ch-ch-ch-changes

If you're reading this - well, first off that's amazing - second off I've moved! After a lot of frustration and a little though, I'm now over at http://potatoesnpeaches.wordpress.com. In addition to the move, I'm going to try branching out content-wise, into not just being about food, but also the lovely crafty things I am prone to making.

Thanks for visiting.
Love,
Beazle

Break-Up Food

Why yes this blog *is* still alive.

Sort of.

I broke up with a girl I really (Really) liked yesterday. It was unavoidable, and I'm not in the mood to share with the internets all the hairy details about it.* I will say, however, that noone ever warned me how completely and totally crappy it is to be the one doing the breaking. It might feel worse than being dumped.

So I've been eating a lot of comfort food this weekend. It looks like this:

*Giant plate of tofu scramble with comfort toast**
*Frozen crinkle-cut french fries
*Non-vegan Lemon Drop cupcake from Cupcake Royale (my neighbor had Salted Caramel, which is delicious as well)
*Soy pudding
*1 Pomegranate smoothie with vitamin boost from Jamba Juice (to make all the junk food acceptable)
*Soy yogurt
*More soy pudding
*1 32oz Very Green Juice Blend from Trader Joe's (again, to offset the junk foods)
*Pistachios
*Pad Thai noodle box thing from Trader Joe's
*More pudding
*More French fries
*Lots of comfort toast
*1 bag of Tings

It's all really serving it's purpose pretty well.



*This song totally made me ugly cry. It was that bad.


**Comfort toast is just your basic toast but eaten when you need comforting.

Vegan's 100 = Much Better Than Work

This is the Vegan's 100 meme from the bittersweet blog, which is a super thing because 1) I can do this instead of pretending to work, 2) C'mon, it makes me think about FOOD, and 3) Wash, rinse, repeat.

Here's Hannah's original list

This is the best meme in the whole world right here.

Instructions!
1) Copy this list into your own blog, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Post a comment here once you’ve finished and link your post back to this one.
5) Pass it on!

Foodie Bits!
1. Natto
2. Green Smoothie
3. Tofu Scramble
4. Haggis (I just...I can't do it)
5. Mangosteen
6. Creme brulee
7. Fondue
8. Marmite/Vegemite
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Nachos
12. Authentic soba noodles
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Taco from a street cart
16. Boba Tea
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (oh, god, yes)
19. Gyoza
20. Vanilla ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Ceviche
24. Rice and beans
25. Knish (Although, I do call Potato my little Knish sometimes)
26. Raw scotch bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Caviar
29. Baklava
30. Pate
31. Wasabi peas
32. Chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Mango lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Mulled cider
37. Scones with buttery spread and jam
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Fast food french fries
41. Raw Brownies
42. Fresh Garbanzo Beans
43. Dahl
44. Homemade Soymilk
45. Wine from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Stroopwafle
47. Samosas
48. Vegetable Sushi
49. Glazed doughnut
50. Seaweed
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Tofurkey
54. Sheese
55. Cotton candy
56. Gnocchi
57. Piña colada
58. Birch beer
59. Scrapple
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Soy curls
63. Chickpea cutlets
64. Curry
65. Durian
66. Homemade Sausages
67. Churros, elephant ears, or funnel cake (all of them, oh yes)
68. Smoked tofu
69. Fried plantain
70. Mochi
71. Gazpacho
72. Warm chocolate chip cookies
73. Absinthe
74. Corn on the cob
75. Whipped cream, straight from the can
76. Pomegranate
77. Fauxstess Cupcake
78. Mashed potatoes with gravy
79. Jerky
80. Croissants
81. French onion soup
82. Savory crepes
83. Tings
84. A meal at Candle 79
85. Moussaka
86. Sprouted grains or seeds
87. Macaroni and “cheese”
88. Flowers
89. Matzoh ball soup
90. White chocolate
91. Seitan
92. Kimchi
93. Butterscotch chips
94. Yellow watermelon
95. Chili with chocolate
96. Bagel and Tofutti
97. Potato milk
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Raw cookie dough (x infiniti)

So, I think I've got a pretty well-rounded list of things I've tried up there, but it also looks like there's plenty more experimenting to be done. Especially that part about the meal at Candle 79. Must go see how I can get them to move to Seattle...

Reader Recap

The last week or so has been a little busy-ish. I've been taking a lot of vacation days from work. I had a picnic for my knitting group to organize (Picknit!), I attended the Seattle Mariners Stitch'n Pitch, helped a friend clean her house, went for a really long walk, and drank a lot of coffee at my favorite coffee shop. Reading, hours and hours and hours of reading as well. I also spent two days taking an advanced Excel class for work which was pretty cool. All of this meant that last week I only worked 2 days and since I read my Google Reader almost exclusively at work, I had a lot of catching up to do this week. Oh, how I suffer.

So, since my camera is Officially Dead (craaaaaaaap) and there was so much good reading going on, here's a few of my favorites from the last week and a bit. There will be seven as that is my lucky number and this post will have to stop somewhere or else I'd just post everything I have starred in Google Reader and there are no words to accurately explain the volume of posts in there.

1. I could eat shortbread until I throw up in order to make room for more shortbread, and this rosewater shortbread just encourages that kind of behavior. (from have cake, will travel!)

2. Don't know if I'll get around to making it, but this is the cutest salad I've ever seen. (from Show Me Vegan)

3. I made this ridiculously good potato salad and was sad when it was over. It brings new meaning to the word "tangy". I subbed in fresh rosemary and green onions for the fresh dill and capers, though. But the idea of sour cream instead of mayo is pure genius. (from Vegan.Chicks.Rock)

4. I can't wait for this book to come out! Queering Animal Liberation. I hope it's even half as interesting as it sounds.

5. Even though I'm not that experienced with curry or plantains, I think the best course of action is to make Curried Plantains, and very soon. (from Bitchin' Vegan Kitchen)

6. Happyveganface has been making some really delicious-looking salads like this one with bulghur (which I've never tried) and the summertime orzo salad. I just recently found this blog and I've really been missing out!

7. Lastly, frozen peaches are just really, really pretty. (again from have cake, will travel!)

So that's what's kept me motivated and feeding my love affair with both food and the vegan blogosphere in general. The camera thing is a minor setback, but it'll get worked out and I kind of like doing these breakdowns, so don't expect this to be the last one. Later!

Salads! Word!

that is some classy servingware

(This one goes out to all the cubicle-dwelling desk-eaters out there)

(That's not people who eat desks, but rather people who eat at their desks)

I've been making lots of salads lately, but can you blame me? It's summertime and there's all this great produce to be had and it's too hot to cook all the time. Much better to cook for a little bit of time and then eat cold things all the rest of your days. All the rest of your days being until you run out of salads and have to make more salads.



Last weekend I made a new salad, Quinoa, Kale and Avocado Salad and it's so freaking green and good! The recipe came in my last CSA box. They always send along a newsletter thing with some recipes on the back, most of which are vegan, and usually all of them are vegetarian and therefore easily veganized. It was originally posted over at http://www.eatdrinkbetter.com/ and like I said it's awesome! You can top it with any salad dressing, I chose Trader Joe's Goddess Dressing (which I am fairly certain is exactly the same as Annie's Goddess dressing) and added some vegan pate that a friend brought to me from Canada last week. The pate adds some substance, but really this salad is so hearty you don't need it. I just really like the pate and have to put it in everything. If you keep out the avocado until right before serving and resign yourself to eating a whole avo with each serving (which I am more than okay with), this salad is super as leftovers for work, just cut up the avo and add it along with your pine nuts and dressing right before you eat. Not to mention, if you are a cube-dweller like myself, then knowing this salad is waiting for you at lunchtime makes going to work worth the effort. And don't we need all the help we can get on a Monday? Yes we do.

What You Need:
1 Cup uncooked quinoa
3 Stalks of kale
1 Sheet of dried nori
1/2 Cucumber
1/2 Cup pine nuts
1 Avocado
1 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
Salad dressing to taste

What You Do:
In a small pot combine one cup quinoa with 2 cups of salted water and bring to a boil. Cover, and lower heat, simmering for about 15 minutes, or until all water has been absorbed.

While the quinoa cooks, remove the stems from the kale. Discard and chop the leaves finely, adding them to a large bowl. The nori can be difficult to cut, so you may find it easier to just break off very small pieces to add to the salad. You can leave the skin on the cucumber, but remove the seeds and chop into small pieces.

Add the pine nuts and sesame seeds to the kale, nori and cucumbers. Add the avocado last (as you don’t want it to brown). Halve it, remove peel and pit, and chop into small pieces. Add to the salad along with the vinegar and lemon juice. Once the quinoa has cooked, stir it with a fork and transfer to the fridge to cool.

Also making an appearance recently are kittee's Tempeh Salad That's Like The Crack of Salads, and the aforementioned Spicy Tofu and Spelt Salad, except that instead of doing the baked tofu thing, I put in a can of garbanzo beans and it was fantastic! A great alternative to dealing with a hot oven in summertime, plus loads of fiber and spelt+beans=complete protein.

Next week the salads continue! The plan is to make Hannah's Cold Sesame Noodles which I guess are not technically a salad but...they have a vegetable and are cold so therefore I'm calling salad, and if I'm feeling adventurous the Asian Pear & Tempeh Salad with Wasabi Dressing as posted on Vegan. Chicks. Rock and much like her, never noticed in V-con in all the times I've gone flipping through it.

Taking a break from salads though, this morning I'm making my first ever solo loaf of bread! When I was little, I spent hundreds (maybe only dozens) of hours helping my mom with her baking projects, but haven't done that many myself. I remember I made pretzels once, but that seems different. That was in her kitchen with her ingredients and tools, so it was partially her food, this time it's all my doing, all mine. I'm using the Quick Yeast Bread recipe from the Dirty South half of the Hot Damn & Hell Yeah/The Dirty South Vegan Cookbook. I didn't realize how soothing kneading dough really is. You just get into this totally relaxed state and the 10 minutes flies by and I was a little sad I had to stop, really. And it was sort of miraculous (to a non-baker like me) that you mix the first ingredients and it's really wet and messy and you add the last cup of flour and it's just a crumbly mess and seems it will never come together and then *poof* 10 minutes later it's a beautiful smooth ball of dough. I love how it feels, smooth and cool like the underside of a forearm or a baby's cheek. Right now it's on it's first rise, then another rise in the loaf pan and then baking and then finally I will get to eat it. In the meantime I off to find a way to distract myself.


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Now playing: Smittens - Nate Is Straight
via FoxyTunes