Well hello there, Delicious Vegan Cupcakes!

It's awesome to see you, looking so nomalicious!

I begged for vegan cupcakes for WEEKS (mostly on facebook...what, you're not my facebook friend?? Why not???). I got a bunch of boo hoos and a recipe. So when a friend of mine suggested we surprise another friend with cupcakes, I jumped at the chance to try these babies out. Don't they look lovely? (sorry about the rusty crappy pan they are in)

So these are an adaptation of a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. My only complaint is that the cupcakes themselves seemed a little dry. Perhaps I baked them too long? I don't know. Making cake-like things turn out well is hard for me. I'd definitely make these again though because although they look like they are complicated, they aren't. You can make them in steps, and none of the steps is very time consuming.

I'm hoping these pictures appease you, dear readers, because I forgot to take a picture of dinner last night. It wasn't anything spectacular, we had stir fry with veggies and soy curls and the same old sauce I always make with stir fry. Eric got home late and I had something to do, so we didn't even eat dinner together.

Tonight I'm making Jerk Seitan from Veganomicon, but I'm not very pleased with my last batch of seitan. I don't know how it will all work out. But I'll let you know!

Wednesday's dinner: No picture but it was basically lentils and pitas. The twist was roasted onions and the pitas were sprinkled with garam masala and crisped in the oven. It was delicious with some chutney. Nom nom nom. Kids? Didn't like it. Oh well, what can you do?


After dinner we went for a walk. Here's some pictures from our adventure, in no particular order.

Yay, he's actually riding his scooter!!!!!! (Eli, I mean, not Eric, although Eric did an awesome job riding too).

The Sand Playground. Hey, here's something kind of amusing: I check in at places around our Apartment Community on foursquare when I remember. I set up locations at places like the pool and both playgrounds. Some joker with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth took my mayorship of the Sand Playground! What the heck? If you don't do foursquare this makes absolutely no sense to you. Hah.

RIDE THAT SCOOTER for goodness' sakes!

We also took pictures of some trees for a homeschool group project. The assignment is to take a picture of one tree once a week until the beginning of November. Then we're to bring the printed pictures to Amazing Mondays the first week in November. I think it will be fun to see how the trees changed over five weeks. The kids get a kick out of standing in front of their tree too.

The plan today is to play catch up. Catch up on housework, catch up on homeschooling, catch up on everything. I hope we have a nice, relaxing day.

Tempeh Burgers and other Goodness

Here's another of my wacky food pictures:

You're looking at a crash hot potato (courtesy of the Pioneer Woman site), tempeh burgers, and some broccoli. It was a pretty delicious dinner. Kids demolished the crash hot potatoes, ate some broccoli, and picked at the tempeh burgers. I think if I slapped the burgers on buns, they would be more appealing.

Anyway, the recipe for the tempeh burgers comes from New Vegetarian Cooking by Rose Elliot, and can also be found on the Internets, so I'll post it here too.

Tempeh Burgers

Makes 4

You need:

7 oz package of tempeh

2 tbsp oil

1 onion, minced

2 tbsp flour

1 garlic clove, minced

1/3 cup soy milk

2 green onions, chopped

1 tbsp lemon juice

salt and pepper

oil for frying

For the coating:

2 tbsp arrowroot

5 tbsp dried bread crumbs

Directions:

Boil the tempeh block for 15 minutes. Drain and mash well in a medium sized bowl.

Heat oil in a saucepan, add onion, cover, and cook for 7-10 minutes until onion is tender and lightly brown. Stir in flour and garlic, cook over low heat 5-7 minutes to cook the flour. Then pour soy milk into pan and stir to make a thick sauce. Remove from heat. Add to tempeh along with green onions and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

For the coating, mix arrowroot with 2-3 tbsp water to make a paste. Shape tempeh into four patties, dip each into paste, then into breadcrumbs. Heat some oil in a skillet, add burgers, and fry 2-3 minutes on each side until lightly browned and crisp. Drain on paper towels and serve at once.

*****

Okay, I will admit I totally screwed up the whole paste and breadcrumbs thing. I don't keep breadcrumbs on hand because I'm too lazy to read a label to find a vegan brand. Since I have the handy dandy Vitamix, I usually just whirl some oatmeal in the dry carafe. For some crazy reason, I mixed the arrowroot, whirled oatmeal, and water on one plate. Don't do that. It's a huge sticky mess, although the burgers still turned out very tasty. Just, you know, READ the directions.

Anyway, these are good. I didn't have green onions so I just left them out. I used to be all "I must follow this recipe exactly!" but I'm not really like that anymore. I'm quick to sub something reasonable if I don't have an ingredient, and leaving something out like green onions in a recipe that already calls for a whole onion seems okay. Despite what we all heard growing up, it's okay to play with your food.

Good Eatin'

Friday night we had pizza. I took a picture, I swear. Now I don't know where it is. But I know I've posted pics of pizza before, so you're not missing much.

Saturday night Eric said, "How about potato pancakes?" So we had potato pancakes, toast, baked kale, and bananas. Here's me with potato pancake mash on my hands. Gross!

The potato pancakes were not gross, however. They were delicious. Oh! See that jar of jelly on the righthand side of the pic? That's Moonshine Jelly from a genuine moonshiner we saw at the Georgia National Fair. It's good jelly too.

The rest of the weekend has been uneventful. I've been sewing up pants from a tester pattern, and let me tell you, they are CUTE. I mean, manly. Eli is loving them because they have pockets. I'll post pics and link to the pattern when it's finished for my sewing friends out there. The kids and I went to the front office of our Apartment Community for a kids' craft event. That was pretty fun. Today I'm making a Joann's run for supplies to make a swap giftie, and I need more elastic for pants. And the kids are bugging me to make them some Halloween costumes already. Gah. That's a lot of pressure...I'd rather head to the Dollar Tree and raid their random costume props. We'll see.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

A mish mash of things

We ran, ran, ran the first part of the week, and today was the first day I got to take a breather. Let's see, I think I only missed one meal, and this is it:

You are looking at the wonder that is Seitan and Portabello Mushroom Stroganoff. This recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance. I don't know that I've talked up this cookbook, it's pretty awesome. I use it a lot, and it's one I recommend to new vegans. I've made this recipe before, but the last time I subbed a LOT. This time I followed the recipe exactly. Next time, the peas are gone. I'm not a fan of peas. Kid friendly? Sort of. Like many meals I make, kids are reluctant to try new foods. Eli kept asking if the seitan was chicken (haha). Both kids took a few bites and declared it good, but didn't really eat a whole lot. I think that might just be a weirdo kid thing.

I also wanted to share the Tofu Spread love that I'm feeling lately. I found the original recipe on Pakupaku, which is an awesome resource for vegan foodstuffs. The recipe originated in a cookbook called The American Vegetarian Cookbook by Marilyn Diamond. It's pretty simple:

You need:

1 block of firm tofu (fresh is best)

1 tbsp tahini

1 tbsp mild flavored miso, lightly colored

Juice of 1/2 a lemon (I used about 2 tbsp)

1 small garlic clove (come on, is ONE clove enough? No. Add more)

I threw everything in the food processor and whirled until it was all mashed and combined. Here's the fun part: now add in some other ingredients to make a totally fun and original spread! Today I used a handful of cilantro, half a red onion, and a handful of almonds. The other day I threw a carrot in there. The recipe suggests such ingredients as kalamata olives, sunflower seeds, fresh dill, and ground pepper. I use this spread on wraps and sandwiches. Om nom nom nom. It's a nice change from the hummus base I usually use.

Other than running here and there, and making tofu spread, I feel like I haven't done a whole heck of a lot this week. I don't know, it's just one of those weeks. I have a pants pattern I'm supposed to be testing, signed up for a swap on one of my message boards, and probably should start thinking about Christmas gifts. Yikes. We did spend time with friends and went to La Leche League on Tuesday.

Tonight's dinner is going to be chili, maybe cornbread muffins (if I get my act together...and I might need to make some soymilk). I'm trying a new recipe, I'll let you know how it goes. And now I'm off to educate the children. Have a great day!

Public Service Announcement!

I have a friend who works at a really cool organization called Children of the Nations. It's all about supporting children in developing nations so they can grow up to postively influence their part of the world (and thus the whole world...neat, huh??). My friend is working to fundraise for a learning trip to Africa, and needs some help. Here's a link with more information: Help My Friend Melissa!

Anything you can do will be appreciated and will make a difference!

Curried Udon Noodles with Vegetables

Yeah, that's right. My kids ate this.

Okay, they did not eat much and seemed to prefer the rice with salt and pepper. BUT. They both at least tried it, and Reese might have even had more than one bite.

That's a bok choy Reese is nomming on. When I was her age, I had no idea bok choy existed. And if I knew it did, I don't know that I would have tried it. She's chill like that, trying new foods.

Every couple weeks I get a craving for curry. This recipe came from Veganomicon. It's just a touch "busy" (not exactly complicated, but a lot of steps). I don't mind, but if I get too distracted when I'm trying to cook it, bad things happen (like the first roux that I burned...whoops). I love it, you can use any curry powder mix you want and it turns out awesomely.

I probably owe you some meals. It was a boring weekend, eating-wise. On Saturday I sweet-talked Eric into making waffles for dinner. On Sunday we were at the Georgia National Fair in Perry, GA. Many deepfried foodstuffs were eaten. When we got home, I was hungry because of the slim vegan food pickings, so I ate a tofu spread and veggie wrap. No big deal there.

Yeah, excuses. It's only October 11th and I'm kind of regretting saying I'd post a pic of our meals every night. That's hard. I'll keep at it though. I'm thinking about joining up for the Vegan MOFO (vegan month of food) in November, but I'm not sure I can take so many food pics and post them two months in a row. I'd have to dig deep. Hah.

I guess I have time to decide. What do you think, readers?