yeah you make me merry, make me very very happy

So my holiday was very nice and relaxing, and also included a trip to new york to see some of my family up there, so that was nice as well.
It's been quite nice having plenty of time to sleep in, relax, and catch up with people..so it's been a really nice break so far! and to think i still have about two weeks left! :)

For Christmas eve dinner I wanted something festive, and I saw on a few people's blogs the Sweet N Salty Stuffing, with the recipe on Yeah That Vegan Shit's blog.. soo I decided to make it.



My mom and dad both had a chance to try it as well, and they seemed to enjoy it. However..I was not a fan. I love craisins so I thought I would love it, but for some reason the seasonings were throwing me off..and honestly I don't think I really liked stuffing to begin with..I just thought it would be a good idea. Meh, oh well. I thought it looked quite pretty though! :)

For dessert however, I also made another recipe from her blog which was the crunchy chocolate pie or something of that sort...and this..was awesome!




The pie filling was a recipe that I had made before from vegweb that I had used a while back..but I thought it was an awesome idea to make chocolate covered pretzels to throw on top!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie:
1 package of firm silken tofu
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c peanut butter
bit of soy milk to get to desired texture
a vegan graham pie crust

Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave. Add the tofu and chocolate to a blender and blend until smooth. Add peanut butter with about 1/2 c of soy milk to start. Blend until smooth and add more soy milk if needed, should be a mousse-ish texture. Add to pie crust, and use garnish with chocolate covered pretzels or just chocolate chips. :)

For Christmas I got a lot of really nice stuff... but vegan-y wise I got a gift basket filled with tons of vegan goodies!



It included a box of peanut butter crunch cliff bars, chocolate covered cherries and peanut butter truffles from Pangea, vegan macaroni and cheese, vegan rice krispy treats, a giant peanut butter chocolate cookie... can you tell i LOVE peanut butter and chocolate yet? ;)

I have yet to make the mac & cheese yet, but when I do..there'll definitely be a review! I also got Fondant and lots of little cut outs for it..so i'm super excited to make adorable cupcakes soon!

Hope everyones new year is wonderful, see you in 2009!!

if my senses fail, stay with me till they go...

So I'm home for winter break, thus the fall semester has officially been OVER! pretty sweet, and the grades weren't too bad either ;)

soo yesterday was the first day since being home that i really got a chance to make something. I wanted to make lots of delicious baked goods..since I feel like that's definitely needed for the holiday-times.
I decided on cookies and fudge!

as requested, I made the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from the ppk, which I had previously made about a year ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was my first vegan cookie recipe. awwww. :)


The recipe calls for using flax seed and soy milk as the egg replacement, but I had just recently gotten Ener-g egg replacer (so much quicker than getting out the blender and blending flax seed all the time!) so I switched it up a bit. I really don't think it made a bit of difference, they were still just as tasty as I remember them being the first time I made them.

I also decided upon a snickerdoodle recipe, since I don't believe I've had a home made snicker doodle, but a cinnamon sugar cookie sounds pretty good.


These came out pretty well. I was a bit nervous because they didnt seem to be done when I took them out, but the recipe said they'd look that way. Anyways though they tasted delish.

I found this recipe on a lot of blogs, so I'm not too sure where it originated from..hmm..

Vegan Snickerdoodles:
1 c margarine
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 T soy milk mixed with 2 T cornstarch
3 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cornstarch

2 T cinnamon
4 T sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together the margarine and sugar until smooth. Add the vanilla and soy milk mix and beat well. In a smaller bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder, and cornstarch together. Stir into wet ingredients and mix well. In a very small bowl, mix cinnamon and sugar. Begin rolling cookie dough into small balls and roll them in cinnamon mixture until completely coated, and place on ungreased baking sheet. Press down on each cookie to make "fork marks". Bake for 12-14 minutes, cookies will still look soft when taken out! Let them cool for 10 minutes on the pans, and then on a wire rack until cooled completely.


I attempted to make Peanut Butter Fudge from bjorkedoff.blogspot.com, but...that did not work well for me. I assume that I did not let it boil long enough perhaps? Either way..it never set right in the fridge and was still quite gooey after it was supposed to be done. That went into the trash..no pic :( i'll have to try that one again sometime..

However.. I did make chocolate fudge that came out really good!




With half of them, I added my wonderful find that I got from MOM's in college park this weekend!

These are great! Although I do find that they have a bit of a different consistency of a regular marshmellow, of course, but they are soo delicious and i love them. haha I really wanted to get the peanut butter smores they have, but unfortunately this was all the store had. I'm excited to use them in other recipes!!
I also picked up some agar-agar flakes...so i'm excited to make something with those too! :)

I hope everyone has a relaxing and wonderful Christmas! And if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful and relaxing day regardless.. :D

they won't see us waving from such great heights

So I don't have anything interesting that i've made to share..
basically we've been eating out or making boca burgers and veggies for lunch ;)
but we leave for a month soon so that's why...otherwise i'd be making some delicious food. anyways.

I do have a vegan food review from 7-11!
yes..that's right, 7-11 the convenience store that sells plenty of non vegan calorie filled doughnuts and packaged snacks.
BUT!
don't be fooled. because 5 of the locations in Philadelphia offer many vegan choices from the brand Moshe who makes different vegan sandwiches, etc. in the city.
And lucky for me, one of those 5 locations is right up the street from my apartment!


I went in and saw the assortment of the different things to try..

there was a vegan chicken salad sandwich, seitan steak sandwich, un turkey sandwich, hummus sandwich, lentils and spinach burrito, vegetarian fajita burrito, vegetarian spring wrappers, these asian noodle things, and manyyy many others :) they all looked delicious and i really had a hard time deciding for my first time!

emily got the seitan steak sandwich and I got the vegetarian spring wrappers. We also bought salsa and were super excited to try these Guacamole chips..only to get home and I realized they were not vegan. :( BUT thats okay. the spring rolls made up for it. :)

Anyway, mine were AWESOME! the sauce that it came with complemented them perfectly and was really delicious. Emily's sandwich was also quite tasty, but it tasted pretty much just like a chicken salad sandwich would taste, I would think. So maybe next time i'll try the chicken and see if it's much different from the "Steak". It was also really cool that they had the ingredients and nutritional information posted on each item as well!
Anyway! this was just really convenient and awesome to see that 7-11's in the city are offering these options for vegans, and for people who might not know it's not really meat!

one final down, 3 to go next week! good luck to everyone else taking their finals :)

talk and talk and talk it out

okay so we all know the scenario..
it's late at night, theres not much food in the house, but you really want something sweet and super quick and easy.
this was the dilemma last night for my roomie and i..after having late night food in the first place, we both really wanted something deliciously sweet afterwards, but didn't want to wait for a while with complicated ingredients or a long time in the oven. thus, I can to the decision to make something using my favorite combo..chocolate and peanut butter, of course.
i present to you these:



haha yes, probably the simplest idea ever, but yet was perfect and so tasty! The coconut on top makes it look like snow and winter-y, how cute :)

Anyway if you come to a problem late at night when you just want something tastyyy quickly, i definitely recommend making up some of these.

Mix 1 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of coconut, 4 tablespoons of agave nectar, 1/2 cup of chocolate chips in a bowl. Mix around, but it'll be pretty sticky. Roll them into balls and in a plate of 1/4 c cocoa powder and more coconut. Put the balls in the fridge for about 15 minutes and they should be fine to eat then, but we learned they're much harder and more "ball-like" the next day.. we just didn't want to wait until then ;)

Woohoo for last day of classes too!!!!! :)

and thats one for the show

So I'm back in philly from home for thanksgiving break, I would've updated sooner with what I made, but I left my camera cord and such in my apartment. I had quite a lovely thanksgiving, and I hope everyone else did too. :)

Oh, And I used that Hain's vegetarian gravy packet, and it actually tasted awesome! It went really quickly at the dphie thanksgiving dinner and I doubt anyone knew it was vegetarian! I wish I had bought more for my thanksgiving at home..

Since I had seen Happy Herbivore's e-cookbook for the pudge free holidays, I was so excited to make a lot from there for thanksgiving! First up was I made the cornbread from it.

I absolutely love cornbread, so I was really excited to try this. It called for unsweetened applesauce, in which that became a problem when seeing that the applesauce in the house was Homestyle sweenetened..even with chunks and brown sugar! Well, I made due and used it anyway. I did not reduce the sugar in the recipe, which I should have.. since these tasted very sweet for cornbread, even more so of a dessert -ish type of food. However, I love sweet foods, soo I absolutely loved it this way! The apple chunks in it from the applesauce made them even more delicious!

For my main dish, while my family ate away at the turkey, I made the Maple-Glazed Vegetables from her ecookbook.

I did enjoy this a lot. I think it may have been better if I used perhaps a different asortment of vegetables or added tofu or tempeh to it. But otherwise, the sauce was really good and I'd definitely use that again.

I was really excited to make dessert. I honestly don't think i had ever eaten pumpkin pie before, but I felt as though it was something thats supposed to be at thanksgiving (not sure why since I don't remember my mother ever having it there..) buttttt I made the Chocolate Pumpkin Pie, in hopes that the chocolate would make it more delicious.

But sadly, I think i've come to conclusion that I just don't like pumpkin pie. at all. I think I really just want to like it, more so than I actually do. Oh well..other people ate it so I guess that's good.

Also for dessert I made an apple cobbler type thing.



I used a recipe from ppk and it came out really good!

Apple Crisp:
4 lbs of granny smith apples, cored and thinly sliced
1 T cornstarch
1/2 c water
1/2 c light brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nut meg
1/4 tsp allspice
1 c quick cooking oats
1 c flour
1 c light brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 c oil
3 tablespoons of soy milk
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dissolve cornstarch in water. Place apples in 9x13 baking pan. Add first two sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice and mix well with apples. Pour cornstarch mixture over all. For topping, mix oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. Add oil, milk, and vanilla and mix well. Crumble over apples and bake for 45 minutes.

This recipe was really super simple, and made a whole pan full, so I'll definitely be using it again. paired up with my chocolate peanut butter soy ice cream..it was awesome! :)
well off to unpack my suitcase and huge bag of clothes that are all over my bed..not a fan of unpacking!

crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction?

so I've been eatings lots of really delicious food lately, however, not too many of it has come from me making it.
tonight however, my sorority has its thanksgiving dinner, so I'm going to make mashed potatoes for it. My roommate is making green bean casserole using a vegan cream of mushroom soup, so theres two things I can eat. haha it'll be fun though.
I'm using Happy Herbivore's recipe for the mashed potatoes, and I'm also going to be making them for thanksgiving next week..so I'm sure they'll be really delicious. :)

I went to the philadelphia library today to pick up a book for my class that I needed and I typed in vegan just for funsies to see if they had any good cookbooks there..and they didn't have many, but they did have Eat Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton..so I'm really excited to try some things out from it! I've been wanting it for a while.
Also, in the walk to the library I saw a sign for a nutritional/dietary food store in Germantown. (yes, germantown the place that also that vegetarian restaurant was that seemed so sketchy!) haha but I went in and the guy that worked there was super friendly and they had a lot of different vegan groceries and vitamins! It was really nice.. although a bit pricey since it was such a small health food shop. I did however pick up this packed of Hain pure food vegetarian brown gravy mix. It says to just add water, so i'm a little skeptical haha but I figure I can make a bit for tonight and see how it tastes. I've never heard of it before..


how bad could it be right? ;)

So this morning I really wanted something warm for breakfast to start my day, and our kitchen is quite limited right now since we're leaving for thanksgiving break in few days. So I concocted an oatmeal breakfast :)


I used 1/2 cup of oats, 1 cup of water, about a teaspoon of cocoa powder, a good amount of raspberry preserves, and a little bit of chocolate chips. Soo delicious! Tasted like chocolate covered raspberries..yum :) i love oatmeal.

okay well off to re-write a paper.. only a week and 1/2 left of classes!

and i was your silver lining as the story goes

So last week my roomie and I were deciding where to go for lunch and we thought of this place that was near our old apartment last year..that we always talked about going to but never actually went to. (you know how that goes..)
We used to live right near Germantown..an outskirt of Philadelphia that isn't exactly the nicest neighborhood..and I remember seeing on menupages that there was a vegetarian restaurant right on Germantown Ave called The Nile Cafe. The menu online showed many different sandwiches, salads, mock meats,..even a questionable veg roast duck and spicy fish. And..a dessert menu which instantly wins me over anyway. ;)

So we finally went. And we walked inside and at first you walk into this store which has lots of different things such as books, cds, incense, different body treatments, etc. It was pretty cool.
And then you walked past it and to the restaurant..which is really just about 7-8 tables past the window where you ordered, which you could see the entire "homey" feeling kitchen.

It says it's a juice bar as well, though I did not ask, I didn't really see any place where they would've made different juices, but hey maybe it's hidden.

Anyway, I asked the woman at the window to see a menu, but she said they didn't really have one, and that they just cooked up different things basically all day and you could choose from what was already there. She had enough soup left for my roomie and I to share a cup while we waited for our food. It was a Lentil Vegetable soup..and quite delicious!


We weren't sure what we wanted..but she told us that she had a creole, another vegetable dish that I don't remember because I don't think I liked that kind of vegetable, mockmeat of fish, mockmeat of duck, and mockmeat of BBQ chicken. She nicely let us sample each of the mockmeats to choose which one we wanted, and we decided to go with the bbq chicken, though they were all quite good! We shared a plate because we were saving room for dessert, and it came with the chicken, rice and we chose the creole.

Everything was awesome! the sauce on the chicken was the best bbq sauce I think i've ever had, and it felt like such a home cooked meal, i loved it! The woman was also super nice and made us feel really comfortable with the stuff knowing it was our first time there.
We finally got the dessert, and I chose a scoop of vanilla caramel and a scoop of cookies n cream ice cream. Emily got a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of mocha ice cream. Both choices were really really awesome. :)



This place was such a different atmosphere than the usual vegan cafe's that i've been to in philly, and I really appreciated that. I know I'll definitely be back, especially since it's so close and I'm excited to see how they change up the lunch menu everyday! :)

Okay so I've been tagged by two super wonderful blogs for the 7 facts survey..so I'll do it ;)

1. I'm really really into the Twilight series and sometimes I admit it and sometimes I don't haha but everytime I see a commercial I get really excited and I can't wait to see it in theatres!

2. My ipod is full of underground, compelling, indie music that I really really enjoy.. but I have a seperate artist folder called "Stuff" which I have all my rap that I like to listen to when I feel gangster or get ready ...or just in the mood for it haha but I keep it all under there so it doesn't look like I just have a bunch of T.I. or Lil Wayne haha.

3. I have a bit of an overwhelming lust for Nick Thomas, the singer of the spill canvas. I first heard their song "the tide" about 6 years ago(yes wayyyyy before mtv had ever even heard of them) and I fell in love with them ever since with what talent at composing such heartfelt meaningful lyrics they had. But I really like Nick a lot even though everyone says he looks like a bear :(

4. I hate rainy days. I'd prefer to just stay in bed watching a good movie all day..but mostly I hate them because they make me have ugly hair all day.

5. I love having dreams. I get really dissapointed when I wake up and I don't remember any from the night before, but I love waking up and rethinking about them all day and trying to analyze them. A bit of a Freudian, I know. ;)

6. Freshman year of college I was sooo determined to transfer back to my hometown and finish school there, but luckily and thankfully I did not. Now I couldn't ever see myself doing that and I think I've learned a lot from being up here instead.

7. I honestly don't even know how I wound up with Psychology as my major, I mean I was interested in it in high school but I guess I just wasn't interested in anything else enough. I really hope to go on to do something with nutritional psychology. Though it does make me really really nervous when people tell me that there isn't hope for a good job with just a bachelors in psych, and that you have to basically go all the way. But we'll see ;)

So a lot of people have already been tagged for this one, but if you haven't been...then I officially tag you because I love reading these! :)

it keeps getting better

so i've been a bit mia for the past week or so...mostly super busy with school! from now until thanksgiving, i have more presentations/papers/exams then i know what to do with..it's a bit overwhelming, but once thanksgiving break gets here, I'll pretty much be carefree. can't wait :)

I did have time to bake last week though, so that was fun. On Thursday my sorority had a bake off..and yes, i'm the only vegan in the sorority, so not much for me to taste-test..other than my own. Butttt other people got to try what I made so that was exciting for me. :) I wanted to try again from VCTOTW, since the icing on the cookies n cream one didn't work out too well for me. I chose the Peanut Butter Heavencakes since who doesn't love a good pb and choc combo??
It was the same basic chocolate cupcake recipe as the cookies n cream one, but instead you fill the middle with the peanut butter cream frosting and then you're supposed to make a chocolate ganache for the top..
welll... leave it to me to have to change the plans.

I was excited once I put them in the oven because the frosting for the middle tasted awesome and I was just hopeing they'd come out right. After baking when I checked on them, the peanut butter cream was just ooooooooooozing everywhere! All over the pan bursting out of the cupcakes. hmph. :(
I didn't use that much in each cupcake, I'm thinking maybe I just had them too full in general? I thought they were a nice 2/3's full...hmm. maybe next time only 1/2?
Well anyway, so I scraped the frosting away off the pan and there was still a nice amount still in the cupcakes. But the tops were sunken in and they didn't exactly look that pretty. So I knew that just having ganache on top wouldn't make them look any better. So I whipped up some more of the butter cream frosting and just frosted them all with that, adding a few chocolate chips to the tops instead of the ganache.
Needless to say, they tasted awesome, and isn't that what matters? ;)




So even though I couldn't try anyone else's delicious looking treats at the bakeoff, I had more than enough of my own, so I'm glad they were so delicious! :)

On Friday I finallyyyy got to try this vegetarian restaurant in Germantown that noone has ever heard of..and it was amazing. So once I get the pictures off of the roomie's camera I'll give a review of it...it was quite an interesting place!

yay phillies :)

soo in case you didnt already know, the phillies won the world series.. so it's been pretty exciting around here haha. you know, the screaming and beeping of horns outside from the moment they won until about 1:30 this morning. ohhh well..theres a parade for it tomorrow in center city and i'd really like to go. we'll see :)

I've been in the halloween spirit lately because it's definitely one of my favorite holidays. Besides Christmas..which I like the weeks before Christmas more than the actual day though. :) Anyway, so I made another recipe from Joy of Vegan Baking. This book has yet to let me down!


boo!



I used the Sugar Cookie recipe, and bought sprinkles and orange decorating icing from walmart in the party aisle, which suprisingly was vegan! :) basically just sugar...but hey who said sugar cookies were healthy? This made is a lot easier for me because lately my icing skills haven't been very good :(

Sugar Cookies (from Joy of Vegan Baking):
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated, nondairy butter, room temperature
3/4 cup graulated sugar
1 egg replacer (i used 1 T flax blended with 3 T water)
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder and set aside. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg replacer and vanilla and beat for another minute. Add the flour mix and beat until a smooth dough. Divide dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour, until firm enough to roll. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove dough and on a lightly floured surface, roll out to a thickness of 1/4". Cut out the cookies with cookie eased bakinutters and put onto grg heet. Refrigerate for 10 minutes so cookies will keep their shape. Put into oven and bake 12-15 minutes until just browned on the edges. Decorate with frosting and sprinkles!! :)

I really liked the simplicity of this recipe, with the ingredients. In a lot of sugar cookie recipes I was looking up involved tofu or some random ingredient, which obviously is not necessary. These tasted just like the sugar cookies I had this past Christmas, non-vegan days. So I'm looking forward to making them for this upcoming holiday season!
Hope everyone has a great halloween! We're having a party tonight, and I'm being a greek goddess! I'm excited :)

and you didn't even notice when the sky turned blue

The weeks are just flyyying by and I can't believe it's already midterm time! I have to register for classes for next semester in 2 weeks...its insane! haha but I guess it's all good because I have a lot to look forward to. :)

This past week I made a brownie recipe that I found on veg web. It struck me as interesting because there wasn't an eggreplacer in it...so I was curious as to how everyone was saying how "fudgy" they were. I've made brownies before and they've been either too oily or too cakey. These turned out really well though!




Brownies: (found on vegweb)
2 cups flour
1 cup water
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Boil water and 1/2 cup flour over low heat, stirring constantly, until it becomes a thin gluey paste. Remove from heat and let cool. Mix sugar, salt, vanilla, cocoa, and oil. Then add flour-water mixture and mix well. Add the rest of the flour, baking powder, and chocolate chips and continue to mix. Spread into a greased 7x11" pan and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.

I would definitely use this brownie recipe again because it was so simple and they came out fudgy enough.

Last weekend I had some leftover tofu from a stir fry I had made the week before, and I wasn't sure what to do with it. More stir fry? Well, of course..but I wanted to try something new. I've never made a tofu scramble before, and I see them on everyone's blogs all the time and they always look soo good! I was never a huge egg fan..I actually don't remember the last time I ever ate eggs, even as a vegetarian I stopped eating them cooked for breakfast and such.
But I decided to give it a try. And it came out soo awesome! My roomie really enjoyed it too, so that was a plus. I added lots of salsa to mine, because I basically eat everything with salsa. that or peanut butter..never both though. haha




All I used was a green bell pepper that I had, some garlic, season all, a bunch more random seasonings, a bit of hot sauce and soy sauce. haha but blended allllll together, it was quite tasty! :) I'll definitely have to experiment with some more scramble recipes.

Well off to pack..I'm going home this weekend for the first time in a while so I'm pretty excited. :)

you can have whatever you like

so still no luck on finding the cord for my nikon..haha butttt i just switched the memory card into my other camera and i can upload them. :)

so i really wanted to try another recipe out from joy of vegan baking..so i decided upon the peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. peanut butter and chocolate..you can't really go wrong.
anddd they didnt..they were absolutely delicious!



Peanut Butter Cookies: (From Joy of Vegan Baking)
1 3/4 c flour, sifted
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg replacer (I used 1 T flax blended with 3 T water)
1 1/4 c packed light brown sugar
3/4 c peanut butter
1/2 c soy milk
3 T vegan margarine
1 T vanilla extract
1/2 c vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt and set aside. In a large bowl, mix together sugar, peanut butter, butter, milk, and vanilla. Beat until well blended. Then add egg replacer and blend. Add flour mixture and chocolate chips and mix. Drop the cookie batter by tablespoonfulls onto ungreased cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork to create criss cross pattern on top. Bake for 10-12 minutes until cookies are just turning brown, be careful not to overbake! Remove from oven and let cool. :)

So those I was really happy about. Also the sorority I'm in was having an Alumni Event this past weekend, so I had the opportunity to bake something for that as well. I still had not gotten around to making any fun cupcakes from VCTOTW, soo that was a must! I decided upon the Cookies N Cream ones.



Okay so taste wise? Awesome!! The cupcakes were perfectly chocolate-y and had oreo crumbles throughout them which were great. The icing was soo sweet and delicious that I loved it with the contrast of the dry-er cupcakes. But ...those look NOTHING like the picture in the book :(
The frosting definitely did not get to the consistency that I was aiming for..thus I could not put the half of a cookie on the icing like in the picture. I think maybe the milk did it? i added 1/4 cup of soy milk like the recipe said..but obviously it didn't work out right. I kept adding more sugar & butter to it too to hopefully even it out...nope...nothing. anyone make these and have more successful frosting??

food wise for me hasn't been anything too interesting..our kitchen is seriously EMPTY ...luckily we're going grocery shopping on friday..i've been living off of canned soups and popcorn! haha nothing wrong with that though ;)

if you jump i will jump too, we can fall together

Okay so I have pictures on my Nikon of two things that I baked last week that were AWESOME (no i'm not saying what yet) buttt I can't seem to find the cord to upload the pictures. so that's being saved for next time haha.

anyway i have much more exciting news.

Sooo last week I went to Kingdom of Vegetarians which is an all-vegan chinese restaurant in center city with my friend. The food.. was AWESOME! i got general tso's "chicken", hot & sour soup, these fried banana things for dessert..and tried some other stuff. it was amazing so I told my roomie about it, and she got pretty excited.. so we treated ourselves to a day of lunch and manicures&pedicures haha. can't go wrong with that! :)

Soo we started off with soup! I got the Won-Ton soup and Emily got the Hot and Sour Soup since I told her how awesome it was!


Then we got two appetizers to share, the Spring Rolls and the Pork Dumplings




The spring rolls were very very tasty, and awesome in the duck sauce they serve! I would not order the pork dumplings again though, we actually didn't even finish them. They were quite soggy and just not that tasty. Oh well, win some, lose some!

For the entree, I wanted to get something different even though I lovvvved the general tso's. So I ordered the Kung Pow Chicken, which the waitress told me had lots of veggies and had peanuts in it! so I thought i'd love it. Emily ordered the general tso's too, good thing! haha


Kung Pow!


I really liked the variety of vegetables that were in my dish, however between the two, I'd definitely choose the general tso's again. the peanuts in it were really good too.. I just felt it was lacking in sauce (but i love my dishes with lots of sauce so that could just be me)

So yeah, next time i'm going to try all new food haha i LOVE this place.<3

So afterward we went and got pretty manicures and pedicures, because I woke up and I had myself convinced that today would be the day that I would finally FINALLY get my tattoo.





I'm not going to lie, it was extremely painful. haha and everyone says your foot hurts the most, but hey, i'm the biggest baby in the world and I got through it! =D I'd say definitely well worth it!

man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment

So after the past 3 weekends of leaving philly and going to New York for different reasons, I am hopeing I'm back here for a while at least! I'm pretty sure my next break is at the end of October, but that's enough time :)

So I made the Chocolate chip scones from Joy of Vegan Baking last week. This is my second recipe out of this book(first being the AMAZING choc chip cookies) and they came out really well! I had multiple test-tasters, so that was always nice haha.



Chocolate Chip Scones:
1 egg replacer (i used flax seed blended with water)
2 1/2 c flour
1/3 c sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c non hydrogenated nondairy margarine
1 c vegan chocolate chips
1/2 c non dairy milk
cinnamon for sprinkling on top

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Lighlty oil a cookie sheet. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the margarine and cut into small pieces with two knives to create a coarse crumbly batter. Stir in the chocolate chips. Add the milk and egg replacer and keep mixing to a minimum. Mix with a fork until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Gather the dough into a ball and place on a lightly floured surface. Pat dough to a 1/2 inch thick round and cut into 8-10 triangle pieces. Place them 1/2 inch apart on the baking sheet and sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake for 12-15 minutes until tops are golden brown.

I wasn't sure if they were done or not, since they never really got that "golden brown" on top.. but they tasted really good and completely done, so I guess maybe my oven is weird. ;)
For the sorority, we have an alumni tea this weekend..so the girls have to bring something such as an appetizer or dessert, etc. I'm figuring this is a perfect opportunity to finally whip up some beautiful cupcakes from VCTOTW, so i'm really excited! I'm thinking the cookies n cream ones? Or maybe there are other favorites?

Oh yes! and i'm also really really excited because tomorrow i'm going to this vegan chinese restaurant in the city with a new vegan friend, so that should be pretty sweet. :) i've heard about the place for a while sooo i'm excited i'll get a chance to go..definitely expect an awesome review :)
well off to finish this never-ending paper that I keep procrastinating about ;) ohhh college..

phosphate free!

It's starting to cool down now and as much as I like the fall/winter months..I really do not like being cold, at all, and I'm cold all the time. it's a bummer..but at least the leaves will be changing and it'll be beautiful. :)

So I bought lentils because I lovvved the snobby joes from Veganomicon I made over the summer, and I really want to make them here. But I wanted to make something new with the lentils, so with half of them last week I made a lentil salad. It came out pretty good.. I could eat it just by itself, but I found it to be more substantial and delicious on top of lettuce with a bit of italian dressing.


Lentil Salad:
1 c dried lentils
1 diced medium sized carrot
6 thinly sliced green onions
1 diced red bell pepper
1/2 c chopped cilantro leaves
1/2 c chopped italian parsley leaves
1 minced clove of garlic
1/3 c lemon juice
1 T olive oil

Bring 3 cups of water in a large saucepan to boil over high heat. Add the lentils and bring to medium low. Cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes. Drain the lentils well and spread them out to cool quicker. Toss the rest of the ingredients with the lentils aside from the lemon juice and oil in a large bowl. Drizzle oil and juice on top. Eat then or ontop of lettuce with a bit of dressing as i chose :)

So we also have a new addition to our family! Meet Ziggy!:


This cute little kitten is soo hard to get a picture of! He will never stop moving! I can't even find him asleep to get a good picture. One day :) But we adopted him on Monday from PAWS (the animal shelter in philadelphia) and he's so adorable. Usually I'm not much of a cat person, I prefer dogs, but he's so cute so it's okay. :)