HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Finger suckers

Today is my Dad's birthday :)  

The pics are from a venture to the Japanese Stroll Garden with my brother and his baby Jude.

Two blog entries in one day...crazy, huh?  (here's the other)

Creamy Green deLight

Strange title, I realize that.  Last night we were listening to Type O Negative.  And while we were gazing at the very greenness that we were about to munch on, Adam realized that the song Creepy Green Light was playing and I couldn't resist ;)

We tried out mung bean noodles for this dish.  These fellas have a definite beany taste and hearty texture, both of which we enjoyed.  And, like Soba noodles, are a quick fix, taking no more than 6-8 minutes.

For the sauce we were inspired by the Roasted Garlic Artichoke Spread from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan.  For 45-50 min. you roast a mixture of garlic, artichokes, oregano, oil and lemon juice.  I mashed some white beans and mixed them with soy milk and black pepper while heating over medium low heat.  Next I added the garlic artichoke mixture, red onion, chopped olives, and marinated shiitake mushrooms. 

This dish was served up on a bed of spinach and sprinkled with leftover topping from the previous night (cashews, nutritional yeast and hemp seed).  After the photo was taken I covered it in nutritional yeast and I would highly recommend this!  In fact, this dish would be quite good with nutritional yeast mixed into the sauce to create a sort of beany fettuccine.

All in all, not bad.  In the future I would like to add more herbs and garlic.  I would also recommend frying the onions and mushrooms ahead of time (which we did not do) to really bring out the flavors.



  

"Squash the Shiitake" Stir-fry

Just a quick number from tonight's dinner.  Most of the veggies were local.  Since we missed the Farmers Market on Saturday we stopped by Homegrown Foods while doing laundry.  This place is awesome!  They just got started this year and already serve up a wide assortment of local foods and related items (coffee, pottery, etc.).

Before cooking, the shiitake mushrooms were marinated in tamari, Worcestershire sauce (vegan of course!) and brown rice vinegar.  The following were stir-fried in toasted sesame oil:  red onion, elephant garlic (local!), marinated shiitake mushrooms, yellow squash, green pepper, turnips, cashews and the remaining marinade.  

After boiling and rinsing the soba noodles, I mixed in some toasted sesame oil, basil, black pepper and black sesame seeds.  Then these were tossed in with the veggie mixture.

Served up with a topping of fresh sprouts and a mixture of finely chopped cashews, hemp seed and nutritional yeast.

Dancing Rabbit pt. 2 - Canning

This is the second installment about my adventure to Dancing Rabbit, an amazing Ecovillage in North East Missouri.  In case you missed the first part, you can check it out here.

We had an AMAZING time!  We made salsa, applesauce, peach jam and pickled okra.  Check out the Milkweed's entry, too!

Getting started with salsa

Down to business

A giant bowl of salsa!

Tina cranks while I concentrate, oh so hard, on watching

We got to take home lots of goodies, as you can see above :)  Aprons, canning books, canning funnels, canning tongs, FOOD, and a few other things (like smiles!).  And yes, that is Vegan Cream Cheese topped Carrot Cake.  If you have the opportunity to take part in such an excursion, I highly recommend it!

Other things...
I have been enjoying my offline time more and more.  And in my efforts to make more time for other things, I'm trying to spend less time online.  This week I made a firm decision to only check facebook once a week.   I have already been limiting blogging time, but still plan to aim for 1 to 2 entries each week, so please stick with me :)  I do still check out many other blogs, though I haven't been leaving as many comments.  Just fyi, for anyone who might wonder.  There is so much inspiration out there and it would be a shame to give up all of that!

Speaking of blogs, I was sad to discover that Green and Crunchy no longer exists.  If anyone knows the story, please fill me in.  This blog was a true inspiration!  It's what gave us the motivation to join a bulk-buying co-op.


Blog Updates (They may happen slowly, but they are coming!)
Coming Up:   Cookbook reviews and giveaway;  DR pt. 3;
Summer Garden pics

Why Vegan? - a story from Warped Tour

Here's a pretty cool video about a girl who decided to go vegan after attending Warped Tour.  I could not post the clip here, so please follow the link.  To those who are already vegan, this shows that we can make a difference in a variety of venues.  You never know who might be inspired to make a change ;)  Organizations like Vegan Outreach off lots of resources to help anyone interested in reaching out to their community.

Other sites that might be of interest:
Info. for new vegans 
Why Vegan - Vegan Outreach

Blog Updates
Coming Up:  DR pt. 2; cookbook reviews and giveaway; and more...
Recent Changes:  You might notice that there is now a search bar to aid in searching through past entries.  This has allowed me to condense the amount of labels used ;)  More to come...