Gooooooo Veggie! June 23, 2008

Boom had been a great sport with my whole going veggie, ’cause it basically means he has to go veggie, by default, since I won’t cook meat and I am usually dealing with meals we eat in the house.  So I decided to try a recipe that Oprah used during her 21-day cleanse.  A tofu wrap - it was delish!  And it met all my criteria for a try-worthy recipe - short ingredient list and few steps to make it.

I like to dabble in veganism, but not sure I could give up eggs and butter.  This wrap is vegan and really, it was so good!  Full of flavor and just very fresh tasting.

Boom really enjoyed it as well!  It says it serves 4 for lunch, but we gobbled all of it up - the 2 of us for our dinner.  I think even non-veggies would enjoy this, or I could replace the tofu with a white fish and make spicy fish wraps!  So many possibilities!

Food these days May 23, 2008

Although we moved down to H-town will just the bare necessities, we are  getting by.  I am cooking a little, mainly when Boom is around, but also just to eat healthy.

Yum!  A poor man’s succotash over spinach and French lentils… used organic frozen corn and edaname, and just tore up some spinach (the heat from the lentils and succotash wilts the spinach), and put it all over French lentils.  Has been my lunch for the past 2 days!

A day or so before we left Richmond, we went to the local healthy grocery store, Ellwood Thompsons, and grabbed dinner.  I had quinoa topped with their fancier succotash.  Since then, I have been a little bit obsessed with making it - I have already made it once with quinoa for Boom.  I think he liked it, but that it didn’t fill him up all the way.

That is the problem these days - since I am not cooking meat, Boom is growing thinner and thinner.  I feel kinda bad, but I do think he eats meat at lunch and when we go out to eat, which is fairly often.

I wish I would grow thinner and thinner - but my crazy cheese tooth isn’t helping that any…

Today I finished all but a little nub of the cheese.  Figured I could save that for Boom tonight - likely should have saved him a little more - opps!

Veggie Dog May 22, 2008

I got Ruby some veggie dog food yesterday:

One of the benefits that is actually written on the back of the food bag is “Lover Lower Stool Volume” - too funny!

Last night I thought Ruby liked it - I am mixing it in with her meat based food (no byproducts, though) until the meat based food runs out. She ate her bowl of mixed kibble lickety-split. But this morning, I can actually hear her stomach growling, and she refuses to eat her mixed kibble.

She was begging me to get her veggie dog food - not wanting to contribute to the suffering of her fellow animals and to do her part to help save the environment - and now she pulls this?! I am not going to worry, once she is hungry enough, she will bust into the mixed kibble. She is so moody…

Happy Friday: Ramblings & Photos February 23, 2008

Yarbidy sent me cds with photos of Thanksgiving and the Austin Marathon - I got them today. The best part is she included them in a super cute handmade card! and she rarely makes cards…

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I was at Macy’s the other day looking for drinking glasses (we have gotten rid of all our plastic glasses, as they possibly leach bad things when put in the dishwasher) from the Martha Stewart Collection. I didn’t end up buying glasses there (got them from Kmart - their Martha Stewart Everyday line - I heart that line! It is great - tho Kmart is totally ghetto. I guess I am lucky we have Kmarts in Va… don’t think they exist in TX) but I did end up getting a cute glass container (supposidly to be used for snacks, but would be a huge amount of snacks…) with a turquose top and matching towels with a turquoise accent on them for my downstairs bathroom. I think the towels are actually bar towels, but they look cute.

Part of why I love her stuff so is the clean and attractive packaging. Not a good reason, I know, but I am the type to buy something just to try based on it’s packaging…

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I cooked up the rest of Ruby’s pumpkin, as part of her veggie dog diet. This time it was a little odd - as the pumpkin was still the one that Ims and Gretty gave to us, but I had frozen the extra. So I thawed it out, and it was already mushy from defrosting, and then steamed it. Ruby knew exactly want was going on, and was very excited!

Here is the cooked pumpkin.

Mashing it.

Full container! This should last a week or so…

I give her a heaping amount of pumpkin with a scant 1/2 cup of dog food on top for each meal. Makes her deuces orange and big, but she does love it!

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As we are using up our conventional cleaners (and paper products), I am replacing with cleaners that don’t contain toxic chemicals (paper products that are unbleached and recycled) - which is better for us and the earth.

I was a little wary of using this Seventh Generation dish washer detergent, as our dishwasher is not the best. Has left food and stuff on the dishes in the past - so I had to go from using the water miser mode, to the full water mode.

Anyway, this stuff works great! and I can use the water miser mode again. Seventh Generation promised to get our dishes sparkling clean, and they did! I am quite pleased.

Sigh… February 20, 2008

The vegan lasagana was just as tasty the 2nd time around - had a healthy portion for lunch. Tho it did look better than this yesterday…

I added the corn in myself… I think you could also add in chopped broccoli and whatever other veggies you want. And for the record, the tofu mix (ricotta sub) was not brown. Maybe not a white white as ricotta, but definitely not brown. Maybe a light tan, at the most…

Cookies also yummy, had 8, heated. Mmmmmm…

Yesterday was quite productive… February 20, 2008

There are a ton of free tutorials out in blog land - I have a huge running list (in my mind) of ones I want to try. So yesterday I decided to just plunge into on - fusing plastic bags to make (plastic) “material” to make a new, more durable bag. It wasn’t hard, but not as easy as I had imagined. I used the Etsy Lab Tutorial - their bags look much fancier and prettier than mine, but I was pleased nonetheless.

Here she is in all her glory! Each panel is 1 bag, folded so there are 8 individual layers. I then used my sewing machine to put her together. B/c of the seams, I am not too sure how strong the bag will be. Next time I’d like to try to make larger fused pieces with multiple bags stacked on top of each other. That is actually how I started out, but quickly realized I needed to test for heat and which bags actually fuse the best (from my experience, Target, Fresh Market, and Ukrop’s bags work the best. Kroger bags are crappy to fuse, which is unfort.)

I think that most people usually fuse the seams (?) so there is no sewing involved. And some actually make patterns with the plastic - that would be very ambitious for me! As it was, this bag took about 3 -4 hours to complete. And I made a mess of my work area (a.k.a. the bathroom - love the formica counter top to iron on):

Here are all the handles and bottom seams that I had to cut off. Easy clean up, though - all went straight into the trash can. I have a few panels left - may try to make some little bags (no zippers, though, think that would be too much for me. Perhaps a snap or something like that) or business card / credit card holders.

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I also made a delicious vegan lasagna last night. It was fairly easy and really turned out tasty. At least I think so, and Boom seemed to like it pretty well. I got the recipe off a Google search here. I will take some photos and post ‘em up today. I am looking forward to having it for lunch! The tofu mixture is great for substituting for ricotta. If I stay in supper club, I may actually make this for the gals. It was that tasty.

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And Boom liked the M&M cookies. Seems that I did as well, since I nearly ate a whole dozen yesterday! All before dinnertime. So after dindin I was certainly not craving cookies. Boom had cookies for dessert (he doesn’t like them heated up, which, in my opinion, is the only want to eat them) and I had some of my leftover apple crumble (from supper club). Eating fruit based desserts helps me to think that I am not being quite as bad as I likely am. And I don’t remember if my crumble recipe called for a lot of butter or perhaps I am more sensitive to it (and fat) since going veggie, but I can really taste the butter in the crumble mix. and it is kinda slick and slimy. But I still ate it, so clearly did not turn me off too much.