The Metal Femme's Vegan Living!

Geese X-Ing

2008-06-11T09:35:00.002-04:00

So I fibbed a bit. I really haven't been back around, have I?

We're still in the midst of recording our EP and a lot of other crap is going on in my life that is taking up a lot of time and energy. I've decided that I will be taking a little bit longer of a break from blogging. It makes me sad, but I don't want to continue half-a$$ing it. Once recording is finished and I get my life back in order, I will be back on here regularly, sharing and reading about delicious foods and other such projects.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a story with all of you that I knew you could appreciate.

I was on the highway the other day, heading to Andrea's house. It was on 93 North, somewhat close to Lowell.

So I'm cruising at around 70mph when all of a sudden, I see a ton of cars in front of me come to an abrupt halt. I kinda slammed on my brakes... Well, I kept pumping my foot on the brake pedal rather than slam it all the way down because I have this terrible fear that the guy behind me is going to come crashing into my rear.

So I keep getting closer and closer to the car in front of me and it was making me very nervous because my brakes aren't the best. At the last second, I stop just in time, leaving a comfortable space between my car and the other's car's rear bumper.

I'm all panick-stricken and aggravated. I HATE when cars just slow down and stop from 70-0. See, my car just can't do that so easily. I have to slow down a good deal before I can totally stop.

As soon as I get there, the cars start picking up the pace again, continuing on their journey down the highway. I turn my head, thinking I'm going to see a broken down car or a statie or some such when, much to my surprise, I see little feathered friends waddling into the woods.

It was a goose with her baby goslings!

Immediately a grin appeared on my face as I shouted, 'Geese crossing!' (Mike was in the car with me, I'm not that effin' weird.)

It truly did make my day and completely erase the fear and frustration I had from almost crashing into the car in front of me. Cute, little geese were just trying to get across the road.

But the part that REALLY made me happy was that all the people stopped for 'em. This isn't like an elk coming at your window. If you run over a coupla birds they won't be fine, but your car will. So I feel these people were stopping out of the goodness of their hearts.

And that set the mood for my day. :)

To All of You

2008-05-11T11:35:00.003-04:00

Today is tough for me, but I wanted to wish all of you who are mothers a very happy Mother's Day and to all of you who still have your mums, cherish today and every day you have with them. Give them a hug for me. :)

Rest in peace, mum.

Miss Me?

2008-05-09T10:21:00.003-04:00

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Sorry I disappeared for so long. Not only did I move to a new department at work where internet time is virtually impossible, I am also in the midst of recording with the band. Everything's coming along real well, we're very excited. But more on that later.

Thanks to those of you who checked in on me. I am fine and still cooking away!

In fact, we had a coupla birthdays go by, as you may remember me mentioning in my last entry from so long ago. The first one was for guitarist and friend, Matt. See, his all-time favourite poison of choice is Guinness. It's not for me, but different strokes for different folks!

In honor of his love for the liqour, I made a 4-layer chocolate cake with chocolate and buttercream frosting in the shape of a mug of Guinness!

(Sorry for the lopsided picture. I didn't mean to force you guys to turn your heads sideways. I forgot to upload the better pictures and they're at home right now! Perhaps I will do a little post in-between posts to show you some better angles.)

I have to admit, I got the idea from something I saw online, but mine is vegan so it's automatically that much cooler. Of course, as always, Mike helped with the label design, made entirely of marzipan and frosting. I shouldn't even use the word 'helped'. He actually did the whole label on his own.

Speaking of Mike, he turned the big 3-0 this year and little did he know, I had been planning a big surprise party for him. It turned out amazing- all our friends and family were there to celebrate with lots and lots of awesome food and he was plenty surprised! Let me tell you, I had TONS of cooking to do. In fact, I took a whole day off from work and was cooking from 9 in the morning to 11 o'clock at night (with minimal breaks). I am like a machine when it comes to this stuff!

Firstly, I am going to do some picture recycling. For the main meal, I made V-Con's Pumpkin Baked Ziti since it's so fabulous. FOUR pans of it!

Next, seeing as Mike is a HUUUGE peanut butter fan, I made The Joy of Vegan Baking's unbelievably delicious peanut butter cookie recipe, tossing in some white chocolate chips (an idea entirely of my own).

I can't even begin to tell you how sweet and yummy these cookies are. In fact, here's a close up if you need a more visual idea:

Did I mention Mike is also a lover of bananas and all things banana flavoured? I could not think of anything more perfect than Vegan Cupcake's Take Over the World's Elvis version Banana cupcakes with Peanut Butter frosting!

This recipe came from the banana split recipe without the 'split' part. Isa and Terry suggested taking out the chocolate and pineapples and filling it with peanut butter frosting. Unbelievable! These were the real winners at the party.

Even though Mike was turning 30, we still went all out with silly decorations and things (more pictures later) all Super Hero themed! To keep with it, I purchased Spiderman cupcake liners. How cute are these?

We also had hummus and tabouli wraps on whole wheat. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of these because I was running around like a madwoman. But let me assure you, if you haven't had hummus and tabouli wraps by now, you're a very bad vegan. Or person, in general. ;) Something sooooo delicious, yet so simple. And it's not even fattening! Who woulda thunk?

We had lots of organic soda, chips, popcorns, salsas, ice cream, etc... (things we rarely ever buy, in fact, much to the joy of our GI tracts). But the best part, of course, was his birthday cake!

I was having trouble deciding what to do because I usually bake the cakes and make the frosting while Mike decorates them. He's an illustrator and a very talented one, at that! I, myself, well... I suck. I can make food taste good, but I have trouble making it look like art.

So I finally decided on a Spiderman design (still sticking to the theme). Using all natural plant-based dyes, I whipped up a few frostings and set to work on my 18 inch German Chocolate sheet cake- my favourite recipe from Sinfully Vegan. I filled the insides with strawberry buttercream and began my journey into the land of frosting art.

Here is what I came up with:

In the end, I was very proud of my accomplishments. I was excited to show everyone, but was sorely disappointed when I kept getting laughs and 'that's cute!'. I suppose I have to admit, it IS more 'cute' than anything else, but I was hoping for a few 'really cool's'. This is why I leave the cake design to the art department (Mike) on most occassions.

In the end, Mike really, really loved it and thought it was awesome. And I know that's all that REALLy counts.

Oh, and the fact that this cake was DELICIOUS! And it was also HUGE. I had to send tons of people home with slices.

So I've got a lot more catching up to do with picture posting, but I'll end it here for now.

After all this junk, Mike and I have finally commenced our 'Liver Detox Diet'. I had done lots of research and finally scheduled out an eating plan for the next 4 weeks. I'll be doing a full post on it later, but basically it consists of 2 weeks of eating the best you can (lots of fruit, veggies, whole grains, nuts, etc...) with herbal liver support teas as well as FRESH juices, all day long. Lots of peeing will be going on, I tell ya. After the two-week mark, we will go on a strictly fresh juice and herbal tea fast for two days with an all-water fruit diet the third day. This is when the real 'clean-out' begins. Then 2 weeks following the fast, we continue our super, squeaky clean diet. After that, we can go back to eating mostly healthy with a few treats here and there. This is something that should ideally be done twice a year.

I am excited to reap the benefits of this detox! From all my research and the testomials I've heard and read, doing this will give me tons more energy and strength, clear up any acne, make me smell better (not that I smell bad now!!! Well, not TOO bad...) make me feel more rested in the morning, bring my mood way up, put a bounce in my step and just create a bright glow in me all around. I'm also back to exercising, which is always an amazing feeling. This way of living has been a long-time coming. I've still got vocal recording to do, so I'm sure this diet will boost my confidence and help keep up my stamina with long hours in the studio!

Anywho, I will shut the hell up now so I can catch up with all of your blogs. I've missed your guys and your awesome food!

Let's just hope I can get past the tempting desserts...

When Life Gets in the Way

2008-03-14T08:58:00.007-04:00

Am I the only one on earth who realizes that March is the month of birthdays? Every month of the year (besides March), I either know and/or hear of 0-3 people with birthdays. Not March! It's one birthday after another! I have 7 close friends and family born in this month, not to mention a surplus of other people I know of that have birthdays in March. I bet a ton of you have March birthdays, don't you? You can go ahead and admit it! ;)

Well, this brings me to why I haven't been very blog-active the past couple of weeks. I've been very busy planning and preparing for birthdays (lots of cooking, you see) as well as an Easter meal that's coming up. Oh, and not to mention... we set the recording date!!! This means we've been practicing our butts off. We actually decided against going with Sanctum Sound, as fancy as they are, because they were waaaay too expensive. We checked out a couple more places and ended up sealing the deal with New Alliance Studio in Cambridge. The producer is really cool, laid back and most importantly- his main shtick is metal! They also have a mastering studio next door (he's affiliated with New Alliance) that will lower our price for going with NA. So we're pretty pysched. You can expect some updates on that very soon. We'll be recording on April 19 & 20 as well as the 26th and 27th. That'll get a good chunk done. We'll be booking future dates to finish it up very soon.

Lastly, my work company is moving! This means that I'm going into a different department where I won't have access to the internet quite as much. Normally I update and read all of your blogs at work, so it's going to take some time to transfer all that reading and writing to evenings and weekends. But I will! I promise!

In the meantime, I made two V-Con recipes to tide you over!

First: Baked Pumpkin Ziti

Yet another V-Con recipe that's been making the rounds! I knew this was going to come out delicious. And you know what? I actually accidentally used the recipe for tofu ricotti as opposed to the cashew ricotta it called for. Whoops! It was still excellent. It was very reminiscent of my mother's baked macaroni and cheese, so it brought back a lot of nice memories.

The only complaint I have is that the pumpkin flavour was a little weak. I know it was more for a bit of sweetness than pumpkiny-ness, but it failed on both counts. It didn't really matter, though- the bread crumb topping was simple yet delicious! I know I could have eaten them even without the ziti. Definitely a must-make!

Second: Chocolate Chip Waffles (with a dollop of vanilla yogurt)

Three words: OH MY GOD! These were utterly amazing! I would say they were definitely more dessert than breakfast. I'd eat 'em after dinner anytime. The chocolate ooey-gooey goodness was complete heaven. Alas, I cannot take the credit. I was going to make them, but got distracted by my NEW JUICER! (More on that in a moment.) So Mike, impatient as ever, started preparing measurements. Then he ended up mixing the batter. Which, in turn, caused him to actually make the whole recipe. I didn't mind. He did an amazing job. So make these! They are like brownies in waffle form. Mmmm...

Now, for my juicer! I may have to do a whole entry dedicated to this. It is truly wondrous. I have to admit, I was a little scared when I first turned it on. The sound it makes is like a horror movie (maybe it's just my model?), but that didn't stop me from throwing in a TON of spinach. The green liquid looked like something from Dr. Dreadful. Does anyone remember that game? I was scared at first to try it but when I did... well, it wasn't bad! It tasted, um, like spinach. So the next morning I got to making a new juice from my juice and smoothie book.

I forget the name of the drink, but I DO remember what was in it:

Fresh strawberry puree (courtesy of my food processor)
Apple Juice
Carrot Juice (homemade!)

It was very good, even better than the strawberry juice from a week ago! I am so excited to try all the different combinations- fruit and veggie alike! It's unbelievably healthy for you. In fact, I firmly believe that FRESH fruit and veggie juice is the healthiest thing you can put in your body. There are many organic supplements and herbal teas and, of course, whole grains, nuts, seeds, etc... that are vital to a strong, healthy body, but fresh fruit and veggie juice is vital for... well... EVERYTHING! Not only can they prevent degenerative diseases, they can also get rid of cancer cells, viruses and harmful bacterial infections. Among many, many other things. Consider them a vacuum of all harm for your body. Or a destroyer of harm.

Get a juicer and get juicin'!

I promise I will be back with updates on the band recordings, birthday treats I've made as well as the day-to-day yummies. I am going to do my best to get myself up-to-date with your blogs. The office closes at noon today, so I'll do what I can. I really miss reading your posts! But I'll be back. Sometimes life just... gets in the way, ya know? ;)

Oh, and because I know that many of you can probably appreciate this this month: Happy Birthday!!!!!

Just a Wee Post Between Posts

2008-03-03T14:15:00.004-05:00

Since the Rocky Horror gala, I haven't been going crazy cooking. Sometimes, with work and all, I need to take a break. Well, I guess it's mainly due to lack of money and the crazy amount of bucks organic and fresh produce costs. In any case, I still had an itchin' to do some home-cookin' that wasn't too time consuming or pocket-emptying.

Saturday night I made my first-ever pesto sauce. I wasn't too sure I would like it, as I had only had pesto once before. I thought the flavour was too strong at the time. But I have this goal where I have to make everything at least once (within my ethics, of course), so out came the fresh basil and parsely!

It may look like green goup, but this pesto sauce was incredibly delicious! I guess that's what happens when something calls for three cloves of garlic (did I ever mention I LOVE garlic?)! The recipe said it yielded 4-6 servings and at first I just couldn't believe it. The pesto filled up a little bowl and no more, no matter how much I scraped at the processor. Well, let's just say I had no idea how very little pesto sauce needs to be spread on one bowl of pasta! The flavour was pretty intense. I actually woke up the next morning with the taste of garlic overwhelming my mouth. It's not very pleasant aftermath, but it was worth it for an amazing and simple dinner.

As a matter of fact, Mike later told me that he woke up in the middle of the night with such a strong flavour of garlic in his mouth that 'forced' him to go down to the kitchen and have a spoonful of ice cream to get the taste off his tongue!

So, yes. I advise just a little dollop of pesto per bowl unless you are man enough and can take the power of garlic! At the very least, garlic is extremely healthy for you- it wards off germs that may plague the immune system AND it wards off vampires. ;)

For Sunday dinner, I whipped up a batch of 'Mocked Clam Chowdah'. I admit, I've never tasted clam chowder a day in my life. Besides the clam part, it always looked so appetizing to me. It's so creamy and smoothe. So luckily I've found a recipe in one of my veggie cook books that makes a pretty damn-good replacement.

It's a lot chunkier than your average chowder, but that was probably my fault because I couldn't bare to puree anymore of the soup. I love chunky potatoes! It didn't matter, though. It was delicious. It contained onions, potatoes, thyme, salt, pepper, carrots, celery and sauteed tofu with tamari sauce and kelp powder all topped with Frontier vegan Bac'uns (bacon-less bacon bits!)!!

The Bac'uns are awesome, by the way. This whole weekend I've been dumping them on just about everything I ate. Buy them. Now. Seriously.

Lastly, I've really been getting into fresh juice. As a matter of fact, my juicer was supposed to come in the mail on Friday. But the stupid company that sent it decided they want me to be there to sign for it directly and I have to have my i.d. proving that I am an adult. I find that irking, purely based on principle: What if I was under 21? In any case, I haven't been home, so I'm going to end up having to drive half an hour to get it on Saturday. So aggravating!

But! When I do get it, I will be quite a happy camper. :)

In the meantime, I've been using my food processor and pre-packaged juices (organic) to tide me over.

First, I present, Apricot Orange Juice.

This had to have been the most delicious juice I've had in a long while! The Apricot Nectar was purchased in the container, but the oranges were freshly squeezed and it really made a difference. The powerful burst of citrus was amazing. I felt like I was drinking liquid candy. I couldn't get enough!

Next, I made a juice called 'Adam's Rib'. Kinda freaky name. But I dig it.

It contained soy milk, apple juice and ten fresh strawberries. At first I thought it was going to be a lot like strawberry milk, but it ended up tasting like strawberry juice. It wasn't a huge disappointment, though. I felt a little healthier about drinking it.

And what's more important than drinking a good cup of health, eh?

A Very Rocky Horror V-Day!

2008-02-25T11:41:00.007-05:00

Not to let Valentines Day pass me by without some sort of silly celebration, I decided I was going to have a small party in honor of one of my favourite movies, 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'.

I've always been a huge fan of this zaney cult-classic. This raunchy, ridiculous, hilariously crazy, over-the-top rock musical has me written all over it! After years of watching the movie (and going to the play), I finally decided to celebrate it's unique awesomeness through a showing of the film including themed food, drinks and music. I guess the inspiration truly came from the fact that two of my friends (and band members) had not seen the movie before. Ah, what shame! At least now they can no longer say that.

I must warn some of you, do to the nature of Rocky Horror and the more adult side of Valentines Day, you may find some slightly offensive language and content in the paragraphs to follow. If this type of thing doesn't fit your sense of humour and isn't quite your cup of tea, go ahead and skip this post. I'll be back with a new post next week.

Now, onto the themed food!

To celebrate those infamous lips that sing to us in introduction and grace the cover of the dvd, I made lip-shaped sugar cookies! It's difficult to get a real red color with India Tree Die, so the royal icing is more of a magenta color. It's okay, 'cause it still fits (as you'll see later).

These were the first to be gobbled up. I have to admit, it's the most delicious sugar cookie I've ever made (Joy of Vegan Baking!!!).

Now for characters!

First, we shall start with my personal favourite (and probably many others'), Dr. Frank N. Furter, played by one of my heroes, Tim Curry.

Frank is a transvestite that enjoys the pleasures of both men and women as well as wearing glitter, haut couteur, sequins and platform heels (he also has an amazing singing voice!). However, there is more to this effeminate man than meets the eye. He is a mad scientist! Like Frankenstein, he learned how to create life itself using crazy colored chemicals and god knows what else in his laboratory.

In honor of Dr. Frank N. Furter, I whipped up a batch of Pigs in a Blanket. Only I didn't call them that. This vegan version of an old favourite has been renamed:

'Franks-in-a-Blank'!

I used a homemade biscuit recipe, wrapping the dough around tofu pups and throwing them in the oven at 450 for 15 minutes. They were a huge hit! This title is not only named after the mad scientist, but also falls along the lines of sexual innuendo. I mean, they are wieners, afterall.

Then there is, of course, Frank N. Furter's prized creation, Rocky. Rocky is a buff, strong, muscle man, 'born' the day of Janet's and Brad's unexpecting visit to the castle. His perfect bod gets Charles Atlas' 'seal of approval', according to Frank.

In honor of his name, I purchased some Rocky Road Ice Cream!

Only... they really didn't have vegan Rocky Road. So instead, we had chocolate with pecans and carob with almonds. Close enough! The important part is that it had lots of nuts in it, rocky and bumpy just as Rocky's hard-as-steel muscle and rocks in his head!

Next we have Eddie. Eddie was a no-good, rebellious punk who ran away from home. He got mixed up with the 'wrong crowd' and ended up dying (cause unknown). He found his way in Dr. Frank N. Furter's hands and was brought back to life. He was even crazier in the end after emerging from the freezer on his bad-ass motorcycle.

If you haven't seen this movie, you wouldn't know that this character was played by the famous recording artist, Meatloaf. I'm pretty sure you can guess what food we had in honor of him?

You guessed it- Meatloaf.

My cousin, Robyn, whipped this up from a recipe found online. It was so delicious. I remember hating meatloaf growing up, but this is the veggie version, so of course it tasted ten thousand times better. The seasonings lended a much fancier flavour than your average loaf.

Up next is Dr. Everett Von Scott. He is a professor of physics and chemistry who ends up getting caught in Frank N. Furter's laboratory after snooping around, looking for his nephew, Eddie. Frank believes his true plan is to search for extraterrestrial life (he's onto Frank's plan).

If you know anything about this movie, you'll know that plays and theatre productions always bring in the cult fanatics, wearing boas and glitz and ruby red lipstick. They're most known for the audience interaction, in which there is a well-known script for the fans to shout out during certain scenes in movies as well as throwing items at the screen and getting up and dancing during certain numbers. Well, for Dr. Scott, what better item to throw than toilet paper? Toilet paper really has nothing to do with this character other than the fact that a huge brand name is 'Scott Tissues'.

So, Elly Blue fixed up a batch of cinnamon rolls we named 'Dr. Scott Rolls'.

We ate them with a simple sugar glaze, but to keep with the theme of the night, I sprinkled powdered sugar on one of them to somewhat resemble toilet paper.

The next characters I will present are Brad and Janet. They are an innocent, healthy couple that took a wrong turn on the way to Brad's friend and colleague Dr. Scott's house. After blowing a tire, they decided to make their way to a mysterious castle they passed a few miles back. Of course their lives were changed forever after ringing that doorbell.

Janet is a sweet, naïve woman who is a virgin in dire need of some passion.

A few scenes after cheating on her fiancé with the very persuasive Frank N. Furter, an angry song is sung to her by the Doctor himself in which this line is said: 'Your apple pie don't taste too nice!'

So very appropriately, I made 'Janet's Apple Pie'.

I got this recipe from 'The Joy of Vegan Baking'. If you do not have this book, I strongly urge you to purchase it. I haven't heard too much about it on the blogosphere, and it makes me sad. I've made several dishes from her book and I cannot even begin to tell you how delicious each and every recipe is. Everyone- including omni friends and family- just love these recipes. This was my first pie crust. The author walked the reader through it so perfectly that it came out pretty darn good! So go buy it! Now!

The apple pie, much like Janet, is sweet and sexy. But quite contrary to Frank N. Furter's opinion, this apple pie tasted quite nice!

Brad, on the other hand, is a geeky, overly-confident, egotistical man. He's a quite rude to his fiancé at times. He also took part in some cheating. So it's no wonder he was dubbed 'asshole' by the audience. Every time he appears, the whole theatre shouts it out loud, throwing popcorn at the screen.

In honor of his name, Mike made a 'Brad's Asshole Cake'.

I put this under a cut in case you don't have a sense of humour. The cake is definitely a naughty one, but much more comical than dirty.

Mike used two rounded casserole tins for a chocolate cake. Once they were done, he proceeded to shape and frost the bum cheeks. We used India Tree Natural dye for the frosting, putting in a drop of pink and a couple drops of yellow for a realistic-looking skin color.

Next is my second-favourite, Magenta. She is a 'domestic', or maid, who is a quiet watcher. She sees just about everything going on in that castle- nothing gets past her eyes.

To celebrate in honor of the name, very appropriate due to her raspberry red lips and wild red hair, I blended a Magenta Smoothie.

Nothing says 'magenta' like juicy, fresh raspberries!

Onto drinks and the remaining characters! (This is the unhealthy part of the party... so sue me!)

Riff-Raff is Frank N. Furter's lowly servant, brother to Magenta.

He has a very dry sense of humour, very quiet throughout most of the movie. He's pretty bitter, so you'll find him drinking quite a bit and doing just about anything to foil his Master's plans. Spoofing Frankenstein's Igor, Riff-Raff has a hump on the top of his back, adding some creepiness to the atmosphere.

After looking online, I found a drink mix called, 'Dry Hump'. Perfect, for his dry personality, the hump on his back and, of course, the obvious connotation.

This was a very hard mix of liqours. I only had a small, taste, myself. When I do drink, I am more of a fruit mix kinda gal.

The next drink on the list is named after Columbia. Columbia is Frank N. Furter's groupie.

She's been around the castle for a long time, falling for Frank's original experiment, Eddie. She's a very loud, squeaky, fiery girl, who presents quite an impressive tap dance for us in her introductory song (with a funny tumble at the end). Thus, the drink is called 'Tap That Ass'. Another fun combo of symbolism and innuendo.

It's a very fruity drink with blends of tropical plants and organic cranberry juice. Most loved this one the best.

Lastly, I give you a very general drink, simple entitled 'Transvestite'.

The song 'Sweet Transvestite' is my absolute favourite number. It really sets the mood for the entire movie.

The drink is a blend of lemonade, vodka and peach. This was my favourite as it was very light on the liver as well as the taste buds. I stuck to this until the lemonade ran out!

Thanks for sticking around to the end. If you haven't seen 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show', go watch it, now! You might enjoy it even more if you find a play going on in your area. It's a crazy, wild, nonsensical movie that's not afraid to poke fun at sexuality in all humans and that's what makes it so great!

So good day, my unconventional conventionalists! We really must do the Time Warp again real soon!

Dog Music?

2008-02-21T11:54:00.004-05:00

Well, now, this is just odd.

According to this Yahoo! news article, '...a song audible only to dogs has topped New Zealand record charts, and is looking to go global.'

It's recorded at a frequency only canines can hear. It's supposed to be soothing to dogs, but there have been cases reported where the dog starts flipping out and going crazy. Other dogs, it seems to have no effect on whatsoever.

Animal Rights activists are against it because of the violent attacks it causes in some dogs. However, sales are sky rocketing. Everyone wants their dog to hear music, apparently.

What are your thoughts on this?

Personally, it freaks me out and I don't like it. Dogs can hear mid to bass tones just fine. That's how they recognize their owner's voice or jump when they hear a bang or a crash. I've never seen a dog get all excited when music was playing. In fact, high pitches usually hurt their ears and make them crazy. Why on earth would some crazy person think this invention was cool or even necessary in the least?

You want to please your dog? Here's what you do. You feed them daily (preferably organic food), give them fresh water, take them for walks, play with them, scratch behind their ears, rub their bellies and tell them how much you love them. Nothing is more pleasing to a dog's ears than the sound of their human pal's voice.

Nude Valentine Petits

2008-02-13T10:23:00.008-05:00

Ah, Valentines Day. I can't tell you how many bitter people I come across who angrily curse this holiday up and down, declaring it a commercial holiday and nothing to be thought twice about. Then there are those who are all about the day, stocking up on chocolate hearts, writing and sending cards, planning fancy dates and wearing pink and red all day long. I don't know if I should be admitting to this... but I am part of the latter group.

For most of my life, I was 'flying solo'- a choice of my own (I had no time for such things as relationships!). Despite how many love birds I saw giving each other flowers and sweets and more than enough ooey-gooey affections, I just could not be bitter about the day. Granted, it's not an entirely important holiday, but it is an excuse for the creative mind to get to work!

I've always loved Valentines day, ever since I was a youngin'. Picking out, signing and bringing in cards for my classmates was the highlight of the month! Of course I never forgot to attach the little lollipops and Sweet Tarts. Once I returned home, my bag filled to the brim with Valentine wishes and candy galore, it was like Halloween all over again (but without the spooky stuff)!

As I grew older, it was fun to exchange candies and cards with my parents, who even went to the trouble of finding vegan candy upon my dietary and lifestyle changes. I'd always find a teddy bear and a rose waiting for me on my pillow after a long day of school and/or work. Of course, wanting a 'Valentine', my close friend, Janelle, and I would always claim each other (being a bit silly about it, of course) as an excuse to get each other yummy goodies and eat out at a fine restaurant on Newbury Street.

These days I have an actual Valentine. :) But that doesn't stop me from my old traditions- As a matter of fact, my other Valentine this year is my 3-year-old nephew, Kenny. He made me a little colorful paper heart (which I hung on my fridge).

Now, of course, comes the best part of this holiday- treats for everyone!

Last year I had made peanut butter balls to share with family and co-workers. The year before I made this awesome creation:

Now this year, I decided to challenge myself even further.

LoLo's Petit Fours!

In my opinion, there are yummy, sweet, happy desserts that everyone can find in just about any cookbook (cookies, brownies, pies, cupcakes, etc...) Then there are those desserts. You know the ones I'm talking about- the kind they serve in high-end restaurants and bakeries, where the flavour is like something from a dream? Not only does it taste amazing, but it always looks like heaven in a mold of sugar- pretty colors from childhood dreams, fluffy white clouds, creamy bliss and perfection. So perfect, in fact, you'd find a similar-looking treat in glittery porcelain dessert decor! This is where white chocolate, ganache, mousse, marzipan, fondant and food coloring (natural, of course) come in.

For a more visual example, those exact treats I'm talking about can be found in just about every frame of Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. I think all of her desserts were pink and white, actually!

These kinds of recipes are so hard to find, especially for a vegan.

However! I checked up on Vegan Yum Yum and found the cutest, sweetest, dreamiest dessert: Petit Fours!

Petit Fours are little, tiny cakes, covered in fondant and often decorated with buttercream, marzipan and chocolate. Just looking at them, one has to wonder, am I in dreamland?

The cake recipe is incredible! It's so simple- vanilla & lemon cake with a raspberry filling. But somehow, after layering and topping with marzipan, it becomes a magickal delight.

Of course LoLo did a wonderful job on the fondant presentation, but I didn't have as much luck. This was my first time making fondant, so I forgive myself for botching it up. I wanted a pink covering, but ended up somehow not having enough to cover all of the squares.

Oh, and it was the wrong consistency. So it looked like candle wax:

I guess I could always call them Candle Fours...

The taste of the cake inside is still devine, and so is the texture, so that is what's most important. All the taste-testers found it to be delicious and wonderous, so I know I passed on that.

As for the remaining baby cakes, what did I do? Well, I kept them naked! (Very appropriate for Valentine's Day, don't you think?) Thus, re-titling them as 'Naked Petits'.

I do plan on practicing with fondant in the near future so I can get my desserts to look as amazing and fancy as the bakery's. I found this site, which will aid me in that. My cousin is getting married in June and I already have some ideas... White chocolate, anyone? ;)

If anyone wants to purchase an extremely belated gift or if you simply wanna jot this down for next year, Rose City has an awesome traditional Valentine Chocolate Heart Box.

The chocolates are all-vegan, Belgian, some filled with creams, others solid, and they are INSANELY delicious. Heck, you should buy from them even if it isn't Valentine's Day!

Whether you are very much in love, dating, or as single as the day you were born, I hope you had a very, very wonderfully happy Valentines Day. Give a friend a hug. Write a card. Bake some goodies. Make a child smile. All in the name of the quality of life. :)

The Usual Weekend

2008-02-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

I'd like to start this blog by saying we've finally confirmed our studio! We had our consultation at Sanctum Sound and we were sold right away.

It definitely has a very cozy interior with nice ambiance and atmosphere for getting into the groove. It's gonna cost us an arm and a leg, of course, but hopefully our talents and perseverance will pay off in the end.

Now for the fuel:

Saturdays usually consist of fairly long practices, so I try to have some food ready for Mike and myself since we're the only vegheads of the band. This week I made How it All Vegan's 'S&M Salad'. Hence the name, this salad is supposed to be extremely spicey, mixing in 1 tsp of cayenne or red pepper flakes AND 1 tsp of wasabi. WOW! The salad seemed so yummy but I am not a fan of wasabi in the least. To me, it tastes, smells and burns like rubbing alcohol. So, in the end, I left that out. AND, being that I am a wimp when it comes to hot and spicy things, I halved the red pepper flakes, giving it just the right amount of bite without burning your tongue off.

So I guess we could call this 'Not Quite S&M Salad'. In the end, it was really good. It had sautéed tofu, butternut squash, onion, mushrooms, carrots, red pepper, cucumber, faux parmesan (toasted sesame seeds, nooch and salt blended up)with rice vinegar. It also called for 'spicy Japanese sprouts' but I had NO idea what they were talking about. Someone on the PPK suggested Kaiware sprouts, but they were nowhere to be found. Not even at an Asian market! In the end, we subbed Kaiware with alfalfa and it turned out just fine. We had ours over a bed of brown rice. It was so delicious, we finished it in the car on the way back from the studio!

Sunday afternoon was a great day, for I got back into cardio exercise! This time I was smart about it and didn't go head-first into something my body wasn't used to (I have a lot of horror stories due to my impatience). Instead of jogging right away, I did a little power walking with Mikey. We're doing our best to be active, strong, healthy and filled with stamina (it's key for those stage shows). Despite the wretched wind and rain, we had our 30 minute walk and felt better for it!

As an energizing reward, I whipped up another HIAV concotion: Ban-ini Smoothie.

It sounded so good and sweet, containing frozen bananas, soy milk, agave nectar and vanilla extract that I was quite excited about it. Banana smoothies are so similar to vanilla frappes, in my opinion, but a healthier alternative.

The only odd ingredient was the 3 tbsp of Tahini. Mike was especially wary of it. He thought it would ruin the yummy banana/vanilla flavour. Well, not one to turn down a challenge, I threw in the tahini and blended away.

The result? Well, the smoothie was very yummy and sweet with the tahini lending a very peanut-buttery taste. However, there was a downside. The after-taste was a little strange. Not so much so we couldn't finish off the drinks, but I think I'd put less tahini in there next time.

For dinner, I made lentil soup. The ingredients had called for a can of diced tomatoes and of course I ended up accidentally tossing in a can of tom sauce instead. In the end, I decided I wasn't going to waste any of the soup so we ate it with my mistake in there. It actually wasn't so bad. It was very reminiscent of pasta sauce, but that was okay.

Contains: 1 large onion, 2 stalks celery, 2 medium carrots, green lentils, veggie stalk, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce (accidental), tomato paste, 2 small potatoes, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, chopped spinach & fresh parsely.

Since Mike is all lentiled-out (his mother makes lentil soup for him just about every week), I made black bean burgers as well. This isn't the recipe from V-con. This is actually a recipe my mother had used ever since I first became vegan, five years ago, and I've loved it ever since. Chickpea cutlets? Meh, okay. Seitan cutlets? I've had better. But black bean burgers? Delicious!

Black beans offer so much more flavour in burger form, plus they are extremely easy to work with. Mashing them and forming them couldn't be easier.

Of course I remember Tropical Vegan requested the recipe a while ago- I have not forgotten you! I've just been everywhere at once, but I finally got to it. :) It's posted at the end of this entry.

Lastly, for work lunch, I made V-Con's 'Prospect Park Potato Salad'.

I don't care that it's not summer time. Potato salad is amazing! I had to give all the grains a break and go for some root vegetable. Let me tell you- this isn't any typical potato salad. This is simply because of the addition of 1/4 of a cup of dijon mustard! Now, if you know me, you KNOW I am in heaven! Definitely try it out and do bring it to cookouts for your friends and family to try once the warmer weather hits. You won't be disappointed!

Black Bean Burgers:
Serves 2

1 15-ounce can black beans, drained
1/4 cup diced and sautéed onions
2 slices whole wheat or multigrain bread, finely crumbled
1/2 tsp each of garlic powder, black pepper and onion powder (optional)
1/4 tsp salt (optional)
1/2 cup bread crumbs or cracker crumbs
In large bowl, mash the drained black beans. Add the sautéed onions, crumbled bread, and spices. Mix thoroughly. Add about 1/4 cup of cracker crumbs (or just enough to be able to form patties from the mixture). Using your hands, form the mixture into 1/2-inch thick patties. For a breaded burger, gently coat each patty with more cracker or bread crumbs.

In a lightly oiled non-stick pan, fry both sides of the patties. Serve with a garnish of lettuce, tomatoes, avocado or any other veggie and condiment of your choice on buns or over a bed of rice.

... and Now it's Time for Deep Thoughts

2008-02-07T11:22:00.001-05:00

In the beginning, I planned on making this blog not solely about food, but about my art, my music and living as a vegan in general. Well, I've been very bad about doing that. I know that I've been pretty good with the foodie updates, which is mainly what I've been striving for, but there's so much more I want to share with all of you.

My main goal is to record my ideas, recipes, experiences, creations and veg life and to communicate with other awesome veggie bloggers and 'tree-hugging-hippies' as I always love to quote (I mean it in a good way... kinda like 'taking it back'... haha). Well, this means YOU guys. And you're all so awesome and I've learned so much and am definitely looking forward to learning more and meeting new veggie friends.

That being said, my second goal was to really promote my band, Acrasjia, and tell the tales of a metal vocalist (who actually sings- using her real voice- not screams) and my journey with my band and in the music field. I hope to turn some vegans who are not metal-heads onto some metal and at the same time (and more importantly) turn some metal-heads who are not vegan onto some veganism.

So do not fear, this blog will still be chock-full of food pictures and cooking/baking tales. I would never leave ya hanging with that! But I do need to get my butt in gear and start incorporating more art/music posts. I think the winter's brought me down into hybernation, but I'm gonna fight it.

Another reason I may have been slacking on the music post side of things is due to the fact that the band is writing and preparing to record, so there isn't much to detail. Hopefully after our studio consult on Saturday, we'll be getting into some heavy-duty recording. Of course I am going to be posting the mp3s as each one is mastered and completed. :)

Our aim is to record a 5-track EP at Sanctum Sound in Boston. They are a very well-known professional recording studio, working with artists from Fuel, My Chemical Romance, Counting Crows, Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), Gary Cherone, Extreme to Wyclef Jean and little JoJo! So they are the real deal. We're just hoping they are good at recording heavy metal/thrashy bands because that's what we are and that music can be pretty hard to mix unless you know what you're doing. They DID record Mike Mangini, who was in a few speed metal bands, so perhaps we are in luck.

Anyway, I won't bore you with any more details.

For now, I would like to recommend a group to you who are NOT metal. Believe it or not- my style of music ranges from opera to musical to jazz to ska to rock and everything in-between.

Their name is Collide and I've been obsessing over them lately. They are a male and female duo and their sound is very trancey (but not techno), slow, soft electronic rock. What really sold me on them was the vocalist's extremely unique melodies and low, soothing voice.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

I'll be back with foodie pics on Monday. But I do urge you not to be bored by musical banter. You never know, my band just might make it and you'll be able to say, 'I used to swap recipes with the singer!' ;)

Art of Sourdough

2008-02-04T08:46:00.001-05:00

I finally did it! I made sourdough! I was so afraid I wasn't going to be able to do it right, simply because it was all so new and unfamiliar territory. It turns out that in the end it was quite easy.

What are the big and scary steps involved? Why, it is mixing 1 cup of flour with 1 cup of water, covering with a cloth and letting it sit in a warm and dry place for three days. Oh, and don't forget to give it a little mix every 12 hours.

This is the healthiest variety of sourdough, as I used all whole wheat flour in the entire recipe, though any kind of flour can be used for the bread. The starter had a very pleasant 'sour' smell. It reminded me of dressing or vinegar.

When it came time to make the bread dough, I had a little trouble at first. The whole wheat was incredibly sticky. I felt like a little kid, squishing my hands in wet goo. Luckily, with a little additional flour tossed into the mix, it turned out soft, smoothe and pliable.

After sitting over night for 12 hours, re-kneading in the morning and sitting for another 6, the bread was ready for the oven. Before I knew it, the house was smelling like a bakery!

I have to say, while a bread maker is convenient and can make some of the most fantastic, plump, gorgeous breads, I could never bring myself to use one. I know I've said on some of your pages, 'Oh, how I wish I owned one!' Well, I now realize that I really enjoy the full act of making bread by scratch. It's exciting and fun! I think a bread maker is totally worth it if you make bread often and don't have the time, but I think I'll stick to mixing, rolling and kneading, myself. Oh, and the occassional creation of sourdough starter! There's just something about the process that makes me feel more fulfilled and, as cheesy as it may sound (though I know you'll all understand), more in touch with my food and the energy provided for my body, health and well-being.

For your viewing pleasure, le close-up:

Being as bread cannot (or should not) be a complete, balanced meal, I made a hearty winter potato stew as the main course for our weekly Sunday dinner.

This stew is chock-full of potatoes, red peppers, mushrooms and veggie broth and seasoned with red pepper flakes, coriander, cumin, basil, pepper and Braggs soy sauce.

For a creamy texture, I puréed two ladles of veggies with 1 cup of soy milk. Then to complete, garnished with green onions and homemade sourdough croutons and wallah!

Croutons are very easy to make. I thought they'd be more difficult but then, what do I know? I just cubed some sourdough bread, mixed with olive oil, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper and a tsp of thyme and tossed it in the oven on 375 for 15 minutes. They couldn't have been tastier!

...and because I love to go backwards on here, I will re-introduce the smoothie.

I think it was quite a few posts ago that I claimed I'd be back with more smoothie recipes yet somehow managed to forget about 'em. Shame on me! Smoothies- especially of the fruit variety- are so healthy and packed with energy-creating atoms. I plan on making more. I also want to buy a juicer and start growing and juicing some organic fruits. I can't think of a better way to rid one's body of toxic matter and to revitalize and energize!

So, here we are. A Sunday morning smoothie:

1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1 frozen banana
1 1/2 cups organic apple juice
1 tsp spirulina
1 heaping tsp soy lecithin (you can find this in health food stores)
1 tsp powdered psyllium husk for good measure

Blend it all up and drink it down!

What I love about smoothies is that you can mix just about any combination and it'll end up tasting fantastic. I like to have fun with different mixtures and experiments. As a matter of fact, I have a book called Smoothies, Shakes and Frappes by Sally Ann Berk, which is filled to the brim with different mixtures and are all vegan-friendly. I was quite happy to find that the author wrote in her preface that anything containing milk or egg can be subbed with a non-dairy version or egg replacer product. How sweet as that?

And! For those of you who like to party and aren't looking for the health benefits, exactly, but just want a sweet taste and a little fun, many of these drinks go great with a little vodka mixed it. Go ahead, try it. I won't tell anyone. ;)

Whoever said smoothies are a summer time drink is outta their mind!

Speaking of summer, this last dish is quite colorful and vibrant, just like the season: V-con's Quinoa, black bean, mango salad.

I was a little hesitant to throw fruit in my salad, I must admit. I am the type of person that feels fruit should either stay by itself or be mixed with something sweet and fattening. Then I thought of The Tropical Vegan and how she puts mangos in just about anything and it got me quite intrigued. ;)

In the end, I forced myself to put those prior beliefs aside and give this dish a go. As I once said, I am not a fan of microwaves and my work has no toaster oven so I am kind of stuck with bringing in cold dishes. Therefore, I gotta keep lunches interesting. So, in went the mango.

Well, let me tell you, that was the best risk I've taken! The mango really ties the dish together. Mike, who hates all of my quinoa and lentil salads (I say 'hate' in exaggeration to bother him) said it was 'really good' due to the addition of mango.

So, maybe you have something there, Theresa. Mangoes are now on my weekly rotation. And you know where I think they'd be best? Why, right in a smoothie, of course!

The Scent of Seitan

2008-01-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

Well, my friends, I finally cooked with seitan. Actually, I shouldn't say 'finally' because I had done it before. I made some from scratch for a soup a while ago but it was in small chunks and very easy to cook. So I consider last night the actual first moment.

I made V-con's Seitan Cutlets, which, I guess, are supposed to be both for consuming after frying/grilling as well as using in other 'meaty' meals. I did 'em up burger style.

First, let me just say, that vital wheat gluten is impossible to work with! Maybe it's just me, but every time I would knead, press and stretch the dough, it always shrunk right back towards the center. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Isa and Terry do mention that it will be a little stubborn at first but to keep at it. Well, I kept at it for a while (so long, in fact, my hands turned red) and it was nearly impossible! I ended up making two different batches because the first ones looked nugget-sized. In the end, I mashed the two together and had chunky cutlets. You'd think this would be better, but it made them quite difficult to fry in the middle.

I baked them in boiled veggie broth for about an hour then let Mikey handle the rest. He's the master fryer, so while I was cooking up some soup, I let him take care of the rest. With suggestion from the book, he smothered them in flour and tossed them in a pan lined with canola oil.

They came out smelling and tasting pretty good. They were very meaty, but had a pork texture to them. I'm glad they didn't taste like pork because I've always found the meat pretty disgusting. They definitely had their own taste and were very reminiscent of the beefy gluten dish Mike loves to get at Grasshopper, but without the seasonings and sauce.

Next time I hope I can make them thinner so the inside cooks better. If anyone has any tips on how to tame wheat gluten, I'd be glad to hear 'em!

To go along with our dinner, I made a Swamp Soup. The dish is really called 'Spring Garden Soup', but it is filled with every green you can think of, so I'm gonna call it what I like! Seriously, this soup is probably the healthiest soup I've ever had. You boil 8 cups of water and toss in nettles, collards, kale, mustard greens, swiss chard, dandelion greens, a fennel sprig, green onions, carrots and firm tofu.

It looked like miso, but tasted nothing like it despite the fact that I actually did put 1/4 of a cup of miso in there. I have to say, the flavour left something to be desired. Firstly, there was no veggie broth. Just plain water. Secondly, other than a little bit of Braggs sauce, there was no seasoning. Thirdly, the tofu was not cooked. Fourthly, it was filled with green! Now, it wasn't disgusting in the least. It had some flavour and was easy to swallow down. I'm sure my body thanked me for the load of health I sent its way. But it's not something I would make if I was looking for a lot of flavour.

My stepfather teased me that I always have to do everything by the book, and he's right- the first time. I like to make things exactly as a recipe says to, no matter how odd it may sound, to see exactly what the chef is raving about. Once I've made it one time, then I can change it and spice it up the way I see fit. So maybe some day soon I'll make another swamp soup but switch the water for veggie broth and load it with spices.

Lunch time! For work lunch this week, I made a bulgar cannellini salad from V-con.

I love cannellini beans, so this definitely intrigued me right away. After cooking the beans and steaming the bulgar, you mix together the dressing: red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, paprika, salt, pepper and pressed garlic. After marinading the cremini mushrooms, beans and onions in there, you mix in the bulgar and some bite-sized arugula leaves. This can be eaten with a fork, but this week we're gonna eat it on some whole wheat wraps.

Before I take my leave, I've just gotta mention this. One of my pet peeves is having hands that smell like onions for a week straight. Well, today my hands do not smell like onions. They smell like seitan. Seitan smells good and yummy, but when it's on my hands, it drives me crazy. I scrubbed and scrubbed and even put pumpkin-scented lotion on, but it still sneaks up on me. How could flour smell so darn strong? It drives me nuts! Mikey's hands smell like seitan too. He got mad at me when I told him. Tee hee...

Guess we'll have to pull out the lemon juice!

Per Your Request

2008-01-22T13:22:00.001-05:00

Some of you were asking about the butternut spinach lasagna and Kate graciously sent over the link to the recipe. She posted all the info on my cousin's and her foodie blog, which you can find here.

As for the recipe, check out this website.

If the macro shot on my previous post looks like just what you want, do read her blog because she made a few small changes to the original recipe and it came out delish!

Yummy Dinnertime

2008-01-21T09:38:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday my cousin, Reenie, decided to have a little family get-together at her place to exchange very late Christmas prezzies and break bread. Of course us four vegans (me, Mike, Robyn and Kate) had to fend for ourselves, though Reenie did offer to make us something. Not wanting to put the burden on her (and of course because we love to cook), Kate and I took the liberty of bringing our own dishes to share. Unfortunately by the time we got there everyone else had already eaten. Eh, no matter. More yummies for us!

To start, Kate made a delicious butternut squash and spinach lasagna. It was very different from the usual tomato sauce and tofutti cream cheese ensamble I often make, but it was unbelievably creamy. The tofu cream sauce was so smoothe and yummy. I'm gonna have to snag the recipe.

I'll have to get some pictures of the whole yummy thing from Kate, but for now- Here is the money shot, right here:

Since Kate was making the entrée, I decided to make an appetizer (at the request of my cousin). I let Mike thumb through all my recipe books until he found something that looked interesting. Of course the winning cook book was Veganomicon. Mikey chose Acorn Squash and Black Bean Empañadas. It was under 'appetizers', and it makes 12, so I figured it'd be small enough as a side dish. Lo and behold- these babies could make a meal on their own. They are so thick and filling! They kinda remind me of calzones without the cheese.

This recipe had a lot of working with dough and dough measurements. I've made many meals with dough, but I always gotta cringe because it takes so much time and focus and even though I've succeeded many times (such as with my pizzas), I can't help but feel a tiny bit of trepidation stepping into these things. Dough can be finicky. So can my fingers.

But! In the end it really worked out. Terry's and Isa's instructions make pastry preparation so easy. A lot of cook book authors talk to the reader as if they're seasoned pros, but not these two ladies! They make you feel confident in what you're doing, with simple steps designed for the beginner and advanced chefs alike.

The dough was perfect! It held together beautifully and puffed out to just the right amount of billowy goodness. With the addition of cornmeal, the flavour had a resemblance to ritz crackers with a hint of butter (thanks to the veggie shortening).

The inside was filled with roasted acorn squash, nummy black beans, sauteéd onions, jalepeños, crushed coriander seeds, garlic, cumin, salt, fresh lime juice and maple syrup.

The smell of roasting acorn squash wafting throughout the house is amazing, I must say. I've only ever sauteéd and simmered squash before, so this was a new and pleasant experience for me. :)

Now, I had flip-flopped on the idea of making dessert for the get-together since I was trying my hardest to be healthy and Mike is trying to refrain from eating sugary foods until his work-out regime is under way. In the end, we flipped a coin and decided I was going to make brownies. V-con's Fudgey Wudgey Blueberry Brownies sounded quite intriguing, so I went ahead with them.

The point of this recipe was to taste an amazing fudge flavour mixed with a tart, blueberry flavour. However, all I tasted was chocolate. The chocolate was great. A brownie is a brownie, right? But I was so looking forward to that hint of blueberry throughout!

Before I go and blame the recipe, I believe it just may have been a fault of my own. 1. I didn't use as many blueberries as was suggested. 2. The blueberry spreadable fruit I used doesn't even taste like blueberry on it's own. I just kinda believed that the flavour would cook itself into existence once I placed it in the oven.

Well, I was wrong.

Regardless, the brownies did their job in satisfying my sweet tooth. I had been craving brownies for nearly two weeks and I finally got it out of my system (for now).

Sunday night dinner, however, wasn't nearly as tasty or sweet as Saturday's. Trying to be good, I went with How it All Vegan's 'Winter Sicky Soup'.

This soup called for collard greens, butternut squash, carrots, garlic, lemon slices, curry, cayenne, ginger, fresh rosemary, miso, green onions and burdock and dandelion roots. These last two I had never heard of as being edible. Heck, I had never even heard of a burdock, period. Luckily, Mike was able to find the burdock roots at Whole Foods, but they were fresh out of the dandelion variety. Not to be disheartened, I told Mike to go ahead and pick up some dandelion greens. I know they are two very different things, but it had 'dandelion' in the name and it was edible, so that was good enough. In the end it didn't really matter because I couldn't tell the difference between them and the collards.

The soup definitely had a 'healthy' flavour, but then that's probably why it's a good soup to eat when you're sick. Chock-full of healthy roots and greens and topped with spicey, nasal-clearing cayenne, this soup'll most likely have you feeling better in no time. For us non-ill people, it was tasty enough to dip in bread and leave us feeling satiated.

I'm not sure I would rush to make this again. The burdock root tasted a little like... well... dirt. But next time I or a loved one has the sniffles, I think I'll be pulling out the ol' burdock.

Lastly, for lunch this week, I made V-Con's Lentil Salad. As you know, I've made tons of lentil salads from other cook books, but this one has got to be the best. Instead of simmering in water, these babies are soaking in veggie broth, whole garlic cloves, bay leaves, thyme sprigs and dried tarragon.

I have to admit, I had a little trouble picking out the leaves, cloves and sprigs when it came time to strain the beans, as the steam was fogging up my glasses. :-/

After straining, I mixed in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tons of dijon, lemon juice, minced garlic, chopped tomatoes, grated carrots, grated radishes and a pinch of black pepper.

The result?

Why, quite possibly the best darn lentil salad I ever did taste!

I'm having fun with this V-con. I already have so many plans (but without ignoring my other fabulous cook books). Next week? Seitan burgers!

Chickpea Cutlets- the Final Thoughts

2008-01-14T16:01:00.000-05:00

After having flubbed the original V-con chickpea cutlet recipe, I fired up my engines and tried, tried again. Luckily I had quite a bit of cooked chickpeas left over in my fridge that were, thankfully, still fresh and ready to be ingested.

For those of you new to the situation, last week I attempted to make these much-talked-about cutlets and ended up zesting a wee bit too much lemon in the recipe. This week, I followed the directions very closely. Actually, I followed them exactly. The result? Well, the over-whelming lemon flavour was gone, but sadly, the cutlet did not excite me.

I had added some bread crumbs to the outside and fried them up, which made it more interesting, but I just can't understand everyone's obsession with the recipe. I mean, they were very good, don't get me wrong, but there was no real flavour to them. There was nothing that stood out or especially pleased my taste buds in any way. They were good enough to swallow down after smothering in mustard and whatever other condiments please your taste buds, but they kinda tasted like a whole lotta nothin' otherwise. AND they were still really chewy from the wheat gluten.

But, alas, they satisfied my hungry belly.

Still having cooked chickpeas left over, Mike decided to try his hand at them. We put our heads together and made a much better cutlet. First, at my suggestion, he added a tsp of dijon mustard to the mix. Then, after having mashed and kneaded it long enough, Mike decided that the gluten was too gluteny and tossed in a bit more veggie broth. That really did the trick. No more nasty strings of gluten! Finally, he squished them out as thin as can be and generously layered whole wheat bread crumbs on either side. Once they were ready to fry, he put a nice helping of olive oil in the frying pan (not a recommended step for the weight-conscious) and did 'em up. When they were nice and brown and crispy, he padded each side of the cutlet with a paper towel, soaking up as much excess oil as possible (so we don't have heart attacks or, at the very least, have to roll out of the bed in the morning).

The result? Delicious! The right amount of crispyness and even that 'barbeque' flavour really hit the spot. Even the texture was just right. There was no chewy gluten consistency anymore!

Again, there was no real distinct flavour, which is disappointing because I LOVE chickpeas in most forms, but it was ten times better than before.

Here they are breaded and ready to go. (Mike is the master bread-crumber, I think.)

I would have gotten an 'after' picture, but I was just too hungry smelling these beauts to bother!

Conclusion? Personally, I wouldn't go out of my way to make this very often. They are tasty enough to hit the spot, but they just don't have a special or unique flavour to them. Even Isa and Terry suggest smothering them in mustard sauce. They must just be a form of substance rather than a decadent dish on their own.

In my opinion, black bean burgers and lentil burgers are far, far tastier. The beans give off enough flavour that one doesn't need anything beyond pepper and a little garlic powder. I'll have to make them again real soon and I would be more than happy to share recipes with any who might like to give them a try.

Mike loves 'em, though. I was craving brownies all night and he was craving another chickpea cutlet. That's just because he loves all things fried, I think. ;)

Now, of course I wasn't going to let this entry go by without a stew review! To go along with our cutlet dinner, I simmered up a vegetable medley stew.

Chock-full of potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, garlic, onions, green peppers and diced tomatoes, this stew was hearty and filling. I just mixed in balsamic vinegar, turmeric, cumin and chili powder. The chili powder brought the stew to a whole new level. What could have been a plain root veggie stew turned into a mouth watering delight. Mike said- and I quote- 'It's the best stew you've made so far'.

Lastly, being as obsessed with pasta salad as I am, I made yet another concotion for work lunch this week. It's the typical pasta salad with flax oil, red wine vinegar, oregano and garlic powder. The only difference is the minced vegan pepperoni I threw in. I'm sure I could find a homemade recipe, but I decided to be lazy and buy the pre-packaged pepperoni. It tasted much better than I thought it would and after whipping it around in my food processor and sprinkling it throughout, the salad became very reminiscent of the dish my mother used to make when I was a kid.

My mother didn't cook a lot of extravagant dishes. She was the 'buy it frozen or boxed and do the rest' kind of lady. But when she did cook, it was delicious. My favourite dish of hers was her pasta salad. She would use ziti, tomatoes, sharp cheese, peppers, onions and Italian dressing. But! There was always one ingredient that I am ashamed to say was my favourite: kielbasa. Looking back, it grosses me out to think I loved that stuff as much as I did, but since becoming vegetarian at the age of 12, I never got to experience that flavour again. My mother continued to make a vegetarian version for me, but it was always missing the meat!

Now, having come across a simple suggestion to throw vegan pepperoni in the batch, I can taste those smokey, spicey flavours without sacrificing my ethics or the life of an animal. I'd like to discover a homemade version because the pre-packaged ones are always low in nutrition and high in sodium. But for now, this is a great way to satisfy those cravings lost in time.

That's it for now! But before I go, I promised a few of you my recipe for hot cocoa. Sorry it took so long! I'm still working on perfecting it, but it's delicious enough for me to have the guts to post it. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts!

This recipe makes 2 cups, so divide or double accordingly.

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 cups milk (I use vanilla soy milk)
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp vanilla powder (optional)

Simmer water, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla extract and salt in a pan over moderate heat, stirring until lumps are dissolved. Add milk to ingredients. Stir and bring slowly to a simmer. Ready to serve once fully blended and warm. For enhanced flavour (highly recommended), stir 1 tsp vanilla powder in each cup and enjoy!

Finally, Veganomicon

2008-01-09T09:34:00.001-05:00

So, after hearing all about how wonderful it is and reading reviews and experiments in all of your blogs, I finally started making recipes from the highly acclaimed Veganomicon. I had tried the yuca tortillas (which are really quesadillas) that Kate and Robyn made for my party and they were quite delicious, but I hadn't tried making anything myself.

The book had actually been sitting there for about a month before I finally picked it up. And what did I decided to make?

Yep, you guessed it. The famous chickpea cutlets! I really wanted to go against the grain and not make them for a long, long time since they seem to be the talk of the town going from blog to blog to blog. But how could I choose to be rebellious when I just might be missing the tastiest meal to come out of a vegan cook book?

So I made them, just like the book said, with one small exception. I kinda got lemon zest happy and peeled a wee bit too much. You see, I was using the zester my sister had gotten me for my birthday for the first time and I was like a little kid. I couldn't stop. So I think I may have doubled the required amount.

After frying up these babies, the house smelled so good, I was salivating down to my feet. I just couldn't wait to take a bite!

Then it happened. I sunk my teeth into it and I tasted... lemon.

Lemon really isn't bad and tastes quite fine in some things, but this wasn't one of them. The burger was still edible and tasted mighty fine with dijon mustard or vegetarian Worcestershire sauce so we ate them all over a period of a couple of days. Regardless, I've decided to remake them properly this coming weekend and give all of you my real review next week.

The only other complaint I do have, though, is that the wheat gluten made them a little too chewy. Not a great re-heat.

Next I made macaroni salad. I've made tons of these because I LOVE macaroni salad and it's very easy to bring to work. This is the first mac salad recipe that required very little ingredients for the dressing (there wasn't even dijon in it!) and let me just say- it was my absolute favourite mac salad I've tried thus far.

Oh, it may look plain and simple, but it will definitely tickle your taste buds with absolute delight and glee. Who cares if it's not summer time! I urge you- if you have Veganomicon (and we all know you do) make the Brooklyn Deli Macaroni Salad, pg 91. You won't regret it. Just make sure you let it chill over night because it tastes much better once it's been marinading for so long. Oh, and do be sure to use Vegenaise, the mayonnaise of champions. No other mayo brand will do.

So far, that's been all from the book, but I do plan on making much more from it. Right now I've been experimenting with La Dolce Vegan which, in my opinion, is a hit or miss book. Luckily, most of the recipes are excellent, even in their simplicity.

I made lentil quinoa stew to go with the cutlets and it was beyond delicious. I wasn't sure it would be. The beans were soaking up just about all of the broth, so I had to add more after it was finished cooking.

I know the picture looks like mush, but believe me when when I say the taste was utterly wonderful. I simmered together onions, celery, carrots, garlic, red lentils, quinoa, basil, oregano, salt, pepper and threw half in the blender for a few seconds. After returning it to the pot, I threw in cilantro, tomatoes and apple cider vinegar. The tomatoes and oregano are what really made the soup come together. They were bursting with flavour and complimented the lentils and quinoa so well.

For work lunch last week, I made up a batch of 'Sloppy Janes' and tossed it in a whole wheat wrap. While I, personally, don't mind eating it cold, most would probably prefer it warm, right off the stove. I mean, who doesn't remember Sloppy Joes, eh?

I just sautéed some white onions with green pepper and crumbled firm tofu. Add in tomato sauce, chili powder (the more, the merrier), salt, pepper, dijon, maple syrup, brown rice and Worcestershire sauce. Make sure this last ingredient has no anchovis. I like to use Annie's Vegetarian brand, which is actually vegan too. :)

As for the mushroom issue, thank you so much to everyone for their input and information. Elly Blue gave me a lot of useful info that I'll probably be posting about sometime in the near future. The short of it is, don't be scared of mushrooms! They're fungis. Get it? Fun guys? Okay.

...and a Happy New Year!

2008-01-03T09:11:00.000-05:00

It's finally over! All this holiday hubbub. I love the holidays because celebration is fun, eating desserts is fun and most importantly, spending times with family and friends is fun. However, it left very little time for my band to focus on recording (which we're supposed to be doing) and it exhausted me completely! Now I can finally relax and jump back into Acrasjia, full on.

I really don't like to take breaks from my band, actually. And it wasn't a real break. We still practiced and we've been working on a new song. But it's been sloooow. I knew we'd all be stressed to the max if we tried to juggle family gatherings, weddings and birthdays (which all seemed to fall right around Christmas) with recording.

So it is over, but band life has started a-new!

Now, to recap my New Years celebration:

I opted for a small gathering because I just couldn't deal with the pain of planning a huge menu, spending lots of money and inviting people that probably already had other plans. So I kept it to close friends, a couple of which couldn't make it, of course. But it didn't stop me from having a good time.

We ate yummy snacks, a hearty dinner, a sweet dessert while all the while Kate and Mike mixed up some drinky drinks. I don't know if I should say fortunately or UNfortunately when I say I didn't even get drunk. I had plans to because I rarely ever drink and I thought this would be a great yearly opportunity, but I was too darn tired! But the food and the company made everything worth while.

Again, I made my pizza recipe from Vegan Italiano and it came out divine. Of course, I didn't think to squeeze the tomatoes until my cousin told me to after the fact, so the middle was a little soggy again in some parts, but I AM making progress because most of the pizza was sturdy and able to be held just fine without dribbling onto the dish.

I really like to lay the goods on thick! I basted the dough with olive oil, spread on some organic, salt-free tom sauce, threw on some fresh tomatoes, zucchini, asparagus, onions, white mushrooms, vegan mozzarella (great stuff) fresh basil, oregano, pepper and a dash of salt.

The mozzarella didn't completely melt as the package promised it would at 500, so I am going to broil it next time. I figure if that doesn't work, nothing will.

Everyone thought the crust was the best part (I agree, it did bake very well). My cousin said it was the best pizza she's ever had. I think that's a little crazy to say, but she wouldn't lie about such things. She is very honest (she dissed a pie crust of mine once before) so I know she meant it. Then again, she was pretty tipsy at the time! It was very good, though, and I look forward to trying new toppings. All suggestions are welcome!

For dessert, cupcakes! And I finally got to use my much anticipated cupcake tower.

I can't think of any item on earth less ridiculous, but I LOVE it! I think it works for weddings, formal parties and birthdays if you don't want to make a cake. Other than that, it's pretty much unnecessary. But you know what? I don't care! I love it!

It really makes your cupcakes look more professional, even tastier, as it is quite the regal display. If you happen to have some extra cash burning a hole in your pocket, I recommend getting one of these and throwing a party just so you can use it.

I made the yummy chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World again, this time adding 1/2 tsp of peppermint extract. For some reason, New Years makes me think of mint. Maybe the confetti looks glitzy, which in turn looks sparkley, which in turn makes me think of mint. I don't know. But I made some butter cream frosting from the book as well and using my tips, piped a bunch out on top. I discovered that homemade frosting is very smoothe and needs to put in the fridge before throwing it in a pastry bag. Otherwise (like part of Kate and Robyn's wedding cake) the shapes will not be shapes at all, but liquidy blobs. So throwing the frosting in the fridge for ten minutes hardens it just enough to get the shapes from your tips.

To finish it off, I used some India Tree blue sugar crystals for sprinkling. The color blue also reminds me of New Years. I'm not sure where that association comes from.

I was so pleased to find that these bottles are a lot cheaper and come in much bigger containers than their dye. 4 bucks for a decent sized bottle. Not bad!

Everyone crashed at my house and I was very happy about that because Kate and Robyn brought breakfast! They made jelly donut muffins- which I've been meaning to try forever- using a scrumptious blueberry filling.

Look at it oozing! :)

I saved the best for last:

Octopus coffee cake!

No, there's no squid in it, silly! But it IS shaped like an octopus. How awesome is that!? I love these girls. They never cease to please and amuse.

I took it at different angles because I couldn't believe how awesome it looked. I've got to get me a cake pan like this!

(Look at the eyes!)

The taste was just as awesome as the visual. It was a brown-sugary coffee cake. Not usually liking coffee cake, I actually enjoyed this one immensely. It had walnuts in it (as you can see in the eyes) and walnuts happen to be my favourite nut. A cup of chocolate soy milk went splendidly with it.

So I know I promised a couple of you that I would post my hot cocoa recipe, but I foolishly left the recipe at home. I remember most of it, but I don't want to screw things up. So I'll write myself a note to get it online for ya, next entry.

Now, I have a question for all of you. To your best knowledge, do raw mushrooms spread toxins in your stomach and eat away your stomach acid? I wouldn't think so because I never get stomach aches when I eat them, but a certain someone told me this and I'm having a hard time believing it. Or wanting to believe it, really. :-/

Anyway, I hope all of you had a very Happy New Year and may you be blessed with success, prosperity, good health and most importantly- happiness!

A Wedding, A Birthday and A Merry Christmas

2007-12-26T10:22:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Between Friday and midnight, last night, I have been going non-stop. Naturally, I made a schedule that could have helped me out a LOT, but after three cake disasters in a row, my schedule was thrown outta whack. I haven't eaten right, slept right or even given myself five minutes to breathe this entire time. But, it is for the love of family, friends, holidays and, of course, food.

Let's start with Friday. My cousin and her then girlfriend (now wife) got married on Saturday. To honor them appropriately, I made them a little wedding cake. They didn't request this of me, nor did they expect it, but since it was a very small ceremony with only a dinner to follow, I knew they wouldn't have a cake. Every wedding needs a cake, c'mon!

So my plan was to make them a cake on Friday and frost/decorate it Saturday morning. Not to mention, I was also going to commence baking for Kevin (close friend and Acrasjia drummer) 4 different kinds of cookies for his birthday on Sunday. I got out of work early on Friday, so I had almost all day to do this. If all had gone well, I may not be so exhausted today.

Silly me decided I would make the wedding couple a white velvet cake with a strawberry filling and cream cheese frosting. Now, I've veganized many a cookie recipe before, but veganizing a cake is pure tomfoolery unless you are a master vegan chef who knows everything there is to know about baking.

First of all, I ordered white chocolate extract from Nature's Flavors and upon opening it, I realized it smelled just like hazelnut. I was so disappointed and upset. Never order from there. They're a bunch of liars.

Anyway, the batter came out pretty gross and sticky, but I tried to bake it anyway. Of course the middle was purely liquidy and the surrounding edges tasted like burnt butter. So I threw it away and tried again, after having realized I used baking POWDER when I really needed to use baking SODA (I do this all the damn time). Guess what? The second cake came out the same exact way. So after crying and stomping my feet, I threw out the recipe and searched through all my cook books for vanilla cake. Can you believe NONE of them had one except for 'La Dolce Vegan'? So I opened up the book and tried to make a simple vanilla cake. Once again, the batter was weird and sticky. So I threw it and cried some more. Then I tried it AGAIN. This time it cooked all right, but the cake was too thin. Doubling it would make it look like a small pancake, let's put it that way.

Poor Mike, who was there to help, had to pull me out of my funk. I was in tears. I was never going to bake again, you see. I sucked and I was no good and I might as well just quit it while I was ahead. I have to laugh, looking back on five days ago. I was using my new heavy duty mixer. At first I thought the mixer was no good then I decided that the mixer was fine and I was no good. Then I thought, 'It's my stove. It's gotta be my stove.' God, it was a mess- about 6 hours of wasting time, energy and ingredients.

Finally, after picking myself up, I realized that I was simply going to have to go with chocolate cake. I've made plenty of those from Sinfully Vegan and they were good every time. See, that lady knows what she's doing. I made 2 double chocolate cakes and stacked them. The batter was 'normal' and delicious and they came out beautifully.

In the end, I realized the problem was not my awesome mixer, nor was it my lack of talent or skill, nor was it my oven. It was the recipes.

Learn from this, you new chefs out there. Learn from this. Don't get sketchy ingredients off the web and don't trust everything you read in a cook book.

So now it was about 11 o'clock at night. I was exhausted. I wanted to curl up in a ball and slip into unconsciousness. But I still had Kevin's cookies! He didn't expect this of me, either, but I really wanted to make them as a perfect birthday prezzie.

I started with peanut butter cookies from 'The Joy of Vegan Baking' and added some white chocolate chips. As they were baking, the oven started smoking and the house smelled like burning plastic. We realized that the peanut oil was causing the wax paper in the oven to melt. Luckily, cookies continue baking after taking them out of the oven, so they turned out just fine without any burnt smell or flavor to them. It was scary when the oven was smoking, but at this point I was too delirious to freak out or get upset.

The next day I woke up bright and early 'cause I had a LOT of baking to do. Mike helped me out so much. He is a good little prep cook. Without him, I may have never gotten anything done, what with my cake catastrophe. All morning I was baking Kevin's cookies as well as trying out a new recipe for his birthday cake. It was not a vegan one, of course, so I had problems. Once again, the batter came out thick and sticky (due to insufficient egg replacement, I'm guessing). I had gotten a new checkered cake baking set and I wanted to use it so I foolishly decided to veganize it. A three cake batter ended up being a two cake batter somehow and the checkered shape ended up being a sort of bullseye marble thing. However, the batter tasted really good and it smelled very good, so I decided to keep it.

That morning I also decorated the wedding cake (using fake flowers because I am not yet talented enough to make frosting flowers). First, I tried to use a cream cheese frosting, but it was too liquidy, so I put it in the center of the cake with strawberry jam. Well, wasn't I a fool because the glaze kept flowing down the side of the cake. After much scraping of the sides, the middle of the cake had barely anything left on it. Oh, well.

For the outside, I ended up using butter cream frosting from The Joy of Vegan Baking and tinted it a pretty pink with India Tree dye. I finally used my new tips, but the frosting was a little too soft for the shapes to come out right. I had to keep putting it in the fridge, but the hardness would only last so long. Oh, well. It still came out very pretty, luckily. I even got paper doilies and a cake box from Michaels to make it more professional/bakery-looking.

After that, I proceeded to make the rest of Kevin's cookies with Mikey preparing measurments for me along the way. I made chocolate chip cookies from the Joy of Vegan Baking, which came out good as always. I made choco choco chip cookies from Vegan Cookies. They were good warm but got a little too hard upon cooling. They were still tasty, of course, so I used them. Lastly, I made vanilla spritz cookies from Sinfully Vegan. Mike cut out a 'K' for 'Kevin' because that was the only letter conveniently missing from my cookie cutter alphabet. Lois Dieterly (Sinfully Vegan) made the so-simple-I-never-would-have-thought-of-it suggestion of dipping them in melted chocolate. I did just that and you wouldn't believe how wonderfully it transforms the taste of a boring sugar cookie into something wonderful.

After all this baking, I had very little time to get ready. Mike and I rushed around like crazy. We left with just enough time to make it to the ceremony, but wouldn't you know that there was insane traffic all throughout Boston to the South Shore and then again at every mall exit along the high way. Last minute Christmas shoppers, you see. So a 40 minute drive turned into an hour and a half. My cousin tried to put off the ceremony for as long as she could, but eventually they could wait no longer. Mike and I would have made the end of it, but we stupidly ended up walking the wrong way down the street and couldn't find the place. AS SOON AS we found it, everyone was exiting the building. Isn't it nice how life works out like that sometimes? Sorry for the sarcasm. I'm just so cranky.

Robyn was ok with us being late because we were still there to celebrate at the big dinner and they plan on having a much bigger ceremony and reception when they renew their vows (I plan on leaving 5 hours early to be there on time). And they were so happy with the cake, so it was well worth it. But I do hate Boston traffic. In fact, I hate Boston. I think I should move to Vermont where there are only moose and no cars.

Anyway, Sunday morning was a little less stressful. Mike and I decorated Kevin's cake. It was supposed to be a drum, but I guess we failed at that because Kevin had no idea it was supposed to be that. Again, the frosting was too liquidy to stay on properly.

Mike was going to do the whole 'melt chocolate and carve it into a shape' thing like he did with my birthday cake, but he forgot his exacto blade and the chocolate ended up breaking apart when he tried to use a steak knife. So, short on time, Mike decorated the top with an Acrasjia-esque design (turning Kevin's name into the logo) and it came out superbly. Again, I used India Tree dye and it came out a pretty blue.

The cake ended up being a very weird cookie/brownie consistency and I wasn't too happy with it. Robyn (my cousin), Kate (her wife), Mike, Matt (other guitarist) and most importantly, Kevin, all seemed to really enjoy it, so at least there was that. I am sticking to cakes I know work next time. No more experimenting last minute. It's so embarrassing when I claim I can bake and cook and then I feed a disaster to people just because I didn't have enough ingredients or time to make something better. Then again, the wedding cake was won over by everyone (including Matt who decided to tell me that it was much better than poor Kevin's birthday cake).

That night, I foolishly went out ot eat when I should have been getting started on Christmas baking. Robyn and Kate wanted to go out to TJ Scallywaggles, a vegan 'fast' food joint. I could have said 'no', but Robyn's been asking me forever and ever and I don't see them too often, so I went. I had a really nice time, but I ended up getting back at my house at 10. I was too exhausted to cook a damn thing so I ended up crashing.

What did that mean? Christmas Eve was filled with the stress of cleaning and baking like crazy. I was more awake, so I was having a little more fun than usual, but I was still going slightly crazy. I made a lasagna, which is pictured here and lots of desserts, including left over cookies from Kevin's batch.

My holiday turned out great, minus the stress, because my family was there and it was so good to be together, what with the death of my mother being so recent. I think part of the reason I stressed myself out over the holidays was not only to make things festive and to show my love to people in the form of home cooking, but also to keep my mind as busy as possible so I didn't have time to sit down and cry and be miserable. It worked. I was more focused than ever.

So, for now, I give you all the pictures of baked and cooked goods with captions attached. Enjoy, and thanks for reading my harrowing baking experience!

Saturday, December 22nd, Wedding Day

This is the double chocolate wedding cake, complete with (paper) decorative flowers and pink decorations.

From different angles for your viewing pleasure:

And my cousin, feeding her lovely bride a wonderful slice. I was so excited about the lighting in this picture, despite the dark restaurant. My aunt, who was across from me, had snapped a picture with the flash on at the perfect time. It's amazing what light can do.

Sunday, December 23rd, Kevin's B-day!

Kevin's chocolate-covered sugar cookies cooling off:

K is for Kookie (that is covered in ooey-gooey chocolatey goodness):

The left-overs from Kevin's birthday batches. You can see some peanut butter cookies peeking out! (Excuse the poor lighting; I was trying to snap a picture before everyone ate them all.):

The cookies at the top of the tin. This was layered with three different types of cookies. (Again, very poor lighting due to rushage. Yes. Rushage.)

Mike's awesome, very last minute, decorating skills, done up Acrasjia style:

It could be a snare drum, I guess. It really could be.

Kevin blowing out the candles after we surprised him at practice. :)

Monday, December 24, Christmas Eve

We mostly ate chips, fruit, cookies, the brownies my sister-in-law brought and lasagna. No picture of the lasagna, but you can see the same recipe in the link I posted earlier. Instead, I give you a fruit platter (already picked at by the fam), complete with homemade fruit dip: Toffuti cream cheese, Toffuti sour cream, 3 Tbsp sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract. My 3-year-old nephew LOVED this stuff. :) There was also a veggie platter, but I'll save you from having to look at a bunch of raw vegetables. I think it's safe to say that we all know what they look like.

Tuesday, December 25, Christmas Day

It is tradition to have Christmas brunch every year. This year, I tried my hand at homemade english muffins, courtesy of Isa's recipe she posted on the PPK quite some time ago. They were still a little doughy upon cutting, but after frying them a bit longer and popping them in the toaster, they were amazing. Pictured are the muffins topped with Cascadian Farms Blueberry Jam. Mmm...

For the full breakfast, I made up some tofu scramble with freshly cut tomatoes, onions, turmeric, garlic, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, sage and some dijon. You knew that was coming! Mike helped me by frying up some vegan sausage and bacon. I typically try to do everything by scratch, but sometimes you have to cheat. Like with Tofutti, food for the vegan gods. ;)

And, of course, my special hot cocoa recipe. It was always good until I discovered vanilla powder, that is. Now it's excellent! I might post the cocoa recipe for any of you looking for one. Personally, it took me forever to come up with a decent one and I'm in love with this.

Dark chocolate truffles are only meant for people who are in love with dark chocolate. They are EXTREMELY rich. I used a bittersweet baking bar, you see. The recipe told me to roll them in cocoa but I rolled them in baking cocoa like a nit-wit, so the outside is beyond bitter. Luckily, my step dad loves 'em and Kate said she wanted some dark chocolate, so they won't go completely to waste.

No Christmas, or winter for that matter, is complete without Snowball Cookies! My nana used to make them for me every year until I finally started baking. I generally use her recipe, but I thought I'd go crazy this year and use the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking, labled as 'Mexican Wedding Cookies'. If you haven't picked up that book by now, you really need to. Everything I've made in it has won over many. Seriously, do it!

Here is a recipe I snagged from Just the Food. Peanut butter fudge! I never even knew such a thing existed, but I was so pleased to try them. They are very crumbly and wonderfully sweet. Surprisingly, they're very easy to make too!

While on the topic of fudge, did I mention that, yes, The Joy of Vegan Baking has THE BEST fudge recipe I've ever tasted in my entire life? Not only is it easy to make, it's tastier than any fudge you've ever had. I guarantee it. Everyone LOVED it. Seriously. Go buy the book.

Close-up of the beauty:

Lastly for desserts, I present The Joy of Vegan Baking's caramel popcorn. I was just gonna wing it until I saw a recipe in the book. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but everyone ended up loving it, even my picky grandpa. It was reminiscent of Cracker Jacks, but better.

For Christmas dinner, my step father made a pot roast for the family. Obviously I didn't want anything to do with that atrocity, so I made marinated, roasted and fried tofu with steamed veggies. Let me tell you- it was delicious. The right blend of spices really does wonders. I'll name a few that were used off the top of my head: majoram, dill, basil, garlic, sage, pepper, etc... I liked to dip mine in dijon, but they were flavourful enough alone, believe me!

And now this last photo brings me to today. Last night, as you can imagine, I was beyond exhausted, so I needed to make something that was quick and easy for the next three work lunches this week. So what did I make? Whole wheat pasta salad! The dressing contains maple syrup, rice vinegar, balsalmic vinegar, flax oil, fresh basil and red wine vinegar, topped with vegan parmesan. Not a feast, but a nice change to an over-load of sugar!

I want to say thanks to Mikey for aaaall the help and for putting up with my drama. You're my moo. And I'm so happy everyone enjoyed their goodies. They were made with lots of love. :)

Stay tuned for more fun desserts and meals. New Years is coming up in a few days, after all.

Pizza- It's in the Blood

2007-12-17T14:01:00.000-05:00

For all of your Bostonians, civilians of Massachusetts and surrounding areas- all of you know that this past Thursday was about as fun as shoving a pencil in your ear. For those of you who are lucky enough not to know what I'm talking about, I'll explain. We were hit with a pretty massive snowstorm. The flakes came down hard, about 2 inches an hour, all day long, well into the evening. Normally, I'd say whatever and deal with it, but both Mikey and my step father had me quite worried. You see, everyone scurried out of work at the exact same time, causing all roads and highways to back up with bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end. My step father, who normally has an hour ride back to Boston, was in traffic for six hours. And poor Mikey! Mikey, who also has an hour drive from Framingham, was stuck in traffic for 8 hours!

I got the easy end of it. I live ten minutes away (by vehicle) from my job, so I only had to wait an hour at the bus stop whilst being pelted by snow. There was no real traffic on the road back to my neighborhood (at the time), so I really lucked out.

Those poor fellas. Quite frankly, I felt bad for everyone on the road that day, particularly those with children and even the children themselves, stuck in school and on school buses for hours on end! Oh, and here's the kicker- my town (crappy South Boston) likes to use streets that people live on to empty out for snow emergencies. Not just the main roads, but the tightly packed neighborhoods. If you lived in my town, you would know that there is virtually no parking at all in South Boston because Ben Affleck made everyone and their grandmother want to live here. If you want a parking spot close to home, you'd better get back before 7 pm on any given night.

So, therefore, Mike and my step dad each had to park at a garage about 20 minutes away from the house and walk through the blinding blizzard to make it home safe and sound.

Feeling awfully sorry that there was nothing I could do to help, I tried to make the coming home part ten times better. I spent my day cleaning up the house and cooking, of course. I turned on the Christmas lights in the living room, popped on the radio and proceeded the baking as I chatted with Mike on the phone to keep him company.

I had a real hankering for cupcakes, but with very little ingredients in the house, I wasn't sure what I could make. Taking out my brand new Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, I decided on simple chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

Those chicks really know what they're talking about. I've made chocolate cupcakes many times, but they've never come out this good! The batter was very dark and moist. The frosting tasted incredibly rich and creamy. It's amazing what one can come up with using house hold ingredients. A tsp of vanilla extract and a 1/2 tsp of almond extract was suggested, so I gave it a go. I thought it would taste all almondy, but it was quite the contrary! The perfect blends of extracts allowed the almond flavour to sneak in there just a bit so that if you didn't know I put it in there, you might not be able to guess what it was at first. It really added that special something.

Oh, and I got to use my brand new mixer, which made it even more fun!

For dinner, I was going to go with the ol' pasta crap, but then decided to be wild and make a pizza. The first pizza I ever made was a horrible recipe I found online and it makes me nauseous when I think about it. So I like to pretend that this was the first pizza I've ever made.

I actually combined two different pizza recipes from Vegan Italiano, by Donna Klein.

I decided to use a fast-rising dough because I was impatient and starving and I knew Mikey would be as well whenever he got in from the storm. After kneading it and letting it rise, I tried rolling it out with a rolling pin, but it kept shrinking back towards the middle. I then decided to give something a try that I never thought I could do. I flipped the dough, right up in the air!

The first couple of times it fell back on the table in one big plop, but eventually I figured out that you have to flip it at an angle in order for it to work. So I proceeded to do that and it stretched the dough out quite beautifully.

I am very, very proud of myself. When you're a new cook, every little accomplishment is exciting.

There was no sauce on this pizza. Instead, I basted the dough in about 2 tbsps of olive oil. I tossed some sliced tomatoes, drained and diced tomatoes, red, green and yellow peppers, onions, basil, oregano and garlic powder on top of it and slid it in the oven on the bottom shelf at 500 degrees for about 18 minutes.

It sent gorgeous aromas wafting through the house! Of course it was just as wonderful going down the hatch as it was pleasing to look at and sniff. ;) My favourite part was the crust. I think I did a fine job:

So while I give myself a pat on the back, I do have to be honest about one thing. The center of the dough base was too thin. I got a little carried away flipping the dough around, I think... Under the weight of the juice from the tomatoes and all the roasted veggies, the middle became soggy. It tasted just fine, of course, but it was more of an 'eat with a fork' type pizza. Haha Oh, well. I've learned my lesson and hopefully next time it will be thicker and more substantial in the middle. At the very least, cooked dough, when moistened, takes on the look and consistency of melted cheese.

Next time I plan on using sauce and a little Vegan mozzarella for a more 'pizza-ry' kind of pizza.

Alas, the storm ended and it was back to normal activities. I ate a lot of junk over the weekend, so to make up for it, I cooked up a mushroom barely stew.

'Stew' is definitely the right word for it as it is a very thick and substantial meal. I just simmered green onions, peppers, chickpeas, pearled barely, carrots and small mushrooms (about 20) in 4 cups of veggie broth along with some Braggs sauce, a dash of tobasco and salt and pepper to taste.

I accidentally singed the chickpeas slightly when cooking them separately (I always simmer dry beans outta the bag; I hate canned foods), but luckily they tasted as good as ever after having been simmered in the soup.

For work lunch this week, I finally tried the famous Quinoa everyone's been talking about. For the longest time, I was pronouncing it "Kwin-oh'-ah" (c'mon, you know you all did it at one point)*, but thanks to Veganomicon, I now know the correct pronunciation! Keen'-wah!

After cooking up a batch, I mixed in corn, black beans, peppers, green onions, cilantro, celery, tomatoes and avocados. For the dressing, it was simply olive oil, balsalmic vinegar, flax oil, salt, pepper and chilli powder. Mmmm... Quinoa has a very harvesty, earthy taste, but I dig it. I think after all that junk I had consumed the past few days, the whole grain will do me good in cleaning out my system.

So, that's all for now, folks. I probably won't be updating again until after Christmas, but I do want to make a quick note to wish everyone a happy celebration this month. See, the whole 'pc' thing irritates me, because I don't get it. Personally, I would NEVER be insulted if someone said 'Happy Hanukkah' to me, even though I don't celebrate it. I would say it right back and mean it. People get offended too often and too easily these days. Whatever you celebrate, as long as it is in good cheer and means being giving, thankful and spending time with loved ones, then I am happy for you and I wish you the best.

So instead of the boring and annoying 'Happy Holidays' (whatever that means), I give to you the following:

'Happy ChristmaHanuKwanzaakah and a fabulous New Year!'

*I also pronounced 'agave' as "ah'-gayve" until this Saturday when friend and fellow Acrasjia web mistress, Elly Blue, made some tea with Agave nectar and happened to say the word appropriately.

More of the Daily Foods

2007-12-12T10:31:00.000-05:00

This month is going to be a busy cooking month, particularly the end of the month. Of course you'll all get to experience, virtually, the dinner, desserts and snacks that will be had by family and friends of mine, but for now I will continue with the weekly soups and work lunches.

Most recently, I made a matzo ball soup.

Being that matzo is purely wheat and water and I only added 2 tbsps of potato startch, I truly thought this soup would be a little on the plain side. Well, I was pleasantly surprised! The matzo took on the flavour of the broth, simmered with green onions, carrots and peas. It was both hearty and delicious! Oh, and not to mention- nutritious.

Next up we have more lunchables. First, I made a coconut curried noodle dish.

All it requires is cooking up some rice noodles, simmering shallots, garlic, sesame oil, curry powder (the original called for paste, but I preferred the powder), tamari, turmeric, salt, and coconut milk. After it's mixed altogether, you throw in some some diced tomatoes and fresh basil.

For a different noodle dish, I made rice noodles with spicy nut dressing.

For the salad, I chopped red and yellow peppers, added some freshly chopped cilantro (and let me tell you- it was the first time using my food processor and I was beyond amazed at how wonderful it is at chopping such food items!) and toasted peanuts. The dressing included peanut butter, veggie stock, rice vinegar, tamari, toasted sesame oil, a bit of sugar, cayenne pepper and a freshly grated ginger root.

I prefer the nut dish over the curry dish, personally. I think the sweeter flavour does me right.

Next up is a macaroni bean salad. This is one of my faves and I plan on making a big bowl of it for future cookouts.

After boiling up some elbow rice pasta, I mixed together some Veganaise (is there any other kind?), fresh minced parsely, red wine vinegar, sugar, basil, celery seed, paprika, salt, pepper and garlic powder. I combined this with grated carrot, green bell pepper, red onion, and tons and tons of kidney beans. The recipe called for relish, but I'm not much of a fan.

Psst... Add some dijon. You won't regret it.

Lastly, I give you the typical black bean and corn salad, but with an excellent dressing.

Lime juice, flax oil, red onion, cilantro, green onions, cumin, chopped tomato, salt and black pepper made this a very tasty work lunch indeed. However, I think throwing it in some whole wheat wraps makes it even better. So that's exactly what I did.

Now for a review: Hemp Milk vs Soy Milk

I tried chocolate hemp milk for the first time last week and I have to say, I didn't like it too much at first. It's definitely an acquired taste. Mike described it best: It's like a protein shake. It's grainy, it tastes a little like chalk. But you know what? After a few sips, I started to like it. It is very reminiscent of Ovaltine and I used to drink that stuff by the gallons when I was a kid.

However, nothing can win my heart over like soy milk. Certainly not rice milk. Bleck! I love rice, but not when it's all liquidy and gooey. No, no. My heart belongs to the almighty soy, master of several different milky flavours, including vanilla, chocolate, chai, mocha, coffee, spice, nog, pumpkin, chocolate mint, etc... Not only is it delicious and a very good substitute for recipes requiring milk, it is also a pleasant treat in a glass, void of all grain and chalk.

Of course I am aware that plain soy milk gives off a tofu-y flavour when consumed by itself, but why drink it plain when you could always have chocolate? :)

Last One in the Chain of Thanksgiving Posts

2007-12-03T11:47:00.001-05:00

First of all- thank you all so much for the birthday wishes and nice comments! :-D

Now that I have relished in how kick-ass my birthday was this year, I can move onto my Thanksgiving summary, as promised.

First of all, I hopped on the band wagon! It was time to 'give back' on Thanksgiving. Mike chipped in to help me adopt a pretty turkey from Farm Sanctuary. Her name is Cicada and she is living her life peacefully and happily.

If you haven't already, you should also consider donating money/adopting a farm animal. It helps support the growth of the farm and continuing rescue and care of tortured factory animals.

Cicada says, 'Cruely is buggin'. Go veg.' ;)

Onto the food! I will warn you now- this isn't going to be a gigantic post with an awesome feast.

Simply because...

I am a VERY slow cook.

I was only able to prepare a tofu roast and a pumpkin pie Thanksgiving eve, so you can imagine how little time I had to cook on the actual day of Thanksgiving. Luckily, I didn't have to wake up at 6 in the morning to start.

My mother passed away this past April, so this was our first holiday without her. Normally, most of the family would have Thanksgiving dinner at her house and the rest would come over for dessert, drinks and a pleasant evening of family 'togetherness'. This year, everyone went to my brother's mother-in-law's for Thanksgiving. I was invited, but truth be told, the only way I'd sit in front of a depressing turkey carcass is if my mother made it. No, it doesn't make it all right that a turkey was tortured, murdered, injected with chemicals and fed to the masses. However, my mother loved spending time with her family and so I stuck around and ate the veggie side dishes and the premade tofurky.

This year, of course, was very different. So while most of my family was down in Dorchester, I was making a tiny, little feast for myself, Mike (after returning from lunch/dinner at his parents), my step father and my sister who is, by nature, a grazer and rarely gets full.

Now, I can give you a quick run-through of what I made, but there are no close-ups other than my yummy dessert and the cranberries cookin' because I thought it looked pretty. This is because not only did I burn the tofu roast to a crisp, I was also so stressed out and the weight of my mother's death was stronger than ever. I kinda just didn't want any pictures. I wanted to go to sleep. But I'm not going to make this a sad post and bring you all down. The truth is, most of the food came out really great (as tiny as my dinner was) and once my family arrived for dessert, I was feeling really good.

As a matter of fact, it was the perfect time to give thanks that I still have a wonderful, supportive family, including some extremely adorable nephews. My mother would have wanted us to be happy and to cherish our time together. If there is, in fact, an after life of any sort, I know she is watching us with pride and love.

So! This is what I made with love:

Mashed yam potatoes with kale- This was a savoury dish. I'm so used to the boring mashed potatoes with salt and soy butter, so this was quite a pleasant change. I added lots of spices, garlic and dijon (the secret ingredient to all salad and potato dishes as far as I'm concerned) and it was wonderful.

Next, I made fancy biscuits- I've made these before, so I'll do some picture recycling.

These biscuits are made with green onions and dill. Of course I like the plain white biscuits, but these make my taste buds dance with glee. My sister was a huge fan of these. In fact, most of my family had one, despite their full tummies. They were gone pretty quickly.

As a quick and easy 'oh my god, I have to get this done and there's practically nothing here to eat', I steamed organic carrots, string beans, corns and peas and threw them altogether. They made a very colorful dish.

I also made a miso gravy that topped the potatoes and biscuits beautifully.

I made a homemade cranberry sauce, much better than any globby mess you'll get out of a can! (Though it did drip on the floor, much to my step father's chagrin.) Here it is, simmering in sweet, organic maple syrup:

And, of course, the tofu roast.

I spent lots of time, carefully preparing this damn roast, I'll tell ya. I made an utterly delicious stuffing, packed with spices, garlic, wheat bread, sauces, golden raisins and walnuts, I drained two packs of firm tofu of all possible liquid, spreading it out on a colander, laying on the stuffing and covering it as best I could with the remaining tofu, proceeding to let it sit in the fridge over-night to drain. The following morning I whipped up a delicious marinade, spread some on the roast and tossed it in the oven.

All of these steps! Each one taken with love and care!

Wait... what did Suzie forget to do... for an hour and a half? She forgot to cover the dish with tin foil. That's right!

Cripsy tofu. Mmmm.

No.

You can imagine my upset. Luckily I wasn't preparing a huge meal for a ton of people, else I would have been freaking out.

Not to go roast-less, I decided to spread some cranberries around the pathetic-looking tofu and put it out on the table. Some people tried it, despite my repeated disclaimer, then politely put it aside, saying, 'It's not THAT bad.'

::sigh:: Ah, well. In any event, the rest of the dishes were received favourably.

Now, for my 'gigantic' lay-out in all it's glory!

(You can imagine how silly I feel after having read all your posts and looked at all your amazing feast pictures!)

I have to ask, how did you all do it? Perhaps I'm a slow cook. Perhaps it's because I had no help whatsoever. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because I had no food processor and spent a good deal of time scraping down the sides of a rickety old blender, causing the spoon to hit the spinning blade, which in turn caused a gigantic blob of un-blended tofu to fly high up in the air, barely grazing the ceiling, falling flat onto my gorgeous pumpkin pie, cooling off on top of the stove.

In any event, I have a nice, new, amazing food processor, so perhaps next year will be different.

Being a new cook, I will be slow, I will be foolish and I accept that. It makes for a good story. Besides, the pie was salvagable!

Behold, the pumpkin cheesecake pie from Sinfully Vegan!

I can give myself a big round of applause, too, because this is the very first crust of mine that came out beautifully. :)

Ah, you win some, you lose some.

I'm not a huge fan of over-consumption and I'm obviously not big on the whole sickening dead turkey thing. I think the history behind Thanksgiving is bloody and awful too. But like most of you, I take this opportunity (and day off from work) to break bread with my family, make food with love (even if I burn things sometimes) and be thankful for all that I have.

Now I will show you a dish I was planning to make until I realized that the brussel sprouts were never purchased.

Dijon Brussel Sprouts:

I went to the supermarket that weekend and picked some up. I had planned on making them, the shallots were already chopped, so I figured, 'Might as well make some as a side dish to go with the left over lasagna from my party!'

Believe it or not, this was my first time eating a brussel sprout, at least that I can remember. The dijon, red wine vinegar, garlic and mustard seed mix really give it a kick (I think they are too bitter without some kind of sauce), but next time I think I'll double the sauce recipe. Brussel sprouts, to me, taste like little cabbages, but a little more 'earthy'. But not to worry! I have many recipe plans for these little suckers. ;)

And finally, I give you some simple party snack ideas that you probably already thought of before I even knew what 'nooch' was.

Nothing says 'party' like a bowl of popcorn or chips. The following are, thus far, some of my favourite snackables:

Stove popped popcorn and salt-free tortilla chips, covered in melted Earth Balance butter, salt, pepper, garlic powder, celery seed and tobasco sauce:

It really wasn't too spicey, though you could add more hot sauce if it suits you fine.

Next, a yummy tortilla cheese dip. This recipe I found in 'La Dolce Vegan' and it's one of the few fake cheeses I really enjoy. You melt a block of fake cheese (I use Vegan Gourmet's cheddar) with butter, flour (for thickness), Braggs (or soy) sauce, nooch, dijon mustard, salt and pepper.

It also goes great on macaroni. =)

Lastly, for now, I give you the popcorn and organic pretzel stick combo, topped with soy butter, pepper and barbeque sauce mixture.

For some reason, these make me think of football games, or Friday night poker. I never really engage in either activity, but I'd love to throw a party just so I could serve these goodies.

A Turkey's Birthday

2007-11-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

My birthday falls on Thanksgiving every 11 years. This year, thankfully, was not one of them. I turned a whopping 23 yesterday, November 26th! My friend, who is only half a year younger than me, teases me that I have one foot in the grave.

Well, being that Thanksgiving and my birthday fall so close together, I decided to update on my birthday first because it was so much fun. Then in a few days, I'll do a short update on my Thanksgiving dishes and thoughts.

My sister threw a party at her new apartment on Saturday. It wasn't anything huge and crazy, but it wasn't small and sad, either. My bandmates were there, my family was there, my close friends were there. It was perfect. We popped in some Billy Idol, played with the kids, shot the shat and most importantly- chowed down!

First off, my poor sister was making a pasta salad meal when she broke a dish and the glass shards mixed in with the food. I felt pretty bad, but she seemed cool about having to throw the whole thing away. And speaking of breaking things, I baked some cookies (they came out huge and flat) but no pictures were taken because Mike tripped on the sidewalk on the way in. What does one have to do with another, you might ask? Well, my sister made the party Star Wars-themed because I love the saga. I decided to add to the decor with my Vader cookie jar. You can imagine the rest, but I'll type it anyway because I love teasing him about it. As we're walking up the stairs, I hear a smash behind me. Sure enough, Mike tripped and broke the jar on concrete. So much for the cookies. And I can laugh (I still am) because he didn't actually fall or hurt himself. He just owes me another Vader cookie jar.

I got a lot of good prezzies, mostly cooking prezzies. People love when you get a new hobby. It's so easy to pick things out. I got a wonderous food processor (FINALLY), a heavy-duty mixer, new cutting boards with rubber bottoms, a sharp knife that actually cuts food (don't get me started on my old ones), a new sifter, more measuring spoons and cups (I can NEVER get enough of those), pastry items, a zester, a soup strainer, etc... etc... I was like a kid in a candy store!

Anyway, time for foodie pics. My cousin, Bokoluna and her partner and my friend, Elly Blue, made a terrific lay-out.

Rice balls, capped with mushrooms:

Sushi... ::drool::

Dips and spreads for our pleasure:

And a beautious lay out it was:

But wait! There's more!

Quesadillas with yuca:

Yummy, buttery bread with a most delicious pesto sauce:

...and a garden salad topped with Annies tahini and tomato dressing.

All of these foods were especially delicious because they were cooked with love. :)

Not to be out-done (but I was anyway), I helped Mike make my favourite lasagna dish. This consists of whole wheat noodles (so you don't feel so guilty about it), organic tomato sauce, sauteed garlic, parsely, steamed carrots, toffuti (I like to cheat sometimes), herbed firm tofu, nutritional yeast and spinach leaves, all topped with garlic and garden pasta sauce.

Later, Michael and I sprinkled some Vegan Gourmet mozzarella 'cheese' on top of the left overs. In my opinion, that is the BEST fake cheese they have on the market thus far.

Okay, here is the part you've all been waiting for.

The cake!

You know how I've been going on and on about there not being enough white chocolate in my life? Mike fixed that right up! I sent him a recipe for white chocolate cake that I need to veganize. I don't have a printer at work, so he does the printing for me. Little did I know, he stole the recipe and decided to make it for my birthday. ;)

The cake had a chocolate candy-coated layer with an utterly delicious white chocolate inside, filled with strawberry jam. Now here's the BEST part. All week, he kept going on about his great decorating idea and how excited he was to do it. I couldn't imagine what it was. At our Thanksgiving dinner, I had to go in the other room while he transferred the cake into the fridge and all I could hear were 'Ooohs' and 'Aahhs' from the kitchen. You can imagine my impatience.

Finally, the day of my party came. My brother helped to fool me even more by asking his son if he saw the 'Darth Vader' cake when I was in the other room. He even played the imperial battle march while they were bringing the cake out. Right up until the last minute, I thought it was Vader. I was so, so, so wrong.

It was ME!

This came from a Photoshopped (by Mike, of course) headshot of me at one of our Acrasjia shows. Here is the original:

Mike never ceases to amaze me! He is a wonderous artist by nature. With my cooking skills and his artistic talent, we could open up our own cake shop! I'd just have to learn how the heck to work with fondant for those picky brides.

I asked Mike to explain how he decorated in 3d (in case any of you would like to give it a go) and here is his summary:

-First I melted some white chocolate chips in a double
boiler
-Then I lined a flat, round pan with wax paper and
poured the white chocolate into the pan
-I then let it cool overnight (though it doesn't take
that long)
-Next I mixed the ingredients and baked the two halves
of the cake.
-Then I let them cool and spread Polaner All-Fruit
strawberry jelly on top of the bottom layer.
-Next I laid wax paper over the image of Suzie and
traced over it with the point of a fork. Not enough to
cut the paper, but enough to leave an impression of
the image.
-I then laid the wax paper over the hardened white
chocolate sheet and cut out the design with a fresh,
clean, exacto blade
-I melted some dark chocolate chips in a double boiler
and then poured it over the two layers of the cake
after I had stacked them
-I let the chocolate cool a little then I took the
pieces of the face in white chocolate and placed them
in the still soft dark chocolate
-For the hair I cut thin slivers out of the leftover
white chocolate and placed them in the dark surface

If I were to do it over again I wouldn't have made the
chocolate layers so thick. it was hard to cut through
when carving the cake. I also didn't let it warm up
long enough when taking it out of the fridge. Part of
that was worrying about an impatient and snooping
birthday girl. -;>D

Well, after the party, my friends and I hopped over to a bar in Quincy and had the dance floor all to ourselves. Who could ask for anything more?

All-in-all, I had a kick-ass birthday. I got lots of nice cards and gifts and more importantly, my friends and family were there to make me feel loved. Oh, and great food was had by all! =)

Baby Cakes

2007-11-19T09:58:00.000-05:00

Autumn is a season of birthdays in my family, including my very own next weekend! Two weeks ago, my nephew, Dylan, had his first birthday. My sister, not wanting to introduce him to processed sweets and junk, asked me to make a cake for him. She wanted, specifically, a cake that looked like Elmo (that was the theme, you see). That's easy enough. But here's the rub- Dylan is allergic to soy. Whenever his mum would eat it and then proceed to breast feed him, his face would break out in red rashes. So I was asked to make a birthday cake without soy product. Eeek! How can you ask a vegan to do such things? Every time I thought of ingredients I could use, I kept coming back to 'Oh, but that has soy in it TOO!'

Not to fear! I then remembered an 'allergy bible' a friend from a previous job passed along to me. This is a collection of typed up recipes that are wheat free, gluten free, egg free, dairy free and yes, soy free. She had used it when her kids were little because they were pretty much allergic to everything.

I fingered through it and found a simple recipe for chocolate cake. Sugar, flour, cocoa, veggie shortening, vanilla extract, white vinegar, salt and baking powder. Let me tell you, it was an extemely yummy chocolate cake and incredibly quick and easy to make.

Now, the frosting! I couldn't use a glaze because my sister wanted it to look like Elmo. That meant thick, colored frosting. After searching online for a non-soy butter based icing, I came up with one idea. Veggie shortening- 100% palm oil. I wasn't sure how it would taste in place of butter. I was a little wary.

So I tried it and guess what? It tastes almost exactly the same! I will admit, it's not as creamy as butter, but it has a very thick and smooth texture that worked just fine.

Now, for the dye. I am against using any chemicals in my food. Luckily, Wholefoods has a brand of food dye in stock that uses plant-based ingredients for color called India Tree. It's a whopping $20! Perhaps that's my most extravagant spend, not the coconut cups. I bought it because I really wanted to make my nephew's first birthday special.

Working with the dye is frustrating. Because the colors come from plants, it's difficult to get the exact shade you want. I used the entire red bottle because the frosting kept looking pink and then almost purple. Eventually I got a maroon-ish color. It took a while to get the yellow and red to come out orange too. The yellow tastes like cumin if you use too much. Not a flavour I want on my cake. The red (derived from beet juice) actually offers a hint of a juicy flavour. The blue, however, has no flavour.

I had Mike, quite the artist, help me design the face. Using a steak knife, he made outlines of the eyes, nose and mouth. We then proceeded to carefully frost and before we knew it, Elmo was staring back at us!

To add a little more to the fun, I baked strawberry cupcakes (using fresh strawberries) and painted them with the yellow and red frostings. Wallah!

Needless to say, Dylan love it! It was his first bite of cake- or anything sweet for that matter, save fruit! He stopped crying and seemed mesmorized by each bite!

The party was cute and fun.

The layout and my cutie nephew, Kenny:

I think I was the most excited about these hats (red eyes kept due to the devilish horn hats):

Oh, by the way, Mike keeps nagging me to point out just who, exactly, he is. Mike is my closest friend and guitarist of Acrasjia and artist man and wonderful person who hangs out at my house all the time and helps me do stuff. I just love him!

Mike:

For my other newphew's first birthday, just yesterday, it was requested of me to make a Cookie Monster cake. I used the same recipe but this time made the buttercream frosting with soy butter. Again, Mike 'carved' the face and we frosted him together. The blue dye looked a little silver until the oxygen hit it for a while. Then it became a dark blue.

Mike also had the idea of hanging a cookie out of the mouth. So using the delicious recipe from 'The Joy of Vegan Baking', I made up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. A slot was cut into Cookie Monster's mouth where the cookie fit nice and snug. The rest of the batch decorated the frame of his head.

Luckily, I was able to redeem myself from the last cookie disaster. Everyone, kids and adults alike, snatched the cookies and they were gone in the first hour. My oldest nephew, Kenny (who is 3), was the first to grab one. He loves his cookies!

Joey ate the cake up with absolute delite. :)

Here is the close-up of this moist cocoa cake (this one's for you, Kevin):

After having a left over batch of frosting and a couple of cookies that weren't as pretty as the rest, there was only one thing to do with them:

This is a kid's meal by far. Sugar on top of sugar. That was the best breakfast I've had in a long time!

My family, though supportive of my ethics and lifestyle, never really know what to offer me at parties, so they've given up trying to make dishes. That's okay. It gives me another excuse to cook!

I made an apple kugel- green apples, yams (though sweet potatoes would have been better), walnuts, cinnamon, matzo meal and apple juice baked in a casserole dish.

It's very reminiscent of apple pie, but a little on the dry side. I think next time I'll put apple sauce in the mix. Or maybe ice cream. ;)

Palladium Paradise and A Little Meme

2007-11-14T11:21:00.000-05:00

*Update* I should mention that Karin Dailey took these professional photos and an awesome job was done!

So all that talk about rocking out at the Worcester Palladium and not a darn picture to show for it? No more! Here are some pro shots we paid a pretty penny for so now we can look like a legite band. ;)

So far we are a 4-piece, looking to expand two more members. Being that we're tuned low and play metal, we've been able to get away with no 'lower end' for a while. However! We just might be getting a bassist (after months of auditioning) very soon. His name is Steve and he's grrrreat! Okay, enough with the cheese. For now, here is the band as it has been for over a year.

From top left to bottom right: Mike- guitarist, Suzie (THAT'S ME!)- vocalist/crazy lady, Kevin- drummer and Matt- guitarist.

Because I didn't want to make this blog ridiculously picture heavy, I asked Mike to make a mosaic. See, he's a photoshop genius, so he does a lot of favours. Tee hee Anyway, because Flickr is totally awesome, you can click on it for a larger view. However, Mikey made some of the cool crowd shots too small! So, I decided to repost them underneath in all their glory.

Oh, and don't try this at home:

Now, for a meme I found off of Just the Food. You should do it too, even if you don't get all the way through mine. ;) I love reading other people's surveys and such!

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
Okay, it's Silk, sugar-free. I hated it at first, but now it's perfect in everything that calls for milk. Now that I'm used to it, regular Silk tastes too disgustingly sweet. It's odd how your mind can get un-used to things. For a dessert-flavoured drink, however, I will go with Mocha Silk Milk.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
Pumpkin ziti, roasted tofu with stuffing and white chocolate cake with white chocolate buttercream frosting.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
Earth balance, garlic powder, salt, pepper and tobasco sauce.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
That would have to be strawberry shortcake. I was a brand new cook at the time. I accidentally put a cup of baking soda in it. You can imagine the rest. My mother was a sweetheart and helped me make a new one. I always have that problem where if a recipe fails, I WILL re-make it immediately, the RIGHT way.

5. Favorite pickled item?
Don't think I'm a fan of pickled items.

6. How do you organize your recipes?
There are tons of them floating around, but I plan on getting a three-ring binder and putting them in sections by snacks, drinks, desserts, entrees, etc... in alphabetical order.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
Well, I want to start a compost but my friend tells me that it will smell bad. For now, I use the trash, saving what I can, but boy do I wish I had a garbage disposal! Someday...

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)?
Pasta, roasted garlic potatoes and chocolate cake.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Circus cookies! Everyday when I came home from kindergarten, my mother would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich with circus cookies while I watched my favourite shows.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
Wheelers Black Label Vegan ice cream. I've only tried it once. But it's THAT good. Buuuut... my favourite flavour ice cream always has been and always will be cookies and cream.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
For now it's my big soup pot, but I would love, love, love a state of the art food processor. I'm old fashioned. I don't have a lot of gadgets... which is probably why it takes me waaay too long to cook.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
Garlic

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
Vegetarian Times

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
Grape

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
My lasagna. I'm telling you, that Tofutti tricks EVERYONE!

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
Tofu. You can use it for anything. It's like the duct tape of the food world.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
Dinner/Evening

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
A radio, a flashlight, a can of pencils and pens and batteries. Bad feng shui.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Banana, bread, corn niblets.

20. What's on your grocery list?
Mini pretzels, garlic powder, raisins, apple juice, diced toms, white kidney beans, curry paste, 2 cans of coconut milk, pasta, pasta sauce, milk and bread

21. Favorite grocery store?
Whole Foods- but it really drains the pockets. :-/

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet.
White Chocolate everything

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa's because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
I read them all everyday. Just look to the right of my posts for names.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
Tropical Source raspberry chocolate bars. My most favourite is white chocolate, but I have yet to try a vegan version. 6 years! God help me.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
Whole coconuts. It wasn't for cooking, it was to make cups.

26. What was your favorite food BEFORE becoming veg*n?
Before being vegan, of course it was white chocolate and anything with cheese. Before being vegetarian, I loved kielbasa, chicken cutlets and Italian subs.

More Soups, More Smoothies, More Beans!

2007-11-12T11:57:00.000-05:00

More soups, as promised. Eventually I'll get to making some 'meatier' meals, such as pasta dishes, seitan, tofu, tempheh, etc... For now I'm having fun with beans and veggies.

A week ago, I made this lovely tortilla chip soup.

The recipe called for chili powder, so I was afraid it was going to burn my tongue off. My fears were allayed upon trying my first bite. Mixing cayenne and chili doesn't have to be as frightening as it sounds. The right amount of ingredients definitely added spice to the dish, but just enough to give it a little kick as opposed to ruining the entire meal (lord knows I've done that before).

I just threw together some home made veggie broth, diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, tomato paste, cumin, jalepeno peppers (seeded) and chili powder. Once the soup was done simmering, I crumpled up a bunch of un-salted, organic tortilla chips (the fun part) and garnished with a slice of avocado. The avocado, in my opinion, should serve to be more than a garnish; it was so delicious, my step father was going back for more to toss in his soup!

Last night I made veggie borscht. For those of you who are new to the cooking world or just don't cook at all but enjoy my blog- you know who you are- here is a definition of borscht from wikipedia: Borscht is a vegetable soup from Eastern Europe, which is traditionally cooked including beetroot as a main ingredient which gives it a strong red color. Other, non-beet varieties also exist, such as the tomato paste-based orange borscht and the green borscht (sorrel soup).

My usual taste testers were afraid to try it for different reasons, but thankfully they were both pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I must admit, I was a little skeptical as well. Raw beets smell and taste like... dirt. So I didn't know how this would be. Not to fear! Sauteeing the vegetable in olive oil and simmering with the perfect blend of spices made the soup flavourful and nummy.

Isn't it so colorful? I grabbed the green-rimmed bowl, not realizing how Christmas-y it looked.

Again, I used home made broth- it really make the difference, I'm tellin' ya! Throw together a small red onion, lots of garlic, 2 large carrots, 4 beets, 1 cup cabbage, 1 cup spinach, 1 can of diced tomatoes, pepper and horseradish mustard to taste. Mmm mmm mmm... It was suggested that the soup was served with a side dish of biscuits and tofu sour cream, but I was too tired by the time I got this soup on the stove. I'll have to try that with the next soup (chive butternut).

More work/road lunchables! Okay, this picture may not look that appealing, but I can assure you that it is quite a delicious dish. The original name is lentil and black bean salad, but I think I'll have to call my version 'Lentil and Black Bean Mash'. I cooked the lentils for a tad too long and you know they get rather mushy if you just look at them for too long.

I normally can't eat too much bean salad or I'll just get sick of it. However, the right dressing combination can make your bean salad taste amazing. For this dressing, I used olive oil, flax oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, cumin, garlic, salt, black pepper and a tiny bit of organic cane sugar.

I think I would like this meal best in a wrap or made into burgers.

Chickpea salad is also a great 'take to work' dish.

It's very simple and light. With home made dressing, you'll feel very healthy and skinny after eating it.

I like to pretend that I'm on a tropical island when it's really 40 degrees outside. It keeps the spirits up! To help get me into that state of mind, I made a citrus smoothie- simply mix together juice from a lime (limes are so little and cute!), 1 cup of orange juice, 1 frozen banana, a tbsp of maple syrup (the real stuff) and 1/2 cup of silken tofu for texture.

Then, to make it REAL fun, you drain and chop up a coconut and use the shell as a cup!

I have to say that I was very surprised to find whole coconuts NOT at Whole Foods, but at Shaws. Shaws! I had given up on the idea of using a coconut as a drinking cup until I happened to walk by a bunch at the supermarket. I couldn't tell you how excited I was to see those fuzzy creatures!

I owe it to Mike for draining, cutting and sanding these fruits. The cups are un-even, due to the fact that it's tough to get a perfect cut without the right tools, but he did a great job.

I think I might start collecting coconut shells and throw a big, tropical party in the summer when I get my new place. With the little umbrellas, people can feel like they are really by the beach, burying their toes in pink sand, shaded by palm trees and feeling the ocean breeze tickling their skin.

Or maybe they'll just feel like they're sitting in an apartment in New England sipping out of a coconut shell.

Some Soup and Lunch-ables

2007-11-07T14:54:00.000-05:00

You'd better get used to soup posts because I make at least one pot a week!

Last week was the soothing carrot soup.

Lately I've been making a lot of 'stew-y' kinds of soup, so it was nice for a change, as the only 'meat' in this dish is the carrot. You'll notice in the picture that there are only three on a spoon- that's because there was nothing to hold them up! I usually cook with as very little salt as possible, so the carrots sunk straight to the bottom!

I sauteed some white onions with the carrots, poured on homemade broth and mixed in a pinch of salt, 1 cup of soy milk, a tbsp of Braggs sauce, a dash of pepper and, of course, tons of dried dill (okay, about a tsp).

I love, love, love dill. You'll probably find this seasoning in most of the recipes I use. It's got such a distinct taste that really brings out the flavour in most meals.

On to lunch-ables!

For work, there is absolutely nothing readily available for the munching. Not only do I prefer healthy, animal-friendly meals, but I like to save my money as well. No buying lunches everyday!

I used to find it difficult to pack wholesome lunches that would fill my tummy. I also hate using microwaves (I just don't trust the damn things) so that left out heating foods up. For the longest time I'd munch on plain rice and tofu or those sodium-filled soy cold cuts. While that can be exciting for a time, it's definitely not something your stomach should get used to. At last I began fingering through my recipe books for cold dishes, such as salads and sandwich spreads that can be easily tossed in some tupperware and carried to work. I couldn't believe how many choices there were to choose from! How could I have been snacking on processed junk for so long? Now I am no longer left starving and unhappy after lunch!

I usually make these meals on Sunday night to be as fresh as possible. I'll double or even triple recipes to make sure they last me through Friday.

Here are some of the more recent lunches I've made:

Cinnamon Rice

This dish is very sweet; it required simmering with a cinnamon stick for about 50 minutes. Included with the brown rice are mustard and cumin seeds, garlic, grated ginger (1 tsp), turmeric, cayenne pepper, green onions, carrots, peas and raisins. For the dressing, I used 2 tbsp of dark sesame oil, Braggs sauce and 1/4 of a cup of flax seed oil.

It was very nummy, but unless you are a huge fan of the spice, I would recommend removing the cinnamon stick about half-way through simmering time. It definitely had an over-powering flavour.

The next lunch-able I made was a bean and rice salad, a vegan staple if you ask me!

This was basically a smorgasbord of veggies and spices- red onion, tomatoes, red pepper, green pepper, corn, black beans, kidney beans, avocado, cilantro sprigs, cayenne pepper, tobasco sauce (just a dash to taste) and the juice of one lemon. I used an actual lemon for juicing, rather than the containers you buy at the store. It has much more intensity! Just mix all that with brown rice and 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar. I ate mine in a whole wheat wrap, using the homemade hummus and guacamole that was left over from that weekend. Mmm mmm good. And muy satisfying!

Lastly, for now, is the sesame noodle!

After boiling some buckwheat noodles, I mixed together cucumber, carrots, radishes, green onions, rice vinegar, Braggs sauce and sesame oil. I then topped it with homemade gomashio (a blend of raw sesame seeds, sea salt and kelp powder). The gomashio really made the dish happenin'. I had so much left over, I was throwing it in soups and on top of pastas for weeks!

Eating right and eating wholesome during the work day can keep you happy and on your toes. So get rid of the microwavable soup and cold cuts that have been sitting on the shelf for eons and make something! =)

Bloody Fingiz and Cookies From Heck

2007-11-05T09:57:00.001-05:00

Well, due to a month of being sick and a month of preparation for The Palladium gig, I had no time to plan Halloween themed foods, create my costume, carve a pumpkin or even go apple picking! Halloween was practically non-existant. Now, this makes me very sad because Halloween is my absolute favourite holiday of the year. I don't know why. Maybe because it falls in my favourite season, maybe because I love horror movies and being spooked out, maybe because I love seeing kids be creative and dress up, maybe it's because I love cosplaying and creating unique costumes (often with the help of others), maybe I just love being creative in general. Or maybe, just maybe, I love apples. Whatever the reason, I skipped out this year. Almost.

Not to let this fine holiday completely slip through the cracks, I happened to see a comment on Isa's post from Bazu, about a finger recipe LindyLoo posted a year ago.

They are almond sugar cookies, shaped like fingers! Blanched almond slivers are used for the finger nails and it looks so creepy. I love it! A very simple recipe, tasty too. I have to say that the recipe directions for the dough didn't work out so well for me. The dough was incredibly dry. I had to add a lot of water to get it to a doughy consistency. Perhaps it was my mistake because the pictures of her cookies look absolutely terrific.

Either way, mine came out awesome. I couldn't find vegan/organic red decorating gel anywhere, not even online. :*( So I put a couple of drops of vegan & natural food dye around two finger nail beds. (I didn't want to waste my dye, as it was 6 bucks a bottle!)

The result?

Awesome! It gives me so many ideas for next year. Hopefully my costume will be done, I won't be sick and we can have a real party!

Now, for a blunder:

At my job, they had a bake sale to raise money for charity. When I heard 'bake sale', my ears perked right up!

I have a wonderful recipe for really soft batch chocolate chip cookies that everyone who has ever tasted loves more than anything.

Well, not this time.

My tub of sugar became infested with those little black bugs that live in your cabinets if you don't clean them out frequently. So I had to toss the whole thing! That means that in the middle of preparing my batter I realized, 'Oh. I have no sugar.' So I had to send out for them and all that was left in the supermarket was Florida Crystals demerara sugar. It was too late to go to Whole Foods. I was stuck.

So I tried it, thinking, 'What's the worst that could happen?' Let me tell you, demerara may be a very organic, raw, natural version of sugar, but it does NOT go well in cookies. It made the texture very grainy, like biting into a sand-filled cookie. The taste was a little 'off' as well, being that they add molasses.

Needless to say, no one liked them. NO ONE. Except for Mike. But I don't work with him, so it doesn't count. ;) Next time I go back to my organic cane juice sugar.

In any event, I won't be cooking with demerara in the near future. Not unless you have a recipe it actually works in?

30 Minutes of Fame

2007-10-31T10:30:00.000-04:00

Well, we finally did it! Acrasjia played at The Worcester Palladium. We got there bright and early to snag a merch table. It turns out there were plenty to go around. Most of the bands didn't even set up any merch.

Our merch section was looking kinda dull, other than the awesome posters Mikey made up for us.

We got laminates, so it felt like the real deal. We had three for crew and merch as well. I must admit, it was kinda fun being able to hold them up for security to see every time we re-entered or went back stage.

Unfortunately, we could only hang our banner on the bottom of the stage for some of the crowd to see because The Misfits had a huge curtain hanging in front of their set up, getting in the way. To say the least, we are upset because we spent good money on that.

Well, we got to stand on the side of the stage as The Misfits did their soundcheck and I had no idea it was them. I thought it was a bunch of roadies who knew the music. Mike had to say, 'Yeah, that's the actual band.' Haha I had no idea. That just goes to show how oblivious I am.

There was so much awesomeness going on, it was unbelievable. All of our family and some friends were there to support us. We were on the main stage. Being Worcester, the crowd started filing in bright and early!

A couple of downsides would be that the sound guy was a jerk (as per usual) and wouldn't let me plug in my in-ear transmitter. I guess I'm not good enough to be able to hear myself sing over the loud, distorted guitars. He smiled at me like I was a damn fool for asking. I was kinda walking around, yelling about it and swearing about it. Next thing I knew, we had five minutes to get on the side stage. So I just dropped everything, mumbling and muttering to myself like a madwoman, and stood on side stage with the band.

Let me tell you- the very second the first band said, 'thank you' we were flying up on stage, scrambling to get ready. I had the stage manager repeatedly saying, 'Three minutes. Two minutes. One minute. Let's go, let's go! Guys, you go on now!' in my ear. Mike didn't get a chance to tune before hand, so he was frantically trying to rush his tuning. He ended up not completely finishing, but he was able to sneak some tweaking in during the first song.

You know what? The second the music started all my fears began to disappear. I was into it from the word 'go'! We had a very nice crowd and from what I could see, all eyes in the place were on us, even the other bands and crew that were just hanging out. One thing I'll never forget is all the people in the front row, looking up at us with wide eyes and awe. It was an amazing feeling. We got great rounds of applause and countless compliments after our set. Even a promoter wanted our info. I'll never forget that feeling. Hopefully I won't have to. Bigger and better shows are to come. That's the plan!

Since we couldn't have our own photographers and we had to pay NEPGM hired photographers, there are no pictures as of yet. They will be sending them to us within the next coupla weeks. By the way, when I emailed the photographer our info, she said, 'You guys were awesome!' I love it! Now we just need to record an EP, or at least a demo, so we can give people something more tangible to remember us by.

Anywho, for now, I leave you with silly pictures of us at the merch table:

Now, for the part you've all been waiting for- food!

As I said in a previous post, Michael and I always pack a lunch when we're going to be out and about for long periods of time with no wholesome food in sight. Even though there is an abundance of 'warm food' recipes out there, there doesn't seem to be a lot of substantial cold salad or sandwich recipes like I'm fond of. At least not in any of my cookbooks! But I've found a handful and I am happy.

To start, I made good, ol' potato salad. It's the usual recipe: soy mayonnaise, green onions, celery and, of course, potatoes. I leave the skin on because not only do I like the grainy texture, it is also very healthy for your body- a good source of fiber. I then threw in some crumbled firmed tofu for the 'egg', celery seed and dijon mustard. Mustard is definitely the happenin' ingredient in all potato dishes, in my opinion. If you just give it the 'dashiest dash', it can make it such an amazing flavour.

Then, to to try something different, I whipped up some couscous edamame. I always buy my couscous organic and by the bulk because boxed couscous has a lot of junk in it. What I love so much about couscous is its ability to absorb water in a very short amount of time. It requires no cooking, really.

I chopped up some asparagus, red onion and a shallot, threw it all in a pan and sauteed in some olive oil. I then added tamari sauce, balsalmic vinegar and a bit of maple syrup for a little sweetness. Mike wanted me to mention this, too- we could not find 'pre-shucked' edamame beans, so he had to sit there shucking them all by himself. He's such a good, little helper. :)

After having tried some of this dish hot and then cold at the venue, I think I actually prefer the dish warm. I don't know what it was about it chilled that didn't tickle my fancy. Mikey liked it, though, and that's good. :)

Finally, when we got home, I did some more cookin'. Of course! Being utterly exhausted from all the stress and excitement, I didn't want to prepare anything that was tedious or would take much effort, so I made potato cucumber salad! I just can't get enough potatoes (I also like to cook the whole bag before it starts growing sprouts)!

You'd be surprised how tasty this dish is, despite how easy it is to make. While you boil some potatoes, you chop up some cucumber, mix together Braggs sauce, red wine vinegar, flax seed oil, dill, horseradish mustard and dijon mustard. Oh mustard, how I love thee with my 'taters!

The food is so scrumptious and takes under an hour to prepare.

Then, as a snack to un-wind and reward for such awesome hardwork, I made some popcorn. I popped it right from the raw kernel (is there any other way?) in 2 tbsp of canola oil. But this wasn't just any ORDINARY popcorn. Nope! I happened upon a cajun recipe for a popcorn topping. You melt soy margarine, of course, and mix a tsp of lime juice. The spice itself is a concotion of paprika, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper and a pinch of salt. I actually didn't have any garlic powder, so I substituted with onion powder and chopped up some garlic to mix around in the melted butter.

The result?

HEAVEN! I love popcorn as it is, but this topping made it so much better. It was definitely flavourful and that bit of lime really puts it over the top with that added burst of goodness.

The popcorn container was actually purchased at an Iparty store. While I was in there looking for other party items, Mike and I found the container and thought it looked like too much fun to pass by. Normally I stay as far away from junk and spending money on crap as I can, but these were only 60 cents and they were just too cute.

So after modeling and photographing the popcorn, it was eaten in front of the tv, which was playing 'Children of the Corn', both in honor of Halloween and, of course, the popcorn itself.

Now, to go backwards in time a little bit... In September we decided to say, 'au revoir!' to summer by sipping on some tropical smoothies.

All it contained were these special ingredients:

The smoothie recipe called for any 'tropical fruit juice'. Instead, I grabbed a whole mango, chopped it up, mixed it with water and threw it in the blender with the rest of the ingredients. There's your fruit juice for ya! It was very tangy and sweet. Being one of the warm fall days, it was just perfect.

Ah, but then the realization that autumn was here:

Apple spirulina energy drink! I bought my apple juice from Wild Oats and you can't get any more organic than that. It looked like cider! Spirulina is a microalgae that comes in supplement form. It's 60% all-vegetable protein, rich in beta carotene, iron, vitamin B-12 and the rare essential fatty acid, GLA. It's chock-full of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrents. You can get this at any health food or vitamin store.

Though some of you may be frightened by green smoothies, fear not! It tasted just like yummy, safe, familiar apple juice while the spirulina offered a slightly, I wanna say almost citrus taste. It was yummy and extremely nutritious!

Later, I made some lentil soup. It was a simple recipe. Using my homemade broth, I simmered green lentils, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, celery, onions and tomatoes in one big pot. After adding a little bit of seasonings (pepper, cayenne, basil), the soup was complete! The recipe called for diced tomatoes, but I like to chop up my own and soak them in water. The fresher, the better.

As an addition to the soup, I made some biscuits- just flour, water, baking powder and soy margarine- with a VERY delicious miso mushroom gravy. Upon reading the recipe, I thought it might taste a little on the not-that-great side, but I couldn't have been more wrong! It was so delicious!

I sauteed some red onions and mushrooms in oil, then added veggie stock, Braggs sauce, cayenee, basil, dill and pepper. As a thickening agent, I stirred some unbleached flour into the pot. After it was thick and creamy, I quickly tossed in the miso before serving. Miso has many nutritional qualities, so it is best to put it in last before all the good stuff is cooked away!

I have a ton more foodie pics that need posting, but for now I will leave you with this. I know long, long blogs can get tiring after a while (for some). 'Tis much better when sprinkled with goodies than cramped with them! :)

Oh, yes...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Rock and Shock and The Boston Vegetarian Food Festival

2007-10-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

The Palladium in Worcester, Ma held a Rock and Shock convention a few weeks ago. I decided to go because, well, I was getting a free ticket and I thought I'd scope out the place to get a feel for what it would be like when my band opens on Sunday.

Oh, did I mention that my band is opening for The Misfits at the Palladium? If you're in the Boston area and you love the Misfits, you should buy a ticket here. Oh, and come early so you can see Acrasjia! We'll have a merch table in the back, so say 'hi'!

We started off at the DCU Center, checking out the horror convention. I have to say, I wasn't incredibly excited, but I was in good company so it was fun. There were lots of movie posters for sale, comics, books, action figures and do-dads, 90% horror related. Of course there were the expected fanatics, running around in halloween costumes.

I got a free book. It's 'Dark Water' by Koji Suzuki and translated by Glynne Walley. Let me tell you, I love reading and I cannot stand lazy writers (you know, the modern romance novel type). So, to see if the book is worth reading, I'll open up the book to a random page and read two lines. Conclusion? While Koji may be a great writer, the translation is crap! Oh, well. It was free. :)

So I saw Tony Todd (Candyman), Shawnee Smith (Saw) and a bunch of other B movie actors from horror movies. Mike's nephew, Al, got choked by Kane Hodder (Jason from Friday the 13th) and he said he was really choking him. Kinda scary.

I didn't actually talk to any of them because I didn't care to wait in a line, but if Pinhead had been there, I would have been all over that.

I did, however, talk to Greg Nicotero. He's the makeup artist of many horror and gruesome action films, such as Evil Dead, Land of the Dead, Sin City, Grind House, Planet Terror, Kill Bill and a ton more you prolly know.

He was a chill guy, but I think he was a little curious as to what we were doing hunched over his display. Why, we were drooling over the original book of the dead, necronomicon, and all the papers inside, that's what!

I touched it! I touched it!

He was desperately trying to leave the table to get food, but people kept talking to him, so I told him, 'Go eat something!' and he was grateful to make his get-away.

So on came the music at the Palladium. I loved Daath, mostly because I could dig the music and their performance was so charismatic and they were great at interacting with the crowd. I got a shirt to support!

Lordi was also entertaining, in their crazy masks and whatnot. The drummer had quite the personality, I'll tell you.

I didn't care for the next couple of bands. You see, despite the fact that I'm a singer in a metal band, I'm very picky about what metal I like. Some of it is plain annoying (i.e. black metal... sorry, Kevin) but every now and again I'll find a metal band that can incorporate other genres as well as intricate melodies, harmonies, groove and unique style.

Mushroomhead came on second to last. The lights and choreography made their show. I wasn't a fan of the music, but one of the vocalists had very impressive skills. He could scream in a way that wasn't shrill or annoying and he sang with professional technique. He seemed egotistical, though, which was the vibe I got when I snapped a picture for Al. It came through in his performance as well.

I didn't stick around for Type-0 Negative. I was irritated, exhausted, hungry and my back hurt.

All in all, it was an entertaining day, and to fill our bellies I made some fun, easy-to-take-on-the-road food. It's quite a challenge being vegan and going to all-day music fests, especially metal ones. The metal community is lacking in vegan influence, so my options were subs and pizza. I think not!

Here is what I made for our day in Worcester:

I wanted something that was easy to eat in the car, since we weren't allowed to bring food inside, so I thought, how about a wrap? I didn't want just any, old boring wrap, so I decided to make all the fixin's from scratch.

First, I made hummus- 'cause what is a wrap without hummus? The chickpeas took FOREVER to cook, despite the fact that I soaked them over night and boiled then simmered them for about 2 hours. Oh, well. In the end, they ended up being the perfect texture.

I threw them in a blender and mixed it with some tahini, lemon juice, garlic, a pinch of salt and cumin. The cumin stood out the most, despite all the garlic I tossed in, as it has a naturally strong flavour. It really gave the hummus a little kick.

Because I am in dire need of a food processor (hey, my birthday's coming up!) and my blender is old and rickety and I kinda broke it trying to mix peanut butter once, there were still some chunks of chickpea. Most of it was smoothe, but I love the chunky surprises! Sometimes good things happen by accident.

Next, I made an excellent tabouli salad. All the usuals went it- bulgar, celery, parsley, green onion, chick peas, cayenne, lemon juice, tomatoes, garlic and spicings. Normally I only put tabouli in a sandwich, but this was so delicious we were eating it straight out of the bowl. I think it was the red wine vinegar that really did the trick.

The recipe was a big one, so I ended up with tons of left-overs. That was just fine by me! Always looking for something quick and easy when I get home from work, as I'm always ravenous, I decided to cook some whole wheat pasta and mix it with the tabouli. On the cooked pasta, I use about a table spoon of red wine vinegar, sprinkled with lemon juice. It's so much healthier than jarred pasta sauce and it's tastier (in my opinion). If you have no time to prepare tabouli, you can always buy it in just about any super market. It adds some life to your pasta!

So, next up, I decided to go a little crazy. We've got hummus, we've got tabouli... why not go for the guacamole too! After gutting some avocados and mixing in lime juice, red onions, tomatoes, salt and jalapeño, I thought, this is really boring. So, I threw a ton of garlic in and that did the trick.

Lastly, for the 'meat', I kept it simple. I fried up some firm tofu in shoyu sauce (my favourite sauce, mind you) and got it so it was nice and crispy on the outside and soft and delicious on the inside.

I spread everything onto a whole wheat wrap, added some romaine lettuce and cucumbers and wrapped it up!

Finally, I wanted a little side dish because this was an all-day thing and I knew we'd be hungry.

I threw together some apple coleslaw with raisins. This one was too easy- I shred some white cabbage and chopped up some apples. I didn't have time to prepare my own mayo, so I bought Vegannaise, which is the best out there, in my opinion. The apples really made the whole dish interesting.

To make sure we were getting all our nutrients, we brought some fruit and soy yogurt and we were good to go!

As planned, we ate lunch in the car like the vegan hippies that we are. ;) The wrap was very thick, but very filling. Hummus always fills me up kinda quickly but that's just fine by me.

Next up is the much anticipated Boston Vegetarian Festival!

We thought we were arriving early by arriving at noon, but we couldn't have been more wrong.

There was absolutely no parking in the lot and a red truck got stuck trying to squeeze by some poorly parked cars. (What's a big truck doing at a vegetarian festival?)

There was so much to see, I don't even know where to begin! First off, let me say that there was ice cream there to die for. It's called The Ice Cream Project and it's supposed to be taking off in November sometime (my month!) so hopefully it comes into fruition. Living in Boston makes it easy to get to health food stores, but there are so few vegan/vegan friendly restaurants and cafes! My sister actually talked about opening up a vegan bakery in Boston with me, but I told her I needed to make some money off of my singing career first!

We got the peanut butter flavour and let me tell you- it tasted like smooth and creamy candy! Out of all the non-dairy ice cream I've tried, it absolutely had to be the best. They served them in cute, colorful cups. I washed mine and saved it, in case I feel inspired.

We bought some caramel chocolate popcorn and a delicious homemade dark chocolate almond crunch bar to start. Great lunch, eh? The chocolate was amazing, but the popcorn stuck to my teeth... not so much fun.

We saw Isa and Terry, selling their Veganomicon. The table looked extremely busy- way to go! Then we happened on by The Conscious Kitchen, where Emilie was selling her utterly delicious cupcakes. We bought two and saved them for a dessert at home. The vanilla was great, but I have to say that red velvet was my personal favourite.

I would have said 'hi' to Emilie, but it looked like she was going crazy with all the customers, so I just went on my way. I wasn't trying to be shady and I'm totally not shy, I swear! I just didn't want to distract.

We tried lots of great burger, soup and rice samples, as well as some pasta. Mike's favourite was the pancakes. I forget the company's name, but I do have a postcard. I couldn't believe how buttery, yet light they got their pancakes. Looking at the ingredients, it simply contained baking powder, white flour (unbleached) and wheat flour. It must be that perfect amount of ingredients, seeing as there was absolutely no sugar! Mike snagged two and tried to go back for more, but I had to pull him the other way.

When sampling some mango chips, the instinctual vegan in me turned a bag over to scan the ingredients. The vendor was curious as to what I was looking for. I told her I was doing the ol' vegan shuffle and she assured me that this year was all vegan. No cheese, no milk, no eggs. That's why they couldn't display all of their products for sampling; some of them had whey and milk products in them. I was very happy to hear that the place was 100% vegan! It does get more and more veganized every year, eh?

We tried some delicious jerky and a slim jim looking thing. Mike bought some to take home. We also tried plum Italian ice, which could have used more sugar, if you ask me. Oh, and I FINALLY sampled this famous Açai (ah-sci-ee)juice everyone's been talking about. It tasted good... but kinda... harvesty at the same time. It's definitely something I would drink often if I could afford to just because of the antioxidants, but it's not a favourite flavour-wise.

After a long day of stuffing post cards, brochures and food bars into our goodie bags, it was time to go home!

I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked to- or any, really- because there was barely any room to breathe, the place was so packed! I was starting to get irritated after a while. While I love the fact that vegetarianism and veganism is growing in Boston, I get very claustrophobic when bunched together with hundreds of people. Call me crazy, but I know I'd be the first to get trampled in a fire! Hopefully they move the fest to a slightly larger area. I think it's a smart idea, seeing as the fest gets more and more popular every year.

So, due to my lack of pictures, I decided to post a picture of me excitedly holding up my new 'The Joy of Vegan Baking' cook book that I had been yearning for for quite some time. I'll definitely be sharing experiences with the recipes!

Once we got home, I made us some apple curry soup and biscuits.

I always make my own broth. Being that it's the chilly season, I've been making soup every weekend, so broth making is perfect for left over vegetables. I usually make enough for a large soup, roughly chopping tons of carrots, celery, onions, peppers, potatoes, brocolli and cauliflower and throwing them in ten cups of water. I add a pinch of salt and about a teaspoon of peppercorn for the added zing. You can really taste the difference when it's homemade. Any broth left over can be refrigerated for a week or tossed in the freezer for up to a month.

I love throwing fruit in my soups, but apples always seem to disappear into the soup, being like tofu and taking on the flavour of what it was cooked in! In any event, the celery, brocolli and zucchini were a perfect addition. I sauteed some onions with the apple and mixed in some curry powder. Once the onions were translucent, in went the broth and the veggies to simmer.

While that was simmering, I threw together some yummy biscuits. I used unbleached flour and canola oil, mixing in green onions and dried dill. They came out smelling great, but the recipe called for a little too much baking soda. It dried out the biscuit a tad. It still tasted great, but next time I think I'll cut back on the soda and add some water to mix it up better. Hey, I'm still a beginner and I'm gonna make some mistakes!

Well, it was a great dinner, regardless. =)

I'll be posting more soups, salads and smoothies in the next couple of days. Oh, don't you just love alliterations?

Inhumanity Continues

2007-10-19T09:42:00.000-04:00

I know I actually have yet to post some good food and tales from my metal gigs, but I will! I'm trying to find a minute to upload those scrumptious pictures, but I promise they will be available soon!

For now, I have something important to share with you that desperately needs your attention.

VKO shared with us, in her blog, a true story about a starving dog that was picked up off the street and used in an art expo. The artist tried to validate this by saying, 'The dog's going to die anyway.' It's so sickening. There are pictures of people hanging out and sipping on drinks as the poor dog is chained up to a wall, starving and very sick.

Please sign this petition, even if you're not vegan or vegetarian. Would you want to see a dog being used and abused for 'art'?

1 Point For the Veggie Eaters!

2007-10-16T16:24:00.001-04:00

I found an interesting article on USA Today that talked about how more and more kids are becoming vegetarian each year. Parents are saying that it is luckily becoming easier to find more and more vegetarian products in your run-of-the-mill grocery store.

You can read the article here.

Of course there is still the side that vehemently argues that vegetarian and vegan diets, especially, are incredibly bad for a child's health.

Well, I became a vegetarian when I was 12. I ate a lot of dairy, but my favourite dish was pasta with tomato sauce. Besides the common cold (which no one can seem to escape from), I really never got sick. Eventually I started taking out more and more animal products, but I was smart about it. With every product I took out, I'd find a vegan one to replace it. I was healthy and I still am to this day.

It frustrates me how narrow-minded these health 'experts' are. Do they realize that whether you're vegan or a frickin'cannibal, you still need supplementation? At least in this country, anyway. Yeah, that's right. Our food has been so tampered with, you'd need more than magick to find any nutrition in your milk or meat. Oh, and did I mention that your milk and meat products are loaded with toxic chemicals?

I'm sorry. I'd rather feed my child plenty of organic fruits, veggies, grain and soy than cancer-causing matter.

I've actually been hearing a lot of crap about vegan parents killing their children with improper nutrition. It's ridiculous to single out one or two vegan families that don't know what they're doing. Guess what? Non-vegan children suffer from malnutrition too, but ya don't hear 'Omnivore Parents Kill Children'. It all boils down to this: Give your children fresh, natural food and make sure they are getting all the nutrition they need- which is found both in plant sources as well as meat, mind you.

Case Closed.

The Beginning of Something Wonderful

2007-10-11T15:43:00.000-04:00

Hello, and welcome to my first ever blog dedicated to cooking, baking, creating and the vegan lifestyle! I'm a bit of a newbie in this cooking world, but I have had lots of practices and made many great meals, so I felt it was time to do some posting!

I will be sharing photos of scrumptious food along with inspiring descriptions, recipes, vegetarian/vegan restaurant reviews , natural product info., animal and environmental discussions and travels all sprinkled with updates on my metal career and music.

The next update shouldn't be too far now. I have been preparing for upcoming blogs, loaded with pictures of foods, teas, drinks & smoothies and soon to come- Halloween fun! See you on the flip-flop side!

Photoshopped by Mikey D