Problems, Problems.

Ok, well I am starting to get better at this posting thing! Only at posting though, as you may have noticed, I have yet to post any pictures of food!
I got online last night and had all my pictures ready to go to be talked about and I was then clueless as to how to upload them. I know I could upload them to a picture hosting site, but I am too lazy to go through all that work and I thought there was an easier way to upload them staight from my desktop. If anyone could be of assistance that’d be great.
Unfortunately, my blog has encountered another problem as well. I have no idea how to change the theme! There are tons of themes that I like a lot better than this one! But I can’t seem to figure out how to change it. Once again, help would be nice!
All right, so since I don’t have any pictures for you, I would describe what has been going on in my stomach!
This morning I was so enthused to make an “Elvis Smoothie” from Veggiegirl (linking to other pages is also something I don’t know how to do ahh!!) Anyways, I walked downstairs and looked in my freezer for a couple bananas I had frozen a while ago. I pulled out the bag and there were 4 banana chunks. Four chunks!! What kind of smoothie could I make with 4 chunks of banana!!! A very small one, that’s what!I quartered the recipe and ended up getting about 4 slurps of Elvis, and every one was delicious!
Since it is summer, I have not been getting up early enough to eat a filling breakfast and be hungry by lunch time so I haven’t any breakfast favorites. I have really been craving them too! I was so close to making pancakes for lunch today, but almost as soon as I pulled the pancake ingredients out, a craving for a veggie burger was flung on me by some evil veggie burger force. Luckily, we had just bought some vegan boca burgers. (Even though I wish my family were vegan, I am glad that I get to eat whatever I feel like each meal rather eating what my family eats)
As of late, I like most other bloggers have been trying hard to eat healthier and perhaps lose some of those freshman 15 pounds!! Unfortunately, veggie burgers are not low in calories. (No surprise there) We also made pizza for dinner which was okay. I haven’t mastered the art of vegan pizza yet. I don’t know which toppings are good to combine and which ones are nasty. Tonight, I used FYH mozzorella cheese and black olives on my entire pizza. Then on one quarter of it, I put roasted red peppers and on another quarter I put some broccoli (following Jennifer McCann’s example). Usually I have an open mind about things and am pretty creative. I think it was the fact that our fridge was low on veggies and the idea of bread, tomato sauce and said veggies would not meld too well. All in all, it was not bad, just blah, really.
Currently, I am at home a lot! Like all day. Right now, I only have a job on weekends. For now, that is good for me because my things still need to be cleaned up from moving back in, but in June, I will starting a new job and probably will have less time to cook (which I am ashamed to say is lacking even when I have plenty of time.)
Ending on a happy note, I hope you all have a great Wednesday!!

At home.

Hey! I am positive I don’t have any readers at the moment, so I am not too worried about updating frequently. Although, when I made this I got excited and had planned to post lots of things. Well I came home the weekend before finals and the computer that I used at home basically crashed. Well, my parents were also gone that weekend and when they are gone, I tend to do a lot of baking/cooking. Which I did! So I really did have tons to blog about but my computer I guess had other plans. Anyways, I still took pictures and they are still planning on being put up. I have just gotten lazy. But they are coming soon, I promise. So for now, a survey which I have done before but not on a blog!

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
I like almost any. I always buy something different when I go to the store, but at the Asian market I can get a quart for 99 cents so if I am going to be doing some baking that uses a lot of soy milk, I tend to buy that. Alone, it’s not too great, but you can’t taste it in baked goods. But I guess I love Silk Chocolate Milk, Almond Breeze, and Living Harvest vanilla hemp milk mmm..
2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
1) I have tried to lay off the baking..or lay off fat in general, but I really want to make the raspberry chocolate chip blondies from VwaV!
2) Chickpea cutlets–I’ve never liked garbanzo beans, but I have heard nothing but good things about these!
3) A falafel waffle! How awesome are those?
3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
I have been craving popcorn for the longest time. I have never made vegan popcorn, but I would love to try vegan kettle corn from the VeganYumYum website
4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
Hmm, I haven’t had any failures that I can recall. Maybe trying to veganize some chocolate chip peanut butter cookies from a cookbook. They tasted great, but were hard and super thick.
5. Favorite pickled item?
I tried pickled ginger with my sushi they other day and it was delish!
6. How do you organize your recipes?
I really need to. My mom gave me a shelf in our pantry for all my vegan cookbooks, but the recipes that I print off, I just kind of stick them all in one random cookbook. Although, I am thinking about creating a three ring binder to put them all in.
7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
We have both trash and garbage disposal.
8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?
I am going to cheat and pretend that there is a mango tree on the island with tons of mango hanging from it!
1) pita bread
2) chocolate
3) peanut butter (hey if I am going to be stranded, I might as well chow down on unhealthy food!)
9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Playing in the snow when my family lived in Ohio and making snow cream (not sure what all was in that concoction, but it was awesome!)
10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
Soy Dream mint chocolate chip (tastes just like Breyers mint chocolate..my favorite ice cream pre-gan!) Although, after reading many blogs about coconut sorbet I have searched and searched for such sorbet with NO SUCH LUCK
11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
Blender and KitchenAid mixer.
12. Spice/herb you would die without?
cinnamon!!
13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
I got like 5 of them for Christmas which started my collection, then about 5 more for my birthday 4 days later and so the collection progressed. Of those 5 I got for Christmas was Vegan with a Vengeance, which is the one I use the most out of them.
14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
SEEDLESS RASPBERRY!! YUM
15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
Are you kidding? My omni friends won’t touch my food with a 10 foot pole. I’ve only served them desserts, which apparently are much more appetizing because they don’t contain *shriek* vegetables!
16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
Honestly, I have only tried tofu. I guess Seitan and tempeh would have been a good answer to the “which food do you want yo make?” question. I have some tempeh in my fridge and promised my mom that seitan was easy to make, yet I have yet to touch either of them.
17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
breakfast..although unless it’s a special occasion or I can’t sleep, I am too lazy to wake up early to make it. Breakfast for dinner is amazing!
18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
A peppermint bark tin and some kitchen decor.
19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
1) ice cream
2) frozen fruit (for smoothies)
3) Lightlife Chik’n strips that I got for a manager’s special price at Kroger and decided to freeze them before they expire.
20. What’s on your grocery list?
I really need/want some quick cooking oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, and more pimentos.
21. Favorite grocery store?
Well, I am super lucky to have Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe located about 45 minutes from me (6 minutes away from my school!) And a few other amazing vegan grocers an equal distance, but I also have a Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s a little closer (20 minutes), although they don’t have the biggest vegan selection!
22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.
Oh! I used to have a really good answer to this question, but I have forgotten what it was.
23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
I have a list of about 50 blogs. I think the ones I look forward to reading the most are VeganYumYum, because all of her recipes seem extremely thought out and thoroughly tested. Second, the Vegan Lunch Box: even though she doesn’t post very often any more, I have gone through all her posts twice, just reading them, and it is the best one I have come across! Third, Fatfree Vegan Kitchen because she tries to make everything low in fat, which is definitely nice!
24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
I don’t eat too much candy. I tend to eat more of those nasty processed desserts. However, now that I am home, I promised myself that I won’t be buying any more pre-packaged desserts as I have an entire kitchen and pantry stocked full of baking supplies to bake my own. But to answer the original question, I would have to say the “accidentally vegan” Golden Oreos.
25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
I went to Whole Foods a couple days ago and I was close to getting some Monkey Brains (the most delish oatmeal I have ever eaten), but I decided against it. I suppose it would be some Soy Protein powder for my morning smoothies.

Hello world!

Well hello! I am inviting myself into the world of vegan blogging. To start off this thing right, I want to tell you a little about myself.
Now I am from the “tell-all” generation of Facebook and Myspace; where everyone’s business becomes everyone elses business. I do not want to exploit myself and tell you every little detail, but I am always dissappointed when I start reading someone’s blog and see that they have absolutely no information about themselves. I understand that some people are private and don’t want the whole world to know about their personal lives, however, whenever I read that they are at “work,” well, where’s work? They mention their “family.” Do they have kids? The talk about their roommate. Do they live in a dorm? If so, do they have a kitchen? If not, then how do they cook/bake so much? These are the questions I am always curious about.
So, without any more blabbing, here goes…
First if all, I am a college student. I am about to finish up my freshman year in about 2 weeks. Currently, I live in a dorm with extremely limited access to a kitchen (I live on the third floor of my dorm and there is a partially working kitchen on the first floor). After this year, though, I am transferring to a state school (I am currently at a private, liberal arts school), and have decided to commute–giving me full access to a kitchen! Which is the reason I am finally starting one of these things.
Second, I am no grammar aficionado.While I can take the time to write a pretty good paper, I don’t see the point in making my blog elegant. Afterall, it is about the food, right?
Third. I am not a photographer. I got a pretty nice point and shoot digital camera for my birthday and I have been snapping shots here and there, but it does not compare to some other pictures I have seen with nice, expensive cameras. So don’t expect to see beautiful pictures with a perfectly places background and sunlight pouring onto my food. Sure, I would love to have pictures like that someday, but it’s not really my thing.
Fourth: I am no chef (I feel like I am explaining the “rules” of my blog to you ). I have only been vegan for a short time (more on that later) and I obviously haven’t gotten much of a chance to cook for myself. So, when I do cook or bake, it is usually following a recipe step by step. I have not once in my life come up with a recipe on my own. Not only that, but during my “pregan” days when I was still a vegitarian, I loved to bake because everything I baked came out perfectly (my first baking project ever was a chocolate cake from scratch which turned out amazing–especially for my first try EVER!) but I never did cook anything other that macaroni and cheese (from a box) and cheese quesadillas (Mom did all the cooking for me). So, long story short, now that I am vegan, it seems like there is a whole new art to baking which I have not yet perfected which caused me to turn to cooking, which I am gettng better at, but by no means in any condition to know what spices go together and such to create my own recipes.
Lastly, I want to explain in short how I became vegan (I always see long posts for these types of stories, but for some reason mine is super short)
My mom has told me that when I was a baby I always had a natural attraction to vegetable flavored baby food. As I got a little older and my parents would stick a one-bite piece of meat on my plate for me to try, I would put it in my mouth and chew on it for 30 minutes at least until they gave me permission to spit it out. I have never liked the taste of meat. I would eat the ocassional chicken nuggets or hot dog and sometimes bologna, but never any red meat…not even fried chicken. I used to always call myself a vegitarian, but I would still consume those few things, until eventually I decided to commit and become a real vegitarian. Part of this, came with help from a girl who told me what hot dogs were made of as she had hot dog bits all over her face. This disgusted me and I never ate meat again. So anyways, I was about 12 years old when I officially became a vegitarian.
The relationship between me and cheese, however is a different story. I loved cheese! It went with everything as a perfect meat replacer. Also, as I mentioned before, I love to bake. There is something about cracking open eggs and unwrapping sticks of butter that got me so excited. It wasn’t until the end of my senior year in high school that things changed. A lady came to my school and gave a presentation on ethical eating. I was so excited because I had never met another vegitarian or vegan in my entire life and I wanted all my classmates to be told the right things. But this lady didn’t give the presentation I expected. You see, I had never really given up meat for ethical reasons. I knew I was eating dead animals and that always bothered me, but when people asked me why I was a vegitarian, I would tell them that I simply didn’t like the taste because “me not eating meat isn’t going to save any cows, so what would be the point otherwise?” So, back to the speaker. She explained how cow’s milk has all sorts of nasty stuff in it including pus, antibiotics, and any diseases the cow itself may have had. Also, she explained how chickens are stacked 4 or 5 in a cage, spending their whole life standing on uncomfortable wire. It kind of made me think, but I was also very ignorant because I felt like I was already doing everything right. I grabbed some flyers to give to my omnivorous friends and family and went on my way.
About a week or so later, my friend mentioned something like “I have a hard time drinking milk after that lady told us about all that pus in it.” I had forgotten about this! Already! Immediately after she said that I forced my mom to buy organic milk. How could I drink pus? Well, my life continued on that way for a while. I went to Costa Rica that summer and ate my weight in cheese and cream sold off a dirty cart (ew!) and indulged in plenty of ice cream there as well.
Once I started college, I was at home one weekend and felt like I had very unhealthy and needed some vegetables. I started eating some soybeans and carrots as I was reading one of the flyers the lady had given us (that I took for my friends, mind you!) It explained that vegetarians should try going vegan for 3 weeks (it takes 3 weeks to make a habit) and if it’s not for you, the so be it. So I told my family and my friends. They were not so much shocked, as they were asking me why and telling my all of my favorites that I wouldn’t be able to eat anymore. Also, when going grocery shopping, my mom made it a point to point out that all my food was so expensive.
All this was really hard for me at first. I would never eat cheese, ice cream, butter, etc. directly (I had kind of weened myself off milk and eggs during my pregan days anyways), but I would buy things I loved at the store knowing that they had milk in them. I did this until halloween when I decided I would give myself a “cheat” day. Where during the whole day I could eat anything I wanted. Well, of course I started with milk chocolate, then whipped cream, and for dinner pasta with alfredo sauce! It sounds good…but it made me so sick! It ruined my halloween because my body was so used to not having dairy that eating that much made me ache all over. From them until Christmas I kind of danced arund veganism–especially at Christmas when it was still new to my family and all I could eat was fruit salad and steamed broccoli. I decided, well maybe this bread has non dairy margarine on it, or I bet this stuffing is made with no eggs and vegetable broth. I was a “bad vegan” as they are called. But then I knew, just like when I danced around vegitarianism, that I had to commit. Ever since then (About December 28) I have been completely cruelty free (with the occasional accident) and proud of it!
Ok, well I said my story was short, and now I can see why everyone’s is so long. There’s a whole life to explain!
So with that said, I will probably leave this blog alone until summer when I can actually post some food porn for you. So, to my many fans: Stay tuned!!