Update

Hello!

A comment showed up in my e-mail inbox the other day asking for an update.  It has been months (about 7, in fact) since I’ve posted anything.  It’s also been months (7, in fact) since I got pregnant.  My lack of posting and the timing of my pregnancy are not coincidental.

As much as I wanted to have a vegan pregnancy, I only lasted about two weeks before my first dairy indiscretion.  I was desperate for some cheese.  I tried to chalk this craving up to a need for fat, but no other type of fat I ate satisfied this craving.  It was then that I decided I would not be vegan during this pregnancy and, because of this, I did not feel justified in continuing to post on this supposed vegan blog.

At about 4 months into my pregnancy, my diet returned to being somewhat normal and I began eating some vegan meals again.  It is not at all unusual for two of my three meals each day to be vegan, but I could never at this point claim I am a vegan.  I am considering returning to being vegan after I have the baby (a girl, due July 19th) and after my family gets adjusted to life with another member.  Perhaps at that point I will be inspired to post again – I actually hope so.  Until then, thanks to everyone who has inquired about me over the past few months.  I am doing very well and am having a wonderful pregnancy.  I am enjoying my now two-year old daughter incredibly much and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my second daughter!

I hope all of you are well and that your lives are peaceful and blessed!

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Long time, no see

Hello, everyone!  It’s been many, many weeks since I last posted, but with good reason.  Remember that “stomach bug” I said I had when I last posted?  Well, I never really had a “bug”, but I am going to have a baby!  I’ve known all along, but I was keeping it under wraps until after my first ultrasound, just so I knew everything was okay – and it is!  I am now 10 weeks along and am due in the middle of July.  I have been endlessly queasy, but, thankfully, I’ve not gotten sick.  Just like during my first pregnancy, I am super-sensitive to smells, so have been relatively unable to cook for the past 5 or so weeks.  I have no problem eating prepared food, but if I try to make something myself, I usually get incredibly nauseated.  So, I haven’t posted because I’ve had nothing to post!  I also haven’t visited any blogs because sometimes just thinking about, talking about, or looking at food will set me off.  I really apologize and know that I’ve certainly been missing out on some great vegan food!

I do want to give a great, big THANKS!!!! to Bethany at Spotted Devil Cat who sent me the best care package EVER!!!  She was my care package swap partner and she was the ultimate in swap partners.  Her care package put mine to shame.  She sent me some awesome pasta, some luscious chocolates, some tea, some yummy-looking olive oil crackers and a few other awesome vegan items, including a cool reusable brown canvas bag!  I loved it all and she put a lot of time and thought into the package.  THANKS, BETHANY!

I probably won’t post again until I really start to feel better.  I’m hoping that will happen within the next two or three weeks.  The nausea is lasting a lot longer this time than it did last time, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, I hope everyone has the best holiday season ever and Happy New Year!

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It was the weekend, but there’s nothing to Round Up

Yet again, I’m remiss in posting my standard Weekend Roundup.  I’ve been dealing with a stomach-thing over the last few days and haven’t been making any food (I also haven’t been much able to look at food, so that’s why I haven’t been visiting so many of your blogs lately!).  I hope I’ll get to do so soon, because I really miss cooking and seeing what everyone else is cooking up, too!

Some good news today, though, is that two lovely vegan bloggers have given me an award!  River (Wing-It Vegan) and Bethany (Spotted Devil Cat and his Vegan Assistant) both gave me a Butterfly Award!

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I’m a big fan of both of these ladies’ blogs and am so happy that they are fans of my blog, too!  I know I’m now supposed to pick ten blogs that I think are really cool and I promise I’ll do that soon!

Until then, Happy Monday to all of you!

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More Urban Vegan Test Recipes

I’ve now tested about 8 recipes for Urban Vegan’s upcoming cookbook and they have all been incredible!  This is going to be one fantastic cookbook!  Here are pics of a few more recipes I’ve tested:

sloppyjoesbeansgreens

Last night, I made Beans and Greens and Sloppy Joes.  The Beans and Greens was a combination of cannellini beans and mustard greens (I got a huge bag on sale at Kroger for $1.29!).  Cooked up in some olive oil and garlic and topped with some flax and vegan parm, this dish was awesome!  And what a nutrition powerhouse!

The sloppy joes were simply delicious and SO…EASY…TO…MAKE!!!  Seriously, if you have a day when you only have 10 minutes to make dinner, make these sloppy joes.  I bet almost all of the ingredients can be found in your pantries!

supersonicsesame

Pictured above are Super-Sonic Sunflower Squares.  If you have an addictive personality, DON’T TRY THESE!!!!  You’ll be hooked just by smelling them.  These squares are a sweet crispy base featuring ingredients like sunflower seeds, coconut, oats and tahini spread on top with a layer of dark chocolate.  I have two in my lunchbox and I’m counting the minutes until I get to eat them!  I can’t believe I made it this long!

Mark your calendars for a year from now when we can all finally get our paws on what I’m sure is going to be an awesome cookbook!

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Weekend Roundup

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Happy Monday, everyone!  Was your weekend as cold as mine?  Egads!  This weather is the pits.  The up side to it, though????  A lot of my time spent inside was in the kitchen!  Here’s what I cooked up:

breadsticks

Pictured above are some delicious breadsticks.  Jessy got me really craving breadsticks the other day, so Ioooked up a recipe that was simple and delicious, but I can’t remember where I found the recipe!  My husband could not stop eating these and said they were the best he’s ever had.  I also thought they were good, but they’re not the best I’ve ever had.  I think both Pizza Hut and Olive Garden have awesome breadsticks, but I never eat them because they have no redeeming nutritional value.  So, I will call my breadsticks the best HEALTHY breadsticks I’ve ever had.

ratatouilleanduvwinterpesto

For dinner on Saturday, I made ratatouille and served it over pasta with vegan meatballs, broccoli, and topped it with Urban Vegan’s Winter Pesto.  I’m excited to be a tester for Urban Vegan’s upcoming cookbook and this Winter Pesto was just one of four recipes I tested this weekend.  This pesto was incredible – a gorgeous green, garlicky spread with wonderful taste and consistency!  The ratatouille (another slow cooker recipe) called for pesto to be mixed in just before serving.  The ratatouille on its own was incredible, but the pesto amped up the incredibleness.  I still have a ton of pesto leftover, so I’m happy to have it waiting in my freezer until another pesto opportunity presents itself.

uvpancakes

On Sunday morning, I tested Urban Vegan’s recipe for Better-Than-Buttermilk pancakes.  I am not a great pancake maker, so I was taking a real risk in making these pancakes, but I’m glad I took that risk!  This batch of pancakes was the most successful batch I’ve ever made.  Light, fluffy, and golden, they tasted as good as they looked.  My husband loved them (he specifically commented on their great texture) and my daughter ate a whole pancake – something she’s never done before!

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braisedpotatoes

I made a Greek Feast for last night’s dinner.  I made Urban Vegan’s Smoked Paprika Hummus and served it on pita topped with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber.  Over top of the sandwiches and the steamed kale I made, is Urban Vegan’s Easy Tahini Sauce.  The hummus was delicious – incredibly flavorful and an awesome texture and the tahini sauce can only be described as heavenly.  I could eat this stuff for days!  Alongside the sandwiches and kale, I served braised potatoes.  I got the recipe from this book.  These potatoes were incredible and the recipe couldn’t be easier.  The pita recipe I used was also from this book and all seemed to be going well with making my own pita until it came time to bake the pita.  None of my pitas  puffed up at all.  My oven was set to 500 degrees.  Does anyone have a fool-proof way of guaranteeing puffy pita?  Please leave any suggestions in the comments!

I hope you all had happy weekends and welcome back to the work week!  Thanks for reading!

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Some things I’ve been eating

Not a very interesting post today, but below are some photos of food I’ve eaten this week.

curried-squash

This is curry-roasted squash.  It is not all that exciting of a recipe, but it came from the new Food Network magazine.  Has anyone else picked up a copy?  I found many recipes in the issues that are vegan or easily veganizable.  I was pleasantly surprised by that.

pumpkin-pasta

This is fusilli pasta with Creamy Pumpkin-Almond sauce.  Simple and delicious!

hoppin-john

This is another great slow-cooker meal.  It is Vegetarian Hoppin’ John from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.  It was so incredibly easy and tasted absolutely awesome.  I can’t wait to have the leftovers for lunch in a few hours!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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My new obsession and some random Vegannifer facts

I pretty much think I’m in love with my slow cooker.  I’ve made two meals in it since Sunday and I love, love, love how easy it is to cook in a slow cooker!  I was off yesterday because of Veteran’s Day, so I chopped up some veggies and tofu in the morning and threw them and some curry-appropriate ingredients into my slow cooker and let them all get to know each other for the next 8 hours.  I actually did use a recipe – it’s the one for the No Hurry Vegetable Curry from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson.  The only changes I made were to leave out the peas, add in a block of cubed tofu and  I also added in a whole can of light coconut milk and a little (about two tablespoons) of Instant Clear Jel to thicken up the sauce.  I think I could avoid having to do this next time by reducing the amount of broth from two cups to one and still adding in a whole can of coconut milk.  I also adjusted the seasonings slightly by adding in a tablespoon of red curry paste in addition to the two tablespoons of curry powder called for in the recipe.  I don’t have a picture of the final product, but if you can visualize a curry, you know what it looked like.  It was really, really good and so incredibly easy!  I was going to throw tonight’s dinner into the slow cooker this morning, but it turned out that I didn’t have all the ingredients.  I’ll pick those up tonight and get something going in the slow cooker for tomorrow night.

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I’ve been tagged by Bethany for a fun meme that asks me to highlight random facts about myself.  Here are the rules for the meme:

  1. Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
  2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
  3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links.
  4. Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Yeesh.  This is tough, but let me see what I can come up with…

1. I was recently nominated for a college-wide (I work at a university) staff excellence award for being such a valuable employee even though my job is so boring that all I do for 30 hours a week from mid-April through mid-October is look at the Internet.  I find out tomorrow if I won the award.  There’s money involved, so wish me luck!

2. I really, really struggled with credit card debt from the minute I stepped onto my college campus in 1994 when I was just 17 years old until I paid off my debt in April 2007 – one month after my daughter was born.  Having a child has really helped me to get all of my debt issues in order and I am so happy to say that I have $0 in credit card debt!  Yippee!

3. My favorite TV show of all time is Felicity.  I think season 4 was the best season, even though the second half of it focused on a strange time-travel plot.  I was always rooting for Felicity to choose Ben over Noel and I could never stand the character of Julie and was so happy when she left at the beginning of season 3.  I think even when I’m 60 years old, I’ll still love Felicity.  Let’s hope my DVDs still play in another 30 years!

4. In 2005, I walked the Columbus Marathon as a member of Team In Training.  Walking a marathon might sound like a weird thing to do, but I refuse to run unless I’m being chased.  I am so invigorated by walking, but I find running incredibly painful.  I walked the 26.2 miles in 6 hours and 19 minutes.  It was one of the best days of my life.  I stayed on that “high” for the next two days until I all of the sudden crashed in the middle of Whole Foods and started bawling my eyes out.

5. I had a roommate about 8 years ago that I was really good friends with and we also worked together.  Our roommate relationship didn’t end well and I haven’t talked to her since we both moved out.  I’ve seen her a few times over the last 8 years, but if we made eye contact, we just pretended not to recognize each other.  Not being able to fix that relationship is one of the biggest regrets of my life.

6. My husband’s name, my name, and my daughter’s name all begin with the letter “J”.  When we have a second baby, I worry that if we don’t give him/her a “J” name, he/she will feel from the beginning like the black sheep of the family.  However, I’m having a hard time coming up with any more “J” names that I really like!

7. If I could live anywhere, it would be San Francisco (I did live there for a short, short while 11 years ago), but if I could visit anywhere (that I haven’t already visited) it would be Japan.  However, I’m such a homebody, that I don’t foresee much travel in my future at all – at least until my hubby and I become empty-nesters.

Phew!  I did it.  Seven random things about myself.  Now I have to figure out who to tag.

Okay…so I made my choices and here they are.  Let me preface this list by saying that I totally understand that some bloggers – maybe even the ones I’ve selected – aren’t into memes.  If any of them don’t want to participate, that’s cool.  An 8th random thing about myself, though, is that I am a major “rules” person and I would have had much anxiety if I wouldn’t have followed the rules of this meme and selected 7 bloggers to tag.

1) Jen at That Pain in the Ass Vegan
2) Lisa at Cravin’ Veggies
3) Jessy at Happyveganface
4) Renae at I Eat Food
5 & 6) Aly and Maureen at Mad About Udon
7) Bianca at Vegan Crunk

I hope everyone has a great day and hopefully I’ll be back soon with more slow cooker goodies!

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Renovation Roundup

wkndroundup1Monday is when I normally do my weekend roundups, but it’s been several weekends since I’ve posted anything because our kitchen is under renovation. So, for today, this post is going to be called “Renovation Roundup”.

We are halfway through with our renovation. My husband planned the renovation to happen in two phases. Phase 1 included putting in the new floor, painting, removing a cabinet to make a place for the dishwasher, rewiring the electricity for the kitchen and moving our gas line from where the stove was to where the stove is now, and installing our new appliances. My husband and my dad put in a lot of time over the week they worked on the kitchen, but they got all of that done. I have some pictures of the new kitchen to share with all of you, but I also have pictures of the old kitchen posted here.

My new stove!  It has a double oven and I love it!

My new stove! It has a double oven and I love it!

My new dishwasher!  No longer do I spend an hour each night washing dishes!  Yahoo!

My new dishwasher! No longer do I spend an hour each night washing dishes! Yahoo!

My new fridge!  It's shiny!  And it dispenses water and ice!

My new fridge! It's shiny! And it dispenses water and ice!

My new cork floor!  It's so pretty!

My new cork floor! It's so pretty!

The new wall color!  It's olive-y green and gorgeous!

The new wall color! It's olive-y green and gorgeous!

So, those are the tasks that have been completed, but there is still a lot left to do. We still need to give our cabinets a makeover, have our tile refinished and install a new countertop. We’ve decided we’re going to put in butcher block for our countertop, but that may not happen for another month or two.

Because our cabinets needed emptying in order to be repainted, I still haven’t been able to move the majority of my pots/pans/utensils/supplies back in to the kitchen. I’m starting to get things figured out, but cooking has been at a minimum over the past several weeks.

Some things I have managed to make are Banana Bread, Homemade Tortillas, and Bagels. All three of these turned out great, but there’s no going back after having homemade tortillas and homemade bagels. I also made a Mac and Cheeze Florentine in my slow-cooker last night. I got the recipe from “Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker” and will definitely be planning more slow cooker meals this winter.

Because of the renovation, I missed the last week of VeganMofo and didn’t quite make it to twenty posts, but I’m okay with that. I had a great time reading all of the other MoFo posts and seeing all of the awesome Halloween treats people made. Speaking of Halloween, I’ll leave you all today with an adorable (if I do say so myself) photo:

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Happy Monday, everyone!

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What’s in my freezer?

I was recently tagged for the “What’s in your (vegan) freezer” game by KimmyKokonut.  Since it’s only been about five weeks since the big windstorm that knocked out our power causing us to empty our fridge and freezer and we’re about to start a kitchen renovation, there isn’t much in my freezer right now!

Just some frozen veggies, frozen burgers, and some buns (the only vegan ones I can find!).  The only two omni things in my freezer are my husband’s Whole Foods cheese pizza and my daughter’s cheese ravioli (which I forgot to label, but it’s under the buns).

The picture I took of the items in the door of the freezer didn’t turn out well (at all!), so I’ll just list the items for you:

- a bag of almond meal
-a box of seitan strips
-a ziploc bag filled with veggie dogs, tofurkey sausage, soy chorizo, and vegan cheese
-vegan meatballs
-tater tots

When our kitchen renovation is complete, I’ll tag myself for this game again and show everyone what we’ve stocked our new freezer with!

Speaking of the upcoming renovation….

I’ve posted kitchen “before” pictures on Flickr.  Here’s the link.

So, that’s the end of this Vegan MoFo week for me.  I’ll still try to post during our renovation, but I will probably be more absent than usual.  However, this will provide me a great opportunity to catch up on reading all of your blogs and maybe discovering some new ones!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Vegan Hodge Podge – Second Edition

After reading this post yesterday, I was craving waffles in a major way.  I decided to make some waffles for dinner, using the recipe for Oatmeal Banana Raisin Waffles from Vegan With a Vengeance.  The batter came together nicely, but, for the life of me, I could not get them to cook in my waffle iron without pulling apart with the top of the waffle stuck to the top of the waffle iron and the bottom of the waffle stuck to the bottom of the waffle iron.  Don’t think that I still didn’t eat those waffles for dinner – I just scraped and salvaged as much as I could and the munchkin and I enjoyed our waffles anyway (really, she surprised me by how much she ate!).  I had some batter leftover (after I gave up trying to make waffles), so I halved the recipe and made some more batter and made muffins out of it this morning.  The muffins turned out really, really well and I actually think I’ll use this recipe to make more muffins in the future!

So, because I didn’t have a great dinner to post about today, I’m presenting some more Vegan Hodge Podge for today’s Vegan MoFo entry.  Here we go…

Halloween is only a week away!  Here is Peta’s list of Vegan Candy.

If you want to have a “Green”-oween, here’s a link to information on how to green up the holiday, including info on how to conserve energy on Halloween.

Since it’s never too early to start thinking about the holidays, here are links to two very adorable vegan Christmas shirts and some vegan holiday gift guides.

Merry Vegan Christmas t-shirt

Soy to the World shirt

Cheap Christmas (or any holiday) Gift Ideas for Vegan Friends

Christmas (again, any holiday) Gift Ideas for Vegans and Vegetarians

And, as far as I’m concerned, wine always makes a good gift, so here’s a link to a vegan wine guide.

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Did anyone watch How I Met Your Mother on Monday night?  The episode took place at a vegan resort and vegan jokes abounded.  Here is a synopsis of the episode and following is an example of one of the many vegan jokes:

Nora (the main character’s fiancee’s sister) says, “I’m a vegan. I wish I could tune out that moral voice inside me that says eating animals is murder, but I guess I’m just not as strong as you are.” Ted (the main character) purses his lips. “That’s ’cause you need protein.”

In fact, it is quite easy for vegans to get all the protein we need.

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On a non-vegan related note, In case you are thinking about redecorating one of the rooms in your house, here’s a link my friend sent me about some adorable wall decals and here’s a link to a picture of the decals we used to decorate our daughter’s bedroom and below are some pictures of our daughter’s bedroom (taken in March 2007, shortly before she was born – it’s not nearly as clean and orderly now!).

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There’s a vegan care package swap in the works (unrelated to the ppk swaps).  Check out this blog for more info!

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I was tagged for a freezer pic by the awesome KimmyKokonut (she has the best sugar substitutions guide I’ve ever seen!), so I’ll be posting about that tomorrow.  I told Kimmy it was great timing, because our kitchen renovation starts this weekend!  Check back for that freezer pic and the kitchen renovation “before” pictures tomorrow!

Have a great day!

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