scandal rocks the vegan world.

Veganism is all all peace and love, right? Oh, how I wish. You've all seen the drama surrounding the veganyumyum book-that-isn't. I just wanted to weigh in and send some love to the herbivore duo. This whole event is just confirming how great Josh & Michelle are. They're really coping with a huge knife-in-the-back & public endangerment of their business with nothing but class. Herbivore, I salute you!

Now, let's all go show our love with the almighty dollar! Shouldn't be hard, they get lots of my dollars as it is. If I could buy one of everything, I would. Oh, and while you're there, preorder Joanna's book- Yellow Rose Recipes. Joanna is one of my favorite Vegans, and I'm just dying waiting for her book to be in my little hands.

good ole salad!

I'm a salad-obsessed vegan, Twigs and berries all the way! Okay, not really twigs. Actually it's spinach, cherry tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, walnuts & poppyseed dressing. sooooooooooooooo yummy. I could eat it all day long. I do sometimes, actually. One of the reasons being vegan has always been so simple for me. As long as I have produce, I am happy!

P.S. I've been a day behind on VeganMoFo since I started and this wimpy post is my way of settling up! Take that, mofo!

"corn dogs are dead in my life"

Um. Shae drew this last night. Laughing and laughing the entire time. I'm not exactly sure what's up because he hasn't mentioned corn dogs. ever. I don't think he's ever had one in his life. He became vegetarian at about 2 1/2... and I didn't let him eat hot dogs anyway (choking hazard!).

I guess I need to figure out how to make vegan corn dogs?

Isa does it again!

mmmmmmmm lasagna! Probably my favorite food ever.

My grandma used to invite us over for lasagna every once in a while. At the time, I remember griping about it and scraping every last bit of the offensive "brain cheese" and meat off of the noodles. Ick. But at some point, she stopped making it and we started. My mom would make the Grandma version, sans the ricotta since everyone one of us hated it, and I'd make a vegan version. It was a really basic lasagna, jar sauce, meat, cheese, ricotta. Our vegan version uses boca crumbles, soy cheese, and a tofu ricotta that a friend taught me years ago. Shae always picked out every last bit of it!He loves the lasagna. Begs for it! Praises it! But would go to great lengths not to let a droplet of that tofu ricotta touch his little tounge.

Well tonight, I used Isa's Tofu Ricotta recipe fromVegan With a Vengeance and Shae inhaled it! He was eating it raw while I was cooking. Actually sought out the ricotta instead of banishing it to the side of his plate. I'm still a little shocked. And full. Really, really full.

And yes, this was another food post brought to you by the motivation of VeganMoFo.

R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E (november 4th)

R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-L-L-E

omg. seriously. how many times can you listen to that word being spelled out before caving in and making it? Shae learned how to spell ratatouille and was incredibly proud of himself. noisily. over and over. So I told him to search through the cookbooks and find me a recipe. He discovered a Chickpea Ratatouille recipe in Vive Le Vegan! and we got to it. even better, he loovveeeess chickpeas. I honestly had no idea what ratatouille even was, but it was super simple to make so I'm all about that. Shae liked it, minus the "gross" tomatoes, which "should NEVER be cooked", that is. Matt and I thought it was good, but very unimpressive. Eh, whatever. We ate it served over brown rice with broccoli on the side.

Hey there, VeganMoFo. You know how everytime you see a blog about vegan food, it's the most magical, gorgeous, complicated meal you've ever seen? I should have already warned you that this blog was not going to be like that AT ALL. I love to bake. But cooking. Well, cooking takes too much energy for me on a regular basis. Like tonight, we got home kind of late, were all super hungry. We had ate a late breakfast and skipped lunch. And I'm tired and just want to eat! Right now! So I did one of our favorite mega-fast, mega-filling meals, Yellow Rice & Black Beans. The rice is Mahatma's and the beans are from a can. We put some tofutti mozzarella in it, eat it with blue corn chips. Gorge ourselves. Steamed veggies on the side.

I asked Shae what he thought of it (he was too busy playing with his dad to help cook)and he said "Mom! I ate ALL OF IT!!". And back to his football game he went.

Vegans can be lazy, without being junkfood addicts.

the cuteness hurts!

Support your local (or unlocal, whatever!) Vegan family! Buy pins! lots of them!. There's some jewelry and embroidered thongs. (yep, you read that correctly.) at my etsy shop too.

VeganMoFo

Soooooo tonight we made the infamous Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets and let's just say that I could have eaten that entire recipe myself, they were so good. Shae flipped for them! He made the Potato Squashers from Eat Drink & Be Vegan, by himself. Got to use a knife and everything. Happy kid. Those were awesome too. I have no idea why they were so much better than regular baked potatoes, but that bit of olive oil really kept us from getting the Earth Balance out and drowning them like we usually would. And those crispy skins... yuuuummmmm. Also, who knew that preheating the oven was the most exciting thing ever?!?!? (according to Shae it is.)

Shae's commentary on dinner- "This dinner was as great as WATERMELON! P.S. I love watermelon." Um, yeah. That's quite a compliment there. You know how kids always bug for junkfood in the store? Since Shae was old enough to talk, he's begged, at every shopping trip, for watermelon. He's gotten much smarter and now knows that politely asking and reminding me of watermelon's healthiness is the surefire way to getting his way.

So since I'm paranoid, Shae still thinks using a butter knife is a privilege. But thanks to Hung and Top Chef, he's been wanting to use "real knives! real BIG knives!". ack. I gave in and let him pierce the potatoes with a steak knife. Still has 10 fingers!


And then his yummy potato goodness-


I forgot to take a picture after we put the mushroom gravy on, because these cutlets smelled soooo good and we were starving. But believe me, we will be making many, many more of these. Like, maybe even today already. So unbelievably good. Isa & Terry have replaced our dependence on storebought faux chicken patties. Especially since they were so incredibly easy (and cheap!) to make. Yay VCon!


And of course, an action shot. He inhaled a cutlet & a potato and then went back for seconds. of both. and actually ate every single bit of it. That's too be expected with anything potato, but is a huge compliment towards the cutlets.

Happy Halloween!

okay, we have chickpea cutlets(vcon) and potato squashers(EDBV) in the oven, Shae is entranced in pokemon world(on his DS), so I'm going to continue with my quest of getting up-to-date with new pictures on here.

Next up, cupcakes! Vegan cupcakes, once again, took over Shae's classroom. First time for third grade and whooooaaa did they go over well! His pregnant teacher ate 3 of them, then begged me to be the official cupcake maker for all class events. Another teacher begged for the recipes, even though they know we are vegan. Hell yeah. I usually always use recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World for all my cakey needs, but this time I only used it for the frosting. Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting, worth the price of the book alone. I'm so not kidding. For the cupcakes, I usedLa Dolce Vegan- Tara's Chocolate Cake. In our house, we refer to it as "Matt's cake" because there was one of Shae's birthdays, long ago, where I tried like 3 different cake recipes and they all flopped and looked horrible and I flipped out, until Matt saved the day. Grabbed a random recipe and magically turned out the best cake ever (it's just a wacky cake! agh!). So my whole family requests "Matt's Cake" from time to time, mostly just to torment me I think. It really is good, moist cake though. Anyway, then we dressed them up all gross-like to please the little 8 year olds.




and on a totally unrelated note, yet on the same camera card--- this is our little buddy, Eli, modeling one of my vegan knit hats. isn't he adorable?!


Back to Halloween! This is the first year that Shae has carved his own pumpkin! Dad helped him pick out a stencil and set it up and Shae concentrated soooooo hard.


Cute, right?


And of course, Dad did one too. I choose the owl, that was my huge contribution! Matt does some awesome pumpkins every year.


And what to Vegan Ninja's do? They use their stealth weaponry on.... pumpkins. oh yeah.


Also, they attack the Devil! She who holds the UnVegan Candy, beware!

yo, veganmofo!

Shae's been super interested in cooking lately and asking to be allowed to do more complicated stuff, so we're joining in on the veganmofo thing! That means that each day in november (yeah, yeah, we're a day late), we'll be posting something vegan food related. Should be fun & motivating. Shae's already asking if he can use the chef knife. scary. (not a chance, there, buddy!)

Check back later on for our chickpea cutlets from veganomicon.

in disguise

"A wig is a hat, because it's headwear" Not allowed to wear costumes to school on halloween was apparently getting to Shae. He has to wear uniform colors and plain stuff to school and he's never been a fan of that. Halloween was hat day- a charity thing where you donate a buck and wear whatever hat you want to school. So Shae convinces me that a wig is a hat and I cave in because really, look how adorable he is. You would too. Next thing you know he's begging me to draw a "mustache and soul patch" on him. When he walked into school, it was like he was instantly famous. Screams and points and crowds. whoa.



his real costume:

smile! laugh!

a bunch of our friends have just had babies and shae's just loving it. this is my oldest friend rachel's little boy, cole. he just happens to be shae's "favorite baby". he's only 4 weeks old, but shae was trying his hardest to get smiles and giggles, mostly he just got wide eyes and wiggles.

BBQ, eagles, festivals and slides.

Last year, we went to an fsu game and it rained, we froze and fsu was totally crushed by wake forest. not fun. This year, the weather was gorgeous, fsu creamed duke, and we ate some amazing food beforehand. At lunchtime, we had some goddess tofu, steamed veggies & chocolate cake at New Leaf Market. The goddess tofu was amaaaaaazinggg. And I'm pretty sure Shae is in love with whoever made the cake. Then right before the game, we had BBQ tofu sandwiches and mac & cheese at Soul Veg, our favorite place on earth! Would live there if we could, even if it IS just a portable food cart. Sigh.

this is the BBQ tofu sandwich:


and Shae with his Trademark Soul Veg mac & cheese


No pictures from the actual game, since I left my camera in the car. Oops.

On Sunday we went to a fun festival at St Andrews State Park called Nature's Gallery. It had a big focus on natures, animals, the earth, and local artists. Shae did lots of crafts- drew on a reusable shopping bag and learned what happens to those nasty plastic one that the cashiers push at us, made lots of crafts, met local artists.

Here is with with his skull mask. With the lovely "tears of blood". DO NOT call it a pirate, cause it's totally not. no, no, no.


And here is the scary bald eagle, who I am pretty sure wanted to murder me.


Matt and Shae leaving the festival. Shae loaded down with crafts, Matt carrying all my plants


And then Shae going down a huge inflatable slide at a fall festival Sunday night. He did this no less than a million times.

biloxi weekend

last weekend, we went to biloxi, mississippi to visit matts family. i'm pretty surprised that we didn't have to drag shae out of there he had so much fun.

doggie treats!

we can't find ANY vegan doggie treats locally anymore (thanks A LOT panama city!), so we made some peanut butter cookies from http://www.yummyfordogs.org/ for him. he is one happy guy!

who needs roomba?


rambling on about how he plans on winning top chef, season 19.


sneaking cookie dough.


and the spooky cookies! we did bats & cats, but the cat pictures are blurry.




recipe: Peanut Butter Power Bites

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup peanut butter
Egg replacer equivalent to 1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
* Combine flour and wheat germ.
* Add peanut butter, egg replacer, oil and water and mix thoroughly.
* When it becomes too stiff to stir, knead the dough till smooth, adding a tablespoon of water, if needed.
* Roll to 1/4 inch thickness.
* Cut into desired shapes.
* Bake for 30-35 minutes, being careful not to over cook.

Ouch!

Shae's first stitches. He either fell when leaning on the side of a table, or jumped out of an airplane. Depends on who ya ask.