garage sell.

Christy and I finally had our garage sale this weekend. Or garage "sell", for those a bit red around the edges. Despite the weird weather, we had a pretty steady stream of people stop by. And we got many a dust catcher out of our houses, whoo!

I decided to try a mini bake sale along with the garage sale. I baked Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies (with walnuts) and Peanut "Better" Cookies (with chocolate drizzles), both from Vive le Vegan. I crowned Dreena's Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies as my favorites a long time ago, and that title still stands. This was my first time making the Peanut Betters, and I must say that those are mighty fine as well. And so easy to make!



I also baked Holly's awesome brownies, which Ken always loves. They are very soft and fudgy.
Not that many people were interested in the baked goods, though. I kept getting the, "oh, I'm trying to watch it" line, along with several self pats to the tummy area. A few people went for it, so that was good.

But perhaps I should lay off the baking. I have a good one for you, true story:

Since we recently got back on a health insurance plan, I made an appointment to have my arm looked at, as I've had some long term pain. Turns out it's tendonitis from using the computer all damn day. But anyway. This morning I go to my appointment, and there's a nurse who checks the usual vitals. I hop on the weight scale, do the blood pressure, etc. and we go into the little room where she proceeds to enter her findings into the computer. At one point she exclaims, "Wow, you have gained quite a bit of weight since you came here last." "Uhh... Yes I have." I told her. She goes on, "Your file popped up with a message about it, that's how much of a change it is!" My response was, "Yes, I am well aware that I have gained weight."

......Who says something like that?! I mean, really? Yes, I've gained 20 pounds since my last appointment one year ago. I was there about my arm. Geez. Piss off, lady. And for the record, you put the elbow band on me incorrectly. Next time pay less attention to my ass, and more attention to your job.
Bah!!
Okay, I feel better now.

Changing gears, here's Moe not getting a piece of a pretty cupcake that I did not bake.

more of the good stuff.

I never thought I would say this but.... I think I'm (vegan) cheesed out. It's been a plethora of vegan cheese this week.

We tried out more of the Teese last night, this time on a white garlic sauced pizza with tomatoes and onions. Watch it ooze:



Here are my final thoughts on Teese for right now. Melted and hot, it has by far the best mozzarella flavor of any other vegan cheese on the market. When it's cold, I don't care for it as much. The tang is too pronounced. And that's a shame, because I love cold tomato sandwiches with a slice of Vegan Gourmet mozzarella. But I'm willing to give that up for delicious, gooey pizzas, pastas, lasagna, and other hot stuff.
One con is Teese is VERY oily. It's so oily, that grating it was difficult. It grated, but the pieces all clumped together and left some wicked oil residue on my hands when I tried spreading the clumps. Another con is that for right now, the cost of Teese is prohibitively expensive. Right now it runs $7.50 plus $7.00 shipping for a one pound size (about the size of a baseball). This is even more expensive than the vegan cheeses imported from the UK and Scotland. Because of this, as much as I love Teese, it will have to be only an occasional treat for us. Very occasional. Which makes me want to cry. But maybe that will change once Teese is out of it's testing stage. Let's hope. For the love of all that is delicious and Italian, let's hope.

But I'm done with cheesy things for now. Bring on the stir fry!

a vast array of fake cheeses.

Yes, it has been a week full of delightful foods pretending to be dairy. First, we finally got our shipment of Cheezly at the store, so we had to immediately take some home and make pizza with it. We have had Cheezly's mozzarella before, so we knew what we were in for. A lovely, mild-tasting mozzarella that readily melts. Sheese may be the best for a good cheddar taste, but Cheezly has the mozzarella down pat. It's awesome, both cold sliced as well as melted.

Cheezly holding hands with Tofurky Italian Sausage:



But just when we thought we had reached the fake cheese pinnacle, along came our order of Teese. At first bite (cold), I was a bit taken back by Teese. It had a definite "tang" to it's flavor that I wasn't expecting. I was worried that I had just paid fifteen bucks (!!) for a pound of fake cheese that I might not like as much as Vegan Gourmet.
............but then I melted it on a garlic baguette. When melted, Teese turns into something magical. The tang is still there, and now I know why. To make it taste like real, authentic, freaking mozzarella cheese. And whoo boy, does it melt. It gets soft, silky and wonderful. Behold, the best garlic bread ever:



I'm pretty sure we are having more Teese-laced food tonight as well. Maybe a white pizza. We have plenty left of the good stuff.

But we didn't have just garlic bread for dinner, although that would have been alright with me. I also made Asparagus and Spinach with Artichoke Cream Sauce from Yellow Rose Recipes. We had it over some vegan "buttered" noodles. I tell you, this sauce is quick and easy to make, and has a rich, creamy flavor. And it wasn't as noochy as I thought it would be, considering how much nooch was actually in it. I will definitely be making this again. Blurry photo:



Stay tuned for more gooey, yummy times with fake cheeses!

what's cookin?

Nothing, that's what.
We have eaten out for dinner two nights in a
row, which is weird for us. But a fun, fatty time for sure! After a
delicious dinner last night at Harmony, Ken and
I headed to the Asian market next door. It's huge, with many nasty
looking meats and skinned animals. But they have lots of cool things,
too. I decided to stay away from the seitan-in-a-can type of stuff I tend to pick up at these places, and instead bought some things I've never used before.



Coconut cream powder? That sounds so awesome. I
don't know what I will use it for yet, but I'm sure it will be
something amazing. maybe I'll just bathe in it.
The lychees in syrup, I'm not sure yet either. Maybe a pretty little baked good of some sort. The spring roll wrappers are obvious. I just have a
difficult time finding won ton and spring roll wrappers without egg in
them outside of Asian markets, so I felt the need to pick some up for
the freezer. You never know when a spring roll emergency might occur.
The banh chuoi kho things were Ken's choice, because he loves bananas. We don't know exactly what these things are typically used for, but they look like banana tortillas. My little bit of google-sleuthing tells me that they
are heated up and eaten plain, or used maneuver sticky rice to one's
mouth Saigon-style. All I know is that we both tried a bite of one
plain, and they tasted surprisingly assy. I don't know if I'm going to be able to fancy them up enough to get Ken to try them again.
as far as the chestnuts....I don't know what the hell. I think the packaging got me. They might be great though, who knows?

there's taters in them thar biscuits.

Tater tot biscuits? Yes, please!



The recipe for tater tot biscuits came from the delightfully kitschy cookbook Cookin'Southern Vegetarian Style by Ann Jackson. But you can pretty much just
take any biscuit recipe you like and crumble slightly over cooked tater
tots to the batter. This is the first recipe I've made from my newly aquired cookbook, but I'm looking forward to more deep fried ridiculousness. Oh, and I bought it from Herbivore and you should too :)

In non-food news, Miles is a founding member of the Little Jerk Association (LJA). Please, please, please stop biting and attacking me, jerk boy!

So smug:

stir fry city.

Is stir fry one word or two? Stirfry? Stir fry? Eh? Whatever.
Stir fry is the ultimate good fast food. I like them because you can pretty much just toss in whatever vegetables you have on hand and make them taste great. Add a grain or noodle of some sort, and you're good to go.

On Saturday night I made the Spicy Almond Stir Fry from Vive le Vegan. The veggies are very basic, and the sauce is really no mystery with it's almond butter, garlic, crushed red pepper, etc. But there's something magical about that sauce once it's finished, man. I mean, I know what's in it. I made it, for cryin' out loud! But the finished product tasted so rich and complex that it left me wondering if my spicy almond sauce had been switched out with some fancy restaurant sauce or something. Ken loved it, too. We had it over quinoa, which caused Ken to proclaim, "I really like quinoa. I want to have it more often." Well alrighty.



You may be wondering about that pretty heart cake from my last post. I'm afraid it's appearance was the most it had going for it, really. The yellow cake part was nice enough. A bit dense, as many vegan cakes are. The chocolate ganache was also good. I mean, it's melted chocolate with soy milk- how bad could that be? What killed it for me was the raspberry frosting. The cake would have suited my tastebuds much better with a different frosting. One that isn't gelatinous from agar and silken tofu. It's texture just...bothered me. But now I know. But don't worry, there will be more heart shaped baked goods to come.

So back to the stir fry stuff. We had another one tonight, and this time it really was me tossing stuff together. It was seriously awesome, too. Zucchinil, red onions, yellow pepper, cashews, crushed red pepper, toasted sesame oil, tamari, garlic, and agave nectar. Oh, and vegan chicken strips. All of this was sitting atop a mound of couscous. Sweet, spicy, lovely.



I also made a quickie wonton soup with frozen tofu wontons, but it was nothing to write home about. It was kind of a waste of spinach and asparagus, if you ask me. But it was pretty:



But hey, we managed to get in about five servings of veggies in one meal tonight, so that's always nice!

tomato weather.

Well, it's almost tomato weather. But really it's tornado weather. I used to get the two confused when I was a kid, as my parents are both tomato enthusiasts, and my father loved to get all excited about possible inclement weather. I also used to call "elevators", "alligators". Yeah, I was a smart kid.

A tornado ripped through downtown Atl last night, which is some scary crap. There were more tornados touching down here and there today as well, leaving me trying to wrangle up the kitties so we could head to the basement while the sirens whirred outside and hail pounded the house. Jes wrote an interesting take on the downtown damage along with photos, here. She's talking about an area which happens to be within a 1/2 mile radius of our store. Again I say... scary crap.

But it seems to be clearing up now, and the sun is shining. I celebrated by baking a cake. My awesome buddy Holly mailed me out some sympathy cake pans, since she heard that I don't actually own any. They're heart shaped, and super cute in a vintage kind of way. I love them! Thanks, Girl!
I recently bought a copy of Dreena B.'s Vive le Vegan, so I broke that out and baked up her raspberry frosted cake with chocolate cream. Oh Dreena, bless her heart. Even when she tries to make a decadent dessert, it's more healthy than I can ever imagine making a dessert on my own. Her cakes are made with applesauce in place of extra oil, her frostings are laced with silken tofu rather than the usual margarine or shortening, and she refers to melted chocolate mixed with soy milk as "chocolate cream". But her healthier slant is why I go to her books, and that's why I chose this recipe today. Because I need a break from the over-the-top insane fatty sweets. And the cake still looks pretty over-the-top, so it's exciting that way, too.

Here are the hearts cooling (look, Ma! I'm takin' pictures in the daylight!)



One of my cool new Bake King pans:



And the finished pretty:



I topped the raspberry frosting with some quick jam I made from the reserved seeds left over from the frosting recipe. I haven't tried it. I'm going to be a good girl and wait until after dinner. We are going to have a nice healthy, stir fry with almond sauce (also from "vive") to make up for the sugar rush dessert. Whoopie!

Oh, and Lori tagged me earlier in the week for a meme. It's five interesting facts about myself. I can't promise you that they will be interesting, but I can promise you that they are facts, at least.

1. I love horror movies. I'm less interested in the ghost or thriller type stories, and more into the serious gore. I'm also not fond of the torture genre that's so popular these days, with Saw and Hostel. I much prefer zombies, serial killers, and monsters. I enjoy the old skool special effects more than the cgi stuff, too. There was a time that I wanted to go to school for special effects so I could learn to make gory monsters of my own, but decided that I should wait to do something like that if I win the lotto or something.

2. I'm realllllly bad at math. So much so that sometimes I feel like I'm retarded or something. I had a really difficult time in school because of it. And I don't mean any offense in the use of the word "retarded".

3. Speaking of retarded, I've never been very good at being P.C. I love to use a variety of curse words, and I enjoy off color jokes. That being said, I would never make a joke at the expense of someone. I hate to hurt anyone's feelings. But I think that sometimes people are offended a bit too easily.

4. I don't drink, smoke, or take drugs. What do I do? Wouldn't you like to know! ;)

5. I was diagnosed seven or so years ago with the dumbest disease in the world. A diffused version of alopecia areata. This means that my hair falls out due to a glitch in my immune system. It has no other symptoms, and poses no health risk at all. All it does is make me slowly become more bald each day, and occasionally cry randomly at the loss of my femininity. It sucks and I hate it, but I'm glad that it's just this and not something physically harmful. So if you ever see me in person, pretend not to notice. :)


Yes, there you have it. Five interesting things about me. If you want to try this lil' meme, consider yourself tagged.

a dinner, some desserts, and a couple of babies.

Of course we eat way more often than I post here. WAY more. The
problem, I guess, is that a lot of the time our food is too boring or
uninspired to mention. Especially lately because we're just too busy to
think straight most of the time. But eat, we do. I admit that we rely
on packaged foods a bit too much. That's why I get extra excited when I
actually have time to cook a real meal.
So what are your favorite "quick-fix" style meals? Some of our favorite fast fixers are:

-Burritos. Canned pintos heated up and wrapped in a tortilla with chopped tomatoes, onions, tofutti sour cream, and whatever else we have laying around.

-Pasta with tvp crumbles, and traditional marinara. Usually with a side of salad and garlic bread. This is Ken's favorite comfort food.

-Veggie burgers. Made from something quick like gimme lean, nature's burger, or
some frozen patty, served on a bun with a side of sweet potato fries.

-Tomato sandwiches. This is my go-to comfort food. I rely on these for breakfast too often.

-Salads
using packaged mixed greens, topped with various stuff. Apples,
cashews, strawberries, olives, carrots, tomatoes, corn, whatever.

I need more quickie ideas! I'm getting stuck in a rut.

Here's one dinner I managed to spend more than ten minutes on this week. The awesome tempeh wings from Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk that I've posted about 200 times already, along with Chipotle
Corn from the new Robin Robertson cookbook Vegan Fire & Spice. The rolls are Celine's
salsa rolls. I made both of these recipes because we wrote
about them in the latest store newsletter, and I thought they would go
well together. And yes they did. Thechipotle corn was deep and spicy,
which surprised me considering the ease of preparation. And Celine's
salsa rolls were really tangy and good, too. And her recipe only made
four rolls, so we didn't over do it :)



Now
on to dessert. I don't really give waffle cone much thought. I mean,
vegan ones are available, but I don't make a habit of keeping them
around. Well for some reason Kevin
and Laura decided to
buy a waffle cone maker, and the were nice enough to share some vegan
waffle cones they made. Let me tell you that these were even better
than the delicious Coconut
Craze Soy Ice Cream they housed! So sweet....so crunchy.



They're
now threatening to create savory cones with their new waffle cone
contraption. A scallion cone filled with mashed potatoes? Stranger
things have happened.

We went to visit some friends of ours who just had a baby two weeks ago. I wanted to bring them some food, since cooking is probably the last thing on their mind right now. M. told me that their freezer was filled with casserole type dinners, so I went with some simple breakfast muffins. M. and I were roomates back in our 20's, so I'm also aware of her great love for the breakfast pastry. The girl would eat a muffin for dinner! So a batch of blueberry streusel muffins from The Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide was in order. Speaking of the Damn Tasty Guide, rumor has it that Kris has a few copies left.... so look for it posted in our store again real soon. :)

Bright, crumble-topped muffiny goodness:



And a cute, teeny newborn:




Speaking of babies, another friend of mine came by the store for a visit with her baby Jacob. He looks pretty unimpressed with the whole thing:



I've held more babies this week than I have in like, two years!

this has nothing to do with food.

I think I did this movie meme once here a long time ago, but it was fun so Ima gonna do it again. It's Harriet's fault. Play along!


Here are the rules:
1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. GUESSERS: NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions. I mean, you can cheat if you want, but is it really that important?
6. One movie guess per blogger. Give people a chance to guess before you steal all of the awesome!(okay, you can name more than one if you know 'em. Seeing how only four or five people read this blog...)

Movie 1.) "Darling. Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in." "Damn Tasty" Kris got this one! It's The Shining, oh yes.

Movie 2.) "We have so much in common, we both love soup and snow peas, we love the outdoors, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about." Best in Show is a perfect movie. And Harriet guessed this one.

Movie 3.) "You could always subscribe to a site like Perfect Ten. I mean that could be anything, it could be a bowling site."

Movie 4.) "I woke up. The pain and sickness all over me like an animal. Then I realized what it was. The music coming up from the floor was our old friend, Ludwig Van, and the dreaded Ninth Symphony." It is A Clockwork Orange, Harriet. Of course you got this one!

Movie 5.) "[Reacting to an IRS notice threatening a lien on personal property for delinquent funds due] Luckily it's just $81.00. What are they gonna take, ya know, like my "Night of the Living Dead" book?"

Movie 6.) "Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!"

Movie 7.) "I'm a killer. A murdering bastard, you know that. And there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."

Movie 8.) "I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I dunno. They say he's a decent man, so maybe his advisers are confused."

Movie 9.) "Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand things with alloys and compositions and things with... molecular structures."

Movie 10.) "I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

A couple of these are mindlessly easy, and a few I tried to dig deeper into the movie. Ready? Go!

well we did.

Have you placed an order for the latest, greatest vegan cheese yet? I can't wait to try it! These pizzas have me all excited.