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The Floating Head

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free or expired.

Sometimes in retail, products expire and then you can't sell it. Shit happens. Right now in our home freezer, we have 11 containers of silken tofu, 8 packs of fakin bakin, and a bunch of Vegan Gourmet cheese. A loss for the store, but a gain for us at home, I suppose.
I always love and use Vegan Gourmet cheese (except for the cheddar flavor. It's not great), so it's like a fake cheese jackpot for us. However, I found out that the texture changes quite a bit after it has been frozen. Once it's thawed, it is too wet and grainy to eat cold on a sandwich. However! When you melt a once frozen block of Vegan Gourmet, it gets super melty. Like, yummy for my tummy melty. Notice the melty goodness on this lasagna we had:



I've been trying to find any excuse to eat the cheese now. I'm all pasta'd out though, so maybe some patty melts are in our future. Maybe with all that fakin bakin?
I also received some free samples of two products that we will be offering very soon, one being a vegan cream and one a vegan condensed milk. I was especially excited about the condensed milk, in hopes of perfecting/veganizing my mom's sausage gravy recipe. It always works fine with soymilk, but since she uses condensed milk in hers, I was hoping for more authenticity.
So, I began whipping up the vegan sausage with oil, since vegan sausage doesn't have the extra fat that pig flesh sausage does, and adding the flour, then I poured in the vegan condensed milk. I was impressed with it's thickness! I stuck my finger in the milk to taste it, and it was VERY sweet. Way more sweet than regular condensed milk, as far as I remember. Shoot. So rather than having sausage gravy, it was more like hot sausage custard. Ha!
Note to self: new condensed milk is great for sweet applications, for savory- not so much. Behold, the custard:



Those are not the usual fluffy veganized Paula Deen biscuits I make, they're just baking powder-style biscuits. I'm trying to be good and not use so much fat in my cooking. Then I go and make a dessert out of sausage. Ha. Yuck. The gravy texture was perfect, the flavor was nasty. Oh well.

triumph of a heart.

I've yet to decide if Bjork is retarded or brilliant, but either way this might be the best video ever.

everyone loves cake!

My sister in law just emailed some pictures from our New York trip, and I love this picture of our niece Lydia with an enormous piece of Vegan Treats cake.

joy.

Why do I get so excited when a new vegan cookbook comes out? Perhaps my exciting hobby of eating is why I've gained so much extra weight this year. *sigh*
Nonetheless, I picked up a copy of the new Joy of Vegan Baking. What a beautiful cookbook this is! It's slick, glossy pages are filled with good tips and nice photos. Even though I've been pressed for time lately, I managed to squeeze in a batch of the chocolate chip cookies featured so elegantly on the cover. Now, you may know that I am constantly in search of the best vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe in the world. And so far, Dreena's cookies currently hold that title, as far as I'm concerned. The reason why I don't make Dreena's version very often is that using maple syrup in that kind of quantity is damned expensive. And her batch makes about eight or nine cookies. Yes, I can double the recipe. But really. Eight or nine cookies? Even so, her cookies are so amazingly perfect.
And at this point, Dreena still has the best chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Unfortunately, I didn't love the chocolate chip cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking. Now don't get me wrong, they were still very delicious, I mean we are talking about sugar, flour and chocolate here. But I found them to be a little too sugary, and they required too much margarine- a full cup. The cookies were also a bit too firm after cooling, for my taste anyway.



But hey... chocolate chip cookies, much like pizza, is good even when it's not the best you've had. This cookbook has so many other great looking recipes that I can't wait to try. I just can't judge a cookbook by it's chocolate chip cookie recipe- if I did, I wouldn't have tried all of the other awesome recipes that can be found within Vegan with a Vengeance. Great cookbook, not the greatest chocolate chip cookies.

Okay. Enough of that. I'll leave you with a cute picture of my husband giving me a look.

hayseed in the big city.

We traveled to New York to visit family, and that we did. We also managed to stuff our faces pretty much every minute of the trip, sleeping time excluded. In true Italian tradition, there was lots of "Eat! Eat!" and food being put in front of us, even right after dinner. Despite the constant flow of food, we still traveled to the city for some vegan restaurant love.
Per Danielle's suggestion, we tried the brunch at Counter. I'm so glad we did, because the food was spectacular. We started with an appetizer basket of fresh baked goods- banana bread slices, chocolate mini cupcakes and bread served with a vegan nutella-type spread, raspberry margarine and sangria marmalade. I ordered a sampling of appetizers for my meal, soy sausage skewers, home fries, and mixed greens. (Sorry for the bad pics, I didn't want to annoy with my flash.)




Counter has a rooftop garden where they grow their greens, among other things. How cool is that?

Our niece Lydia enjoyed eating the berries off of her pancakes and drinking from a big girl glass.


The staff at Counter were very good, too. All around a great dining experience.

Something else that was on my agenda was to try anything from Vegan Treats Bakery. Vegan Treats' stuff is offered at restaurants all over the city, so we basically just had to pick a place. We tried Atlas, and my wish was granted. And they had exactly what I wanted to try, which is the chocolate covered strawberry shortcake. It was everything I could have hoped for and more!



The piece was the size of my head, and damn it was god. I mean good. Either way. I couldn't even finish the piece, which is just bizarre for me. Ken treated himself to the vegan soft serve with cookie pieces, which was pretty amazing as well:



Ken's sister is a huge fan of Lush products, so we sought out one of the Lush stores, too. I bought a few bubble bars and powder that smells like candy, which is always fun. Unfortunately, my bag was rummaged though at the airport, and everything got covered in the glittery powder I bought. Our bathroom still smells of Candy Fluff.
While walking back from Lush, we discovered it was National Guacamole Day. "Give a Hoot, Eat a Fruit!" Ha.



One other interesting food-related tidbit is the beautiful fig tree that was in the backyard of Ken's aunt & uncle's house. It's huge, probably nine feet tall at least, and has the prettiest leaves on it. And the fruit, oh the fruit. So good. Apparently it's a very old tree. I was told that someone (Ken's uncle's father? I don't remember exactly...) traveled from Italy with a fig tree branch in his pants leg. Then he planted it here, and now this pretty tree sits in Astoria. Cool.



We definitely want to go back when we have more time and money to spend. There's so much more vegan food in that city yet to explore!

I've been meme'd.

We got back into town Monday afternoon, after a whirlwind weekend visit to New York. Good food talk with horrible photos to come!
But first, Lori tagged me for a meme. Here goes nothin'.

Rules:
#1 Players must list one fact, word, or tidbit that is somehow relevant to their life for each letter of your first or middle name.
#2 When you are tagged you need to write your own post containing your first or middle name game facts, word, or tidbit.
#3 At the end of your post choose one person for each letter of your name to tag. Don’t forget to leave a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
#4 If I’ve tagged YOU (the bloggers that I've tagged are listed at the end), please join in on the fun!





L- love. I have always loved with reckless abandon. I am deeply in love with my husband Ken, and I suspect I always will be. Our 3 year wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks. Go us!


E- easy. I'm a pretty simple girl. I don't get a kick out of severe problem-solving or anything that takes extra effort for no good reason. I like canned beans over dry, the shortest distance between two points... that kind of thing. What did you think I meant? Easy? No!!


I- innocent. *snort* I kid, I kid.


G- guilty. Everything's my fault, at all times. Not really, but I will still apologize for it. I'm full of catholic guilt without the catholic. Atheist guilt? Hmm.


H- herbivore. Yup. I've been a vegetarian for sixteen years, and a vegan for six of those years. Although my veg lifestyle doesn't define who I am as a whole, it does play a big part in my life. For me, it's not about my diet, It's ethics.


And there you have it. I know the "I" is a cop-out, but I really can't think of an "I" word that fits me well enough to mention. And unfortunately my name contains no "Z"s, so I wasn't able to express my deep love and appreciation for zombie movies. Maybe on the next meme.
Maybe if you guys are up for it, perhaps Christy, Hussy, Laura and Tanya would be into doing this thing too? I'm interested in your answers.

putting things between bread.

Oh, Miles. What a brat he is. Here's the last thing you see before everything goes dark and you wake up bleeding:



Anyway, there hasn't been much time for cooking lately. We are leaving on Saturday morning for a family-related trip to NYC, and every spare moment we have has been dedicated to making the house look like it's occupied by us, and not by some random squatters. See, my brother is coming to take care of the kitties while we are gone, otherwise we would still be...not cleaning.
But even when I can't cook, I still have to eat. And there's one thing I eat virtually everyday in the summer, and that's tomato sandwiches. Tomato sandwiches are one of my comfort foods, ever since I was a kid. I even eat them for breakfast on occasion. This summer has been producing some fabulous heirlooms, and for a bit less money per pound than the past few years. Here is my lunch from yesterday- an heirloom tomato sandwich, made with a light yellow (and less acidic) tomato, vegenaise, Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella, and salt & pepper. Lightly grilled, for extra yum.



For dinner, we put more things between bread. An Amy's Quarter Pound Burger patty on a bun with Vegan Gourmet Cheddar, more tomatoes, pickles, vidalia onions, baby lettuce, vegenaise, and ketchup. On the side were some pale, sad, soggy sweet potato fries. I should have saved the $3.50 and cut up a damn potato myself, instead of relying on the frozen food section. At least the burger was good.


Speaking of sweet potato, it's taking all my willpower to not veganize and make the sweet potato donuts I saw Paula Deen make on her show last night. That saucy southern temptress.

crappy customer service rant

Ken turned 35 on Tuesday, and he enjoyed his requested "day of nothing". We had lots of food and cake at his parent's house on Monday, and he got some cool presents. I usually try to give him gifts that he wants, but won't buy for himself, and I had one particular item in mind that fit that description.

I went searching online for a certain brand of shirt that he likes, since I can't easily walk into a store and find this brand in the type of style and color he wants. These shirts are also kind of pricey, so I wanted to find a good deal. I ended up placing an online order for a shirt with a company I have never heard of, but they were in the U.S., so I was hoping to get the shirt in a timely manner. I Placed the order a little over two weeks before Ken's B-Day, so it really should have been no problem, right? Ha.
Perhaps I expect too much. But I found a reply to an email I sent to this company to be the single rudest response in the history of customer service. I waited about a week after a placed the order to write them, since I had not received any kind of indication that they had shipped my order. My email said this:


"Hello,
I was wondering if my order has been shipped yet? It was placed on August 20th, and the order number is 29722. I'm hoping to receive this before next weekend, as it is a present for my husband's birthday.
Thanks!"


A perfectly reasonable question, right? I mean, Ken and I receive emails like this every day, since we run a mail order business. I received a reply several days later that was an attached form letter. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the form letter:


"You're getting this "form letter" because you asked the question I get a MILLION times a day "I was just wondering, where's my stuff?".
These are the most likely answers as well as questions I need to help you:
1) Did you order a shirt, sweatshirt, canvas bag or something that requires “printing”? If so, please RE-READ your e-mail reply from us. In it, it says that all shirts may take up to three weeks for us to GET as most are made to order. It also says this right on the website under the t-shirt pages."

Keep in mind, the shirt I ordered did not require printing of any sort. Now back to the form letter.



"...please keep in mind this is NOT Amazon.com. We're just four people doing the best we can so unless it's been a while (4 weeks at least) PLEASE BE PATIENT. Answering these "Just wondering...." e-mails is time we could be using wrapping up YOURS and others orders."

So let me get this straight. Unless it's been at least four weeks since I placed my order, then I'm an impatient asshole for inquiring about it? Seriously? Four fucking weeks? And I find the Amazon reference and the "just wondering..." email parts to be particularly patronizing.


And okay. Maybe I really do expect a lot in a customer service situation. But really. Ken and I run our online business as well as our retail store by ourselves. Two people. And we still manage to get out every single order within 24 hours, unless there is a problem in which case we let our customers know about it immediately. We also answer every email with a personal response... call us crazy.
The good news is that the shirt arrived two days before his birthday, about 12 days after I placed the order. That time frame is okay with me considering it was shipping from the west coast, but the email form letter was just too much! I can't imagine emailing something like that to our customers!
But all is well now. Ken liked his shirt and also his trip to a spa for a massage.

...and I promise to cook something this weekend. I'm not sure what yet! No desserts though, we're all caked out.

tempeh wingz

Holy Crap.



These tempeh wingz are so lip-smackin', finger lickin' good. The recipe is from the Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk zine (and the recipe is here).
I took a taste of the sauce while the tempeh was baking, and I thought that these were going to be just so-so. But the whole thing really came together in the end. The panko crumbs gave the wingz a good crispness, and the agave gave the sauce a touch of sweet to go with the mellow hot. A must-try!