Protein Protein Protein

Dear Vegans and Non Vegans Alike,
I am doing some research on protein both to clear up the issue for myself and to help my best friend be vegetarian and hypoglycemic at the same time. Does anyone have any credible resources or  information that would help me out?

Part 2

 Guac! 

 

Yep.

And lets finish with some more cupcakes. 'Cause they were so bomb. And a hit. I've made my vegan cupcakes famous, so people are always looking to see what I make this time. Tell me what you think!

Birthday Party! (Part 1)

So my birthday was this week, so I decided to throw a party with a whole bunch on crunk vegan food. Let's just get strait to the pictures.

The Whole Shebang.

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World

Fruit. Fruit. Fruit. Fruit. Fruit. (and chocolate!)

Pineapple Right Side Up Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World



(see part 2 for the rest)

Backpacking Year 2 Part 2

(the below mentioned) Salsa Leather!!! I think it kind of looks like lava on a plate.

and finally, in the most unorganized of manners, here is everything we ate on the trip.
Here is a complete menu:

Day 1:
 Dinner: Chili (see above post)
              Trail Bread (see recipe below)
              Drinks ( our drink bag included: Gatorade Packets, 2 kinds of caffeine free tea bags, Maté, Coffee, Apple Cider, and Hot Chocolate)

Day 2:
 Breakfast: Instant Oatmeal w/ Dried Fruit and Sugar
                  Boulder Lake Breakfast Bars from Lipsmackin' Backpackin'
                  Drinks
Lunch: Bagels with PB and Trail Mix
Dinner: Jamaican Red Beans and Rice (We bought a pre made mix from REI, [GASP!] but it was basically instant rice, beans, and seasoning. Easy!)
             Trail Bread
              Drinks

Day 3:
Breakfast: Instant Grits
                 Breakfast Bars
                 Drinks
Lunch: Trail Bread/GORP/Breakfast Bars (everything left over)

The Trail Bread was a recipe from Lipsmackin' Backpackin' that was basically 2 kinds of flour, molasses, agave nectar, vegetable oil, and water. It packed really well though! I was impressed.
If you look, last year I made the Boulder Lake Breakfast Bars, and the only problem we had with them was that they didn't stay together, they were crumbly. This year I added 3 tbsp of flax seed to the liquid in the recipe and it kept them together great. I'm definitely doing that every time I make them now. 

Backpacking Year 2

So last year I posted some backpacking food, but I have to say, this year was better.

Here is the hummus wrap I got when we stopped for lunch in Buena Vista. I love this kind of thing.

This is the chili we brought for the 1st night,

Recipe?

1 cup dehydrated pinto beans

1 cup dehydrated kidney beans

8 oz dehydrated salsa (see below)

1 cup dried TVP

1 Package Taco Seasoning Mix (or Chili)

5 cups water

Using a dehydrator or your oven, dehydrate the beans and the salsa. For the salsa, I put mine on a plate and it took a while, but it eventually turned into a leather that you could tear into pieces. Add the beans, salsa, and TVP together and store for packing. 

At Camp: When you get to camp, add all ingredients together and cook for 15 minutes. 

(I suppose you could add the seasoning at home, but I added it at camp to prevent losing some in transit from bag to bag.)

Easy Bake Lil’ Chocolate Cake

Here’s a recipe out of 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes

It is an easy bake oven recipe, but I doubled it and baked it in a mini loaf pan in a regular oven. Pretty good!

Ice Cream and German Food

Turns out that Germans eat a lot of ice cream. Who knew? While I was there I hunted down the vegan flavors. I think this was apricot and raspberry.

This one was apricot and strawberry. It was really good. And while we’re at it, this was a crazy sugary ice tea I got in a French Restaurant on the last day. I thought it looked impressive.

The Mother of all 5 Minute Sandwiches

So..tonight after I got home, I decided to make some dinner… and this is what I came up with.

Zucchini quickly sautéed

Tempeh cooked in Soy Sauce

Cooked Bell Pepper

Lettuce

Spicy Mustard

Veganiase

: ) Enough said.

I had a German to feed!

So the past couple weeks have been filled with candy, food, candy, vegan cooking parties, potlucks, candy, and well….candy. While my exchange student was here we fed her maple syrup, fruit loops, skittles, gushers, and other random candies and foods for the first time. That was cool. oh and s’mores. that was fun. There was chalking and garden gnome stealing and dance parties…and well. you get the idea.

So now I am going to tell you about our vegan cooking party we had last Wednesday, which rocked!

So we just wanted to cook, but we did it at my house so it turned out vegan. My friend Blake and I cooked with a little help from everyone else.

We started with mashed potatoes (there was a reason for that) and I started on a vegan lasagna from Veginomicon. The mashed potatoes came out first so Blake arranged them in a potato pyramid, like so…

Then, we started on peanut butter cups from 100 best vegan baking recipes, which we turned into little peanut butter muffins, even though the recipe just wanted them to be filled cookies.

Here is the peanut butter filling.

The dough we rolled out pretty thin (like a coin thickness) and then cut with a biscuit cutter and put in the cups, then cut a smaller circle and used it to cover the top.

 

 

Here is the finished product. They were pretty good!

And just to do things out of order, the lasagna came out at the same time, but here is a crappy picture of the empty pan. (Because that’s how fast it got eaten.)

Everyone was really surprised at how good it was. No one there was a vegan, the only vegetarian was my partner, and I fed it to a room full of Germans. Now that is a success!

Apparently one of the exchange students went home and went on and on about how good it was even though it was vegan. Whoop!

Just a quick quote..

Sorry, no food as of yet, but come tommorw my exange student will be here and we will be eating all sorts of amazing things! But for now, here is some food for thought (in the form of some of my favorite quotes)

 

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.  ~Henry David Thoreau

(this one is kind of gory)

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh?  For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.  How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?  How could his nose endure the stench?  How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?  ~Plutarch

The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
~ Jeremy Bentham (philosopher, 1748 -1832)

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (Nobel Prize-winning novelist, 1904 - 1991)

Brunch ideas for vegans, vegetarians, carnivores and Germans alike?

So, I will have an exchange student from Germany saying with me for 3 weeks comes Thursday, and we are making brunch for us, and my friends family with a exchange student too. I was wondering what kind of ideas you have for Brunch? My we will have 1 vegan (muah) 2 vegetarians (my friend and my exchange partner) 1 semi-veg (my friends exchange partner) and 4 omnivores (parents).

I want to come up with something cool, but also fool proof  

Let me know what you think!

Apology Muffins :(

So, I messed up. I told my friend I might be able to go to an art museum in another town this weekend (after I told him I couldn’t last weekend) then, said yes, but my parents took it back and said no and 10:30 the night before. Then, today, we were going to go volunteer downtown, and I completely spaced and wasn’t awake when he came to pick me up this morning. for the 2nd week in a row. (Sorry!) So…because I am such a BIG FAT LOSER, I am making some apology muffins. Raspberry Lime with a hint of guilt baked in. because, I am such a BIG FAT LOSER.

Mini muffins because I made so many muffins I ran out of full size muffin pans.

Zested, juiced, beat up limes. because I deserve to be this lime.

Finished product.

I ended up with a ton, of muffins. It was crazy.

But anyway, here is the original recipe, and my version. (doubled)

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=21583.0

Raspberry Lime Muffins
Ingredients (use vegan versions):
    4 cups all-purpose flour
    2 teaspoons baking soda
    1 teaspoon salt
    zest of 2 limes
    1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar
    2 cup soy milk
    2/3 cup applesauce
    5 tablespoons lime juice
    2 tablespoons white vinegar
    1 cup raspberries and 1 cup blueberries (fresh is better, but frozen works)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400F. Grease muffin tin. In a large bowl combine flour, baking soda, salt and lime zest. In a medium bowl combine sugar, soy milk, oil, lime juice, and vinegar. Mix well. Add to flour mixture. Stir until just blended. Pour half of the batter into another bowl. Gently fold in raspberries into one half. Fold in blueberries to the other half. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 20 minutes for full size muffins or 10 minutes for mini muffins or until toothpick inserted into muffins comes out clean.  Remove from oven. Let sit for 10 minutes. Remove muffins from tin and cool on a wire rack. Yield: around 24- 30 muffins
Preparation time: 30 minutes

 

Amy’s Brown Rice and Vegetables

So I ate such a good bowl from Amy’s foods tonight I have to share it with y’all.

http://www.amys.com/products/product-detail/bowls/000161

This bowl was really good, I was surprised. Usually frozen meals are mushy and runny and flavorless, but this one was well cooked, not runny at all, and very flavorful. I would definitely recommend this bowl.

I’ve had the Indian Matar Tofu one and it wasn’t quite as good but still decent. The Tofu scramble pockets are really good. The black beans and curry burritos are good with a lot of salsa, because they are kind of dry. But anyway, I just wanted y’all to know how good this was!

Pumpkin Bread

After the first Monday back to school after Spring Break, I decided to make some pumpkin bread.

Here is the original recipe from No-Meat-Athlete

http://www.nomeatathlete.com/vegan-pumpkin-bread/

But here is my version:

Pumpkin Spice Bread Recipe

3 tbs ground flaxseed

1/2 cup water

1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar

1/2 cup applesauce

1/2 cup mashed banana (about 1 medium banana)

2 cups fresh pumpkin puree

3 cups white flour

1 tsp each cinnamon, fresh nutmeg,

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix together the flaxseed and water until thickened.
Combine flax mixture in a large bowl with sugar, applesauce, banana, and pumpkin.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, spices, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Stir the dry ingredients into the wet. Lightly grease loaf pans.  Divide into two regular 8 inch loaf pans or four mini loaf pans.  [Bake the large loaves for about 55 minutes and the smaller loaves for about 40 minutes.  Let sit for 20 minutes before removing from pan.] (But mine were done in about 40 minutes for two big loaves, so check often!)

Hummus and Albino Bison…

So, my boyfriend and I went to a Middle Eastern place for dinner the other night, and of course, he is not a vegan, and has never really eaten anything super ethnic before. unfortunately , he wasn't’ a super big fan, but I was; so we’ll see about this.

However,(now for something completely different) on a college road trip this weekend we ran into some…White Buffalo.

Isn’t that cool?

I just learned using the occasionally reliable internet resource Wikipedia, that they can be part cow, albino, or have some sort of genetic thing.

Anyway… I’ll end on a vegan note. At Western State College we ate in their new cafeteria, where I managed to find a veggie sandwich. Which was pretty good. I’ve managed to find vegan food at all the colleges I’ve been to, although some advertise it more than others. I think though, that colleges should focus a tad bit more on anyone with diet restrictions, whether gluten-free or vegan or raw. But not to bad, overall.

 

Cookies!

Here are my favorite cookies. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted them before, but their soo good.

 

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies (original recipe here http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6391.0)
Ingredients:

    2 cups unbleached flour
    1 teaspoons baking powder
    1/2 teaspoon salt
     handful vegan chocolate or carob chips
    1 cup raw sugar
    1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    1/4 cup water
Directions:
1. Very important-make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. It will work if they're not at room temp but it works much better if they are. Also while your oven is pre-heating put the cookie sheets you are going to use on top of the oven so they get preheated as well. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in chips. Make a well in the center and set aside. In a medium size bowl, add together sugar and oil; mix well. 
3. Add the vanilla and then add the water; mix well.  Add the wet to the well in the dry. Mix it well but be careful not to overwork it.  Add more chips if you need to. 
4. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Put them in the oven.  Bake for 12 minutes Take them out when they are done and move them to wire cooling racks. If they split or come apart when you try to remove them let them sit on the pan for 2 minutes before transferring them to the racks.
Serves: almost 2 dozen; Preparation Time: 10 minutes; Cooking Time: 10 to 12 minutes

Tofu Chili

I apologize for not posting lately. I haven’t been very motivated. Maybe comments would motivate? :) but anyway, here is the Chili I made tonight.   oh and some cornbread. and there was some rice and sweet potato fries too.

a variation of a Whole Foods Chili Recipe

1 14 oz package tofu, drained and pressed

2 tbsp olive oil

2-4 tbsp chopped sun dried tomatoes, with oil from jar if using the oil marinated kind

1/2 onion

2 c. corn and/or 1 can beans of your choice (I used Black-eyed Peas)

1 1/2 c. vegetable broth

1 15 oz can white beans, drained

1 15ish oz can fire roasted diced tomatoes

14 oz tomato sauce

1 tbsp chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

salt and pepper to taste

 

To Make:

Press the tofu and crumble, set aside.

Heat oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add onion, sun dried tomatoes, and corn (if using) and cook for about 5 minutes. Add broth, beans, crumbled tofu, tomatoes, tomato sauce, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until hot and flavors have blended. Serve.

Happy New Year!

  For the trip to see family this year I made Chocolate Vanilla Swirl cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World. Which were fantastic. Get that cookbook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge from this page.

http://sweetbeetandgreenbean.net/2009/02/16/chocolate-peanut-butter-fudge/

Here is my version

chocolate peanut butter fudge
1/2 c earth balance (or other vegan margarine)
4 c powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 c soy milk
1/3 c peanut butter
1/2 c dark chocolate chips

Double Boiler: a bowl on top of a pot. if you have one, use it in this recipe, if not, after putting water in a medium pot and setting the heat to high, put a bowl that fits the pot on top.

 

1. Heat the double boiler. Once boiling, add earth balance, vanilla extract and soy milk to the bowl and stir occasionally until melted.

2. Slowly sift in 3 cups of the powdered sugar while stirring so that you don’t have any clumps.

3. Divide the sugar/butter mixture in half and transfer half to another bowl. The half left in the double boiler will be the PB half.

4. Add the peanut butter and 1/2 c. powdered sugar to the butter/sugar mixture and stir until melted.

5. Grease a shallow 8x8 pan and pour the peanut butter mixture in the bottom. Put in the refrigerator until the chocolate is ready.

6. Pour the remaining butter/sugar mixture back into the double boiler. Add the chocolate chips and remaining 1/2 c. powdered sugar and stir until melted.

7. Take the pan out of the fridge and pour the chocolate on top. Smooth with a spoon and return to fridge to set for a couple hours before cutting,

I made just a slight modification with the powdered sugar. It was really good!

.