Monthly Archives: October 2012

So today I got out of bed and went to weigh myself on the wii. It wouldn’t turn on cause I guess it’s broken now.

I was in a rush cause I was taking the dogs to the beagle brigade but I was all out of coffee so I went to look up a drive-thru Starbucks on the way but the Internet wasn’t working.

So I got the dogs in the car & went to the only Starbucks drive-thru I knew and waited in the long line for my soy latte. It wasn’t until I got to the dog park that I realized it was a dairy chai latte.

I got the times wrong so I missed the beagle brigade but the dogs were still super happy having a blast, until Willow twisted her ankle and I had to carry her out after 15 minutes.

Then I went back to Starbucks to get a replacement soy latte. They wanted to give me a gigantic one to apologize, but I said, no medium is fine. They gave me the gigantic one.

I put it in the cup holder…right on top of the dog leash…so when the dogs went to get out of the car coffee spilled all over the inside of the vehicle & on my bakesale flyers I was taking to the vegan potluck in the afternoon.

I got home and tried to get on the Internet company website with my phone but it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t login. So I had to call. My account was somehow all messed up with incorrect information (I’m not ryan!) so I had to sort it out.

So then I went to make the samosa stuffed baked potatoes from the veganomicon. A recipe that claims to take 20 minutes. An hour and a half later I put them in the oven. It did take a little extra time because I cut myself trying to hurry.

It was too late to go to the potluck.

I ate these samosas with my crippled dog and watched 30 Rock and that’s been my Saturday so far.

They were really tasty.

Bakesale for SARA animal sanctuary October 21

Last week I wrote about learning that SARA animal sanctuary is having some difficult times and since then I have been working on putting together a bakesale to hopefully raise some funds. My heart grew at least three sizes when Sugar Tooth Bakery, Happy Vegan Baker, Mr. Natural, Sugar Mama’s, Celeste’s Best, and Capital City Bakery signed on to donate baked goods. That’s almost every vegan friendly bakery in town! We still need a more help though. A lot of folks are going to be out of town at the Texas State Veggie Fair in Dallas over the weekend so if your waffling about weather or not you want to participate, stop it! I know you love dogs and animals and eating baked goods so let’s make this happen. You can sign on to bake or volunteer to help. Or if you aren’t in Austin you can donate to SARA directly. Also please invite your friends to the Facebook event and if you are an Austin blogger, I would love your help promoting the sale, the hardest part is getting people to actually come out.I‘m having a hard time deciding what to make, like always. For the worldwide vegan bakesale in the spring I made ice cream sandwiches with Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies and Banana Ice Cream. They went really fast but now it’s not really ice cream season.

would you eat me?

I also made chocolate TIEs and I think I might make those again too because nerds just can’t resist.

you cannot escape me

But then I was also kind of think I should do something more autumnal like Kittie’s Sweet Potato Hand Pies from Vegan Pie in the Sky or maybe a family recipe for Apple Strudel with Figs. There are so many recipes out there that would be great like, oh, everything on the PPK: Chai Spice Snickerdoodles, Cherry Chocolate Chunk Mini Loaves, and Magical Coconut Bars all sound amazing. Then I always think I should make something gluten free because I love my GF friends and lots of folks always ask for them, I know Manifest Vegan and Cake Maker to the Stars both have tons of great recipes filling that niche. Then I was thinking about making corn empanadas because then everyone could eat them and savory stuff is always fun but then Dan told me he doesn’t like empanadas. WTF who doesn’t like empanadas?

What is your favorite thing to make for bakesales? Or what do you like to buy?

If you have the answer I like best I’ll send you one of whatever I make! Ha!

Veganmofo: Chipotle rubbed acorn squash tacos with refried beans & mango salsa

 

I had half a day where I was thinking that I would do an all taco theme for veganmofo and with 30 tacos in 30 days. Then one of my twitter friends suggested breakfast, lunch and dinner of all tacos, as in 90 tacos for 30 days. Kind of like super size me but with tacos. I’ll have to think about it more for next year but I still have tacos on my mind. Actually, I always have tacos on my mind. Like, if I was Willie Nelson, and I was singing this song I would be singing about tacos. Yesterday I talked about being a coffee snob and I’m kind of the opposite when it comes to tacos. I’ll eat any taco any time any where. From Mexican street style to Vietnamese to TexMex, breakfast tacos, jackfruit brisket tacos, dessert tacos, tater tot tacos, al pastor tacos, and raw tacos, I want to try them all.

A while back I came across a recipe for cauliflower chipotle tacos. Normally, I probably would have cruised right by such a recipes but since it came from the kitchen of one of my favorite vegan cookbook authors Terry Hope Romero I pinned it and waited for the perfect time. My plan last night was to use an acorn squash instead of cauliflower since that is what I had and then make baked chimichurri tofu to go with. I got the food processor out and then grabbed the parsley and then realized it was cilantro. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me in my life, probably about one billion. I ran over to the Mexican meat market to pick some up parsley and they only had cilantro too. So I changed my plan, picked up a mango, and instead made refried beans and mango salsa.

After spending 10 minutes breaking down the acorn squash with a cleaver I finally got to the actual business to making the tacos and they came together really easily and fast. After taking a quick photo I finally got to try them and WOW these tacos were amazing. The spice rub would have been a little intense if the squash had been on it’s own but mixed with the garlicky refried beans, the sweet and spicy mango salsa, and the luscious creamy avocado they together formed a perfect taco. Highly recommended.

VeganMoFo: a perfect cup of coffee

Another year another Vegan Month of Food! Since 2008 I’ve been participating in veganmofo and I’m so stoked to begin another year. I have a lot of stuff tentatively planned but no formal theme this year so it should be more of the usual, tacos, restaurant talk, bake sale planning, travel pics, favorite recipes and maybe some of my own recipes which I’ve really gotten away from in recent years. Writing recipes takes forever. I don’t know how you all do it and where you find the time, I’ve got books to read and TV to watch. Also this is my 401 post! That’s a lot of blah blah blah vegan.

And speaking of talking too much, there is one subject I can talk about all day and that’s coffee. I love it. Ever since I was 11 and my Dad handed me a cup saying. “this is a cappuccino” I’ve been hooked on fancy coffee. It is so easy to spend way too much money every day going to coffee shops and getting a nice soy latte but sadly it is not something I can afford to do every day. So over these many years I have suffered, sure in a first-world comparably-rich easy-office-job-lifestyle-way, but suffered nonetheless with shitty cups of coffee. Some of you may know that I spent much of last year in pain and unable to walk and it is all because I fell in a hole on my way to get coffee, passing at least three places I could have picked it up along the way, because I have standards folks. I’m a total snob when it comes to coffee at home too and after using drip machines, and french presses for some time I have finally found my ideal family of coffee making equipment.

For my birthday this last year Dan got me a Toddy and really at the time it seemed kind of silly. I was perfectly satisfied with using the french press to cold brew coffee and I wasn’t even looking for something else. But like heroin once I tried it, I couldn’t resist. The Toddy works very similarly to the french press, you cover some coffee grounds with cold water and let it sit overnight. The difference is really in the filter. Instead of the single screen in the french press the Toddy has a really thick multi-layered filter and it ends up taking out a lot of the acid taste which I never even noticed was covering up all the flavors. The liquid that comes out is concentrated so it lasts for quite a few cups and then you can mix it with soy milk, water or whatever.

All summer I’ve been enjoying it over ice but now that the weather has gotten into the 70s I’ve been craving a hot cup of joe. A few weeks ago I pulled out my Bodum frother and I have got to tell you that the frothy vanilla soy milk with the toddy cold pressed coffee has lead to the greatest cups of coffee in my life, especially with this Indian coffee they have at the Fair Bean. You can just taste every nuance of the beans and it doesn’t hurt my belly the way shitty coffee does. It almost seems healthy but folks, I promise I’m highly caffeinated See all these run-on sentences? They all comes from this coffee!!!!! I could really go on all day about this but instead I am going to leave you with a clip from a place where they take coffee very seriously.