The big V and Vegan Lunch Box.

First, I finally ordered and received my copy of Vegan Lunch Box. I was excited, it arrived on a bleak day when I was feeling rather tired, so I spent the day in bed reading it. I didn't want to go to the grocery store, so I glanced at the pictures for something I wanted to make that I probably had the ingredients for. I decided on the tofu fish sticks.



I'm going to come out and say that I did not make these well. I don't do a lot of breading, so I added too much coating, which made the outside dry (the lemon juice helped). Then I baked them for a little too long, so the ends were kind of hard. The only thing I didn't like that I can attribute to the recipe is the amount of salt. I have a low salt tolerance, and I think the breading mixture only had half a teaspoon, but they still tasted very salty to me.

On to the most made-up holiday ever. Now, we usually don't have a big to-do about V-day. However, my husband was gone for 2 1/2 weeks for a leadership course and just so happened to get back today. Also, last year he was in Iraq and sent me tax forms as a joke so I thought this year should go a little better. We didn't exchange actual gifts, just bought things that we wanted and had been holding out for in lieu of paying our first few months of mortgage and utilities.

I'm going to skip our boring dinner and go right for the goods.



Cakes and I don't get along. Maybe someday i'll go back and blog about the last cake I made, which made me declare war on cakes. I always seem to overbake them, or I pick a bad recipe, and/or they look terrible when I try to frost them. I decided to give it one last shot. And this was it. Bullseye!



I started with a basic vanilla cake, and added some almond extract and black cherry fruit spread. Then I spread some more of the black cherry spread on the top of one, chocolate buttercream on the top of the other, and smooshed them together. And frosted it with more chocolate buttcream. I devised a new method for frosting, I put a piece of parchment paper on the overturned cakepan and used it as a pedestal. When I transferred it to the plate it needed a little touching up, but still eliminated a lot of the mess.

Now you're probably thinking, "Hey, aren't you on a diet?!" Yes, I am. And i've been very good. I've lost over ten pounds since i've started, so I can afford a little cake. I actually stuck extra close to a low-fat and sugar free diet for the past week so I could have this cake without feeeling guilty. Of course, there was the side effect of the frosting almost making me sick because I was not used to sugar anymore. But it was worth it.

A very small christmas post.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures at Christmas period, let alone the food. Mostly because everything I made, was made at Thanksgiving. Except for the cherry cobbler, which we burned (but ate around the burned parts and it was awesome). And since Christmas is at the grand-in-laws house, there was a lot of non-vegan stuff that I didn't make so I didn't take a picture of the spread. Why is it that every year someone manages to bring up ham talk? Gross. Anyway, here's a picture of some leftovers we brought home:



Egg free noodles in veggie broth, apple pecan cornbread stuffing (which turned out MUCH better this time around), and broccoli chickpea casserole. I also made sweet potatoes and banana bread, but those got left with grandpa because I made them for him anyway. Grandma made stuffing too, and I guess no one was interested in bread this year because no one but us ate our own. I made the chickpea casserole from Brian's mom and I, since it's a non-fatty dish and no one else even asked what it was. Brian's family is rather unadventurous. If they don't recognize it on sight, they don't want it. It's not the vegan thing, because they don't know that i'm a vegan. I don't think that most of them even notice that I don't eat meat.

This is pre-christmas porn, I actually made it on the day we left so I had to freeze the leftovers and hope they'd warm up okay. Luckily, they did. This is the stewed tofu and potatoes in miso gravy from VWaV, with extra gravy: