' breakfast for dinner. so there. ppppthhhhh! seriously, what doesn't rock about vegan french toast, roasted taters, tempeh bacon, AND tofu scramble? mah tummeh, that's what doesn't rock because it's FULL!

upcoming adventures: i'm making eggplant bacon tomorrow night. got the idea from the ppk forum. we'll see how it goes.

Rockin' the french toast

you know how i said i'm picky about my tofu scramble, and how i only like my own? well, i feel the same way about my french toast. i've tried a couple of recipes and they just don't do it for me. here's my recipe. the key is using bananas. they brown the bread really well, and they add a natural sweetness so you don't have to drown them in maple syrup-(although a little syrup never hurt nobody nohow).

jewbacca's vegan french toast:

you'll need:
really stale bread (a loaf of crusty french works best, but i used old hoagie buns in the pic above)
2-3 super overripe bananas
1 1/4 c. non-dairy milk
1t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1t vanilla
1T flax seeds

cut your loaf of bread in nice diagonal shapes if you feel fancy. otherwise, get your bread together and set aside. if you don't have stale bread handy, you can dry bread out in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes, but check your bread to make sure it is good and tough.

take those wet ingredients and puree the shit outta them in a blender. pour the mixture in a nice wide shallow bowl.

heat a NON STICK skillet. use oil or non-stick spray if you do the low-fat thang. PLEASE use a non-stick skillet or you'll just be pissed and sad. dredge your stale bread in the french toast mixture and cook for a few minutes on each side, flipping it until the sides are nice and toasty brown. for some fun presentation, you can also dip whole pieces of less stale bread in the mixture and put them in well greased muffin tins for french toast cups. this isn't my idea, i just saw that somewhere once. you can also take your stale bread and crumble it up mixing it with the french toast mixture and press it into a shallow casserole dish and cook it at 350 for about 25-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, then you have**VOILA**french toast casserole!

now how about that interview? bianca from vegan crunk has this interview thingy going on, and i thought i'd play along. lemme know if you want in the pool, k?

1) If you could only get your protein from one source, which food would you choose?
i'm a sucker for tempeh. i could easily eat an entire package by myself.

2) How did you choose the name for your blog?
well, it is my observation that most (not all) but most non-vegans view vegans as pains in the ass. granted there are some vegans out there that warrant that label, but i don't really think i'm one of them. conversely so, i think some omnis are a pain the ass. i guess if i think about it even further being a pain-in-the-ass knows no age, gender, sexual identity, faith, political party, or eating habit. i gave the blog the title because i wanted to challenge the omni notion of: why is it "normal" for you to eat the way you do, but annoying to you that i choose to eat the way i do? for the record, i am a live-and-let-omnis-live vegan. i don't fault anyone for eating the way they choose to eat. my partner is an omni and our son is a vegetarian.

3) What's your all-time favorite dessert?
chocolate chip cookies just outta the oven. to cut down on the sweetness, i like to put a scoop of vanilla soy delicious on the top.

4) How long have you been veg? And what sparked the change in you?
i've been on and off the veg wagon for years. i started when i was 15 after reading an article in sassy magazine. i didn't know how to cook then so i ate a lot of pb&j sammiches. in 1999 i went vegan because my girlfriend at the time was vegan. she did all the cooking. so when she left, so did the vegan eats. i mean i tried, but how fun is it to eat nothing but luna bars and soy milk? i bounced back and forth from vegetarian and omnivorism. i guess i just forgot about my connection with food. in june of last year my supervisor brought in a copy of veg news with her to work and i read it cover to cover. i thought to myself, y'know why did you lose your way jen? what can you do to get back on track? i decided that day i'd get back on the bus. i made a 3 week transition from veg. to veganism and haven't looked back since. i did a TON of homework and practiced some vegan cooking. each week i got better and better. now i LOVE to cook for myself and i really don't miss the way i used to eat. i consider making omni food vegan a fun challenge.

5) If you were president, what's the first thing you would do? outlaw fast food restaurants, factory farms, and create a financial incentive for farmers to grow quality organic food for EVERYONE, not just those who can afford it. i'd also create a 'green initiative' that gave tax breaks to any individual, family, or business that utilized green practices: organic farming, recycling, eating a vegetarian or vegan diet.

To play along:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." If a few people want interviews, I will randomly pick 2.
2. I will respond by commenting on your blog with five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Hag Sameach!

these are hamantaschen i veganized from 5 star foodie's blog. seriously, i'm diggin' all the food networking that i get done on foodbuzz. it is a never ending society of foodies from a wide spectrum of taste: omnis, vegetarians, and vegans. at first i just wanted to get to know other vegans and scope out restaurants in different cities. then it hit me-- i realized by only friending other vegans i was missing out on the opportunity to meet other neat people and the awesome challenge of veganizing their recipes.

now what's "hamantaschen"? it's a triangular shaped cookie filled with a sweet filling (fruit, poppy seeds, nut paste, or chocolate) to represent the hat of Haman, some giant douchebag that tried to extinguish the jews-(throughout history there's always been someone trying to do that!) but failed miserably. so we eat his hat? yeah, it doesn't make sense but neither does the holiday of purim. it's kind of like mardi gras: we dress in wacky costumes, party it up, read the book of esther, and eat these cookies. we don't eat a lot of fatty foods though, that's for chanukkah.

so anyway, back to these cookies! they were very tasty, a nice buttery soft shortbread accompanied by a mixture of almond paste and pears. these would go well with tea. my problem is that i had always relied on the other ladies at synagogue to make hamantaschen and never learned to make it myself. i folded pretty triangles pre-oven, but they became kind of warped in the baking process and looked kind of odd. pictured above are the prettiest ones. i took the ugly ones to a gathering of my omni-goyfriends and they inhaled them so fast the plate stuck to someone's face. cool.

let them eat cake

i hope everyone had a great weekend. i know i sure did! my friend maren turned 40 on saturday and had a huge partay. before her party she asked if she could borrow some recipes because there were going to be vegans at the party besides me. i got SO excited! i thought it was awesome of her to make a special vegan cake--i mean, it's HER birthday and she wanted to make something for others? then again, that's maren in a nutshell: she's always doing nice things for other people. i lent her VWAV and pictured above and below is the chocolate raspberry blackout cake. holy shit it was divine.
i mean it was one of those cakes where you wish the piece you were eating never would end. i'm a big girl and realize that all things do have to be over sooner or later and i need to deal with it. thanks maren for sharing your special day with all of us!

you ain't seen nuthin till your down on a muffin

yeah-yeah, i'm a total show off. when i hosted the oneg at shul last week i realized i had forgotten my camera to take pics of these glorious s'mores muffins by CCK. i took the pictures with my camera phone and forgot all about them. well here they are again. i'd apologize for the repeat, BUT c'mon these muffins were SO FINE. i'm sure steven tyler would approve.

people couldn't believe they were vegan. i don't know what it is about some omnivores that are so amazed that vegan food is tasty. honestly, do they think most of the food we make tastes like dirt? i discussed this with my spouse and he told me that vegan cooking has definitely evolved since the 90's. he had a college friend that made some cookies and brought them to a party he was at and they did in fact, taste like dirt.

baked goods is a group of foods that can be easily veganized. i know i'm preaching to the choir here, but i'm getting more vegetarians and omnivores reading this blog-(yay!), so i thought i'd let them in on all the alternatives:

eggs: silken tofu (pureed), apple sauce, mushed bananas, ground flaxseeds+water, NRG egg replacer, i've discovered that if you don't have applesauce around you can puree pears or peaches and get the same result. most recently i used some baby food pears my son wouldn't eat in a loaf of miki's pumpkin bread. it turned out great. i would think you could use any kind of baby food fruit as a binder or replacement for oil to make things lower in fat-(if you're into that sort of thing).

butter: canola oil or earth balance does just fine. i've never used olive oil, but i heard that doesn't work so well for baking sweets. anyone ever try this in a pinch? spectrum makes a shortening that is vegan.

milk: with the rise of people realizing that they are lactose intolerant, there are too many milks on the market to count- soy, rice, hemp, and almond are just the tip of the iceberg in the non-dairy milk world. silk brand is the cadillac of soy milks. almond breeze is nice too.

good evening, clarice

come closer....
closer....
OKAY, that's close enough! now then, tell me. what did miggs say to you?

no-no, not about your hygiene practices. he clearly stated he loved this burrito.

hannibal lecter probably wouldn't like this dish because there isn't any human flesh in it. i mean, i could be wrong because his character was an insanely brilliant man and had a always had a hankering for fine cuisine--so who knows maybe he would like this. (((taking bite)))) yeah, he would.

this is the melting pot burrito i made last night. inside is a medley of spinach, corn, black beans, rice, rotell tomatoes with lime, and some great northern beans. it's all been wrapped up in a rice flour burrito shell and topped with tofutti sour cream, salsa verde, salsa, guac, and some of that lovey-dovey cheez sauce from p. 68 in the ultimate uncheez cookbook. to my knowledge, this dish is accidentally gluten free. when i make something a la melting pot, that just means i've purged the pantry and freezer. on a deeper level, when i look at this gem and meditate upon all the colors and textures involved, i think of our awesome country. awesome in an awesome way, of course. not in that blind ultra nationalist way. i guess if i were that type of person i wouldn't necessarily keep a vegan blog, would i? wait, was that a tacky sentiment? oh well, i'm far from perfect.

but that baby sure was tasty. i piled a little too much on top, so some of the flavors of the burrito were masked by the toppings. it took me going vegan to notice my habit of drowning my food in toppings. every now and then that's fine, but i realize i really miss out on a good culinary experience by not tasting the main ingredients.

from the food porn vault

sorry readers, don't have time to write much today. i'm gettin' ready for an art opening on friday. here's a pic from my food porn vault: boca chikn patty with a blend of baked potatoes and red cabbage. topped with miso happy gravy.

tonight i'm makin' what i like to call melting pot burritos. that's just code speak for freezer and pantry purge. pics to follow soon.

leftovertown, population one

no biggie. just a visit from leftovertown. featured is a salad made of bianca's chicken fried tofu on a bed of baby greens with some 'maters n' dressing. the salad dressing was a cinch: store bought salsa and some veganaise. what can i say? sometimes i just don't feel like cooking.

fyi: sometimes i don't have time to post a real food porn pic and entry and will often blather on about a product i like. an example of this is the entry about the dark chocolates. this by no means is a directive to any of you readers. i realize all you purdy peeps are grown up and can think for yourselves.

speaking of thinking for yourself, i have to get this out. sometimes i don't always like the campaigns that a certain animal-rights group comes out with to gain new members. point in case: the sexiest vegetarian award. c'mon PETA: vegans come in all shapes and sizes. sure-sure the contestants are all aesthetically pleasing, but in that very commercial sort of way that markets to the male gaze. for an elastic second, i considered sending them a photo of me making a funny face to make a point, but i don't feel like playing ping-pong with their marketing department.

it took me a long time to come to this conclusion (and this will probably shock my spouse to read my typed words) but I AM BEAUTIFUL and SO ARE YOU. we all have the capacity to be sexy or ugly, and to beat a cliche to death it really is all about who you are on the inside. i have no doubt that some of the winners from that contest are great people, but i don't think looks alone provide a solid enough foundation for sex appeal.

...and then mrs. jen molica was awarded P.I.T.A.V.'s sexiest vegetarian award!
(Pain In The Ass Vegan)

when the moon hits the sky like a big pizza pie...

my favorite pizza place aver's makes a pie called "the cream and crimson" which i used to love in my pregan days-(sans bacon), but couldn't bear to eat now that i've given up animal products. the very un-vegan pizza has an alfredo sauce and is topped with potato slices(yay!) and thick cut bacon(boo!). i used my vegan superpowers to make it right: i made an alfreda sauce from vegan with a vengeance and topped it with potatoes and tempeh bacon instead. the crust? well, i borrowed my friend mari's idea and bought a ball of their dough for a couple of bucks to take home and bake myself. pretty neat, huh? this was an awesome pizza.

behold, the s'more muffin

this was a recipe by chocolate covered katie. it was a cinch to make and very good to eat. i didn't have any vegan marshmallow creme to put on this, so i used vanilla frosting with some melted chocolate chips. super decadent. i made these for oneg shabbat at temple and had big plans to photograph the whole spread but forgot my camera! don't you just hate it when that happens? anyway, i managed to save one to photograph. i hope i made you proud, CCK!