Ha.

I can't get enough of this Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare story. Funny as hell.
"the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball."

sigh.

So Ken and I have decided to start dieting. I hate to diet. I'm never very good at it, because I love food, and I hate feeling like I can't have something. I also have some pretty deeply ingrained emotional issues relating to certain foods. Being vegan is completely different, because my ethical commitment is so strong, I can't imagine going back to eating animal foods. But dieting for my health is...different. I have gained an uncomfortable 15 pounds in the past nine months. That is not cool.
We are now in day two of our own modified version of Eat to Live. Since we already eat vegan, the main change we face with this diet is the cutting out of sweets, bread, and fat. I love fruit and vegetables, but I'm missing sugar and fat like crazy. Someone kill me now.

breakfast and pizza. but not pizza for breakfast.

I found some beautiful raspberries at Trader Joe's yesterday, and I knew we couldn't go 24 hours without eating them. I decided to use them in some scones for breakfast this morning, and *whoa* were they ever awesome. I made the basic scone recipe from VwaV, and made half of the batch with the fresh raspberries and the other half with chocolate chips. Heaven is a warm scone with a smear of EB. Seriously.
We also had some tofu scramble so breakfast wasn't completely about bread. I don't really follow recipes for tofu scrambles anymore. I just start with a base of crumbled tofu, bragg's, nutritional yeast, pepper and oregano, then I throw in whatever we have. Today was onion, fresh spinach, garlic, and Fakin' Bacon. All and all a damn fine scramble.
The spread:



I mentioned pizza before. We eat pizza in some form or another, all the freakin' time. Sometimes I take the time to make crust, other times we buy pre-made crusts. Harry's and Trader Joe's both sell dough balls in the fridge section, so we use those as well. Last week we had the easiest of all the pizza variations by using two thin, pre-made crusts from Harry's.
The first one we had without tomato sauce. I just olive oiled and garlicked the crust before piling on broccoli and spinach with a shake or two of vegan parmesan. It was very nice and light, with the crust crispy kind of like a big cracker.



The second pizza we had with Vegan Gourmet mozzarella, Nate's Meatballs, purple onions, and a sauce I just kind of threw together by blending a can of diced tomatoes, olive oil, crushed garlic, and basil together with the immersion blender. As you can see, the sauce wasn't a nice dark, rich color like tomato sauce usually is. But it gave some moisture to the pizza, I guess.



We've been big fans of those "meat" balls for years, by the way. They are great for meatball hoagies and spaghetti.

Alright! I have no idea what's for dinner tonight. I'm still too full of scones to think about it.

foodstuffs

When we go grocery shopping, we are always on the lookout for new vegan friendly stuff. I'm a sucker for a new vegan pre-packaged food, even if it's pricey. We usually consider it research for the store. :)
Last week we picked up a bagged snack called Hummus Chips. The bag proclaims, "Made With Real Hummus!". These are crispy little chips made with garbanzo flour and olive oil, so I guess that's what they consider "real hummus". The chips really don't taste all that great. The flavor is okay, but the texture kind of sucks. They're gritty and weird. The texture is similar to some of the gluten-free products I've had before, and these are gluten-free as well. Hummus Chips would be better tasting with a dip of some sort. Maybe some... hummus?
Next, I just had to try the new Soy Feta from Sunergia. I don't know why, since I never really liked feta cheese before I went vegan. I just don't like the idea of there being vegan cheese in the world that I haven't tried. So I bought the Mediterranean Herb Feta. We tried it on salads on a few different occasions, and yup. It's just like feta, as far as I know. It crumbles like feta, it smells stinky like feta, and I don't care for it- just like feta. So please try it if you like feta, and don't consider this a bad review. I just had no business trying it in the first place.
Now, another snack! I used to buy this a million years ago when I worked at the co-op, but I haven't seen it in a long time. Rasta Pop! I love Rasta Pop. Especially the garlic and curry ones. These taste very health-foody, so be warned if you prefer your snacks to taste fatty. These are made here in Atlanta, too.

welcome home dinner

First off, here's a handsome Miles J.



Ken's home now. Yay! I wanted to make us dinner tonight with lots of vegetables (and no bread), since we have both been eating kind of shitty for the past week. I decided on two recipes from my new Vegan Italiano cookbook: Spring Vegetable Risotto and Baked Stuffed Tomatoes Florentine.



Both recipes were really good, especially the risotto. The risotto included asparagus, carrots, onions, parsley, and creamy yumminess. With the tomatoes, I changed the recipe a little bit. I didn't want to use bread in the stuffing as suggested, so I used seasoned tofu instead. We've had a tub of this garlic & onion tofu sitting in the fridge for a while, so I used it. I will say that this tofu being pre-marinated really isn't worth the trouble. Even though it was labeled as "firm", it was very soft and mushy. Draining it was just a mess, not typical of Nasoya tofu at all. It tasted fine, but nothing spectacular that I couldn't have done myself with garlic and onions. And yeah, I know that Donna Klein refers to tofu as a "weak substitution" in her cookbook, but I don't consider it that at all. So there.
Anyway, a very tasty dinner overall. I will definitely make the risotto again. The stuffed tomatoes...eh. Probably stuffed with something different, but yeah.

i already miss him, too.

Sorry it's been a while. There has been some cooking going on, but only sporadically. I am looking forward to digging into my new cookbook Vegan Italiano, a gift from Christy. This cookbook appears to be more fun than Donna Klein's last one, The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen, which I hardly ever use. Vegan Italiano has a lot more recipes that appeal to me, and non of them use fake meats. This helps my new year resolution to eat more of a variety of vegetables. Funny, huh? A vegan that needs to eat more vegetables? We just get caught in the "same ol'" food ruts sometimes. I'm also attempting to lay off the sweets a bit, which has been going okay so far. No serious withdraw symptoms yet. Ha.
Ken is leaving for a week-long work trip tomorrow. I will miss him terribly. I probably won't be doing much cooking during the week either, because of the cooking-for-one thing. But who knows, I just might anyway.