Our new family memeber - part 2

Our new family member continued.

I don't drink very often. It was one of those nights this week. Fresh squeeze lemonade with a generous shot of Limoncello. Very tasty. It also went along nicely with our Italian dinner.

The Simplest Garlic Bread from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan really is a quick and easy side for Italian dinners. I purchased a baguette a week ago and cut it into the size I wanted and shoved the bag into the back of the freezer. Eight minutes in the oven and we had crusty garlic bread.

The main dish was Popeye Pasta, also from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. While I was cooking this I was working on 3 other dishes. One of the timers went off and I took my penne off the heat. Turns out it was the wrong dish and had to make new noodles. Macaroni was the only thing I had on hand. The dish still turned out well. I'm not positive that the kids would like it this way (they spent the night at my moms for the first time. YEAH. Got called to pick up Ramsey at 10 o'clock but it was Isaac's first time, too. He stayed the whole night) If I cut the spinach smaller they might go for this sauce.

Joe and I both didn't really care for the wine in the sauce but that can easily be replace with vegetable broth. I also made a spinach salad with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. The balsamic was really easy. 3T balsamic vinegar, 4 T olive oil, 2 t dijon mustard, salt and pepper. This was slightly more tart then I like but an addition an agave nectar would probably make it ok.

Jelly Donut Cupcakes from Veganomicon. They sound a lot more exciting then how they turned out. I left them out over night, like suggested, but they were still to weird for me. The kids weren't even keen on them. To put it in perspective, we threw away 8 of 12 and one of those was only used to take the picture.

In the future I'll just break down and make real donuts.

All of us love bunuelos when we are out eating Mexican food and so I was very excited when I saw the recipe for Cinnamon Sweet Tortilla Chips in Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Unlike the restaurant version, these bunuelos are baked not fried. We LOVED them. I like these better then the fried version. The baking causes the sugar to caramelize and they are thick and crispy. I've made these twice just this week. I see fried ice cream in my future using these as the outside coating.

Last but not least, I finally got around to making Goddess Bars from the O.B. People's Co-Op recipe. They taste exactly like when I buy them from People's. I'm thinking that People's must leave their nuts in larger pieces, aside from that I think I was dead on. I halved the restaurant quantity recipe and still ended up with a full 9x13 inch pan. I decided to calculate the nutrition on these babies and ended up sobbing to myself. Oh, they are high in fiber, iron and tons of other vitamins. A 2x3" square is also high in about 570 calories! Yikes. I don't think I'll make these again until Christmas. I also pawned off half the pan onto friends at park day.

Evidently you can only make your posts so long and you run out of room. I'll end by saying that I made the tempeh bacon, from Vegan with a Vengeance, to put on sandwiches. It was a little to salty but other then that we were happy with it. I'll have to play around some more with the recipe.

Have a nice week.