VeganMofo Day 19/Day 43

Sunflower butter and raspberry preserves on tortilla, pringles multi grain chips, and yogurt with granola

Angry birds shirt, and jeans. Got the hood up because it is cold!

He jacked my curry noodle soup!

Sadness, I ordered Isa noodles, and they brought me tofu and pork :/

It was another long day. After school, we were going to go wash obscene amounts of laundry, and decided to swing by Crystal Jade (amazing and very vegan friendly) for their 4th anniversary celebration (a meal for $8.88, hell yeah! Cheaper than us going through taco bell and eatting in a laundromat). It was crazy busy (great for them, perhaps not so much for ordering vegan food while they were getting slammed). They give you a TON of food if you dine in, and we usually have left overs for a few days. Really, that much food. We decided to finally try the Isa noodles which were strongly suggested by Aunt Shirley (the owner who may be the sweetest woman I've ever met, she will come sit down and talk to you and show the little ones how to make roses from daikons, and she brought the little man a special fried banana dessert for bringing her a grand total of 10 new customers. She is a gem.) strongly suggested them to us last time, and she hasn't done us wrong before, so that coupled with the fact that their named after a vegan culinary goddess sounded like a good plan. The waitress we had initially was new-ish and apparantly is not familiar with all of the dishes, and I was brough someone elses food. I, having never ordered the Isa noodles before, thought maybe they had an analogue of some sort in them (as far as I know, they only have tofu and mock duck, which is amazing as well, but I digress) and upon closer inspection of this weird looking tan stuff snuggled up with my tofu, realized it was probably pork, thankfully, it never touched my mouth, but took about 20 minutes (because of the being so busy) to be able to flag down the waitress and let her know that my Isa noodles surely did not have pork in them. She appologized profusely, and had them whip up a fresh batch. We continued noshing on our curry noodle soup (I had to order a second bowl, because Mr. Picky, who doesn't like curry noodle soup wanted to try a bite, and then half the bowl was gone), vegan egg rolls, and vegan curry puffs. When the food finally came it was delicious! It's slightly sweet, slightly spicy, and savory, with crispy fried tofu, and slurpable (is that a word) noodles. Little man also met his future wife. There was a little girl who was flirting with him the whole time he was eatting his appetizers and waiting for the meal, and Aunt Shirley was taking pictures of all the guests to celebrate their anniversary. She asked to take a pic of the little love birds together. It was adorable!! When they were walking out, he tried to propose to her but they were already heading out the door. Then he tells me that when he gets older, if he remembers her face, he's going to try to marry her. Thanks to the magic of face book, that may be an option. Lol.

VeganMofoDay 18/Day 42

Leftovers!

Purple potato and red bean tacos

Somehow I missed the outfit pic today. Little man  had leftovers for lunch. He had the remains of the shells and cheese, with carrots and a slice of garlic bread (I love how challah looks like happy little wedges of clouds when you slice it) with an oreo for a snack. Something about the sun setting around 7 is kicking my butt. I picked him up around 5:40 and had to hang out at the school for parent teacher conferences at 6. Conferences went well mostly. The teacher says he hates handwriting, but is doing excellent at everything else. Reading, science (his favorite) and math are all above level. Way to go little man. Dinner tonight was purple potato and red bean tacos. I think I'm going to throw some kale in mine for lunch tomorrow.

VeganMofo Day 17/Day41

Daiya quesadilla with carrot sticks, ginger soy vinagrette dip, and vanilla Whole Soy yogurt with maple brown sugar granola

Rocking a blue tee for his cheer performance tonight!

We were time traveling at the park. He was digging up dino bones.

Roads End Organics mac and chreese with home made challah garlic bread, and green beans

Today was little man's cheer performance! Last day of cheerleading for him this year though. It was soooo cute! All the little ones were super excited to jump around, shout, and shake their pom poms.  I must admit I was never a fan of cheerleaders in highschool, or jr high, or, hell, ever, but I guess I'm over that aversion now :) He was adorable. Lunch was a daiya quesadilla, with carrot sticks and ginger soy vinagrette, vanilla Wholesoy yogurt with maple brown sugar granolla. After his performance we went to the park to play until the sun started setting. There weren't any other kids there at first, so I "had to" play along. We time traveled (by had to I mean I can still fit down the slides, and will gladly play on the equipment when given the chance. I love the days when there are no other kids there.) Then we headed home and I made the dinner of his choice. He chose shells and chreese, with marinated green beans, and garlic bread made from the last of our challah, then he hopped in the tub, got jammies on and we headed over to visit friends. Us to watch American Horror Story, him to play with the animals, and play on his leap pad. It was a good day.

VeganMofo Day 16/Day 40

We totally overslept this morning (I was having a crazy dream that we became carnies, and then was like, Why is that ride beeping, is it going to blow up?! And one of my fellow carnies, was like "No, that's your alarm clock, wake up" and I did, and it was 8:20 :/ Craptastic) so it's a boring lunch kind of day again, sunflower butter and strawberry preserves on challah, vanilla WholeSoy yogurt, and buffalo wheat thins. Todays outfit is a gray angry birds shirt, and black levi's. Maybe some day, we will be carnies. I've always wanted to....

Chopped Challenge part 2: Sweet and spicy butternut quiche

So, I'm kinda pissed that the top cracked, so the recipe obviously needs tweeking, but the flavor results were delicious. I used 1/2 butternut squash mashed, 1 block medium firm tofu, mashed as well, 1/4 cup tahini, 1/4 cup nooch, 2 cloves minced garlic, 2tsp minced rosemary, 1/8th cup water, 1/2 cup apricot preserves, salt, 4 grinds from the good ole fashioned red pepper/chili grinder, a pinch of white pepper, and a couple sprigs of rosemary for decoration. For the crust I used 1 cup popcorn meal, 1 cup whole wheat flour, a pinch of salt 1/3 cup olive oil, and 1/4 cup water. Baked at 350 for 45 minutes. Tastes pretty good even if it did crack, but the boy wouldn't touch it (he's weird about anything from a pie pan) so I had to do the popped tarts too.

popcorn meal

the crust

Ready for the oven

Ready for my tummy

VeganMofo Day 15/Popped tarts: Chopped/Vegan challenge!/Day 39

 

The dough rolled out.

Filling the rectangles on my ugly cookie sheet

Outfit of the day

Iced and ready to eat!

Nom! I feel a little guilty that they weren't ready for his breakfast, but I had to test one out before posting the recipe :x

Yummy indeed!

Don't you love the sugar skull cookie he decorated :)

And so the week begins.Little man wore his solar system t-shirt and jeans today, with mismatched socks, one blue cookie monster, and one black cars. I can't wait to hear his grandma bitch about it :) Little man is having some tofu spinach florentine ravioli and a slice of  garlic bread for lunch, with a side of strawberries, and a sugar cookie, with some vanilla milk to wash it down. It was a long, fun weekend, with the exception of my meeting yesterday evening. I was super excited for the chopped/vegan challenge! So I am opting for two entries "Popped tarts" and a sweet and spicy butternut quiche. The ingredients were pop corn, butternut squash, apricot preserves, and fresh rosemary. To start, you pop come pop corn. Easy enough. Then throw about 2 cups of pop corn in the food processor. I had heard you could make popcorn flour this way, but apparently my food processor is kinda old, and wasn't quite feeling up to par, so I settled for popcorn meal, it should roughly resemble matzoh meal if that helps at all. For the popped tarts, I used 1/2 cup of the organic popcorn meal, and 1 cup of unbleached white organic flour. Mix in 1/2 cup of earth balance, or other vegan margarine that is suitable for baking, and 1/4 cup of roasted butternut squash. (between both recipes, I used one medium squash.)Toss in 1 tsp of sugar (I like florida crystals organic) and 1/2 tsp salt. Mix it until it's, well, dough, and let it chill in the fridge until it firms up enough to roll. You may need more flour, mine was a little soft still after hanging out in the fridge overnight, so I just threw 1/4 cup flour on the table to roll it in and they came out awesome. After it's chilled, roll it out into a giant rectangle about 3/16 of an inch thick. Divide that into 4 equal rectangles. You can divide those in half, or opt for the fold in half method. I folded, but I'm a busy single mama :) Take the remains of the half of a butternut (that you already took the 1/4th cup out of) and mash the hell out of it with 1/4-1/3 cup of apricot preserves, and 1/2 tsp finely minced rosemary. Fill half of each rectangle with 2-3 tbsp of the mixture. Fold, crimp or fork seal the edges and bake at 3:50 for about 20-30 minutes. Mix vegan, organic powdered/confectioners sugar with a little bit of the apricot preserves, (I also added annatto based food coloring to make them pop and be a little more autumnal) and a splash or two of soy/almond/hemp/whatever makes you happy vegan milk until you have royal icing. Drizzle or spread  on top of the cooled popped tarts (15 minutes or so?) and enjoy! I also made some chocolate frosting for them, by mixing powdered sugar with cocoa powder and blue natural food coloring to make it look almost black, and a little soy milk.Post 2 with the quiche coming soon!

VeganMofo Day 13/Zombie Walk

"When ever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like....eatting your brains"

Today was the zombie walk, in which Zombies invade a neighborhood for the greater portion of the day all in the name of good clean, gruesome fun, and charity. Win-win right? There was an 80's theme this year so I was asking the boy how he wanted to dress up, and showing him some fashion styles from the 80's (I thought he was going to go preppy there for a minute, thank God he didn't) and he fell for Robert Smith, and decided to go 80's goth. Phew! Close call there. So we took a Snookie wig from last year that I grabbed by accident when I was looking for a good black wig for my Kali Costume, and chopped it and sprayed/gelled the crap out of it to give him a little dude Robert Smith wig, and he wore his suit jacket that I made for him for Fashion Week last year. I just wore a cute little dress from hot topic, and some lace-y stockings, and ankle booties. The make up was awesome, I wish it had photographed better, but for some reason, the blood had a greenish cast to it in artificial lighting, and with the pic, so it kinda looks like I have poo smeared on my face, but oh well. Look at my emo little guy living up to the character! He was growling at people left and right. What fun! It was an hour long walk so my feet and thighs are killing me (it's hard to walk like a zombie for that long!) but it was so worth it! Sadly only a few people knew who he was, but you should have seen his face light up when they were like "hey it's a little robert smith zombie!" sooo cute XD No food pics today, but we had breakfast tacos with tofu scramble for brunch, lots of chocolate and lollipops, and chinese foods for dinner (fried tofu with string beans and spring rolls).

VeganMofo Day 12/Day 38 of school

Leftovers for lunch. Considering it's pizza and vegan garlic cheese bread sticks, I don't think he'll mind :)

Mmmm. Challah.

The boy loves his spinach, provided it's in ravioli, or on pizza. Whatever it takes to get greens in him I guess :)

I had to pick up some Daiya wedges while we were at Whole Foods. I went for rosemary and apricot preserves, and left missing $93 :/ Whole foods is a dangerous place for me to go to pick up 2 things.

Shabbat Dinner

He ate 12 raviolis! I was stuffed after 5 and a few slices of challah and daiya. Growth spurt maybe?

Today little man had leftovers for lunch. Left over pizza that is, with strawberries and chocolate soy milk, with his haunted silly house cookie. After I got off work, I braided my challah to let it rise, picked up the boy, and hauled ass to whole foods to pick up the remaining ingredients for the Chopped challenge. I only meant to get rosemary and apricot preserves, and figured I'd pick up daiya while I was out I swear. 3 wedges of daiya, 2 pkgs of tortillas, a pound of gummy bears, a bag of lollipops, a container of vanilla whole soy, 2 lbs of  purple potatoes, tofu spinach florentine ravioli, 2 lbs of brown lentils, a container of mexi-cheddar oat not cheese dip, a box of matzoh, a jumbo jar of vegenaise, and a bag of endangered species chocolate bars later we left with my head hanging down, and my checking account depleted lol. Shabbat dinner was tofu spinach florentine with marinara sauce, frenched green beans, challah (with eb for the boy and a slice of daiya for me) kedeem grape juice for the boy and manischewitz for me. It was a nice evening. And a big day ahead tomorrow. Zombie walk time!!!

Vegan Mofo Day 11/Day 37

Lunch today is garlic bread slices with pepperoni seitan slices, plain yogurt with diced strawberry chunks and a swirl of agave, organic apple juice, and my vampire bat cookie. Sorry for the crappy picture quality, it was 6 am and black outside and my kitchen has shitty lighting. Also no little man pic today  as he was taken to school by his Mimi and after picking him up from his party he he was kinda grubby. We did have pizza tonight from Nightflight. Thin crust, his half black and green olives with FYH mozarella, my half tomato, artichoke heart, banana pepper, garlic. They used to have tempeh bacon which is amazing with the combo, but they haven't had it in months since switching to mock duck (which is good, but I want smokey with my peppers and chokes damn it!) and mock pork. It was a long day. :Looking forward to the weekend.

VeganMofo Day10/Day 36

Straw-bana-sun seed sammie on mutt bread

He was waiting for me to measure him, but he has not grown in the last 2 days

Pre-bake basted with bruschetta flavored olive oil and sprinkled with minced garlic

Post bake with the garlic slightly carmelized and oh so fragrant

stuffed acorn squash with frenched green been almond risotto with kidney beans, and some french fried onions on top for a little crunch. I sliced the bread and made a few pieces of garlic bread with it. The garicky-ness was amazing! Vampires beware :)

Little man's portion, he hates french fried onions :/ This makes me sad. I think it was because of that time that he was two and got into a container when I was in the bathroom and ate the whole thing. It gave him baby onion breath for days if I remember correctly.

The artist at work. He wanted to go silly with his cookies instead of creepy

His masterpieces (he got a little carried away with the orange which caused it to run, and so his jack-o-lantern's mouth and part of his haunted house are on the foil instead)

My vampire bat

Today little man had a strawberry-banana-sunflower butter sandwich on the mutt bread. Whole grain pringles and an oreo (I know they are horrible, our local stores are going to force me to drive all the way to whole foods once a week again. The organic/vegan options used to be pretty good. Now they are starting to suck again. And I hate driving to whole foods. The curvy lanes and traffic annoy me, and the employees at whole foods get pissed when you coupon there. Damned pseudo-hipsters. Maybe i should just bake more?) Outfit for today was yellow dkny shirt and jeans. It was a busy day! After cheerleading (yes, my son is a cheerleader) we ate, went to pick up a present for his friend Aiden's birthday party tomorrow, wrapped the present, had him fill out the card, and off to bed. I have to work tomorrow at 7 am drop him off with his Mimi and Grammie, and straight to the party after work. I'm thinking tomorrow is going to be a pizza night.

VeganMofo Day 9/Day 34/Picture Day

Today is picture day! And doesn't my little man look handsome!  He wore his grey button front long sleeve shirt with pearlized (not real m.o.p., the snaps are vegan) decorative straps and snaps at the shoulders and cuffs, with his DKNY jeans. Lunch today is brown rice/half wheat bread I made last night (it's a mutt loaf because I ran out of flour. How does such a thing happen?!) with some more (I made 4 rolls) seitanic pepperoni, strawberries (his favorite), and whole grain pringles (which I scored for $0.38 at Kmart, yay coupons!) He has apple juice in his batman thermos that he is using for the first time, because I finally ran out of those single serving silks. Sad.. Come on coupon fairy bring us more soymilk q's :) Today is library day. Excited to see what books he brings back, and kinda happy he took the Lorax back, because he almost cries towards the end every time I read it after the last Truffula tree is cut down. His mission for the day is to try something new! I'm excited to hear about what he tried tonight.

VeganMofo Day 8/Day 33

 

Lunch today was kinda boring, but I hadn't had a chance to actually bake a loaf of bread yet. Leftovers from last night of breadstick, and bowtie pasta with marinara sauce, chocolate almond milk, and strawberries. Outfit for the day was his green solar system shirt (which you can't see under his coat anyway) and jeans. It was chilly this morning, so he pulled out his bat hood from his backpack. I wish the bat ears stood up better, you can't really see them very well in the pic, and I was going to take another one, but there were 2 rambunctious little ones chasing each other around us, and I felt like I was being herded. And then when everyone else realized that he had a batman hoodie come out of his backpack, they were swarming him. He  said he had fun playing the poisonous words song in music today. I guess it's kind of like Simon says with learning notes?

Vegan Mofo Day 5/ Day 32

TGIF or maybe not, because I'm working all weekend anyway :( Outfit for the day was jeans and the scooby doo shirt. Lunch today was sunnut butter and strawberry preserves cracker-wiches strawberry wholesoy yogurt, chocolate almond milk, carrot sticks with sesame ginger vinagrette, and strawberries. Sad that I won't be able to take part in the VeganMofo Iron chef beet competetion. I had some cupcakes in mind, but am going to be too busy working this weekend.

VeganMofo Day 4/ Day 31 of School

Lunch today was goulash with freeze dried strawberries, a blueberry archer farms fruit leather,a vanilla almond milk, and a bat (or batman?) cookie that we baked last night, but ran out of time to decorate. Maybe tomorrow night? The cookie recipe was http://www.vegweb.com/recipes/quick-and-easy-sugar-cookies I was worried at first that they were going to be too soft, but they came out great, although as a heads up, if you plan to make cut out cookies, I recommend rolling them straight onto a floured cookie sheet, and cutting them out on there, because the dough is really, really soft even after refrigerating it for a couple of hours.Outfit of the day was a forest green polo with breast pockets, and jeans. Little man's teacher had spoke to me yesterday morning when I dropped him off at school. She told me that his reading and comprehension level is at a third grade level, and they put him in a special reading club with older kids, and they're working on chapter books! So to celebrate I took him to McFoster's Natural Kind (a local vegetarian restaurant) for dinner. He wanted blueberry pancakes. I got the salisbury fake lentil loaf with smashed potatoes and gravy, and sauteed veggies. It was delicious! I am a lover of lentils though, they taste preseasoned always. Is that weird? Because they're kinda peppery? Anyway, the food was amazing! We also ordered the tempura veggies (G-d help me I love peppers and broccoli fried) with vegan cucumber ranch dressing (wow, I ate two cups full) and miso tahini dressing (finally found something little man likes besides his beloved ginger vinagrette!) We had the GF/vegan chocolate chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Very yummy as well. Then we went to the store so I could pick up some VWG. It was labelled on the shelf, in the middle of the gluten free section as Gluten Free Flour :/ Wow there are some stupid people in corporate jobs, and I will leave it at that.