thanks!

We found this gem in the store mailbox today:



Thank you, glittery lip gloss note. You have really opened our eyes about how much we really suck. I'm off to go eat a steak and cry now. Pssh.

I love you, tempeh wings.

I know I have mentioned it before, but I really do love you, tempeh wings. Your buttery, sweet sauce covering your crispy coating are the things that dreams are made of. You are even better paired with the tangy herbed tomato potato salad. I found both of you in the Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk zine and I haven't looked back since. Thank you for being in my life, and for giving me more ways to use agave nectar.

tasty beige food and kitty loaves.

From the look of this picture, it appears that Moe and Miles actually get along. I guess a good sun spot can bring together kitty enemies, at least temporarily.



Cut me off a piece of that kitty loaf:




Anyway, on to the beige food. I wanted to make something with the new vegan cream that recently arrived to the store, so I decided to try an Alfredo sauce. I've probably made five or six variations of vegan Alfredo in my day, and some have been okay, some good, many mediocre. Well, this version kicked our ass. It's sooooo good! (read: soooo fattening!)
Here's our mostly beige plate, Linguine with Alfredo sauce, grape tomatoes, and some store-bought onion focaccia bread.



Here's the Alfredo Sauce recipe:

1 container of Purity Soy Cream
1/3 cup Parma vegan parmesan
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 Tbs vegan margarine
some plain soy milk for thinning (between 1/4 to 1/2 cup)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg


In a medium saucepan, melt the margarine over medium heat. Once melted, add your flour and mix to create a roux. Don't even think about Rachael Ray's "Tigger and Roo" joke she always makes when making a roux, or you will ruin your recipe with the bitter taste of annoying.
Once the flour is incorporated, slowly whisk in the soy cream. Stir continuously with a whisk while the sauce heats up and gets bubbly. Lower the heat to medium-low and stir in the vegan parmesan.
If the sauce is too thick, slowly add in soy milk to your desired level of thickness.
Add the rest of your spices.
Serve over pasta right away.
Yum.

disseminated.

"Call up bop and I'm bunting stomach,
Koko mop I chop chunking plummet,
Thud on top, I ate the chocodile."
-Soul Coughing, Disseminated


Those Soul Coughing lyrics make no damn sense. But I always liked that song because chocodiles are mentioned. Which reminds me! Vegan Chocodiles came in the mail today!

Fresh out of the box:


Unwrapped:


After a big ol' bite:


These are perfect! I wouldn't change a thing. Especially not the cream filling, it's amazing. She uses the same filling for the chocolate whoopie pies, which are HUGE. Seriously, they are as big as a Big Mac. Wow, what an unvegan comparison. Here's the whoopies, still wrapped.



I highly recommend purchasing baked goods from Vegan Honey. Her stuff rocks. And will make me fat(ter).

the puking squash

Remember my squash from the other day?



Well now, every time I look at it, it reminds me of the puking pumpkin.
Me being an emetophobic and all, this is pretty upsetting. Not as upsetting as say... actually puking up acorn squash, but stilll kinda upsetting.

Stupid squash.

poor moe.

Maybe Moe in a punkin' hat will make me feel better.



Yeah, a little better.

organ shaped food

Man, am I grumpy today. I was hoping that making something tasty out of the sweet potato shaped like a stomach would pull me out of my bad mood.

See the stomach?


I decided to do a sweet potato version of Lolo's colcannon. I (obviously) used sweet potatoes in place of white potatoes, and rather than seitan, I threw in some Tofurky Italian Sausage. Yeah, we still have a shit ton of it in the freezer due to the expiration dates of some store stock.



The verdict? I think I want to eat this everyday from now on. It's so wonderful.
...but I'm still in a bad mood. Bah.

real food, finally.

Is it autumn yet? I thought it was for a day or two, when the temperature dropped below 70F. But here we are, still in the 80's during the day. I want to make some good fall food, I really do, but I kind of have a hard time wrapping my mouth around pumpkin muffins and nutmeggy things when I'm wearing the same old short sleeved tees. So tonight I made a summer/fall meal.
Tomatoes and spinach are definitely summer. Soups and squash scream fall.

I haven't used my Vegan Italiano cookbook in a while, so tonight I made the Tomato Florentine Soup from it. The soup was warm and light, and the recipe made about 56 gallons of soup for us to freeze.



Along with the soup, we had these adorable little acorn squashes (squash? squashes? squashi?) that I filled with a mixture of white beans, diced tomatoes, garlic, oregano and pepper.



And finally, I baked a blueberry cake. The recipe is from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I modified the recipe a bit, mainly because I just hate to use powdered egg replacer in cakes these days. Non-dairy yogurts are the way to go in cakes, because they turn out so moist! Normally I use Wildwood soy yogurt, but I decided to try this new rice yogurt instead. Ricera does still have vitamin D3 listed as an ingredient on their labels, but according to their site, they have recently switched to the vegan for of vitamin D (D2) due to feedback from the vegan community. Go vegans! yay!



So yeah, the cake is really delicious. I made it in a springform pan, but next time I'll make it in a smaller dish so it comes out thicker and more like a coffee cake. But still, it was damn good.
...and blueberries are sooo not autumn.

as if I need more baked goods.

I just ordered VEGAN CHOCODILES from here. Gobb bless you, internets.

more skrimp.

There hasn't been much cooking going on in our house this week. It's been a combination of having a house guest and lack of time, which equals lots of eating out at restaurants. So we are trying to catch up on things now, and we're mainly eating convenience foods. I did whip up a yummy "seafood" salad that I think I mentioned here before, but it's worth another look.



Mmm. I think fake seafood is my favorite of the meat analogs. This is the VegeUSA "shrimp", thawed. I mixed it with chopped celery, onions, romaine lettuce, a dollop of Vegenaise, garlic, salt, dulse flakes, and a splash of lime juice. Chill it for a few hours and voila! I intended to eat this with crackers, but once my fork hit it it was pretty much gone. Ken doesn't like seafoody type of things, so it's mine, mine, mine.

seen in L5P yesterday.

Heheheheee...

xoxoxo

Thanks for marrying me three years ago. I still think you're pretty awesome.