kittee's cheeze grits.

Today's breakfast was my favorite recipe from Papa Tofu. Cheeze Grits! I made this batch with Mozzarella Teese and topped them with some french fried onions and a few sun dried tomatoes. Yummm.

breakfasting.

While Ken and I lead fairly hectic lives, the one thing that is nice is our days start a bit later. We don't open the store until noon, so we almost always have time for a nice breakfast before we run off to do chores or meet appointments before work. Sometimes breakfast consists of a bagel with a side of tofu scramble, other times it's cereal and fruit. And every now and then, we cook up a monster breakfast!

Ken has been looking through my cookbook collection recently, because he wants to start cooking more. Cool! So a few mornings ago, I was treated to Fronch Toast from Vegan with a Vengeance. He even used a sourdough baguette for it. Fancy!





We had the Fronch Toast with maple syrup and some yummy wild blueberry sauce from Trader Joe's.

Speaking of bottled sauces from Trader Joe's, we also found some Black Pepper Thai sauce that is perfect for adding some flavor to an otherwise typical stir fry:



This was a quick dinner of stir fry broccoli & cashews with black pepper sauce, some May Wah "chicken" legs also coated in the sauce, brown rice, and boiled edamame. All prepared in about 25 minutes. I like cooking from scratch as much as the next vegan blogger, but eating dinner at 10:30 can be a real hassle sometimes. Quick, easy meals help us on many occasion!

cozy inside and out.

So I finally dipped into my copy of Cozy Inside, and it did not disappoint. I actually made Joni's recipe for a Fluffy Omelet first, but forgot to photograph it. D'oh! It's probably for the best anyway, because I can't flip vegan omelets for crap, so they always tear and look bad. But it tasted oh-so-good. I'm sure we will be making those again real soon.

Last night, I made the tasty and fart-tastic Spicy 3 Bean TVP Chili & Sweet Skillet Cornbread. It really hit the spot on a freezing winter night, and made a huge amount for leftovers. We will be eating this chili for a long, long time.



I loved both parts of this meal, but the cornbread really blew my skirt up! It was moist yet firm, not too sweet (despite the name), and perfect slathered in Earth Balance. Plus, I love anything that requires baking in an iron skillet.




Something else I'm excited about is the upcoming berry season. My friend Jeanette of Vegan Dish made me this gorgeous berry bowl! The fuzzy pictures I took do not do this bowl justice.





Jeanette makes some wonderful things, so do check out both of her stores, Vegan Dish and Vessels & Wares. I am really looking forward to displaying my new berry bowl, along with my recently framed kitchen prints just as soon as I paint our goofy, outdated kitchen.

Behold, the goofy:





As much as I wish we could afford to renovate our kitchen with new cabinets and counter tops, we simply cannot. The best I can do is manage to paint the walls one color, and throw some fresh paint on the cabinets. I'll probably replace the cabinet pulls too, if we can scrape up the money. But want to see the weirdest part of our kitchen? Here's the ceiling:



We can't figure out why the kitchen ceiling has this cut out. Is is functional? A design element? Who knows? I do have a new, nicer ceiling fan waiting to be put up after I paint and get rid of the fug wallpaper border. But I have been trying to figure out the best thing to do to the space where the wallpaper currently lives. Here are my thoughts so far:

-tile
-decoupage vintage postcards and/or recipe cards
-get a slew of old forks and spoons from the thrift store and glue them up there in a pattern of some sort
-paint a solid color

What are your thoughts on my ceiling hole? Huh?

non-edibles.

Sorry, sorry. I have all kinds of excuses for not blogging, so pick any of the following that you like the best:

- the overcast weather every single fucking day is bumming me out
- no time to cook any food fancy enough to take a picture of
- my new year's resolution of cutting back on sugar is bumming me out
- I'm just bummed out

But, hey! I am excited about a cookbook I just purchased. I know it's been out a while, but I finally bought the downloadable copy of Joni Marie's Cozy Inside. It looks really great. Does anyone have some recommendations for their favorite recipes from this?

Also, I want to share with you my christmas present. I had our friend Tony custom create some zombie-themed shoes for me. Aren't they rad?









If you are want some unique, all-vegan kicks, then you can get in touch with Tony via his Etsy shop here. See some of his other designs there, too!