brownies and garage sale mojo.

Ever since summer began this year, the suburbs around here have been swollen with garage sales. I am totally down with OPC (other people's crap). Every weekend these sales beckon me, with my little handful of quarters. That's how I avoid spending too much money, you know. I only bring to a garage sale what I can scrounge up in coins.

This weekend I went to a charity rummage sale for Mostly Mutts, a local animal rescue. It's there I found an adorable cast iron muffin pan that was still sealed in it's original packaging. Not bad for only one buck!
After cleaning and seasoning the pan, I promptly baked a batch of fudge brownies using a recipe from The Vegan Scoop. This recipe came out great! The brownies were perfectly fudgy, not cakey. Here they are in my new little cast iron pan:



And here are the brownies resting on another garage sale find. Have you ever seen such a cute cutting board?



Becky referred to my recent finds as garage sale mojo. I like that.

oh so busy.

Sorry, sorry. I've got a lot going on this month, so I haven't really been putting a much effort into cooking. And I don't expect my time to open up this month either, as I'm putting together a Vegan Bake Sale, then traveling to Portland, OR for the Let Live Conference!

But here's what I've been up to in the kitchen lately:

A couple more tester recipes from the upcoming Vegan Latina. Potato Pancakes with Peanut Sauce



And some arepas stuffed with a tempeh and avocado filling:



Here's a little hand pie I made using a basic biscuit recipe. The filling is some kind of weird but tasty concoction I made using Soy Curls, nutritional yeast sauce, and spinach. I like savory breakfasts, and these were great for a few mornings' worth of meals.



We finally had a chance to try the new Dandies vegan marshmallows. After eating a few straight from the bag, I proceeded to make cereal treats using a vegan HFS version of Cocoa Puffs. Pretty tasty!



Now, this lovely little Pyrex teacup is filled with vegan vanilla ice cream. We bought a copy of The Vegan Scoop, and we are thrilled with the ice cream recipes so far. This soy-based vanilla was smooth, creamy, and pretty much perfect. We also tried the Rocky Road ice cream, and it was crazy good.



That's a homemade ladyfinger sticking out of the ice cream, too. The last chapter of The Vegan Scoop is filled with some amazing sounding baked goods. I'm sorry to say that the recipe for Ladyfingers didn't work out for me at all. In fact, they sucked something awful. I was expecting a light, spongy little cake, but instead got a hard, crusty, dense little cake. Not sure what happened there, but my perfect ladyfinger recipe search continues. But don't take this as a bad review for the book, because it really is an ice cream book and the ice cream recipes really deliver! I'm excited to try more frozen treats from this title very soon.

Alright. I will leave you with a pitiful picture of little Miles. Sleeping is the only time he's being good.

Atlanta Vegan Bake Sale!

This is for the local folks- Please come visit us during the Atlanta Vegan Bake Sale on June 21st! We will be stuffing every maw in L5P with vegan baked goodness. And if you feel like posting some flyers, please feel free! Flyer1 Flyer2 Flyer3