MAKE THIS TODAY!

I had some bananas that were getting ready to go bad and searched online for a yummy vegan banana bread recipe and ran across this. It just so happened that I had an extra zucchini in my fridge that was crying to be used and was just enough for me to double this recipe. I made 2 loaves and cut into one as soon as it was cool enough. Sweet sassy molassy!!! IT. WAS. SO. GOOD.

The skeptical roommate nearly bit my hand off trying to get more. He took the rest to work with him and his coworker (the same one who loved the cookies) ate it and told him to leave the rest of the loaf so he could eat it for breakfast the next morning.

The other loaf was taken to a bbq (or cookout depending on where you're from) where we were made to leave half the loaf. They really should rename it "Crack Bread".

The only changes I would have made are: due to the fact that the bananas I had were so ripe, I would have cut back a little on the sugar and I would have used whole wheat flour in place of some (if not all) of the flour that I used. Aside from that, this bread was PERFECT.

Make some today. You won't regret it!


Here is the link in case you missed it up top: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=28286.0

No Bake Cookies!

Recently, I've been seeing these already made at the grocery store. As the name suggests, they are cookies you don't have to bake and therefore a TIME SAVER. I think it's terrible that people are too lazy to even make their own no bake cookies anymore.

My mom used to make these all of the time when I was a kid. We had trouble waiting for the delicious piles of goop to set up before we ate them, and even when I make them now I will eat the remnants off of the utensils and whatever is left in the pot.

This was an incredibly easy recipe to adapt to being acceptable to a vegan diet. I even made an addition that isn't in the traditional recipe that the roomie agreed was a wise decision. The roomie took a few of them to work and his coworker had a hard time believing they were vegan. Vegan or not, give them a shot!

No Bake Cookies
1-1/2 cups sugar (evaporated cane juice)
1 stick non-dairy butter (Earth Balance)
1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I used almond.)
1/3 cup cocoa powder (I used Ghiradelli. Worth it.)
1/3 cup peanut butter (I used natural. Don't be like me and forget to stir it AND refrigerate it. Even if you ARE like me, your cookies will still turn out splendidly.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (Don't use imitation. That's just gross.)
3 cups of Rolled Oats (May need a little more.)
1/2 cup cocao nibs (My addition. Do it.)

1. Combine first four ingredients in medium sized saucepan. Cook over medium heat stirring occasionally. Once the mixture comes to a boil, continue to cook and continually stir for 1 minute.
2. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla extract. Add oats and cocao nibs. Pay attention to how the mixture is coming together. May have to add extra oats depending on the mixture. I ended up adding one more cup of oats for a total of four cups. Mixture should look glossy, but not be runny with excess liquid.
3. Scoop out large tablespoon-fulls onto wax paper or aluminum foil. (I like to scoop them out using an ice cream scoop with a lever to push them out.)
4. Allow to cool and set up. Yield: About 16-24 depending on size of scoops

You're welcome.

The Other Night's Dinner

I got a little behind on posting our dinners and different delicious dishes I've made, but I'm going to make an attempt to catch up starting now.

One night last week I faced a common dilemma: What to make for dinner.

Spaghetti is always an option for me and it just so happened that we had spaghetti and organic/vegan pasta sauce. So, I decided that's what I should make.

We had a bunch of in season veggies and I knew I wanted to incorporate those some how. I sliced eggplant and sprinkled it with salt to draw out the bitterness. I then sliced zucchini into thin "planks", drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and slid them under the broiler for a few minutes. I made whole wheat spaghetti noodles and cooked them to the desired done-ness and drizzled them with olive oil so as not to stick together.

I roasted asparagus the same way I did the zucchini and decided to not roast the eggplant the same way since I had already roasted 2 other veggies. I instead cut the eggplant into chunks, sauteed it in olive oil and added diced red onion and minced garlic later on. Of course, I seasoned this with salt and pepper as well and added some cracked red pepper flakes. I added the jarred pasta sauce and warmed it all together.

After the veggies came out of the oven, I served up spaghetti with the sauce on top and got all fancy like and fanned the zucchini over the top. I served the asparagus on the side.


IT WAS SO DELICIOUS! It tasted like eggplant Parmesan without the Parmesan...but the cheese was not missed. I would HIGHLY recommend making this dish as even non vegans will be satisfied. Dinner dilemma solved!

Happy eating!

Happy Independence Day!

Sorry I've been so lazy with the posting this weekend. I will be back tomorrow with some meal ideas and reviews, but for now, hope you're enjoying the 4th with people you love.

God Bless America!!!

Bakery Review!

Last week I was bored and wandering around online and stumbled across a new bakery that had it's Grand Opening two weeks ago. I am all about new bakeries as that's my cup o' tea and was pretty excited to find out it was an allergen free bakery! When I worked at the cupcake store, there was at least 1 inquiry a week about whether or not we did nut free, egg free, dairy free, gluten free, sugar free cupcakes. I never knew where to send these people! Turns out, the need was big enough to open a whole bakery dedicated to it. Not only does the bakery do allergen free, but does egg and dairy free (i.e. VEGAN!) as well. On my way to fill out an application and change my driver's license to my current residence after almost 10 months, I decided to check the little bakery out. Come along!

The name of the place is Annie May's Sweet Cafe and it is located at 3110 Frankfort Ave. in Louisville. Their phone number, hours and full menu as well as an ingredients list are all available on the website.

When I got there the lunch hour had just started. There was a taco truck sitting out front serving all of the local business people on break. I would assume that they have something worked out with the Cafe's owner as customers were bringing their tacos and whatnot into the cafe. The cafe was very clean and cute. There were plenty of tables and chairs inside. Something else I noticed was how clean the case looked. I wish I would have had the presence of mind to take pictures inside the cafe, but I was on a mission!

I had been craving a cupcake since yesterday and as I am still slowly collecting the more expensive products to make vegan baked goods, I decided the cheaper option would be for me to just purchase one.



On the left is an allergen free vegan chocolate chip cookie and on the right is an allergen free vegan chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream.

As soon as I got into my car, I acted like a fat chick and ate my cupcake in no time flat. It was fantastic. It is gluten free and I immediately tasted the rice flour used in it. There is also non dairy milk in the frosting and I could tell it was rice milk. Since rice does not have that strong of a taste and it is not offensive, I did not find this disagreeable. The cupcake was rich and dense and the frosting is super sweet and delicious. The size of the cupcake and the amount of frosting were just right. It was wonderful.

The cookie was a different story. I kept it in my car while I ran errands figuring if it got a little warm, it wouldn't really be an issue. Who doesn't like warm chocolate chip cookies?! After running a particularly frustrating errand in which I did not get what I set out to accomplish done, I was SO looking forward to that cookie. I broke a piece off of it while still sitting in my car and popped it in my mouth. Of course it was warm but it was also super soft. I was salivating before even getting it into my mouth. As soon as I began chewing, I was disappointed. The cookie wasn't horrible, but it was obviously gluten free. The rice flour made it almost disintegrate and left a chalky residue in my mouth. All I wanted was a big, tall glass of milk with the thing, but of course, that would defeat the whole purpose. I understand that gluten free items are always going to be a little different than the products they're trying to imitate, but this was particularly bad. The suggestion I would give to improve this recipe is to change the blend of flour and perhaps not rely so heavily on the brown rice flour. Whether or not that will ever happen, I don't know, but until then, I'll stick with the cupcakes.

The bakery also does vegan cinnamon rolls mostly every day, but I naturally visited on a day when they did NOT have them. A return visit is in order.

For a special vegan or allergen free treat, I would definitely recommend this bakery.

Failures

We all know that failures are a part of life...especially when trying to drastically change your lifestyle.

I'm going to post about a few today and later post something more sunshine-y and interesting, so for now, bear with me.

1. The roomie is done with the "vegan thing" as he puts it.
Admittedly, this lifestyle is not an easy one to follow, especially without proper advance planning. Vegan friendly meals are more readily available in larger cities, and we even have a few restaurants here that are becoming vegan friendly, but to run out and grab a quick bite to eat at a fast food joint is not conducive to the vegan way. I wish he would have given it a few more days, but in the end, it's his decision. I'm still going to be following the lifestyle and cooking vegan meals at home, roomie or not.

Speaking of fast food,
2. I went to Wendy's today and ordered one of those new berry almond chicken salads sans chicken...
...but forgot to tell them no cheese. I ended up picking off most of the cheese that I could, but some was still ingested. I also used the nasty excuse for a dressing they give you with it. Not. Satisfied. I will probably be smelling the results from my dairy ingestion later. Pleasant, eh?

3. I still haven't been able to wriggle free of the vice grip that Diet Coke has on me.
I ordered a large Diet Coke with my salad...and I'm still drinking it. I am fully aware of how horrible the stuff is for me, but I have made a lot of big changes so far and am not 100% ready to let that one simple, horrible pleasure in life go just yet. Sue me. Shun me. At least I get my D.C. fix.

That's all for now.

Last Night's Dinner

The past few nights around our house have been rushed, and as I'm still not very well versed in vegan cooking, I was having a hard time coming up with something fast to fix for dinner last night. I had bought things to make a version of "Texas Caviar", so I decided to wing it and go with that.

What I came up with was very, very similar but I didn't use bottled salad dressing. Instead, I added olive oil and red wine vinegar to taste and added Italian seasoning. I also added the juice of one lime and since I didn't have a bell pepper, I just didn't put it in. I didn't have any cherry or grape tomatoes, so I diced two Roma tomatoes and added those. My recipe also had 2 cans of black eyed peas, though I'm sure one would have sufficed. I added about a cup of frozen corn kernels that I intended to just thaw but ended up cooking. Oops!

This is what I ended up with (forgive the blurry picture, I was using my old, crappy phone):The roomie seemed to like it okay, but was pretty disappointed when I notified him that this WAS dinner. I served it with blue corn tortilla chips (all natural, organic and all that jazz) and we ate it like salsa. After a few chip-fulls, I ended up eating it like a salad with crumbled chips on top of it.

Once we were satisfied with this, we polished off a carton of strawberries between the two of us. We were both satiated and didn't feel like a couple of slugs. We had plenty of energy to go check out the new Transformer's movie!

This is a recipe that works great as a summer side. You can serve it as a salad or like I did with the chips. Either way, it's pretty darn tasty. It's better the next day after it's been given a chance to let the flavors meld. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Happy eating!

You're not an A-hole and I don't Smell Funny

I could make a post like everyone else does on the whys of my making a go of a vegan lifestyle, but for fear of being cliche, I'm instead going to make a list of things we are NOT trying to prove with our recent decision.

Buckle up for safety!

1. Every vegan is a crazy hippie/hipster that smells funny and thinks you're an a-hole for eating meat.

I don't think you're an a-hole. Just like it's my business and my own personal choice of what I put in my body, it's your business if you want to eat a steak, or a whole chicken, feathers and all, or 5 pounds of bacon as your midnight snack or all of the preceding deep fried, covered in cheese and topped with a dozen over easy eggs.

I will never try to force anything down anyone's throat. If someone asks me a question, I will respond appropriately: e.g. Do you miss having to run to the bathroom to poop your brains out anytime you eat pizza or ice cream? My response: No.

Yes, I do have some very strong convictions as to the why of my choices and I will discuss them at a later point. That's the beauty of living in a free country as ours, however. We're free to make our own decisions and express the beauty of individuality. With all of the problems of our Country, at least we have that.

As far as being a hipster...I will never, ever be cool enough. I have a few plaid shirts that I like to wear and I enjoy a big, fatty beard on a dude, but I enjoy other things to drink besides PBR. The roomie absolutely refuses to wear any kind of plaid and cannot go more than a week and a half without shaving. Hipsters we are not.

We cannot be labeled as hippies, either. I know personally I am not that "free". I shave my armpits. I like to smell good using things other than patchouli oil, I don't smoke weed and I do not look very good in those weird little headband things.

Maybe we're anomalies or maybe we're just normal people trying to make more responsible choices.

2. Vegans are malnourished little weaklings who eat nothing but carrot sticks and potato chips.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some kettle fried potato chips, but just like anything else, they have to be enjoyed in moderation and worked in to a more healthy, balanced diet.

There is also this weird notion that vegans don't get enough protein. Most Americans get more than enough protein in their diets, and since when did protein become the superior nutrient? In all the conversations I've ever heard between vegans and omnivores, I rarely hear those opposing the vegan lifestyle be concerned about vitamins and minerals. The omnivore is more than likely not getting the nutrients they need as most Americans do not. And what about fiber? I'm not a nutritionist and am not going to go into depth about the health benefits of fiber, but again, the average American is not consuming the daily recommended amount of fiber.

If left uneducated and ignorant about what is going into our bodies, we ARE going to become malnourished. The vegan selecting some processed crap to consume just because it has a big "VEGAN" stamped on the front of it is no better off than the person who runs through the drive thru of some fast food restaurant that pumps out mass quantities of God knows what.

My biggest goal in this experiment of diet is to ultimately become healthier. I am a little ahead of the curve as far as knowing the subject matter as I have had nutrition classes and have been reading about about nutrition seemingly forever. I am not diving into this blindly and am doing my best to guide my roomie in the right direction as well. Knowledge may be power, but what is knowledge without the proper application?

3. Vegans only eat nasty stuff like tofu and beans.

First of all, lay off! Tofu is wonderful and versatile and so are beans! From what other sources are we going to get that elusive protein?! (Insert sarcastic smirk.)
Yes, we will probably eat a lot of tofu and beans in different forms, BUT I have started subscribing to many different vegan blogs and have added a bunch of vegan cookbooks to my Amazon.com wishlist in preparation for our recent venture. I certainly do not want to only eat tofu and beans and I'm sure the roomie would appreciate a little more versatility as well. I will be using recipes from the previously stated sources and featuring them on this handy dandy blog and rate them according to how tasty (or not) they are...tofu and beans and all.

4. I'm trying to become a spokesperson for PETA (or any animal rights group, for that matter).

I love puppies and had an absolutely fantastic dream about a kitten the other day, but I don't think it's wrong to raise an animal with the purpose of using it for food (or even clothing...i.e. leather jackets, not fugly mink coats). With that being said, I do not think that the way our country raises and processes animals for food is healthy for the animals, healthy for the environment or healthy for our bodies.

Factory farms are disease ridden places where zombie animals are kept until the appropriate size deemed necessary by the money hungry companies that feed the carnivorous nation with this tainted "meat" or milk, or eggs.

The treatment of these animals is abhorrent, the food they are fed is vile and the chemicals they are pumped full of with the intention of righting the wrongs of their conditions is poisoning them as well as the Nation.

Grass fed cattle that are allowed to walk around without running into another cow live much healthier lives and in turn are much healthier for the consumer. If I'm going to eat a steak, this is where I would want it to come from. Due to the backwardness of our food system, however, the production of animals that are raised under natural conditions becomes very expensive. This cost is passed on to the consumer, and unless you are an affluent individual, these products become very unaffordable. Until I get a sugar daddy that will enable me to afford such luxuries, I'm going to play it on the safe side and avoid tainted animal products, thankyouverymuch.

So, yes, I love animals but yes, I also love to eat animals (BACON. Mmmmmmmm...), so I will not be the poster child for any animal rights activist organizations anytime soon.



I'm sure as this project progresses, there will be more things I can add to this list, but this helps give a slight overview for you, the reader to know what is going on in this little brain of mine. If you have a question, please feel free to either email it to me or leave it in the comments and I will answer it to the best of my ability.

Happy eating!

An Introduction

My roommate and I have decided to embark on a fantastic new journey starting tomorrow, June 27th, 2011. After much deliberation, we have decided to try out being Vegan!

To some, this may come as a shock. To others, it makes sense. Regardless, I want to take a little time to explain how we came to this decision and what we are hoping to convey through this change in our lifestyles.

When I was a teenager, my grandfather had prostate cancer. Watching and caring for his brother not too long before dying from a combination of the disease and the treatments, he decided to try a more holistic approach. My grandfather researched long and hard, reading many books on diet and its effects on the body. With his findings, he learned that a vegetarian diet containing a vast majority of raw fruits and vegetables and supplemented with natural nutrients in various forms was what would help him become cancer free. My mother took note of my grandfather's findings and switched our family over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I went something like 4 years without eating a hamburger. Since then, my immediate family has switched back to an omnivore's diet and my grandfather has remained cancer free for about 15 years.

Throughout my adulthood, I have still exercised some of the dietary practices that I learned in earlier years, many times being what I call "accidentally vegetarian". When eating out, I'll occasionally order a steak or burger, but will usually go for the lighter choices. Many times these choices did not come from my desire to be healthier, but out of sheer preference. I had developed a taste for things that were leaner and better for me than some, but I unfortunately have also always had a sweet tooth and an affinity for things that are much less good for me.

Being overweight since early childhood, I have been on almost every diet in the book. Most of them worked, but I very quickly grew tired of these methods and longed for a more "normal" existence. Unfortunately this "normal" existence consisted of me still having a big butt and fitting only in plus sizes.

It's easy to place the blame on genetics or being a product of our environments for being overweight or unhealthy, but at some point personal responsibility kicks in as mine did years ago. It has been a constant struggle for me to try to fit in to what is considered "normal" or "healthy". I have tried numerous methods and know that what it boils down to is that if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. I also know that if these calories are not from nutrient dense sources, these food sources are not going to provide to me the nutrients necessary for me to lead a healthy life. Basically in computer speak, garbage in, garbage out. If I eat garbage, I'm going to feel like garbage.

I've decided to try out following a Vegan lifestyle for a year. My roommate, although we are not going to be living together for a year, is going to try to stick to it as best as he can while we are still living together and perhaps after.

The purpose of this blog is to follow my new decision and document successes, failures, struggles and victories associated with being Vegan.

Later I will go into more depth and reasoning behind my decision, but tonight I must go to work.

Happy Sunday night!