A Vegan Vacation

It really has been too long since I last posted.  As always, I apologize.  I get busy, you know.  Kids, house, cat, oh and that vacation we took at the end of June.

We headed south to Virginia Beach.  Such a lovely time was had by all!
As a vegan family with picky tiny people, staying in a hotel is not possible, at least not yet.  So we rented a cabin.  We stayed in First Landing State Park.  We were in cabin #8.  It was a nice little spot, surrounded by trees and quiet!  The cabin has 2 bedrooms, a small kitchen and living room.
The kitchen was good enough for cooking but we were on vacation! There was no way that we would seriously cook every meal there.  And so we went on a hunt for vegan friendly food.

My absolute favorite was LaBella Italia.  They had a vegan menu.  The food was absolutely delicious.  I had Gardien Pollo Parmigiana.  YUM!  The sauce we fabulous, it had to have been made fresh there, so amazing!  I'm almost positive that the cheese they used was Daiya,  but I could be mistaken.  They gave us a plate of crusty bread for the table which was also yum!  The place didn't look like much from the outside but inside it was very nice.
We had Dippin Dots: Rainbow Ice at the Zoo in Norfolk.  Those tiny things are so yummy!  I wanted to get them again before heading home but we didn't.
We stopped in at Carolina Cupcakery for some vegan cupcakes but sadly they only had 3 there.  We snatched them all up though.  But if we're ever down that way again, we'll have to call ahead and make an order.  The boys were disappointed that there weren't any chocolate.
After two failed attempts at vegan pizza, we finally went to Zpizza.  Two of three boys ate the pizza.  We got whole wheat crust cheese pizza, half of it had corn.  That was surprisingly good!  ZPizza is definitely a place we would go back to!
Oh man! The Skinny Dip!!  They had ONE vegan flavor of frozen yogurt.  It was creme brulee.  It was still delicious.  The boys loved the opportunity to add their own toppings.  And in the end it wasn't too expensive.  I wish there was a place like that around our area.
There were more choices but not many that would have worked for our three picky eaters.  There were so many different restaurants the area including Mexican and Greek!

Finally on the trip home we stopped in Richmond at a place called Strange Matter.  WOW!  This place was not only cool but there was so many vegan yummies to choose from, I had a hard time deciding.  I ended up going with a sandwich called 'The Revenge'.  It was literally 2 grilled cheese sandwiches with three different vegan meats between them.  One HUGE sandwich.  I ate probably 90% of it.  I also had a side of roasted vegetables which were very good as well.  The boys had fun playing with the old arcade games that they had in the back.  I suffered a painful tummy ache for about 30+ minutes after eating but it was worth it.  I WILL go there again.  SO GOOD!  The boys had a bowl of mac-n-cheese (teese?), fries and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Donut Day!

Every first Friday in June is National Donut Day.
Today happens to be that day.  Yay?

I'm leaving for the beach on June 22.  For the past week I have been eating pretty well, working out a lot and feeling pretty good about myself (for the most part).  I had planned to continue on this way until the day we leave for the beach because I was hoping this last ditch effort would help me to look alright in my bathing suit.  But then, I woke up this morning and saw that it was a holiday.  Not just any holiday, but one that would require baking.  I can't say no, donuts are delicious!  Besides, I feel like eating a donut on National Donut is mandatory or you just aren't a decent person.  Okay, I'm totally kidding on that last part but seriously, Eat A Donut!

Healthy donuts?  Probably not but at least we got some fruit in there.  So I started with some ingredients.  Flour, bananas...

That stuff had to go into the food processor.  Just makes it easier.  And so, in it went.

But then it all had to go into a bowl to mix with some other stuff.  Which lead to the dirtying of more dishes.  No worries, it's my dish night.

 And well, no one really wants to see unbaked donuts in the oven so we'll skip that picture.  When they came out I thought they were kinda light, a bit too soft in my opinion.  I was pretty worried about the stop that followed.  Which I of course didn't take a picture.  They have chocolate glaze on top.  I had to dip them in.  All the little ones survived the dipping process.

The boys taste tested for me.  Yum? or Yuck?  Yum of course!  They asked for seconds!

 I should probably add that even though your pan is non stick, you should probably grease it anyway or this could happen.  Next time, I'll grease that last one, even if I don't really feel like it.

 Oh and the recipe came from this book.  I've cooked a lot from it.  I've loved pretty much everything!  If you haven't yet, maybe you should grab a copy!

A 3-Day Reboot!

I recently bought a book from The Happy Herbivore.  You see, lately, my eating hasn't been so great.  Is that a cookie?  Let me just eat one or three!  Or... oh we have chocolate chips in the cabinet? I'm just going to eat a little handful... Every Time I Go Into The Kitchen!  Seconds on dinner, big evening snacks before bed.  You see what I'm getting at?  I was doing Fabulous before my birthday!  I was at my lowest weight, I felt great and then... Happy Birthday!!  My birthday was back in October...
The age isn't the problem.  The fact that I went out to eat and restaurant food always causes a gain (and bloat).  Sure... maybe eating a bit too much while I'm out has something to do with it.  But still!  I don't get to go out very often so when I do, I may overindulge a bit.  Anyway, I gained a little extra and then Thanksgiving came.  Oh boy!  You see, it wouldn't be so bad if I only went one place.  At my grandma's, it's not so vegan friendly.  We bring our own meal.  I did great, didn't overeat!  But then... we went to the in-laws...   They love us so much that they cook yummy vegan stuff for us.  I, of course, ate too much. ::sigh::  Plus pie!  I love pie!
And of course following Thanksgiving, you have all the Christmas foods, which always include cookies.  Eating too much again...  I was starting to feel less than awesome.  You would think it would stop there but OH NO!  It does not!  You see...
Mid-January we have a birthday here in our little house.  That requires yummy food and, yep, cake!  Then February, you have to buy chocolates, March well... we became addicted to baked goods over the past few months so we kinda started making cookies and things pretty much weekly.  Cookies, cupcakes, donuts, brownies....etc... over and over again!  Mmmmmm!

Well, enough was enough!  No more!  :-/

That's when I saw that The Happy Herbivore had a lovely new book, '3-Day Reboot'  I bought it!  I also bought the '10-Day Cleanse' book, but to be honest, I'm not ready to do that one yet.    So we started it on Saturday.  My usual pancake breakfast was replaced with oatmeal.  It was good, but I definitely missed my pancakes.  Then my morning snack was a detox drink (water, ACV, lemon juice, cayenne, cinnamon and honey) and I would have preferred an apple.  Lunch was pumpkin chili, although we used sweet potato instead of pumpkin.  All the food was good.  The serving sizes were way more than I could eat.  We actually were able to feed both my husband and myself with just one serving split between us.  I doubled a few recipes and will be able to eat that stuff the rest of this week.  So my usual 6 meals/snacks a day got knocked down to 3 meals, one snack.  OH MY GOSH!  Sometimes I would be starving but I kept busy and drank lots of water.  We did it, all three days!  Although, we did have some chocolate with our strawberries one night.  But... we were about 90% with it the rest of the time, lol!

{And my youngest has been sleeping a bit better, he adds in hour in each night so that's less he's been in my bed.  Thank you PediaKids Sleeplessness!  }

And so, after my 3 Days I have to say, I'm doing good.  I am 1 lb away from where I was before my birthday, I'm not as tired as I was before and I'm in a better mood for the most part.  If I had the will power to keep this up that would be Fantastic!

So, if you're looking for a reboot, check out the book! Happy Herbivore

Spring Break

Just a few days after having a day off from school because of snow, my oldest started his Spring Break.  Sounds unnatural, doesn't it?  The actual seasons have shifted so much from our calendar expectations, it's hard to say what is what anymore!  And they say climate change isn't something to bother thinking about.  Ah well...

So in this house we don't celebrate religious holidays, we do it our way.  We don't really go too far off from what others do but I kinda like how with each passing year we are building up our own traditions.
Easter is just Spring for us.  Sure, we say Easter but it's just a celebration of Spring.  Flowers are starting to bloom, trees are (suppose to be) starting to get leaves, and everything is new again.  And warm weather usually comes but we haven't had the chance to get much of that yet.  For the most part our Spring (Easter) baskets are made up of toys with a bit of candy.  We made some of the candy this year.  Filled eggs, filled with Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut butter and filled with Justin's Maple Almond Butter, YUM!  We also did a few solid chocolates but the filled were definitely my favorites.

What about the eggs?  Don't my children get the joy of taking eggs and plopping them in mugs of colored water?  Well... no.  We don't eat eggs, we're vegan!  A few years ago I bought some plaster eggs and let the kids paint them.  We still have those eggs and since I don't like to throw pretty things away, if I continued to buy plaster eggs each year we'd eventually have WAY too many, te he!  So I came up with something new to do each year.  TIE DYE!

This was our second year doing it.  This year turned out so much better.  Our first year, I went with a fairly cheap kit, sat outside where it was a bit breezy.  I ended up ruining a pair of pants because my bottles leaked from under the cap and it was just a huge mess.  Plus I didn't use enough dye...  our shirts were more white than colored.
This year all went well.  I worked inside at the dining table.  Used plenty of dye and ta da!

I don't wear gloves, lol!  

I had just freshly painted my nail the night before too.  A beautiful new polish that I ordered from Zoya.    Ah well... my hands were all rainbow colored.  It has mostly worn off now though.  Which is great because my youngest doesn't like my hands this way.  He just looks at them, says: "No!" and backs away, ha!  

I did 15 tops, which means we each got 3.  A few days before tie dye day, my 4 year old and I watch videos on YouTube.  We saw a few techniques but the one that caught my little lovey was the heart.   Here is how his tie dyed heart shirt turned out.

I made one for myself too but I don't have a picture of it.

Oh and I should mention food!  We went to my in-laws for lunch on Sunday.  We ate a Gardein loaf, which I prefer over Tofurky.  We also had baked potatoes, I put Daiya cheddar, steamed broccoli and Tofutti Better than Sour Cream on mine.  I also ate too many chips and french onion dip but we won't talk about that.  

Today I'm baking bread.  The recipe changes a little almost every time I make it.  Maybe I'll share that recipe with you all at another time.  I hope everyone had a lovely weekend.  

More Betty Cooking!

I still have in my possession the Betty Goes Vegan cookbook.  And well... I've been using it.
We have about 6 RIPE bananas so I was instructed to make something with banana, which I did :-)

Banana, Peanut Butter, Chocolate chip cookies

except they aren't... not totally

My littlest dude seems to have a peanut allergy and so whenever something calls for peanut anything we sub.  This time around I used Justin's maple almond butter.  You'll find that I substitute with Maple Almond butter a lot in cookie baking.  I love that stuff.  I eat it for breakfast, a lot!  

The recipe calls for brown sugar but I used coconut sugar, which is brown, just not the brown this recipe was looking for.

Anyway, they turned out amazing!  The recipe was super easy to mix together, even when using a fork instead of a hand mixer!  If you ever get your hands on "Betty Goes Vegan" then be sure to try these cookies!

And because I like to share, here is a picture of my lunch.

Some kind of yummy soup that my darling best friend husband made yesterday :-)

A Book Borrowed and Bread Baked

So I borrowed a cookbook from my Mother in law.
See...

And I have to say, there are a lot of yummies inside this book.  Seriously.  We've made a few things so far but today I'm going to talk about one specific item.  See in the background of the above picture?  Two (not so pretty) loaves of bread.  Who cares what it looks like though, it is delicious!

I made the Whole Wheat Sunflower Seed Herb bread.  Yum!  Well... to be honest, it's not 100% the recipe from the book because I was missing a few ingredients... yeah... but I followed it and my bread came out yummy.

I was lacking the agave nectar the the recipe called for so I used Brown Rice Syrup instead.  Specifically, this one:

I use this in my regular sandwich bread. 

The recipe also called for 1 cup of sunflower seeds, I had 3/4 of a cup.  So... I was a little short.  No biggie.

Then there were the herbs... celery seed?  I don't have that, we checked the other day.  Ah well... moving on.  Basil... check!  Thyme...check!  Dill weed... no...  Meh! Two out of four isn't bad!

Mix it up, wait an hour...

Punch it, divide it, roll it, wrap it, wait an hour...

Bake 40 minutes and done!

Of course I waited for it to cool before I cut it!  I do have a little bit of patience.  I waited 5 whole(ish) minutes.

Can't forget the buttery spread!  

I think this recipe is going to be a keeper.  I may change things a bit, add some other herbs, maybe a few other flours.  This one uses all Whole Wheat flour.  I think changing a bit would be good too.

Have a fabulous day <3

I disappeared!

Okay, I didn't actually disappear.
But, how much can you talk about vegan food without losing the interest of all your readers?

Anyway...

Tuesday we prepared for the big snow storm that was coming.  No, I didn't go out and buy up all the bread, milk, and water that my local grocery store had.  That would be silly of me.  What I did was...

sorry for the crappy cell picture

I baked cookies!  When it comes to the possibility of being trapped in your house because of 2 feet of snow and power outages, the only thing you should be doing to prepare is baking.  So I did of course!  Almond butter-oatmeal-chocolate chunk cookies!  These are my favorite cookie to make.  If I'm baking cookies, these are what come out of the oven.  Delicious (vegan) and peanut-free.

Well, we didn't get 2 feet of snow yesterday.  Just one foot but it felt like it would NEVER end.  And to make things worse 2 out of my 3 boys woke up with fevers yesterday.  They alternating between sleeping, being a crab and acting normal.  It was exhausting for me.  All the worry that goes a long with being a mom plus adding emetophobia on top of it.  (Look it up: emetophobia)  Luckily no one was physically ill yesterday, just fevers.  But I was on edge, waiting...

Update: Both boys woke up feeling fine this morning.  I'm relieved!

Now, have a lovely day and go bake some cookies!

Best Yummy Cookies 

Ingredients:

2/3cup + 2TBSP Maple Almond butter (Justin's)

4TBSP Canola oil ( or you can use Coconut oil just be sure to melt it first)

1cup brown sugar

1cup sugar

2/3cup non dairy milk ( I used Dream Blends unsweetened: Almond, cashew, & hazelnut)
2tsp vanilla extract

1cup unbleached white flour

1cup whole wheat flour

1tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

2cups rolled oats

1cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Mega Chunks

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375* (Fahrenheit)

In large bowl stir together first 5 ingredients

In a small bowl, stir together flour, soda and salt

Stir into nut butter and sugar mixture

Stir in oats

then stir in chunks

Drop batter by rounded Tablespoonful onto Silpat or parchment lined cookie sheet (I don't do either, I just use non stick cookie sheet)

Bake 10 minute

Remove from oven and cool on pan for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack


I'm planning to cut back the sugar on this recipe.  I'll let you know when that happens. :-)