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.

Trick-or-Treat

This year we went up and did Mickey's Trick-or-Treat at California Adventure. We have annual passes for both California Adventure and Disneyland. (The husbands family are Disney freaks) We stayed the night at the Disneyland hotel and made a mini trip of it.
Here is my little goat. It drives me mad that Joe's hair is all long and like a dumb ass I chopped mine off.

Ramsey "had" to have her picture taken with Winnie-the-Pooh. She knew who Pooh was and Tigger but every 2 minutes she would ask me who Eeyore was.

This is our first year in the scary costume category. Isaac was very excited to be a "bad guy". I made Ramsey's trick-or-treat bag out of an old shirt of Joe's. We had a great time at trick-or-treat. They play good music and all of the characters are out. The kids just loved it. They set up little stations to hand out the candy to the kids. There was always a line but it moved quickly. I always bribe my kids to part with their load of candy. Ramsey traded her candy in for a new outfit for her baby doll, Emma. Isaac parted with his candy for $5.

On actual Halloween night we went to a small Halloween party at Joe's sisters, Jenny. I made cupcakes and she had all sorts of supplies to decorate them with. It was nice not being out on the actual night. I hope we do the exact same thing next year.

I made Cheesy Bean and Cheese Enchiladas from vegweb. http://vegweb.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=8a19c34877238c5059ad42e550bd34a7&topic=5980.0 Following some of the reviews I made a casserole instead of rolling each tortilla. I also used 1 onion instead of 2, 2 cans of beans instead of 3, 2 packs of corn tortillas, and no olives. These were excellent. I plan to follow a few other recommendations in the future, sauteing the onion first and adding a bit a cumin and lime juice.

There ended up being so many leftovers that I froze some portions for later. Yesterday I microwaved one of them for lunch and it turned out great.

For breakfast yesterday I made the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Scones from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. I also made the Warm Raspberry Sauce to pour on top. These were pretty easy to throw together and bake in about 30 minutes. The scones wouldn't have been half so good with out the raspberry sauce.

I found the scones to be not as flaky/crumbly as regular scones. I'm thinking that this change in texture has to do with the oat flour. I used unbleached wheat flour instead of the spelt flour. They were still very good. The chocolate made them a touch to sweet for me but the tartness of the raspberry sauce helped cut that. I also spread a bit of Earth Balance inside of my warm scone. I love that salty addition.

For breakfast this morning I made parfaits. There wasn't really much to them. Acai granola, vanilla Silk yogurt and sliced strawberry. For being so simple they were wonderful. I'm all out of strawberries but will try a different fruit tomorrow morning.

I didn't have my camera with me at my mom's yesterday when I made dinner. I made Simplest Garlic Bread from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. I ended up adding more chopped garlic on top and roasting some garlic to use as spread. I was in garlic heaven. This is a great simple recipe.

I also made a heirloom tomato salad with just chopped up heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. I think I could eat that and the garlic bread every day. We had pasta and green salad as well but I only ate about 3 bites of each. Yum!