Pixiepine Swag & a Chocolate-Covered Breakfast

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

A package full o’ wonders made its way into my mailbox a few days ago. I was so excited to win Pixiepine‘s smoothie and drink mix giveaway, because look at all the awesome swag I received:

A whole lotta yummy!

Everything was wrapped in some beautifully cut tissue paper, but unfortunately it got a little ripped up and didn’t photograph well. :( But at least the contents survived unscathed! Yesterday, I tried out this Natural Calm powder mix.

Calming cows?

I mixed the packet with hot water as instructed and drank it like tea. The flavor was… interesting; it was sort of sour and I couldn’t really take more than a few sips at a time. But between bites of my cereal, I had no problem finishing my mug. I don’t know if I necessarily felt calmer after drinking it, but I’ve got so much going on right now that I doubt anything other than a stiff drink could mellow me out! ;P

This morning, I tried out one of the products I was most excited to receive – Amazing Grass Chocolate Green SuperFood. I knew I didn’t want to just drink this in a smoothie, but what else could I do? Hmm…

How mysterious...

What could be behind that packet?! Well, last night I remembered Katie‘s post about using it in super healthy pancakes! Chocolate for breakfast? Um, yes, please!

I think Katie must be psychic, because I woke up this morning to find her post about chocoholics in my Google Reader. Needless to say, this further solidified my resolve to make a delicious chocolate-covered breakfast. I decided to make a recipe mash-up for my pancakes, mixing Katie’s recipe with Isa’s pancake recipe from VWAV. Here are the results!

SuperFood? You better believe it!

These were yummy, but not quite perfect. I used half a banana, but next time I’ll use applesauce because I’m a freak who doesn’t really like bananas. And I used a flax egg, but I don’t know if that was actually necessary. I am glad that I used blackstrap molasses, though; you can’t beat that little boost of calcium! Anyway, here’s the first version of my recipe for Chocolate SuperFood Pancakes. You really can’t go wrong with a batch of ~8 pancakes that include 7 servings of fruits and vegetables!

Chocolate SuperFood Pancakes
Ingredients
3/4 cup flour (I used a blend of AP and whole wheat)
1 packet Amazing Grass Chocolate SuperFood
1 t baking powder
pinch salt
1 flax “egg” (1 T ground flax whisked with 3 T warm water… optional!)
1/2 small banana, mashed (or 1/3 cup applesauce)
3/4 cup vanilla rice milk
1 1/2 T blackstrap molasses
1 T Sugar in the Raw
Healthy handful chocolate chips
H2O as necessary

Make your flax egg and set it aside. Sift all dry ingredients except the sugar into a large bowl and mix. In another bowl, mix all wet ingredients plus the sugar and whisk together. Add the flax egg and whisk some more. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined. If the batter is too thick, add tablespoonfuls of water until it reaches a good consistency. Throw in your chocolate chips, mix it all up, and cook on a lightly oiled pan over a medium burner. Voila!

Giveaway Winner Time!

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

Hey, everyone! I just got back from a wonderful – if chilly – bike ride with my mama, and now it’s time to announce the winner of my Papa Tofu giveaway! Although I considered using one of those random number generators, since I didn’t have that many entries I decided it’d be much more fun to physically pick the winning name out of a hat. So I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and got to work! I put all the names into my trusty hand-knitted Jayne hat, shook ’em up, and drew a piece o’ paper…

A winner is you!

My first giveaway winner is Lindsay from Cooking for a Vegan Lover! Congrats! I’ll be emailing you soon for your mailing address.

Thanks to everyone who entered! I can’t wait to host another giveaway in the future. :)

Just a Wee Little Post

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

Hiii, everyone! After the monthlong blogging blitz of MoFo, I have to admit that it felt weird not posting for nearly a week. But my boyfriend was visiting, and besides entertaining him I’ve been busy trying to organize a trip out to Madison to apartment hunt, so things around my end are pretty hectic. But I did have some blogworthy fun recently, so I’ll definitely provide a real update soon. In the meantime, don’t forget to enter my Papa Tofu giveaway! It ends tomorrow, and I can’t wait to pick a winner. Also, make sure you click on over to Katie’s blog to help support Operation Chocolate-Covered Kindness. Yay!

And with that, I’m out like a powder blue polyester leisure suit. ;)

Chocolate-Covered Charity

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

Hi, friends! Maybe you remember my post about giving back during MoFo – I was promoting Project Feed Me and talking about the importance of recognizing that not everybody is lucky enough to be able to participate in a whole month dedicated to blogging about delicious food. It’s not too late to join Project Feed Me, by the way, and all you have to do is commit to buying two nonperishable food items a week. So go check that out!

If you’re looking for another way to help do some good during the holiday season, look no further than everybody’s favorite chocolate-covered blogger, Katie. The wonderfully generous and giving Miss Katie has come up with an awesome idea to help raise money for charity. Operation Chocolate-Covered Kindness makes participation super simple. Since Katie makes a small amount of money for every link clicked and page viewed on her blog, she’s decided to host a page-view charity drive. Basically, all you have to do is click around her blog as much as possible, and she’ll donate all the money she makes this month from her blog to a wonderful charity. Let me say that again – you click links, Katie gets money, Katie gives money to charity. So easy, a caveman could do it! Provided said caveman had internet access… so, maybe not. Anyway.

Chocolate-Covered charity - the best kind!

You probably already drool over Katie’s delicious creations, so why not check out her Fudge Babies again? Perhaps you could reconsider eating Brownie Batter Oatmeal for breakfast. Or maybe you just want to have a little “aww” moment while you look at her adorable pups. So what are you waiting for?! Get thee to the best chocolate-covered blog around and click your little heart out! Post about Operation Chocolate-Covered Kindness on your own blog! Encourage others to participate! Katie’s making this so easy that you have no excuse not to participate.

Also, don’t forget to enter my Papa Tofu (+ some sort of surprise!) giveaway! I’m so excited to be doing this and I can’t wait to pick a winner next week. :)

World Vegan Day + a GIVEAWAY!

/ Kelly / 14 Comments

Happy World Vegan Day, everyone! I’m celebrating this awesome day and the end of MoFo by hosting my first ever giveaway!

I have to say, the stars must’ve been aligning to lead me to the delicious world of veganism, because recently I’ve won quite a few giveaways. First I won my spiralizer from Katie. Then I won a copy of Jennifer Cornbleet’s Raw For Dessert from Vegan Visitor, followed by a fun selection of vegan smoothie and drink mixes from Pixiepine. Finally, I just saw that I won one of the awesome MoFo-inspired handmade keychains from Vessels and Wares. Add to that the various cookbooks I’ve won by responding to various Tweets quickly, and I’m beginning to realize that I’m a lucky little vegan! I’m not used to ever winning these sorts of random drawings, so this is exciting and strange.

Anyway, now it’s time for me to share something with all of you! In honor of Kittee from the fantastic Cake Maker to the Stars, I’m going to be giving away a copy of her cookzine, Papa Tofu. Kittee put together the master list of MoFo participants and generally helped make it a truly awesome Month o’ Food, so I thought it’d be nice to give away her zine. I felt like I’d completed some sort of vegan rite of passage when I ordered two copies from Herbivore! Although I haven’t gotten them in yet, I’ve wanted to get my hands on this hot little zine for a while now. Kittee has lots of great many recipes and helpful info over at PakuPaku, and she promises that Papa Tofu “is designed to be a handy-dandy “best of” print edition. Something you can slap on the counter, while you run to see if you’ve got enough shortening left to make frosting.” Umm, sounds good to me! And I’m probably going to throw a few extra treats into the box when I mail this out, but I haven’t decided what they’ll be yet. ;)

I nabbed this photo from Herbivore.

This contest is super easy to enter. Just leave a comment telling me the most delicious thing you’ve eaten today. You can earn an additional two entries by blogging and/or Tweeting about the contest. Just come back here and leave another comment for each extra entry. The giveaway will end on Wednesday, November 11th. Good luck!

Adios, MoFo: Ghosts of Halloween Past and Cupcakes of Halloween Present

/ Kelly / 6 Comments

Happy Halloween, blogpals! I wish I were a kid, because it’s 70 degrees today – perfect trick-or-treating weather! All the neighborhood kidlets will be able to gather their candy without having to hide their costumes behind icky winter coats. Awesome.

Before I move on to the Halloween fun, I just want to do a little MoFo wrap-up. This has truly been an amazing month. I can’t imagine a better way to spend my first month as a vegan! To everyone who participated, read posts, and left comments, thank you so much for your support. I can’t tell you how much it means to me! The vegan community is amazing, and I felt so welcomed during this month. Your support helped me to post every single day this month. THANK YOU! See the end of this post for an exciting announcement – you’ve all given so much to me, so now I’m giving something back!

Now for the fun. This year, I’m celebrating Halloween in true MoFo style – I baked and decorated a lovely batch of Halloween-themed cupcakes. I was intending to share them with all my little cousins tonight, but a bunch of them are sick and they’ve decided not to gather so as to prevent the further spread of germs. :( Oh well; I’m sure I’ll find someone to share them with! I made a batch each of the Golden Vanilla and the Basic Chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW, and decorated them in a variety of styles.

First up is Mr. Pumpkinhead. Isn't he cute?

I hope you're not scared of spiders...

All hail the Pumpkin King - it's Jack Skellington!

And here’s the whole gang (minus their less-than-photogenic pals, who will soon find a home in my tummy).

All together, now.

I also finally got to use my new Halloween mini-cake pans! They make cute little ghosts and pumpkins.

I think they're a little scared of Yorick...

And here I am with my creations.

Do you like my Jack Skellington earrings? ;)

I may have to make cupcake baking a new Halloween tradition! I’m breaking with old traditions this year – I’m not dressing up. This is my first costume-less Halloween ever! I know, I know, that’s horrible, especially because I absolutely love costumes! But this year I just felt like taking a break from the partying and dressing up craziness. I politely declined a few invitations, so for the first time ever I’ll be staying home and handing out candy to the kids. It’s a far cry from the past four years of college Halloween fun, but I’m okay with that. Next year I’ll be in Madison – which is supposed to be absolutely insane for Halloween – and I’m sure I’ll be up for crazy costuming once more. In the meantime, here’s a little collage of my costumes from previous years. They’re not all from Halloween, but I think they illustrate my love of dressing up. We’ve got some Lord of the Rings, some Harry Potter, some Nightmare Before Christmas, a zombie witch doctor, and a Goth Detective front and center (if you get that reference, I think I love you), among other things. :)

I may or may not be holding a huge bottle of vodka in the center photo.

Happy Halloween, friends! Be safe and have fun. Also, MoFo may be over, but the fun sure isn’t. Check back tomorrow for my first ever GIVEAWAY! Yay!

P.S. If I were dressing up this year, I’d definitely be one of the girls from Subtle Sexuality. ;) Office love!

On Becoming a Cheezehead: My Exciting Employment News

/ Kelly / 6 Comments

This post has two purposes. I’m saving my creative, Halloween-y post for tomorrow (obviously), so today I am going to share some news that I’ve been withholding for a while. But first, cheeze.

Remember how much I enjoyed VeganYumYum’s Mac & Cheese last week? Well, I’ve been craving something creamy and warm and cheezy ever since, so today I cobbled together my own version of a cheeze sauce. It’s basically a big ol’ mess of EB, soy milk, nutritional yeast, a bit o’ flour, tahini, and various spices. Simple and totally awesome after taking a baking stint in the oven for 15ish minutes. It definitely hit the spot, and I’ve got leftovers for tomorrow, so I’m golden.

My bit o’ news is actually cheese-related, so here it goes – I got a job! I’m going to be a tech writer at a medical software company in Madison, Wisconsin! I’ll be moving out there in December and joining the land of the cheeseheads in America’s Dairyland. Kind of ironic, huh? I go vegan and then I go to Wisco. Heh. But I can’t really complain; it’s a full-time job with good benefits at a good company, and I’m going to need the moneyz once my student loans are no longer in their oh-so-wonderful grace period and I need to start repaying those suckers. So – any Madtown vegans in the house? Or, any recommendations for awesome places to eat in Madison? I’m excited because it’s a much bigger city than my hometown and my college town, so hopefully I’ll get to meet ~*~real live vegans~*~ and dine at ~*~real live vegan restaurants!~*~ Haha. Seriously though, if you’ve got any suggestions, let me know. :)

Ciao ’til the LAST DAY OF MOFO. Aahhh!

Short ‘n Sweet: Peanut Butter Cookies

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

I’m keeping things short and sweet tonight, mostly because there’s not much to say about peanut butter cookies. It’s peanut butter… in a cookie. With chocolate chips, if you’re me. You really can’t go wrong.

I made the Crispy Peanut Butter Cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance tonight. Actually, I think these are the first straight-up vegan p.b. cookies I’ve ever made; I baked a batch of the Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Cookies from VWAV last year, but yeah, not exactly the same. These are simple cookies that get the job done. What else is there to say?

Actually, I will say that these cookies are more sandy than crispy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I prefer a chewier cookie, but still. They didn’t hold together very well during the baking sheet —> cooling rack transfer, although I might’ve been a little overzealous in my transferral and moved them before they were properly cooled. Whatever; they’re still tasty enough. I can’t say I’d rush to use this particular recipe again, but that’s due to personal preference more than major recipe fail.

Don’t worry  – my final two MoFo posts will be way more creative than this one. Pinky swear!

Product Review: Sesame Seaweed Rice Balls

/ Kelly / 2 Comments

I woke up this morning with the intention of doing my first ever “daily eats” post – I was going to photograph everything I stuffed into my gob today, and then share it with y’all tonight. But then I got lazy, and then it got all grey outside and the lighting in my kitchen was horrible, so… I gave up. Instead, I need to – need to – tell you about my new favorite thing.

YUMMY.

Forget cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel, I’m talkin’ about these SESAME SEAWEED RICE BALLS, people. Trader Joe’s had a bag of these intriguing specimens on sale for somewhere in the region of $1.50, and I had to try them. In two days’ time, this is what remained of my bag:

DONE.

A whole lotta NOTHIN’. These lil guys are like CRACK. They’re not overly salty, but they have little flecks of seaweed that give them little bursts of yumminess. And the sesame flavor is understated, but in the best way possible. Basically, they’re tiny little balls o’ deliciousness. I’m pretty sure I could’ve eaten the entire bag in one sitting, but somehow I managed to make it last two days. Small victories.

Anyway, if you’re in the market for a relatively cheap snack food, give these little guys a shot! They’d make great travel food, I bet. They’re easily munchable yet they won’t leave you feeling all gross like you would if you downed a bag of chips or something. Plus, they’re vegan AND gluten free! Everyone’s a winner! Yeehaw.

Introducing the VeggaBar!

/ Kelly / 7 Comments

Although I definitely took advantage of the empty kitchen while my parents were on a mini-vacation this weekend, I’ll admit that my innovation and creativity were not particularly high. Sure, I followed a couple of recipes and had an especially productive Friday, but I’ve been itching to try something new. So when I came home from a trip to Trader Joe’s with a package of delicious Medjool dates, my mind instantly began pondering the creation of some kind of raw (or nearly raw) bar.

Now, obviously this is not my invention. I adore Larabars, and although I’ve yet to try Angela’s Glo Bars, they look amazing. And lots of other bloggers have come up with similar concoctions lately. Averie’s shared some scrumptious-looking Raw Vegan Donut Holes while Katie’s Fudge Babies are taking the blogworld by storm. What with these girls’ creations and the availability of tantalizing raw bar and cookie recipes in raw food books, it’s clear that this is a dessert variety that’s definitely in vogue at the moment.

And that’s okay. I felt like I was in good company when I was in the kitchen experimenting with my own version of raw(ish) bars. I enjoyed the results of my personal experimentation, and it’s fun to think about all the variations I could try in the future, taking inspiration from all the other wonderful bloggers out there who’ve made their own contributions in this realm. So without further ado, here are my Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie VeggaBars!

Aren’t they cute? Inspired by the adorable mini Larabars (trick or treat sized, perhaps?), I made a bunch of tiny bars along with some circular “cookies”. If I owned any cute smallish cookie cutters, I definitely would’ve utilized them! These are yummy little nuggets of flavor, a fusion of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies in Ani’s Raw Food Desserts and a Peanut Butter Cookie Larabar. It seems silly to post a “recipe” for these, but I’ll do it anyway.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie VeggaBars
Ingredients
3/4 cup dates, pitted (I used a blend of Medjool and presoaked regular dates)
1/2 cup peanuts
1/4 cup oats
pinch salt (optional)

Add dates and peanuts to food processor; process until peanuts are roughly chopped. Add oats and salt and pulse until combined. Remove “dough” from food processor, roll it out, and cut or shape as desired!

Easy as pie, and thrice as healthy. Yum!