Two Vegans in States with Two Names Eat Things and Go Places

Indianapolis

2011-05-13T18:13:00.001-04:00

So Indianapolis is behind us and we are driving onwards to st Louis. I don't remember seeing this many 18-wheelers the last time we drove through thee middle west.
I am enjoying being able to post from my phone as we are driving, I am going to see what else this app can do.
Nothing else to report at this time, just empty fields and lots of road ahead of us.

Mofo #8 Cookbooks You Don't Use Nearly Enough

2009-10-09T19:46:00.004-04:00

i know we just did one of these, but we're doing one again!

tonight: "vegan taste of france" by linda majzlik. i know, i know. we did a vegan taste of... book last time. too bad.

for dinner tonight, i made the country cider casserole. holy.crap. this was another recipe that took a long time. remember the gyros took a few hours what with the chilling and everything? this is similar. an hour soak on some beans, cooking time, then baking time. overall, it took a little over 3 hours. but it was worth every minute.

leeks, onions, carrot, garlic, beans, apples, and cider all baked together and topped with crunchy walnuts and fresh chervil. whoa. amazing. i love leeks, so right off the bat, i knew i was at least going to like this. but the way the cider infuses into all of the veggies and gives everything a slight sweetness just really sent this over the top for me.

the only thing i would have liked was some nice crusty bread on the side. oh well, next time! and there will be a next time. soon.

a couple weeks ago, i picked up some trader joe's instant pudding. because the boxes were really cute. it says right on the package not to use soy or rice milk. so i used almond milk, hoping it would have enough fat to make the pudding set. it wasn't perfect - more of a soft set, but it got the job done. i love chocolate pudding on veggie casserole night. so cozy.

Mofo #7 Cookbooks You Don't Use Nearly Enough

2009-10-07T18:49:00.005-04:00

some of the "vegan taste of..." books have gotten a bad rap. i have both a "vegan taste of greece" and a "vegan taste of france". before this evening, i had never used either, but thought there were several recipes that sounded good.

tonight i made the vegan gyros from linda majzlik's "vegan taste of greece" and warm chickpea salad from joanne stepaniak's "vegan deli".

the gyros were easy enough to put together, but they needed to be refrigerated for 2 hours. which just seemed like an awfully long time to me. the recipe called for them to be pan fried, but i stuck them in the oven and heated them that way.
they certainly weren't bad, but they weren't fantastic. they were a little bland, but that could be because i used a pretty bland broth to reconstitute the tvp. a more flavorful broth would have made for a more flavorful end product.

served on pita with some spinach, tomato, and tsatsiki

alongside the gyros was the warm chickpea salad from "vegan deli". i've made recipes from the book before, but i don't use it often enough. everything i've made from it so far has been great and this was no exception. light and flavorful, the chickpeas complemented the gyros perfectly. also, i love radishes!

Mofo #6: Who Loves Peanut Butter and Jelly?

2009-10-06T18:30:00.004-04:00

this guy!

there are few meals that make me happier than the humble peanut (or in my case, almond) butter and jelly sandwich. there are as many ways to make pbj as there are types of nut butters and jellies combined. grape jelly? or strawberry? peanut butter on one slice, boysenberry jelly on the other? cashew butter on both slices, apple jelly in the middle? crusts? no crusts? wonder white or whole grain wheat?

do you use a spoon or a knife for the spreads? do you use the same utensil for each? or a new one? peanut butter first? or jelly? apparently these things are up for debate.

for me, it's gobs of creamy almond butter spread on two slices of white bread with a dollop of black or blueberry jam in the middle. a few weeks ago, at whole foods, i found a single serving packet of justin's maple almond butter. it was amazing. i need to pick up an entire jar for abj sandwiches. i use a knife for spreading - first in the almond butter then the same knife in the jelly. toss some green grapes on the side of the plate and hand me a juice box because i'm ready to go!

and have i mentioned my pbj friendship necklace that i got on etsy and wear every.single.day? it's awesome.

how do you like your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

Mofo #5: Let's Show the Vegan Food Etsy-ers Some Love, Shall We?

2009-10-05T20:01:00.006-04:00

i started selling cookies on etsy about 2 1/2 years ago. when i started i was one of the only shops out there selling vegan baked goods. type "vegan" and "food" into the etsy search bar now and whoa... lots more. lots lots more. which is awesome.

tonight, my top 3 vegan food etsy-ers. need a foodie gift to send to your vegan-mocking omni co-workers? keep these guys in mind.

1. Sweet Fritsy: whimsical cupcakes, chocolates with killer flavor combinations, donuts, candy. unbelievable.

2. The Cupcake Mint: new jersey represent! lemon amaretto buttercream? triple chocolate heaven? chocolate raspberry?!? YES PLEASE!

3. The Chocolate Muffin: cakes, pies, cupcakes - oh my!

Mofo #4: It's the Great Pumpkin Shortage, Charlie Brown!

2009-10-04T20:51:00.005-04:00

for the past few weeks, i've gone to the supermarket in search of cans of pumpkin to begin the fall line-up: pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin oatmeal, pumpkin soup, pumpkin ravioli, the obligatory pumpkin pie - you get the idea - only to be greeted with a vast expanse of empty supermarket shelving where the pumpkin puree once stood.

picture stolen from KCCI8 des moines

it's been weeks and pumpkin just started re-appearing in my part of new jersey. apparently, the nightmare is real and is part of the great pumpkin shortage of 2009. basically, a cold and wet spring made for a serious mess with this year's pumpkin crop.

consider this your psa to buy canned pumpkin when you see it, lest you be reduced to hours of pumpkin baking and scraping to make your own pumpkin puree (who the hell has the time?!?) or WORSE... going without.pumpkin. in october.

you're welcome.

Mofo #3: Cookbooks You Don't Use Nearly Enough

2009-10-04T12:13:00.007-04:00

if you're anything like me, you have 950,000 cookbooks stashed around your kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom, laundry room... i have so many of them that i love, but inevitably some disappear from my direct sight and then my brain. which is kind of good because when i rediscover them, it's like getting a new cookbook.

asian vegan kitchen is such a fantastic cookbook, but i hardly ever cook from it. which is ridiculous. granted, there are a few recipes that require specific asian ingredients that aren't the easiest thing in the world for me to find, but most of them are based around fresh veggies and easily found spices.

so tonight, i decided to take on the vegetables manchurian recipe. loads of fresh grated veggies mashed into pop-into-your-mouth-sized pieces with a spicy glaze.

i started off making the stock for the glaze. super easy veggie scraps leftover from the veggie balls themselves. cauliflower, carrot, cilantro stems and roots, cabbage, and scallion simmered quickly to create a light, fresh-tasting broth that is lovely for light soups and sauces.

the balls (heh) have cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, ginger, garlic, scallions, and spices.

all held together with some flour (which i totally didn't think was going to work) and then pan-fried.

i served with some rice and extra sauce.
holy yumminess. since i normally don't fry things, i'd try baking these next time. but other than that, i wouldn't change anything. they're light, crispy, and veggifull - what's not to love?

Mofo #2 - Soup!

2009-10-02T20:26:00.007-04:00

it's finally cold enough to make soup and not hate yourself!

michael is sick and told me to blog about things vegans eat when they are sick. i'm cold and was hoping to blog about something that made me feel warm. so this post was either going to be about hot chocolate or soup. because both of those fit into both of our criteria. i decided on soup for tonight, but keep an eye out for hot chocolate soon!

i've been doing some testing for isa chandra moskowitz's upcoming weight lossy-healthy food cookbook and this soup is one of the tester recipes. it's a really great black bean, sweet potato, citrus soup.

here's another tester recipe - this one is a potato soup from terry romero's upcoming vegan latina cookbook. anything that is topped with avocados is great, yes?

this one is from last year's mofo: carrot, apple, curry soup. really easy to put together and totally delicious.

soup is one of my favorite pantry meals. i can grab grains and beans out of the cabinets, veggie clippings from the freezer for stock, and random herbs and veggies from the fridge and create any number of combinations. i'm fond of lots of carrots, celery, potatoes, garlic, and onions with chickpeas in an herby broth. i usually have all of these things on hand - 10 minutes or so to chop everything up and get it all into a pot, then i can get some chores done while it's simmering away on the stove. if i'm feeling really ambitious, i'll make some bread to go with it. because there's nothing quite as amazing as fresh bread and some hot soup.

tomorrow is my farmer's market pick up. soup is always a good option for "what do i do with this?" veggies. have a bunch of greens you're tired of sauteeing? slice them into thin shreds and add them to soup! got some sort of weird knobby root looking veggie? throw it into some broth with a few other veggies and puree the whole thing after a long simmer. bumper crop of cantaloupe? cold fruit soup! see? so many possibilities.

i was going to end with a ridiculous "SOUP IS SOUPER!" pun, but i couldn't find any kind of graphic to go with it. google images, you fail me.

Next Time I Say I'm Out of Food, Punch Me

2009-10-02T16:27:00.005-04:00

vegan mofo is back!
this year, i'm trying to make as many meals as possible with stuff from my cabinets. i think i'm going to do ok, no?

stay tuned for posts featuring things from my cabinets and freezer, with a few trips to the farmar and regular supermarket thrown in for some fresh veggie action.

since jess asked what other people have in mind for this year's mofo, i'm going to go ahead and post the ideas i had....
using cookbooks i don't use nearly enough, using ingredients i rarely use (if ever), and using ingredients that might have a neat back-story (the history of amaranth, anyone?) all while trying to stay with my goal of using up the items in my cabinets.

since i flaked yesterday (worked late AND got a haircut!), i'm considering this my first mofo post and will post more later tonight.

happy mofo-ing everyone!

Vegan Mofo: Iron Chef Challenge

2008-10-12T15:43:00.005-04:00

this week: pears and nuts.

i went with the fairly obvious this week, having nothing exciting going on for breakfast. one of my favorite things to make is the sour cream coffee cake from la dolce vegan, so this was kind of a no-brainer for me.

i veganized this recipe as follows:

Pear Walnut Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Topping
1 c. walnuts, chopped
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon

Filling
1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 c. earth balance, chilled and cut into bits

Pears
2 medium pears, chopped
2 t. lemon juice

Cake
1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 c. earth balance, room temperature
1 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. tofutti better than sour cream

preheat the oven to 350 degrees. oil a 9" square pan and set aside.

mix the topping ingredients together and set aside.

for the filling, cut the margarine into the flour until coarse crumbs form. set aside.

mix the pears and lemon juice. set aside.

mix together the dry ingredients for the cake. set aside.

combine the room temp earth balance with the sugar and mix until smooth. you can do this any number of ways. using a mixer is easiest, but today i just used a whisk. it's a little annoying at first, but once you've gotten the earth balance beaten down, everything comes together. add the vanilla and sour cream. mix until smooth. pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix with your favorite wooden spoon until just combined.

spread 2/3 of the batter into the pan. this stuff is sticky so good luck with this part. it seems thin, but it will puff up considerably while baking. sprinkle the filling over the batter. sprinkle the pears over the filling. spread the remaining batter over the pears. like i said, this stuff is sticky and really hard to spread around. you might just want to dollop the batter around. sprinkle the whole thing with the topping and bake for 40 minutes or until it's done. cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

i'm bringing this as dessert tonight. my grandma is in town and i spent all day yesterday putting together a lasagna for dinner tonight. so stay tuned for tomorrow's lasagna post!

Vegan Mofo: My Favorite Restaurant Breakfast

2008-10-09T18:50:00.003-04:00

there's really nothing more exciting than being able to wake up in providence and walk across the street to get (vegan! yummy!) breakfast. at home, if i want tofu scramble... i can go to my kitchen. and that's it. there are a couple places within walking distance of michael's, but i am most excited when we head over to julian's for some tofu scramble or tofu benedict.

i have been craving the benedict at julian's for a few weeks now and decided it was time to try to make it myself at home.

i came up with something pretty darn close.

i scooped the tofu straight out of the package with an ice cream scoop. drained it briefly by squeezing it gently, then dried it on some kitchen towels. the 'fu balls were then tossed in cornstarch and pan fried for about 3 minutes on each of 3 sides (fry on the flat side first, then knock it over on one side, then flip. voila. 3 sides.). the tofu was then drained on some newspaper.

while the tofu was cooking, i wilted some spinach in a pan, drizzled with some garlic oil that i had made earlier, then tossed with some lightly fried garlic from when i made the garlic oil.

i toasted 2 very thick slices of italian bread and then plated everything up: bread, spinach, tofu, and drenched everything in a bastardized version of bryanna clark grogan's hollandaise sauce (my version contained some mustard and tarragon). after taking the picture i doused the entire plate in salt, pepper, and ketchup and shoved all of it into my face.

Vegan Mofo: Cider Donuts

2008-10-08T19:53:00.006-04:00

one of my favorite things about the fall is going apple picking. when i was younger, apple picking always meant a drive out to one of the farms a little further north and west. there were farm smells mixed with the smell of the fallen leaves and hay and apples and cider and always always always the inevitable cider donuts.

last year, nowheykatie posted her apple cider donuts based off this recipe. from what i remember, she just replaced the liquid in the recipe with apple cider. just make sure you have fresh yeast for these. the first batch i made (the ones you see in the pictures below) came out beautifully, but when i made them with michael a few weeks later, we must have used some older yeast because they never rose and they were greasy and awful. so go out and buy new yeast!

Vegan Mofo: The Best Idea I've Ever Had

2008-10-07T20:05:00.004-04:00

taco.pasta.

i couldn't decide whether i wanted to make tacos or pasta last night. so i made both. it's vaguely reminiscent of hamburger helper. gross... in such a good way. this is what happens when i start running out of food and i'm too lazy to go shopping.

since i didn't really bother making something actually good for dinner, i redeemed myself with a quick apple crisp later in the evening.

and you'll be pleased to know that i went food shopping this evening so that things like taco pasta will not happen again. at least for a few weeks...

Vegan Mofo: Weekend Take-out

2008-10-05T20:11:00.004-04:00

first, a cookie update. so, after making cookies all night friday and most of saturday, i wanted nothing more than to continue hiding in bed this morning when the alarm went off at 6:15 am. i mean, it's sunday, for christssake and it's pouring. and cold. who the hell wants to get out of bed to drive to long island? but i had two boxes of cookies on my living room floor that needed to be handed out.

i got to jones beach for the autism speaks walk at about 8:30 and was all set up at the wellness center for autism table by 9:30. i was out of cookies by 11. before the walk even started. i was so busy that i didn't even get any pictures. i had a good time and i was shocked that 100 bags of cookies disappeared so quickly, but now i've got a whole mess of business cards floating around long island. coolness.

so after all of this weekend's craziness, between baking and participating in the iron chef challenge, the last thing i wanted to do today was cook. so take-out it was. the area of northern new jersey that i live in is hardly a vegan haven. there is only one totally vegan restaurant within 15 miles of me and the rest aren't even close. don't get me wrong. i'm not complaining. new york is only 40-someodd miles away so if i need some fancy and vegan, i can just take a trip out there. anyway, despite not having entirely vegan restaurant options, i still have a lot of ethnic restaurants in the area, which are always great for finding vegan foods.

the indian place right around the corner from my house has their vegetarian menu marked clearly and even includes a little green "v" next to vegan items. awesome.

the chinese place around the other corner has an entirely vegan menu in addition to their regular menu. neat.

there is a great sushi place at the end of my street. who doesn't love sweet potato maki?

tonight, it was time for thai. the thai place is a little "far" (7 miles as opposed to the less than 5 miles of the other three places i mentioned above) so it usually gets left out of the take-out options. but not tonight.
i had some really great massaman curry with thai spring rolls. it's so nice to skip cooking sometimes.

Vegan Mofo: Iron Chef Challenge

2008-10-04T13:06:00.012-04:00

cookie update: as of this morning, all of the cookies are baked and all but the last 25 are in bags and ready to go. whew! i will post the rest of the pictures and a wrap-up tomorrow evening. but for now: iron chef challenge!

katie suggested an iron chef challenge for vegan mofo. competitors would find out the secret ingredients on friday night and have until sunday afternoon to post what they made with the secret ingredients. katie announced the first secret ingredients, apples and ginger, last night. right away, i thought carrot soup. i wasn't going to participate in this week's challenge because i had all the cookies going on, but it turns out i had everything i needed to make soup right here. it was too easy to turn down.

carrot apple ginger curry soup
this soup is thick and sweet and just a bit spicy from the curry powder and ginger. wonderful for a chilly fall day.

i started by making stock out of frozen veggie scraps. you've heard this before, but it's really easy to save carrot peelings, onion skins, ends of celery, and herb stems in the fridge and then break them out every so often to make stock. this time, i had a ton of onion skins, some leek greens, various amounts of carrot and celery, and what looked like some parsley in my zip loc baggie in the freezer. i dumped it all in my big stock pot, added carrot peelings from the carrots i was using in the soup, some sprigs of thyme and rosemary from the fridge, and about a tablespoon of peppercorns.

i added enough water to cover and boiled away. after the stock had reduced to half, i let it cool a bit.

then i drained the veggies and set the stock aside. easy. time for soup!

ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
12 carrots, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
6-8 cups veggie stock
3 apples (any kind), chopped
2 sprigs thyme, plus extra for garnish
2 heaping tablespoons powdered ginger
1 heaping tablespoon curry powder

in a large soup pot, heat olive oil over med high heat. add carrots and onion and cook until they start to brown.

once they're brown and the onions have softened a bit, add the vinegar. once the vinegar as deglazed the pan and kind of evaporated off add 3 cups of the stock.

simmer the carrots and onions for 10 minutes. add the apples. for this, i used 2 macintosh and 1 granny smith. add more veggie stock if you need to - it should come up right to the top of the apples or slightly under. add the thyme (add stems and everything. the leaves will fall off into the soup while it's cooking and you can just fish out the stems before blending), ginger, and curry powder.

simmer for 45 minutes or until the carrots are very soft.

remove from heat and let it cool just a bit. using either a blender, food processor, or hand blender, blend until smooth.

i made croutons out of a leftover hotdog roll i found on top of my fridge. relax, i keep bread in a basket on top of my fridge. it's not like it was just rolling around up there.
for croutons, i cut up the hot dog roll into bits, melted some earth balance in a frying pan, added the bread and toasted lightly. i finished off the croutons by broiling them for 5 minutes. sprinkle with some adobo once they come out of the oven and voila. croutons.

Vegan Mofo: Gluten-Free Cookies

2008-10-03T16:29:00.009-04:00

So, I wasn't going to post again until tomorrow or Sunday because I've been working on an enormous project and I wanted to focus on that and post about it once it was complete. But I decided to give a play-by-play for tonight and tomorrow.

I've been making cookies for the upcoming (as in, Sunday morning) Autism Speaks Walk in Long Island. I am in the middle of making 300 gluten-free sugar cookies to give away at the walk.

So far, it's been ok. Last night I did a trial run to see how many cookies I could get out of one batch. I got all of my wet ingredients mixed together and picked up my bag of Bob's Red Mill Baking Mix. I scanned the label to see if I needed to leave out any extra liquids, bake at a different temperature, or anything like that. It was then that I realized I picked up the wrong thing. I had bought the Biscuit and Baking Mix - which is the gluten-free version of Bisquick. What I WANTED was the All-Purpose Baking Flour. Suck. So I figured I would give it a go anyway because what is Bisquick other than flour with baking soda and salt (and a bunch of other crap)? Bob's doesn't have any crap in it, so I just left out the baking soda and salt and proceeded with my recipe. Aside from my over baking the trial cookies, they came out fine! And super tasty!

So tonight I am trying to bang out the first 100, if not more. I'm 2/3 of the way through as of 5:38 pm EST.

This is what my kitchen is looking like so far...

i'll update again tomorrow!

2008-10-01T20:02:00.004-04:00

Vegan Mofo is back!

This year it's in October instead of November. Whatever. Bones is on so I'm going to make this quick.

Some of the folks on the ppk are doing a make-it-yourself challenge. The first week they did pita. Last week was jelly/jam. John P brought up pepper jelly and since i had a TON of pepper laying around from my garden and nothing to do with them, I decided to give it a go.

I used this recipe and modified it for what I had on hand. My version is below:

Vegan Mofo Pepper Jelly
2 cups chopped red bell pepper
1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper
1/2 cup or more of chopped green and red banana peppers
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 (1.75 ounce) packages of pectin
5 cups sugar

Place peppers, vinegar, and pectin in a large saucepan. Cook over med-high heat until boiling. Add sugar. Stir until it all melts down and starts to boil. Boil for 1 minute.
Pour into sterilized jars. Seal and process until jars are firmly sealed.

To serve, I like to pour this over Tofutti cream cheese and dip crackers and tortilla chips into it. But I also poured it into some rice last night to spice up plain white rice with veggies.

2008-02-07T19:56:00.001-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year!

it's the year of the rat, which is michael's year. although i think this year is an earth rat or some such thing and he is a water rat. i'm not sure how that works. and just because i know you're interested, i am a metal monkey. i like the idea of that.

anyway, i wasn't going to make anything special today because etsy orders were nuts. but i got out of work really early yesterday and i had a decent amount of time to get stuff done. so i decided to make a really simple, doubtfully traditional chinese dinner.

rice noodles (uncut for long life) with kale (green, leafy, money-like!) and shredded carrots (i have no idea what that would mean). i made a sauce out of a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter thinned with some hot water, tamari, and hoisin. for dessert, some mandarins.

i've also had the good fortune of being a tester for another of isa chandra moskowitz's and terry romero's books (are there too many 's's in that?). tonight i made isa's banana everything cookies. seriously, like warm, sweet banana oatmeal. these were so amazing with some tea. i want to eat these next time i'm snowed in. i would be all warm and cozy under my blankets in my zip-up once-piece ducky pjs sprawled on the couch, watching silly things on tv whist eating my cookies and drinking my tea. best.snow.day.ever!

2008-02-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

mardi gras!

one year, i will go to new orleans for mardi gras. one year. as for this year, i just made some dinner...

bbq black eyed pea collard rolls with hot sauce-glazed tempeh over messy rice (all from veganomicon).

for dessert, kittee's king cake. i used the recipe from papa tofu, but kittee posted an updated recipe on her blog a couple of days ago.

up next? i would say chinese new year, but etsy orders are out of control right now and i dont know if i'm going to have time to do any fun dinners for the rest of the week. we shall see though.

2008-02-03T22:33:00.000-05:00

super bowl food. well, in my case, anti-super bowl food. i watched the mythbusters marathon until i couldn't take it anymore. i went for maybe 7 hours or so before i had to turn on the puppy bowl on animal planet. so adorable!
anyway, i may not care about football, but i rather enjoy the food. so for my not-super bowl party i made some chili in the crockpot, potato skins, and some of katie's DEOTS tempeh wingz.
the potato skins were amazing. i looked up a few recipes online and the only one that sounded good was also the one that said i needed to microwave, bake, and deep fry the potatoes. um no. i managed to get away with just baking them. i started off baking the whole potatoes for an hour at around 400 degrees. i let them cool a bit, then halved and scooped, then re-baked the shells at 425 for another hour. i filled these with some shredded cheddar-flavored scheese. if you haven't had scheese before, i think it's worth the $8 or $9 you pay to order it. i wouldn't buy it all the time, but it's nice a couple of times a year for special occasions. i topped the scheese with some bac-os, then popped them back into the oven at 350 for a few minutes. when they came out, they were topped with some tofutti sour cream and dill. yum!

the chili is adapted from vegan planet by robin robertson. i added some extra veggies and stole the idea of adding a bunch of molasses from michael's chili. i let it sit on low in the crockpot for about 10 hours and it just got better and better and more flavorful. i can't wait to try it out again tomorrow!

finally, katie's tempeh wingz. i could eat these every day for the rest of my life. the only thing i do differently is double the sauce recipe and up the hot sauce.

so, yay! for super bowl foods and boo! for the people outside my house setting off fireworks and banging on cowbells and whatnot at 10 pm. is it really that exciting that the giants won? i didn't think so.

up next? mardi gras!

2007-12-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

MEOMI!

you've probably seen meomi's designs somewhere before. you can find their stuff on buy olympia, giant robot, and other places that are escaping me right this second.

i recently got the octonauts books for michael. i absolutely love them (or the one we read anyway - we didn't get to the second one yet) and i'm pretty sure he liked them too. they're fantastically adorable children's books that i want to buy for every kid i know. the story is cute and the artwork is gorgeous!

2007-12-02T17:50:00.000-05:00

ok, so vegan mofo is over. i thought i'd continue with something a little different for december.

my idea is to blog about things i like to do, places i like to buy from, things i like to make around the holidays.

today, i'm going to plug etsy for animals. i just joined today. every month, efa donates to a specific charity. members also donate on their own. so yay! pugs ! check it out! and buy my chocolate chip cookies from the efa store or you can buy rumnog cookies or pignoli cookies from my shop. they're pretty much my three favorite cookies. and i'm donating 100% of the price (minus etsy fees - which is, like, 50 cents - and shipping - which is usually a bit more) to the monthly charity.

2007-11-26T18:14:00.000-05:00

i know. i said i would post inside shots on thanksgiving. it's now monday. so obviously, i lied.

here they are:

and from this weekend, pizza from nice slice in providence! we got half pesto and tomato (the pesto was a spicy chipotle pesto and it was awesome!) and half earth crisis (tomatoes, spinach, artichokes). so good. god, i love pizza.

anyway, michael and i had a second thanksgiving on sunday and made the cassoulet from veganomicon, corn spoon bread, apple pecan stuffing (both from deots 2), and jess' mom's sweet potato pie casserole. everything was really yummy!

2007-11-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

PIES!

so i got the great idea to make smaller pies since there will only be 5 or 6 people coming over for dessert tomorrow and everyone wanted something different. i have three sizes of tart pans, so i thought i would just keep re-using the smallest one to make each pie. i started with the pecan. some of the pecan goo got between the crust and the pan and glued it to the side. so. there went that idea.

i now have three completed pies in three diffrent sizes.

from smallest to largest, i give you thanksiving dessert!
todd x's vegan pecan pie

bryanna clark grogan's pumpkin pie as found here

and isa chandra moskowitz's chocolate smlove pie

tomorrow i will post some inside shots. happy thanksgiving!

2007-11-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

i am exhausted.

i just baked at least a dozen of each of six kinds of cookies for etsy orders.

i made: chocolate chip, peanut butter chocolate chip, chocolate peanut butter shells, oatmeal, pear pecan, and pumpkin chip cookies.

but the cookies are done and i will be able to get them out into the mail tomorrow and avoid the holiday rush on friday.

so go me!

tomorrow night: thanksgiving baking! pumpkin, pecan, and chocolate smlove pies!

2007-11-19T19:33:00.000-05:00

my dad's birthday was yesterday. we went to see one of the after dark horrorfest movies and afterwards, he came to my house for some dinner. i made one of the meals out of the voluptuous vegan by myra kornfeld:
amaranth-studded cornbread, cranberry relish with apples & pears, sweet dumpling squash (i used gold nugget squash) with chestnut stuffing and lima bean gravy, sauteed haricots verts with horseradish, and fennel, orange, & pomegranate salad.

despite all the yummy sounding names, everything except the salad was kind of blah. i guess i should have been forewarned - lima bean gravy is about as good as you would expect something called lima beans gravy to be.

but the salad was fantastic. and my dad loved everything, so i can't say the dinner was a bust or anything.

for dessert, a litterbox cake, originally mentioned by joanna on the ppk.

2007-11-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

my friend scott had a cookout this weekend. to be fair, he came right out and told me it was a cookout. i took the liberty of assuming that something got lost in translation (he's canadian) and what he meant was they would be cooking on the grill and someone would be running in and out of the house while the rest of us stayed toasty warm inside. nope. he meant outside.
there was nothing vegan about the sixteen pounds of meat on the grill, so i brought my own stuff for everyone to enjoy.
here is my list of what to bring to a cookout in the middle of november:
kettle chips salt and pepper chips. subtle, potato-y, peppery, salty yummy goodness.
hummus and pita. duh.
chips and salsa. again, duh.
baked beans.
cauliflower pot pie with olive crust from 'nomicon

for dessert, hot chocolate snuggles (they're basically chocolate snickerdoodles, but michael gave them the snuggles name and i think it's cute) and lower fat chocolate cake from 'nomicon.

for breakfast this morning, i brought hawaiian bread from DEOTS 2. but, like last time, it was eaten before i got a chance to take a picture. that stuff is so amazing.

hot chocolate snuggles (sorry, we ate them before i took photos! they're good though. and they look like chocolate snickerdoodles!)
1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp soy milk mixed with 2 tbsp cornstarch
2 1/3 cups unbleached white flour
2/3 cups cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cornstarch

2 tbsp cinnamon
4 tbsp granulated white sugar
2 tbsp brown sugar

Preheat your oven to 300 F.
Cream the margarine and sugar together until smooth. Add the vanilla, and the cornstarch/soymilk mixture, and beat until well-mixed.
Add flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, and cornstarch.
In a small bowl mix together the granulated sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar.

Begin rolling the cookie dough into smallish balls. Roll each ball in the cinnamon/sugars mixture until completely coated and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Continue until all the dough is used up. Using the bottom of a glass, press down on each ball until they are about an inch thick. Bake for 12 minutes or so. Let cool on the pans for about 5 minutes, and then transfer to a wire baking rack and let cool completely.

2007-11-16T20:40:00.001-05:00

because i'm a follower - not a leader!

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

soymilk. right now? chocolate peppermint vitasoy. and chocolate banana over the summer. but just plain ole soymilk for a non-holiday specialty

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
i'm excited to make some stuffed squash and the fixins out of the voluptuous vegan for my dad's birthday on sunday.
bbq seitan sandwiches from 'nomicon
and todd x's pecan pie

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
EB and salt.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
disasterous is such a harsh word. there are things i've thrown out, but nothing that i would consider a disaster. i have to say, i can't get into the 'nomicon chickpea cutlets. i know it's me since everyone else in the world loves them, but i just can't make them taste like anything other than meat bubblegum.

5. Favorite pickled item?
pickles. der.

6. How do you organize your recipes?
there are cookbooks strewn about my kitchen and hiding in cabinets. i have things bookmarked on my computer and things that i make up myself are stored either in my head or, if i'm not feeling lazy, on an index card in my recipe box.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
trash, recycling, and compost in the summer.

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)?
TLTs with extra mayo.
cassoulet
tofutti pizza

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
my grandma's mac n cheese

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
i don't really like ice cream, but if i have to choose one, i like eating the cobbler out of temptation's peach cobbler.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
SPOON! spoon is the name of my favoritest wooden spoon. oh spoon, how i love yooooooou!

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
basil.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
hmn. i just cleaned out a bunch of cookbooks i don't use anymore. so i guess the oldest one i've got now would be 'how it all vegan' by sarah kramer

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
forest berry. made by swiss people.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
cookies. and cupcakes. but mostly cookies.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
TEMPEH! all the way. then tofu. sometimes seitan.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
brunch is nice because it feels very unrushed.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
phonebooks, steve's lunchbox, a pirate, an oversized clothespin, and a basket full of bread, pita, cookies, some nut snack-things

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
cauliflower, tofu, tofutti pizza

20. What’s on your grocery list?
i went shopping this morning, so nothing right now.

21. Favorite grocery store?
shop rite is close. i wish the health shoppe was more consistent with what they had. whole foods is nice, but far and too fucking expensive. i was totally digging fred meyer when we were in fairbanks. i wish we had a decent farmer's market all year.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.
cheese. and also my mom's zucchini bread. it's easy, but i've just been too lazy to veganize it.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it every day). Or maybe the top 3?
i check cake maker to the stars, get sconed, and dont eat off the sidewalk every day. tere are others too, but you asked for three.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
i don't really like candy or chocolate. but if i have to choose, i pick swedish fish.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
i spent $7 on maybe 2 cups of pecans last week. fucking bastards raised prices for thanksgiving. jesus. other than that, i'm not sure i've bought anything extravagant lately. i got vegan treats two weekends in a row and we ate at candle 79 last weekend, but i didn't pay for that, so i dont know if that counts.

26. What was your favorite food BEFORE becoming veg*n?
tiramisu.

2007-11-14T19:01:00.000-05:00

things that i'm picky about:
tomatoes - if they're going to be raw, they must must MUST be de-snotted. michael had never heard of de-snotting a tomato before he met me, but he also never heard of san fransisco having fog, so what does he know? anyway, de-snotted and chopped small. that's the only way you're getting them in my mouth.

peas - i only like fresh peas. like, right off the vine, fresh. otherwise, keep them away from me. my dad is always astounded that i don't like peas.
me (picking peas out of my food)...
dad: dont you like peas?
me: no
dad: i thought you liked peas!
me: i hate peas. i have never liked peas. we go through this verbatim every time you put peas in something.
dad: oh. i could have sworn you like peas.
every.time.

raw onions - i don't dislike raw onions, but i can only handle small amounts at a time. i get a headache if i eat too many. i think it has something to do with my sulfur allergy.

olives - see yesterday's post. long story short, i like kalamatas. in stuff.

raisins - evil evil bits of evilness.

grapes - see raisins. also, i like green grapes. michael once asked me if i was in kindergarten because i said i like to eat green grapes with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. jerk. i can fit 36 grapes into my mouth at once. true story.

grape flavored things - gag. they taste like purple. and purple is not a good flavor. gag.

2007-11-13T18:57:00.000-05:00

things i am enjoying as of late:

-the vitasoy holiday flavors. i blew through the summer banana chocolate and strawberry banana flavors in july and august, but i got some holly nog and chocolate peppermint and i can't stop drinking it! silk nog can bite me. holly nog has nutmeg. nutmeg! the world's most perfect spice. and warm chocolate peppermint after work? whoa boy. warm chocolate peppermint brings me to the next thing i like...

-soyatoo. i really only ever liked whipped cream on hot chocolate anyway, so the soyatoo has not been hanging around my house for long. i like to make a small cup of hot chocolate in a huge mug and fill the rest of the mug with whipped cream. and when i'm out of whipped cream? refill!

-baked ziti. see below? 'nuff said.

-candle 79. remember when michael and i went to millenium? remember how we felt like jerks for not really liking it? well, candle 79 kicks millenium's pasty vegan ass all over the place. i should have known that east coast would trump west coast any day. speaking of, i liked their seitan piccata so much that i made my own tonight! see?

-caper berries. i wish i had taken a picture of my piccata from candle 79. so that, one, i could show you side by side photos of mine vs. theirs, but also so that i could show you the caper berry that was on top of the dish. i like capers. i figured one gigantoid caper would be awesome. i popped it in my mouth, bit down and got a mouthful of brine. i don't recommend that. what i do recommend is cutting it up into bits and eating it with dinner. yump!

-olives. i always hated olives. i tried all kinds. black, green, kalamata. i tried canned, jarred, those fancy ones at the "olive bar" at the supermarket. bah, then katie jane put them on pizza when were in chicago. and... i couldn't stop eating them. i still can't eat them plain. and i still only like kalamatas, but it's a start!

2007-11-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

before i went vegan, i used to make baked ziti every chance i got. it was probably one of my favorite things to make because i could throw it together in about 30 minutes and have it ready to eat within an hour. and it was good. so good.

about a year ago, amy's came out with a vegan (and gluten-free!) baked ziti that is pretty kick ass. but it's still nothing like what i used to make.

in may, i finally figured out how to remake my old baked ziti in full color veganism. first, i have to thank terry romero for the pine nut cream in veganomicon . without it, this recipe would not exist. this is a very very loose recipe. i don't measure stuff like this out because some days i want things to be saltier or have more tomato chunks or less basil or whatever, so just throw this together according to your tastes:

boil ziti. while its cooking, make 1/2 a recipe of tofu ricotta. feel free to make the ricotta in vegan with a vengeance or make your own. basically, you just need 1/2 a block of tofu and seasonings (you can put in anything you want in any amounts you want, but i think basil, oregano, thyme, and nooch are non-negotiable). next, either make some tomato sauce or open a jar of your favorite spagetti sauce. if you make your own, again all you need is some canned tomatoes, garlic, and spices (again, basil, oregano, and thyme are non-negotiable for me here) and then i add in whatever else i'm in the mood for: olive, capers, roasted red peppers, onions, roasted garlic, whatevs. make a full recipe (or 2) of the pine nut cream. mix 1/2 the pine nut cream with your sauce and tofu ricotta. the mixture should be pretty wet. ***i should note here that i like my baked ziti saucy. as you can see in the pictures, i even put some extra sauce on top. this particular batch had about a jar and a quarter in it. i happened to have a quarter jar in the fridge that i wanted to use up. if i didn't have one open, i don't think i would have bothered with the extra 1/4.*** when the pasta is done cooking, mix it with the cream/tomato sauce mixture. pour it into a 9 x 13 baking dish. pour the rest of the pine nut cream on top and bake until the cream is set (maybe 15 minutes). eat. eat more.

this freezes well, too. awesome.

sorry, for some strange reason i have no pictures of this. maybe i'll whip some up tomorrow if i can find some asceptic silken tofu and i'll add pictures to here. woo!

edited to add the pictures. zomigod. yump!

2007-11-10T21:57:00.000-05:00

my first experience at an all veg restaurant was at veggie heaven in parsippany, nj. i went with my friend paul, who was the first vegan i knew and who was my inspiration to become vegetarian and eventually vegan. actually, the very first vegan food i ate (barring naturally vegan things like fruits, veggies, grains - that kind of thing) was a boca burger at paul's house. it was gross. and i'm still kind of iffy about boca.

anyway, paul used to drive me home from school. instead of bringing me right home, we would go to the photo store and buy a couple rolls of film or ten, go out and shoot them, then grab dinner at veggie heaven. from there, he would either drop me back off at my house or we would go into new york for a movie or something. actually, paul was the first person i went into the city with that wasn't a parent. it was very exciting. we would drive to hoboken (hoboken!) then take the path (the path!) into the village (the village!) and go to the movies. we were very very cool.

the first thing i tried at veggie heaven was the sweet and sour veggie chicken. i loved it and i used to get it all the time. from there i moved onto general tso's veggie chicken and from there i bounced around the menu before settling on my current favorite: veggie chicken with black pepper sauce.

so, hooray for paul for introducing me to veggie heaven and veganism in general and for showing me that it wasn't so hard.

old vs. new, sweet and sour chickn meets chickn with black pepper sauce.

2007-11-09T07:47:00.000-05:00

i didn't blog yesterday! i'm a horrible person!

so you get two today. yay you!

i'm going to give you one more autumn cookie recipe today. i need to start experimenting with some winter cookies soon because i went to get them up on etsy at the end of this month, so you'll probably be seeing some of those in the coming weeks, but for now, pumpkin chip cookies.

i apologize for this picture being so ass.

most pumpkin cookies come out very soft because of the pumpkin. they're cakey - more muffin than cookies. adding a little bit of oil helps with this although they're still very soft.

enjoy!

1 c. unbleached sugar
1 c. canned pumpkin
1/2 c. vegan shortening
1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chocolate chips

preheat oven to 375. mix sugar, pumpkin, and shortening. mix in the rest of the stuff. drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet, and bake 8-10 minutes. let cool on the pan for 5 minutes. remove to a cooling rack to cool completely

2007-11-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

apples! fall is awesome.

2007-11-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

tonight i wanted to give you all a reason (or several) to go and pre-order joanna's yellow rose recipes from herbivore. i was a tester for joanna and i have to say that i loved pretty much everything i tried and i know that there wasn't anything that i disliked. and joanna's seitan is the only seitan i can get to work consistently for me. it's awesome. and the mustard crusted seitan is one of my all time favorite things. i love that everything in the cookbook is quick and easy and something that didn't make me want to die because i had to make it after work and didn't wind up eating until after 8. nope, joanna's stuff was ready and into my belly within an hour. i really don't think there's much in there that would take longer than that. and all of the recipes are very supermarket friendly. there is nothing in there that you can't get easily. the most "exotic" thing in there was tvp, as far as i remember. it's a really great book and i'm really happy that joanna let me test for it. i'm so excited for it to come out! onto the porn...

the infmaous mustard crusted setitan with bonus sesame green beans on the side. i think this is my favorite meal from the book.

the most beautiful chili you've ever eaten

minestrone soup

baked samosas with mint and mango chutney

goddess salad

corn salsa and spinach dip. i actually ate all of the salsa before my guests came over for the birthday party i made this for. oops.

tofu marsala

artichoke pesto

2007-11-06T19:41:00.000-05:00

another recipe for you crazy kiddos.

this is another cookie recipe that i made for autumn. pear in a cookie might seem odd, but the flavor is subtle and the cookies are soft and delicious. this recipe is great when you've got one slightly overripe pear hanging around that you don't feel like eating.

pear-pecan cookies

1/2 c. earth balance, softened
1 1/2 c packed brown sugar
egg replacer, equal to one egg - i usually use ener-g for these
1 t vanilla extract
2 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
1 medium pear, peeled, cored, shredded on a box grater (the biggest holes)
pecan halves

preheat oven to 350 degrees. beat margarine and sugar untill smooth. beat in "egg" and vanilla. add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger. stir in pears.
drop about two inches apart by rounded tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets and bake 15 minutes or until edges are golden brown and center springs back when lightly touched. cool on pan for 5 minutes. press a pecan half into the center of each cookie. remove to wire racks to cool.

2007-11-05T18:45:00.000-05:00

ok, i need to talk about something important tonight.

first and foremost, my friend katie over at don't eat off the sidewalk has published the second issue of her cookzine. it's available now, so go on over and order it. now. i was a tester for this issue and, let me tell you, everything, was wonderful. here are some of the things you'll find inside...
dinner rolls. super easy and fun to use for sloppy joes (or snobby joes from veganomicon, as the case may be here) with some mac and cheez

chocolate, almond, cranberry bread. this is one of two quick breads. it's wonderful, but i actually liked the other one a bit better. the other one is a pineapple, macadamia nut, coconut job that i didn't even get to take pictures of because i shoved it all in my face before i got the chance.

this is a stew with dumplings. it's super easy, fast, and only takes one pot. what's not to love?

triple threat: seitan, corn pudding-y stuff, and roasted sweet potatoes

seitan fajitas made with chipotle seitan

oh holy hell. these are pumpkin cinnamon buns and they are fucking awesome. the zine is worth it for this recipe alone. f'reals.

hot chocolate puddin.'

caramel apple upside down cake with caramel sauce. oh yeah.

mini apple pie, shown here with vanilla soy delicious and caramel sauce

chipotle chili with polenta dumplings

right. like i said. go get it.

2007-11-04T19:24:00.001-05:00

i've been selling cookies over on etsy for a few months now. business has been pretty good and i've been having fun coming up with season specialties. for autumn, i have three new cookies - pear pecan, pumpkin chip, and apple cider. the apple ciders have been selling very well and they're by far my favorite to both eat and make. they're like a snickerdoodle, but more cinnamon and with a subtle apple flavor - like the apple cinnamon-y-ness of apple cider donuts. mmmm... donuts...
enjoy!

1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp applecider whipped with 2 tbsp cornstarch
3 cups unbleached white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cornstarch

2 tbsp cinnamon
4 tbsp granulated white sugar
1 tbsp brown sugar

Preheat your oven to 300 F.
In a large bowl, cream the margarine and sugar together until smooth. Add the vanilla, and the cornstarch/apple cider mixture, and beat until well-mixed.
Add the flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, and cornstarch. Stir to combine well.
In a small bowl stir together the granulated sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar.
Roll a piece of dough into a ball about the size of a large walnut. Roll each ball in the cinnamon/sugar mixture until completely coated and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Continue until all the dough is used up. Using the bottom of a glass, press down on each ball until they are about an inch thick. Bake for 12 - 14 minutes. Let cool on the pans for about 5 minutes, and then transfer to a wire baking rack and let cool completely.

2007-11-03T20:58:00.000-04:00

i went to vegan treats today. oh, vegan treats, is there anything you can't do?

i got my requisite coconut cream donut. this is probably one of the best things i have ever put in my mouth. that and the boston cream, but the coconut cream wins out of the boston cream anyday. seriously, people, forget the mighty-o, forget voodoo, forget everything you now about the vegan donut. eat one of these and you'll know what i mean. there are donuts in the perfect sense of the word. dough-y, erm nut-y?, coconut-y, creamy. all of it. in here.
::swoon::

i also got a mini pumpkin cheesecake which was fantastic. like a pumpkin pie mousse. really really tasty stuff.

and i also got a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake. a little too sweet for my tastes, but still very VERY good.

so, i know this post isn't very long and maybe that's cheating, but i wanted to just leave you with the food porn today.

2007-11-02T22:53:00.000-04:00

for breakfast today, i had some leftover squash that i had made for halloween.

Stuffed Acorn Squash
makes 8 servings

2 acorn squash
medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. tamari
1 c whole wheat couscous, dry
1 1/4 c broth
1/2 t. of each of the following: rosemary, sage, thyme, marjoram, oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 c. dried cranberries
1/4 c. chopped walnuts
1/4 c. chopped dried apricots
pomegranate molasses
hoisin sauce

preheat oven to 400. cut squash in half and scoop out seeds. place, cut side down on a parchement lined baking sheet and place in the oven
saute onion and garlic in a small amount of oil until softened. add the tamari and stire for 30 seconds. add the couscous and stir for 1 minute. add the broth, spices, and salt and pepper, bring to a boil (this should happen quickly), stir couscous, cover, and take off heat.
let stand for 5 minutes. add the dried fruit and walnuts to the pot and re-cover for another 5 minutes.
uncover and stir to incorporate everything.
remove squash from the oven. they should be done by now, but if they're not, cook until they are tender.
when squash is finished, take it out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes, flip them over (be careful not to rip holes in them - they will be soft). fill with the couscous mixture. drizzle pomegranate molasses and hoisin sauce over top. cut each squash in half carefully and serve.
this is especially awesome with sauteed greens on the side. on halloween, i made kale with the tahini sauce from vegan with a vengeance

i had some leftover mexican tacos from yesterday for lunch.

dinner was another attempt at raw. this was my third raw meal and this is the first one that didnt go well. i think i just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. it's solidly autumn in new jersey and it's been chilly all day. i started eating tonight and i realized that i really wanted something warm. it wasn't that i disliked the meal, i just wasn't into it tonight. anyway, tonight's raw meal was "pasta" alfredo. the pasta consisted of zucchini noodles mixed with red pepper, mushrooms, shallots, tarragon, onion, garlic, jalapeno, and ginger. the alfredo was cashews and macadamia nuts processed with lemon juice and nama shoyu. my food processor is super small and not very strong, so instead of getting a creamy sauce from the nuts, i got more of a pasta. no biggie.

2007-11-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

i know. i know. it's been a long time. too long actually. and it's not like michael and i haven't been traveling, we just haven't been writing.

well, some of the people over on The Post Punk Kitchen decided to do a month of vegan food writing (VeganMoFo) coinciding with NaNoWriMo. so here i am. i'm going to try to blog at least once a day about food. it could be what i've made for dinner (like tonight's entry). it could be some of the stuff i've been selling lately (apple cider cookies anyone?), it could be someplace i've eaten, could be cookbook reviews. whatever. it will be food related. i'm pretty excited about this as i really need to get back into writing and i've been bad about it.

anyway, thanks to katie over at don't eat off the sidewalk for the cool banner. onto the food!

dinner tonight came out of Everyday Vegan by Dreena Burton. It's the Mexican Tofu Tacos with Creamy Dill Dressing and Mexican Nacho Cheese. i got this cookook last year for christmas and after a year of testing a crapload of vegan cookbooks, i'm just now getting around to making some things out of here. i'm not the world's biggest fan of vegan cheese. it's just not right. it's ok melted, but it still kind of squicks me out. the dish as a whole was ok. certainly not bad. i ate it. i will eat what is leftover. i'm just not sure i would make it again. so out of a scale of 0 to 4 mofo's. i'd give it a 1.

2007-08-25T07:57:00.000-04:00

I finally finished putting all of our photos in chronological order and got them all labelled.

You can find the First 2 Weeks here

The Final 2 Weeks here

And The Videos here

2007-08-09T18:04:00.000-04:00

ok so it's been a couple of months since either of us have posted, but i think that we're (or at least i am) ready to start writing about some other stuff that has gone on this summer.
first off, the end of the road trip. we were exhausted, but totally giddy with the thought of everything we had seen. we took over 2,000 pictures between the two of us. even after deleting blurry ones or repeats, we still had close to 2,000. i have been putting them in chronological order and as soon as i finish that, i will post a link to them. i was getting through them at a fairly decent pace and then just started getting tired of photobucket taking FOREVER to do stuff. so, anyway, that's that.

i have taken a few trips to the jersey shore this summer. one of my absolute favorite places to go is ocean city, nj. i've been going every year for the last 9 years and i went for a few years when i was much younger, but there were a couple of years where my family tried some other places around jersey and eventually, we wound up back in OC. they have, by far, the best mini golf choices in new jersey. here are some of the places i love:

pirate golf:

monster golf:

and the haunted option at congo golf:

ocean city also has some really great vegan food options. the bashful banana is probably my favorite place. they have tofu scramble burritos and vegan muffins in the morning, veggie burgers and sandwiches for lunch and dinner, and vegan baked goods and banana "ice cream" for dessert. it's really a lovely place. one morning, i had the tofu scramble burrito and an apple cinnamon muffin:

there are also scads of chinese restuarants around. but my favorite is the szechwan garden on 9th street. If you like mock meats, they have some really great stuff. There is also a middle eastern restuarant (also on 9th) called Katina's that has some amazing hummus and falafel. just make sure to ask them to leave off the "special sauce" which has yogurt and cheese in it.
here's a picture of the hummus. i would have gotten a picture of the falafel, but, well, i ate it.

there's also the lunasea market on 10th and West. It's a small place, but they have always been really well stocked with anything you would find at a larger health food store.

a couple of weeks ago, i was in lavalette, nj. not a whole lot of vegan options in the area, but there are plenty of pizzerias where you can get some pasta. boring, i know. but it's better than nothing. or you could just go to the supermarket and make your own food. i don't mind.
anyway, the moon was really great my first night there:

the second day there, the bay side of the island flooded. there was an amazing storm that came through and it just poured and thundered for hours. for some reason, the beach was totally calm, though. i think because the wind never really picked up.

i spent last weekend hanging out with michael up in providence. i got to play around with the fireworks setting on my camera. fun!

on saturday, michael made homefries and blueberry/blackberry pancakes for breakfast.

on sunday, michael took me to the garden in the woods in framingham, ma. so.many.turtles!! and lots of fun. except for when we saw the snake. snakes squick me out pretty badly, so i had to run away screaming like a little kid. oh well, we saw lots of neat stuff. including caterpillars of the cecropia moth. which is the largest moth in north america, apparently. the caterpillars are HUGE and green and have knobby little yellow and orange... um... knobs... on their bodies. at the garden, they are kept protected in cloth bag-things until they cocoon.

on monday, i spent the morning walking around michael's yard taking pictures of all of the pretty flowers in the garden.

monday night, we made pizza and lolo tester green bean salad.

so that's pretty much where we're at right now. i'm heading back up to providence next weekend, so hopefully, i will have something to update from there.

in the meantime, you can see some of the pictures from the trip in my etsy store. while you're at it, feel free to buy some cookies or a picture or something.

2007-06-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

providence!

we made it back today around 4ish, stopped at whole foods for some pizza making supplies (and also stuffed french toast supplies for the morning!!!!) and we headed to my place.

a.b. my cat was meowing at me for about 2 hours before she would let me touch her but then she finally caved in and let me pet her. she was so needing to be brushed! i think i brushed at least a cat and a half off her and there is still more to go.

we are now probably going to bed soon and not drive anywhere tomorrow! yay!

2007-05-29T12:10:00.000-04:00

san francisco!

from ukiah we drove back up to the redwoods so that i could drive the car through a tree. yep, we drove an hour north, paid 5 bucks, waited in line for 5 minutes and then i drove through. went into the gift shop to see what crazy stuff they were selling and then headed back south to san francisco.

as we were heading into san francisco, i noticed something that looked like storm clouds in the distance. i pointed it out to amanda and she said 'oh that is probably just the fog.' what do you mean, 'the fog?' she then looked at me like i had 3 heads and she told me to stop joking. i said i was serious and didn't have any idea that san francisco was foggy. no one ever mentioned it to me! not one single person.

there were some other things that we did in san francisco but i am going to make another post for that.

salt lake city is pretty mormonrific. i don't remember the whole reason why they decided to stop there next to a lake that they couldn't drink the water. doesn't make much sense to me.

we found a vegetarian place that leaned more towards vegan so we were pretty excited about that. i got some sort of burger and amanda got a philly cheese sub. we brought her car over to get the oil changed and while we were waiting we ate our sandwiches. now, granted, we really shouldn't be complaining about vegan food in the middle of america but the sandwiches were not that great. they both had patties made out of corn or something like it. they were not the best we have had and they were not the worst meal we have eaten either.

last night we stayed in laramie, wyoming. it was a bigger town/city than i thought it would be but still pretty small. there was a health food store and some decent coffee shops and also a vegetarian restaurant that had an okay selection of vegan options. the waitress we had sounded very southern and she also seemed to be annoyed when we asked for things to be made vegan. we said it with smiles even though we had not had any coffee yet!
i ordered the farmer's market sandwich and amanda ordered the falafel. mine was on wheat bread with avocado, cucumber, granny smith apple, tomato and lettuce. i don't remember if it had any kind of dressing or not. it was pretty good. amanda's falafel was better than the ones she gets in new york, which doesn't surprise me one bit. at least this place in the middle of wyoming knows not to put ranch dressing on a falafel.

nebraska is almost as boring as saskatchewan. but at least there are some trees and the grass is a bit greener. the sky is really big and blue and filled with lots of puffy clouds. the road never seems to end.
we are now stopping at a wagon rut rest stop.

2007-05-26T12:07:00.001-04:00

right now, we are in ukiah, california. we're about 2 hours from san francisco. our plan for today is to drive back an hour to leggett to drive through a tree, then head back down to SF.
yesterday, took about a billion AMAZING pictures. we stopped high up on the california coast and climbed some rocks to check out some tide pools. then we stopped a bunch of times in redwoods national/state park.
i guess i'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. they should explain our day pretty well.

coast and tide pools:

redwoods

2007-05-26T11:34:00.000-04:00

i'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and then do a new post to catch everyone up on where we are now, ok? ok.

michael forgot to mention that we went to the archie mcphee store in seattle:

we also stopped by mt. st. helens on our way to portland. it's smoking!

mt. hood coming into portland.

japanese gardens:

foodz: breakfast at vita. tatos, burrito, nachos, mac n cheez

pirate dinner (it was dark in there so the pictures suck somewhat). mushroom stroganoff, hawaiian chikn, club sandwich, chikn fried steak

herbi-peeps
george

me and josh at breakfast

bye michelle! (at the herbistore)

2007-05-24T10:53:00.000-04:00

portland is full of vegans. tons of them. and restaurants, stores and all sorts of vegan things. it's kinda crazy to be able to go into places that are vegan and see other people there. back in providence it seemed that when i was able to go to the only vegan restaurant in town, my friend and i were the only ones there. that might be why it closed. anyway...

amanda and i arrived in town the other night and headed for Herbivore: the house. we are staying with our friends josh and michelle, their super adorable daughter ruby and their awesome dog george.

we have been trying to fit in as many things we can in the small amount of time that we have here. so far this is what we have done:

we walked a couple of blocks to brunch at vita and had some super good food. i got nachos and some broccoli mac and cheese and amanda got a breakfast burrito. i think we are going back there this morning to try out some more food! after we ate we walked over to Herbivore: the store. we looked around at all the stuff we wanted to buy, amanda bought some things and then we left before we bought more stuff. she will probably buy more today when we go back. i will probably buy some things too. amanda got so many compliments on her hooded zippered sweatshirt that i think i need to get one.

after Herbistore, we got in the car and headed downtown to check out Powell's bookstore, get some vegan soft serve and hang out with amanda's friend melissa who was super nice. we three went over to the Portland japanese tea garden and looked around. it was very nice and authentic as the sign said.

our next stop was to meet up with another friend from the ppk, jdfunks, for dinner. at a pirate themed vegan restaurant. it was pretty good, we were the only people there so the service was super fast and the food was good. it was just a bit pricy for what it was. and there was not enough pirate talk for our tastes. he didn't even ARRGGGGH! or YARRRRR! once. kinda disappointing. amanda did get a crazy good peanut butter shake though!

next stop on our whirlwind tour was to head to jd's house to watch the Lost season finale. she made lost themed snacks that were super tasty. a couple more ppkers showed up a little later, suzytofumonster and tommy2gears. so far everyone has been super nice and it has been great to meet everyone.

i am going to go play blocks with ruby now.

2007-05-21T23:21:00.000-04:00

amanda and i arrived in vancouver yesterday and met up with our friend 'vulchy' from the forum we are on and had a super great lunch. it was raining but i guess that is what it does in vancouver in the spring. it was a pretty nice city from what we could see through the rain and fog. i would like to go back there sometime and see more of it.

after leaving vancouver, we headed for the border and the border police asked amanda if she had bought any food and she said yes.

doritos. lots of doritos.

our next stop on the vegan trans-north america express was olympia, washington to meet yet another friend from the ppk forum, vwam.

we got to her house and met her and her kids and her cats and guy friend. amanda and i were both hopped up on caffeine so we needed to eat something stat! luckily, vwam had made a super delicious stew that hit the rainy caffeinated spot oh so perfectly. we stayed up and chatted for a while eating cupcakes and then headed to bed.

today amanda and i got up and did vwam's dishes because we promised her that if she made cupcakes we would do her dishes. or actually i promised and amanda was nice enough to help me.

as we were doing the dishes, i started to clean the french press and while taking it out of the holder it jumped out and smashed itself against the wall, most likely because it knew that amanda and i had been drinking gas station coffee for the past few days and that we most likely did not appreciate how wonderfully it pressed and brewed the coffee for us this morning.

so of course, our first stop was at the local target to buy a new press for her to replace the broken one. after our trip to our first olympian target, we drove over to our first national park on the trip. Mount Rainier.

it was so freakin awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so green!!!

and the trees were so big!!!!

and we saw a stellar's jay that was so beautiful and blue!

and then it was snowy!!!!!

2007-05-20T00:48:00.000-04:00

051907

today we are driving from smithers, bc heading towards vancouver, which is about 13 hours away. we are hoping to get within a few hours of vancouver and then tomorrow meet up with some people from the ppk for brunch or dinner. amanda and i are both craving some good tofu scramble. and pancakes. and home fries. and good coffee.

so far in the pacific northwest we have not had good coffee. granted, the only places we have stopped at have been gas stations. i just thought every place would have good coffee. i guess i was mistaken.

i just realized as we were driving along in the rain that i could type up a post as we drive. not sure why i didnt think of this before. if i had, we would probably have been posting a lot more often and with much more detail. it is pretty weird to be in the car and riding along and typing at the same time. i keep looking up and out the front window at the rain coming down and the road zooming along at us. pretty neat this technology stuff.

right now the terrain is rolling hills and off in the distance between the fog and rain clouds i can see mountains. yesterday when we were driving down the cassiar highway coming into this area it was such a super fun road to drive on. they have been doing improvements on the road so it was freshly paved, nice and wide and it was super curvy with lots of ups and downs. it was totally a perfect road for driving and it looked like the road they make all the car commercials on.

2007-05-19T12:23:00.000-04:00

i don't have cell phone service yet so...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAN!

2007-05-19T11:44:00.000-04:00

just trying to catch up on posts. this is from wednesday until thursday morning.

our plan was to drive the denali highway and then take the tok cutoff up to the alaska highway and stop in watson lake. didn't happen exactly like that.

the denali highway is about 137 miles long. and it is not paved. well it is paved for about 3 miles on one end and 8 or so on the other. we were at the end with 3 miles paved. i think we got about 26 miles into the road before we decded to turn around and drive back up to fairbanks and head to watson lake that way. amanda had gotten out the gps to see what the quickest route to watson lake was and the denali highway wasn't even showing up!!! it said it was quicker to just turn around and backtrack a couple hundred miles.

so we headed for paved roads!

on our way back through fairbanks we stopped at the store to get some sandwich supplies and then headed back out on the road. we crossed the canadian border with no problem and then headed to where we were planning to stay.

Destruction Bay on lake luane.

we pulled into the motel parking lot and went to the door. it was dark. we went to the restaurant part. that was dark. we drove around the building to see if there was a night entrance. nope. so we sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. do we have enough gas to make it to the next gas station or possible motel? no. would any be open on this road at this time of night anyway? probably a big no. so. we pulled over to the side of the lot and tried to get some sleep until morning. oh, did i mention that it was snowing? yeah. and we saw a wolf running around too. we, well i never got much sleep so by the time the place opened in the morning and we were able to get gas i was in no shape to drive so amanda drove us to whitehorse while i tried to sleep in the car which i never can do it seems.

we stopped in whitehorse for some coffee and grabbed lunch at a nice little indian place. we were the only people in there and he was just setting up the lunch buffet which consisted of rice, chickpeas in some sort of sauce, curried veggies (which i figured out were from the bag of mixed frozen veggies you can buy at the store! and they were so good too!), yellow curry dal and some naan. oh and he also put a cd on which was one song that lasted about 20 minutes. yep, it was an indian dance club song and it kept reminding us that 'this is the remix' in case we forgot we were listening to the same song still. it was a pretty good song. i can't really say if it was a good remix or not because i have never heard the original. which i am sure was much much shorter.

when we were heading into watson lake we saw a roadsign for the hotel we were planning to stay at. at the bottom i saw some of the best words ever.

jacuzzi suites.

exactly what we needed after that long cold night in the car.

i had never been in a jacuzzi before and man, do i want one now. my back never felt better. i slept like a log. the other nice thing about the jacuzzi suite is that it had a full kitchen so we were able to make pancakes in the morning!

2007-05-18T12:51:00.000-04:00

alaska!

we arrived there after spending a night in an amazing trailer suite, complete with possible blood stains on the ceiling and a door that almost locked. there was a doorhandle that locked and then it had a deadbolt that turned but there was no locking part to it. awesome. i woke up a few times throughout the night thinking that there was a bear sleeping on the couch but it must have been my imagination. or else the bear was just gone by the time we got up.

as you can see from amanda's post, the sun never went down. it looked the same when we got up as it did when we went to bed. very strange. it is going to be very hard to head back east and lose not only time but also daylight!

we arrived at amanda's uncle's place, our reason for the whole trip. her uncle was as cool as she said he would be. he even made us a super delicious vegan pasta dinner! so nice to have home cooked food. sure, we have been cooking food along the way but it isn't the same. still trying to figure out what the difference is though.

the next day we explored fairbanks a bit and then took a cruise down the chena river on a paddlewheel steamboat. i am very excited about this, it was one of the things i wanted to do but i wasn't sure amanda would like to do it. the chena river flows through the center of fairbanks and up until not too long ago it was one of the only ways into the city. that or by plane.

the boat ride was fun. we learned all about the property values around the city (still not sure why he was talking about that) and the different kinds of log cabins and the importance of the river being kept clean so the salmon can use it to breed. it made a few stops along the river where they had little performances set up to talk about things like bush pilots and their importance to commerce and just general travel for probably 3/4 of the state. alaska is big and not very easy to traverse. travel by car is not really an option once you leave the cities and towns and even some of those roads are barely passable. another stop was at a dogsled kennel where we met the dogs. further up the river we stopped at a "native village" which was not set up for commerce we were told a few times before we were allowed off the boat. they showed us how they dress a salmon, turn animal hide into leather using moose brains, how to hunt animals using other animal bones to kill them and other things that we didn't really want to see. subsistance living is still a major way of life in alaska, practiced by most of the people who live in the real native villages outside of the larger populated areas. it is pretty amazing to think that they are living the same way their relatives have lived for the past kajillion years.

2007-05-14T15:02:00.000-04:00

we got here yesterday afternoon after staying at a skanky "motel" in beaver creek, yukon territory. we got a "suite." i think that means it had a door. barely. the cool thing about being so far up north is that the sun never goes down. i took some pictures friday night and last night. since i couldn't really get the clock and the window in the same picture, i took photos of the clock first, then outside.
friday:

last night:

last night, my mountain man uncle made us some yummy vegan food: spagetti with onions, red peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, herbs, and olive oil. after living mostly on doritos and root beer, it was nice to have some real food.

our plan for today is a cruise down the chena river. we may or may not be leaving tomorrow. we need to get my oil changed and we wanted to see the town a bit. next stop: olympia.

some more pictures:
sign post forest in watson lake:

kluane lake:

i forget the name of this lake...

2007-05-12T01:13:00.000-04:00

ok, so i'll pick up where michael left off.

we left drumheller wednesday morning and headed for calgary. we had a couple of hours left of driving through the plains. it all looks like this:

pretty, but empty as you can see. as were getting closer to calgary, we could see the rockies in the distance. finally! a change of scenery.

we drove through the center of town and past the olympic park. on the far side of the city, we started getting into the mountains.

we got into banff national park early in the afternoon. the town itself looks like a little swiss alpine village.

about halfway through the park, we got onto the icefieds parkway. the parkway follows the rocky mountains north to jasper national park. we got so many amazing pictures, but here's a few:

we saw some animals; elk, deer, some birds. but also, this guy and a couple of his friends.

after jasper, we headed back east a bit to see our friends jordan and dallas. they let us stay at their place in edmonton (thanks again!). they took us for some awesome breakfast at the cafe where they both work. i had just been telling michael how much i wanted some tofu scramble and the scramble at this place was great!

after edmonton, we headed back into the northwest. we got onto the alaska highway in dawson creek, BC in the early evening and spent the night in fort st. john. this morning, we got up and drove back through the rockies to watson lake. we saw a TON of animals today! deer, caribou (!), stone sheep, birds, possibly a grizzly bear (it could have been a brown black bear, we were already going by it when we saw it and we couldn't stop to take a picture, so there's no way for me to really identify it), black bear (one was up in a tree!), buffalo (with a baby!), a fox, some farm goats, and a couple of dogs.

tomorrow morning, we're going to head over to the signpost forest, which is across the street. we should get into alaska sometime tomorrow and we should be in fairbanks by sunday!!!

2007-05-11T11:28:00.000-04:00

we have done a lot in the past couple of days! sorry about the lack of posts and also the lack of pictures but after driving all day and then getting into the hotel at 9ish, eating something for dinner and then getting ready for bed, we are pretty much exhausted.

i thought we would be having a lot of downtime after we get into the hotel. no such luck. being on the road and crossing so many different time zones, you start to lose track of the time and days. so this is from may 8th.

so let's see, in between eating tandoori sizzler doritos and spicy heat doritos, both with A&W, we drove from Brandon, Manitoba all the way through Saskatchewan (which is pretty boring to my eyes. all flat prairie and not much else) to Drumheller, Alberta where the world's largest dinosaur lives!

when we got there, we drove straight to the dinosaur and what did we see? a giant dinosaur surrounded by construction equipment. crap!!! so we walked around, took some pictures and debated whether or not we should just drive on to calgary or stay the night in drumheller and get up early in the morning and see if the dino was going to be open.

we decided to stay. and we lucked out! we went in to the gift shop, paid, got our dinosaur hand stamp which was good for the entire day and we could go up into the dinosaur as many times as we liked until 5.30 that evening! awesome!

we walked over to the entrance to the belly of the beast( actually we were walking into his right leg) and started to climb the stairs. a few minutes before we got there, i saw a mom and two little kids going into the dinosaur. as we were climbing the 108 stairs to the gaping maw of said dino, there came the mom and two kids down the stairs. the first one had a look of terror in his eyes as he passed us and the second was covering one ear and his eyes with his arm and holding his mom's hand with the other hand. it was about that point when the recorded dinosaur roar happened right around the next turn (his right thigh).

we made it to the top without running back down scared but that was soon to be changed. once we got into the actual mouth of the beast, we could see out and started taking pictures. that's when the wind started to pick up. and when the wind picked up, i mean it started to blow really hard and constant. that is when we noticed the head we were standing in was shaking!

now, i hate heights. but i love dinosaurs. but not enough to stand in a dinosaur's head as it is being battered about by winds strong enough to shake it. so we set up my camera to take a timed photo, ran down into the open mouth and ran back up to the sturdier deck where the shaking was less. we were hoping that the wind would die down so we could enjoy the view of the Canadian Badlands but no such luck. it seemed to be be blowing faster and harder as we stood there. so we went back down.

i wanted to go back up again a couple times just because i could, but i figured that amanda would probably get annoyed and we also had to get back on the road.

next update from me will include: Calgary! Canadian Rockies! Iceland Parkway! Edmonton! Meeting Jordan and Dallas!

2007-05-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

Tandoori Sizzler Doritos. yum.

being vegan, which means not eating any meat dairy or basically anything derived from an animal, i have not had a Dorito in ages. Hey, just because i don't eat animals doesn't mean i don't love the junk food.
Recently, i had the luck to come across some Sweet Chili Doritos which happened to be vegan. ate the whole bag. there is no other tortilla chip that has the same crunch as a Dorito. things like that are very important in junk food. you know it's not good for you so you might as well fully enjoy it, right? right.
So the Sweet Chili were good. not saying they weren't. but last night when amanda went into the store to see if they had postcards she came back out and said 'i need my purse. they have Tandoori Doritos!' she came back out with a bag of Doritos in one hand and a bottle of A&W Root Beer in the other.

We proceeded to devour the bag and drank half the bottle of root beer. Those chips were so good we drove around and found another store and bought two more bags for the road!

A side effect we found while eating and drinking these two in combination is that it makes you burp without warning and extremely loud. it was pretty awesome.

off to take a shower now and then head out on the road to Calgary.

i keep forgetting to bring my camera cable into the hotel room so i have not had a chance to upload photos. i promise that i will bring it in tonight and start posting some pictures!

brief tally of animals we have seen:
bald eagles
deer
various hawks
a bajillion red wing blackbirds
2 magpies
a porcupine!
cows
baby cows
horses
a couple cats
a quail!
elk!
a steer with giant horns like on boss hogg's car

okay. off to shower for real.

2007-05-08T08:49:00.000-04:00

Savers! Value village!

these are some of my favorite stores. they are a chain of salvation army type stores and they are nice enough to leave out the god part of their mission to help people. basically that means they are open on sundays.
so far on the trip i have seen 1 savers store and 1 value village. without even trying!!! i thought it would be a harder job finding them but they seem to just keep popping up. sure, i have driven from providence to new jersey to canada and only have seen 2 stores but still...

2007-05-07T08:47:00.000-04:00

Trying to post while you're trying to get out a hotel room as early as possible is difficult.

long story short, we're in st. cloud, minnesota. yesterday we got through the rest of illinois, wisconsin, and the beginning of minnesota. today, we're aiming for medicine hat or thereabouts.

canada is big. really big. i thought we were going to get much further, but i think i misjudged exactly how big canada can be.

anyway, we saw our first elk yesterday outside of minneapolis. that was neat. the scenery is starting to change. it's becoming slightly less flat and a little more... i don't know... rolling prairie? i'm excited to get up into the mountains. we should be there tomorrow.

we also ate our first hotel-cooked meal. brown rice with black beans and mangoes and salsa and avocado. so good. we have pictures, but we haven't uploaded them yet. one of us will do that tonight, i think.

ok, gory's getting out of the shower and i think i was supposed to be cleaning up instead of getting on the computer.

off we go!

2007-05-06T09:07:00.000-04:00

oh i forgot to mention that all the food amanda has made has been amazingly mega super tasty. we are going to be so fat by the end of this trip!

2007-05-06T08:50:00.000-04:00

Illinois!

we drove from new jersey to illinois yesterday. left around 8 or 8.30 and got here around 9ish. not a bad stretch for our first day on the road, eh?
i woke up this morning around 4 or 5. i need to work on sleeping in later. i think i just was too excited still! i have a whole container of rootbeer floatcake cupcakes to eat still!!!!

amanda is out of the shower now so i am going to go shower and then we are going to see my grandfather and uncle for a bit. then after that we are heading back out on the road headed towards minneapolis and points north!

when we logged on to the internet this morning, we couldn't get on using the hotel's free wireless so i searched around and found one that worked entitled 'curious cup.' the name made me curious so i googled it and found out it was a local coffee roaster/shop! yay! good coffee! and we could see the shop right from the hotel window. so i went over and got us some fancy froofroo drinks. i got a soy cappaccino and amanda got a soy vanilla peppermint latte. very tasty.

when i update next, i will post the list of birds we have seen so far on the trip. we saw a bald eagle in ohio yesterday!

okay, off we go to visit with family and then amanda wants to chase a tornado or something.

2007-04-26T17:52:00.000-04:00

wow.

with all that food esme is making/has made, i better hope i have my eating hat on during this trip!
so the other day in the mail i received my new toiletry/shower bag thingy. for the past kajillion years i have been using a plastic shopping bag to tote my bathroom stuff around in and i felt that this trip deserved something more. also i figured since we would be living out of the car it would be a nice thing to have my stuff all in one place instead of rolling around in the trunk or mixed in with my dirty boxers. yeah. it's happened before. not cool.
so. back to the bag. it has little compartments for all sorts of things that i don't have or use, a mirror that i can use to shave or shine in grizzly bear eyes and a hook that i can use to hang it in the bathroom or shower or in the car or even on a stunned grizzly bear if i want.
now i just need to get more stuff to put in the silly thing.

2007-04-25T20:42:00.000-04:00

we're getting into the single digits. 9 days to go.
mostly, i've been cooking. a lot.
this is what i've made so far:

empanadas from veganomicon

samosas from joanna with mint cilantro chutney and lolo's mango chutney

banana-date scones (also from v-con)

and thin mints from our friend lisa

i still need to make lolo's lemon cranberry muffins and picnic sandwich, cranberry orange muffins, cherry almond muffins, joanna's soft oatmeal cookies, and the eggplant muffalatta from v-con (although i think i will have to change the eggplant to zucchini for gory). and that should be it for food. oh wait. i'm also making some granola and trail mix, but i can throw that together in a couple of minutes. oh and cupcakes for gory's birthday. right. then i'll be done.

9 days to go.

ack!

2007-04-22T11:16:00.000-04:00

speaking of food and packing, i bought my half of the food/non-food list this weekend. i am now the proud guardian of three bags of soup, rice, newman o's, tings, a shitload of larabars, toothpaste, cereal, and oatmeal. i've decided that microwaveable rice completely freaks me out. therefore, i bought about 800 bags of the stuff. neat!

i also cleaned my car out. it really didn't even take that long. i just had to rearrange the glovebox, get rid of some random papers, and vaccuum out the pringles bits. sometime this week i need to pick up some new windshield wipers and some batteries for a couple of flashlights and i should be good to go.

a couple of new things:
we nomainated ourselves for best travel blog
(hee!). click the button over on the right and vote for us. c'mon. you know you want to. so far, we're the only vegan travel blog. if you don't vote for us, you hate veganism.

a donation button! we're poor. and i'm quitting my job to go on this trip, so i'm super poor. we would like to get home without having to get jobs at scary random truck stop bars, so, if you feel like it, drop us some cash. in order to guilt you into sending us more money, we'll give half of it to charity. we haven't decided which yet (gory mentioned something about the human fund...), but one of us will post as soon as we figure it out. it'll most likely be farm sanctuary or something similar.

keep track of us over at herbivore! you need a subscription for access to the article(s) we'll be posting, so if you don't subscribe, go do that now.

2007-04-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

packing.

how to pack, what to pack, what not to pack. these questions have been going through my head for the past couple of weeks as the trip has been inching closer and ever closer. most of my recent packing has been for weekend visits, just a few clothes in a bag and off i go. prior to that it was a bicycle camping trip. that packing involved getting the most amount of stuff into two pannier bags and a rack attached to my bicycle. whatever i could carry on the bike i could bring, if it didn't fit, leave it at home.
packing for a month-long car trip from one side of north america to the other and back again is a whole different kind of packing. i have so much more room to bring things! books! video games! kites! my bowling ball even! i could even bring a video projector if i wanted to!
so now, with all this extra room at hand, i almost have too much space. i only own 2 or 3 pants, a couple shorts and lots of shirts. how often do i want to do laundry? how often do i do laundry now? not that often. i found a nice little packing list and it even comes with check boxes to mark off what i have packed so i don't forget anything. check boxes are very important. i tend to be in the habit of packing things i don't need and forgetting to pack things that i do need.

yo-yo's are much more important than maps anyway.

2007-04-18T13:05:00.000-04:00

17 days to go!

My car has been given the go-ahead for cross country travel. So if it breaks down, I’m calling the dealership and telling them to come get us. And then telling them to pay for whatever’s broken. And then making them get us a rental car so that we can finish up. Or something.

AND I got my passport. Good god. I know everyone talks about their passport picture, but seriously, this is the worst picture I have ever seen of myself. I look beyond dead. I look dead, buried, dug up and then kicked a few times. Scary.

Ok, so with only one food shopping trip left before leaving, I need to figure out what kinds of food we’re taking with us. Because we’re vegan. If we don’t bring our own food we will, in fact, starve to death. I know that I get very very cranky when I get hungry. I don’t know if Gory does, but I’m guessing yes.

Our buddies on the ppk gave us some ideas for road trip food.
So far we’ve got:
lots of fruit.
easy veggies like baby carrots.
nuts
dried fruits
trail mix
tings and other crappy stuff that we'll eat within an hour and will make us feel crappy.
pita
stuff for making hummus.
pre-made hummus since I won't have the patience to wait for homemade hummus.
lots o water.
soymilk.
tofutti cream cheese.
bagels.
crackers.
peanut butter
marshmallow fluff (yes, relax, the vegan kind)
bread.
cans of baked beans
Luna bars
granola
cereal
newman-o's
vegan marshmellows
instant coffee
clif bars
instant soup
instant oatmeal
pretzels
tortilla chips
muffins and scones
rice and quinoa mixes in a microwave bag
any kind of “pocket” food: samosas, calzone-y type things
cans of soup and chili
cans of beans

I plan on making muffins and some scones and then the pocket type food, but I don’t want to make too much. I don’t really think we’d have a hard time eating it all before it goes bad, but I worry about stuff like that.

We’re bringing my mini food processor so that we can make hummus and we have a hot plate so we can cook at night.

We got the book Apocalypse Chow by Jon Robertson. Everything in it looks good (and vegan), so hopefully we’ll use that. I’m freaked out by canned vegetables, though, so I guess we can sub some fresh veggies for canned ones.

This weekend is supposed to be beautiful in Jersey, so I’m going to be cleaning out my car. Yay!

2007-04-08T23:28:00.000-04:00

26 days until we leave!

I can't believe it is coming up so fast now. getting a little nervous now, only due to the fact that I have never done anything like this before. But i am so excited more than anything else. So many new things/places/people/animals/landscapes/trees/everything to see! i can't wait.

it is going to be so wicked awesome.

2007-03-31T16:23:00.000-04:00

gah!

5 weeks to go!

on monday i'm bringing my car in to be looked over. wish him (the car has been dubbed "black licorice", which i think he hates) luck. my mileage hit 90,000 when i was driving to work on thursday. that means i'll hit 100,000 (and i'll lose my warranty) sometime during the trip. good times.

i still haven't gotten my passport yet. the government is holding my birth certificate hostage.

we finally figured out our actual route. we think we're pretty much only going to have time to go straight north as originally planned, through north dakota. and then we're turning around in san fransisco. which is mildly disappointing because i would have liked to go back through LA and vegas. so anyway, the link over there on the right in mostly accurate. if we work up a better one, i'll replace what's there, but until then...

2007-03-26T21:30:00.000-04:00

just testing this out.

6 weeks to go before we leave!

looking at maps makes me sleepy...