GROWING WAISTLINE ALERT!!! You're about to eat a tub of cookie dough

The Whole Foods in my neighborhood is like Costco on Sunday's. If you've never been to a Costco on a Sunday afternoon it is aisle after aisle after aisle of free samples. My Whole Foods is like this at least 3 days out of any given week. Heck, they even used to have a DJ on Saturday's to really get the food party going. I don't allow my daughter to have many sweets. A cookie a quarter and cupcakes on birthday's only is pretty much how we roll - yep, I'm the sugar police. So I slyly tried Eat Pastry's Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Dough (baked into delicious cookies of course) while she nibbled on some watermelon and grapes. Ahhh fruit, nature's candy.

As soon as the cookie hit my lips I said "Oh no, this is too dangerous." I knew if I were to buy this tub of cookie dough that within minutes it would be deep in my stomach and I would have no regrets about it. These cookies are made in a dedicated Vegan Facility and are made of really wholesome ingredients. They had my heart when I turned over to look at the ingredients and I saw they use Earth Balance Margarine in their dough - oh how I love Earth Balance! Eat Pastry's flavor options include the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie (which I ended up buying and eating all of), Chocolate Chip (regular, gluten free and double chocolate), Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles, and Gluten Free Sugar Momma's. When my sweet little girl asked nicely for a bite of one of my cookies as I binged out on 6 while hiding in a closet so she wouldn't see me (yes, I'm a closet cookie eater, literally) I bent the rules a little and let her try one little bite. Of course, she loved it, it's a cookie isn't it?

This Week's Rating 

Scale of 1-4 Dancing Guinea Pigs 1 meaning it is destined for the compost bin and 4 meaning it is destined for greatness

Vegan Guinea Pig gives these cookies 4 out of 4 Dancing Guinea Pigs

Lil' Guinea Pig gives it 4 out of 4 Dancing Guinea Pigs

The Times They Are A Changin'...

When I started this blog I was a single gal with a coupe dogs, a couple goats and a new cookbook on the horizon. Since then my life has changed immensely! I have three cookbooks under my belt, got my Master's in Nutrition, am now a registered dietitian and lactation consultant but most importantly I'm now a mother to a happy, energetic, opinionated little vegan girl. As I sat and discussed the presence of Umami in a smoky BBQ chia seed crisp I was sharing with my nearly 2 year old daughter I thought to myself. "If she has an opinion on umami then surely she's got what it takes to judge the good, the bad and the ugly of all that is vegan!" After all, unlike me, she's been vegan all her life (even if that life is only 22 months old).

So, I'm changing the ways things are done around here. The first change you'll notice is a rating scale at the beginning of each post. I'll be using a 1 to 4 rating scale with 1 meaning it is destined for the compost bin and 4 meaning it is destined for greatness! I'll weighing in with my rating, then my daughter (Lil' Guinea Pig) will weigh in with her rating and from time to time our special guest omnivore, my fiance, will weigh in with his rating we'll call him. Along with the ratings you'll still get the thought out and through reviews you are used to from yours truly.

Thank you all for taking this journey with me! I love writing this blog, and even though life sometimes takes me away from it from time to time I'll always come back because I love to share all the new vegan goodness out there! Happy cooking!

The Vegan Guinea Pig

Don't Put This In Your Mouth!

I've been undertaking the very risky task of experimenting with new recipes while feeding a toddler. As any parent knows this is a risky proposition. Come to think of it, testing out new recipes is a risky proposition for anyone! If the recipe is a total disaster then you're left trying to figure out what's for dinner with very little time to spare. In my pre-mommy days I would just go grab some Chinese food takeout or order a Papa John's pizza (sans the cheese of course) and call it a night. But that doesn't exactly fly when feeding a little one.

This week has been a week of awful recipes. I decided to finally clean out my big box of recipes I've been meaning to try and go through the recipes I've earmarked in cookbook after cookbook. Unfortunately not one of them, nope not one, turned out well. The worst of all of them was this recipe for Soy-Free Vegan Ground Beef that I found on Veg News website. The picture looked like a warm, savory, delicious dish and despite the very skeptical comments left under the recipe and more than one commentor saying that it turned out awful I still tried the recipe. I figured the folks who didn't like the recipe had bad food processors or just didn't know what they were doing. But in reality, the recipe is just flawed. I have an amazing, large capacity Cuisinart food processor and even with this powerhouse of a processor this stuff just came out a pink mess. I immediately felt foolish for even trying the recipe as more than one of the commentors on it said this happened to them as well.

I soldiered on and tried to bake it up anyway - not willing to accept the fact that I just wasted a perfectly good head of cauliflower that my daughter who had loved and 2 cups of walnuts which are not cheap. But after 1 hour and 15 minutes in the oven I had to accept defeat. This recipe, just wasn't going to work out. It was completely and totally inedible. Although, I have to admit, by the end of the 1 1/4 hours in the oven it did look pretty darn spiffy. So readers beware, don't get sucked into the same false sense of security that I did. That somehow you will be able to outfox this recipe and make it taste delicious. Unfortunately, it just can't be done. Oh well...on to the next one.

Cookbook Review: The Sexy Vegan's Happy Hour at Home + A New Recipe!

When author Brian Patton aka The Sexy Vegan began dating his soon-to-be wife, he offered to entertain her with Friday night Happy Hours at her apartment or his. After a long workweek, she was ready to kick back and enjoy a cocktail or glass of wine, and it was the perfect way to enjoy summer evenings. After a couple weeks, these evenings weren’t just for two because her friends begged for invitations after hearing rave reviews of Brian’s delicious tapas and appetizers.

Brian created so many recipes that he decided it was time to put them into a book.  The Sexy Vegan’s Happy Hour at Home is divided into 20 Menus, each with 3 or 4 recipes, and libation suggestions. The dishes in each menu complement each other, using similar spices and overlapping ingredients, making the menus efficient. Designed around specific themes, each menu has a unique twist but can easily be combined with other finger foods to provide everything you need to entertain vegan and non-vegan friends and family alike.  

I fell in love with Brian's first cookbook last year and was so excited when I found out he had another book on the horizon (and a new wife, and a new little vegan baby!) I was even more thrilled to get a chance to cook my way through the book and fall in love with the new collection of recipes from The Sexy Vegan's Happy Hour at Home. Being a mom to a toddler I don't get too many happy hours (and by that I mean I get none) but these recipes are perfect for any occasion, including a regular ole family dinner - which is how I used the recipes in our house. My daughter is quite an adventurous eater but when it comes to faux meats she turns up her nose (and why shouldn't she?!) so I was thrilled to see that this book is free of the fake stuff and uses healthy, basic ingredients to make extraordinary dishes. The lentil patties that go into the Little Mac's are her new favorite burger and she asks for them constantly. 

I loved every recipe in the book except two - the yamburger sliders and the tamales  The yamburgers because they were nothing but slices of yams and I expected more from the recipe and the tamales because they really shouldn't be called tamales at all. The taste, textures and ingredients are not even close to a tamale. But that's a personal bone to pick with me because I grew up on authentic tamales and am pretty inflexible about changing them up even the slightest.

This Little Macs recipe is from the book’s The Happiest Meal Happy Hour Menu that also includes a recipe for Baked Sweet Potato “Fries” with Adobo Dipping Sauce.

  

Little Macs with Very, Very Special Sauce

One 15-ounce can black or green lentils, drained

1 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 tablespoon low-sodium tamari

1 teaspoon vegan Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

16 small slices vegan cheddar cheeze

8 tiny sesame seed buns (about 2 inches wide) plus the bottom halves of
8 other tiny buns (to use as the middle bun)

1/2 cup Very, Very Special Sauce (recipe follows)

2 cups shredded romaine lettuce

2 small dill pickles, thinly sliced

1/2 cup minced white onion

8 long toothpicks or skewers

To make the burger patties, in a medium bowl, combine the lentils, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, tamari, and Worcestershire. Mash it all together with a fork or your hands until about 70 percent of the lentils are mashed. Add the wheat gluten and continue mashing until there are no dry parts remaining and you have a ball of dough. Scoop out a heaping tablespoon of dough and place it on a large cutting board or other work surface. Repeat until you have 16 lumps of dough. Roll each lump into a ball, then flatten it into a 2-inch patty.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil to medium-high, and add the patties (you may have to fry them in two shifts). Fry on one side for about 5 minutes, or until browned. Then flip, top each patty with a cheddar slice, and fry for another 5 minutes.

In the meantime, get your tiny buns ready. Slather the top and bottom bun halves, and one side of the middle buns, with the Very, Very Special Sauce.

By now your patties should be ready, so it’s time to start assembling. Place one patty on each of the bottom bun halves. Top the patties with half of the lettuce and half of the pickles. Place
the middle bun pieces, sauce side down, on top of that, followed by the remaining patties, lettuce, and pickles, and the onion. Finally, cover with the bun tops and use toothpicks or skewers to hold them together. 

Very, Very Special Sauce

1 cup vegan mayo

1/2 cup sweet pickle relish

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup yellow mustard

In a small bowl, whisk all this stuff together.

Excerpted with permission from The Sexy Vegan’s Happy Hour at Home ©2013 by Brian Patton.  Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com

Brian Patton is author of The Sexy Vegan’s Happy Hour at Home and The Sexy Vegan Cookbook. He is also executive chef for Vegin’ Out, a vegan food delivery service in Los Angeles. As the quintessential “regular dude” vegan chef, he started posting instructional cooking videos on YouTube as his witty, ukulele playing alter-ego The Sexy Vegan and quickly gained a large following.  Visit him online at http://www.thesexyvegan.com. 

Final Week of Feeding A Family For $50 A Week!

So here we are, week 5 of the $50 a week grocery experiment. The past 4 weeks have been an incredible learning experience for me. They have taught me discipline, helped me become a better and more creative cook and made me organize myself in a way that I had not really done before. Although this was intended to only be an experiment for the month of July I have decided that I will continue to eat, cook and shop this way until we add another member to the family (which will be no time soon I promise you!) My cabinets are still stocked with food, and I could still probably last for a month or so if the zombie Apocalypse were to happen but there are entire sections of my pantry that are now bare. In truth, did I need 6 types of gluten free flours on hand including xanthum gum? Did I really need every type of dried bean that nature ever produced? Really...every single kind? How many types of hot sauce does one person really need and how many types of nut butter does a person really need to keep around the house? Soy, Peanut, Almond, Sun, and White Chocolate Peanut Butter all seem a bit much to have loaded up in one pantry.

I feel like the way I eat, shop and cook now is in a way that makes sense, isn't wasteful and fully utilizes the resources I have available. I've begun to depend on my garden in a way that I did not before. I used to have so much extra crops that I would end up pickling and canning all summer and winter long. But this year, I've only pickled one jar of green beans and everything else has gone to immediate use. I plan on still doing a good bit of preserving, after all it is another great way of extending out the seasons bounty in a frugal way, but nothing to the amount I did last year.

This final week presented it's own unique challenges. This week my daughter is off of school which means instead of being responsible for cooking 2 meals a day and 1 snack for her I am now responsible for 3 meals a day and 3 snacks. On top of that one of her classmates is going to be staying with us for 2 days so we have an extra mouth to feed for 2 meals and 2-3 snacks. So for this week I'll be not only giving you what I'm making for breakfast, lunch and dinner but also what we're having for snacks.

Breakfast

• Oatmeal and Fruit
• English Muffin Breakfast Sandwiches (with vegan egg patty and daiya cheese that I found in the freezer) - for the kiddo I'll be nixing the Daiya and instead slathering both sides in EB, egg patty on the side with fruit
• Banana waffles, white nectarines and Naked Tofu Scramble
• I have all the ingredients I would need to make breakfast sausage but I'm not sure if I have the time so I'm not counting on this one

Lunch

• Macaroni and Cheese with Marinated Roasted Tofu and Steamed Carrots
• Homemade Super Low-Sodium Ramen Noodles with Tofu and Braised Green Beans
• Southern Style Meatballs with Steamed Veggies and Dinner Rolls (I froze some a couple weeks back and still have plenty to go around)

Dinner

• Smothered Pork Chops with Green Bean Casserole and Dinner Rolls
• Baked Beans, Corn Muffins, and Steamed Veggies
• Soft Tacos made with Adzuki Beans (I randomly have a bunch laying around) with Salsa and Sour Cream, steamed corn and some type of green veggie

Snacks

• Homemade Graham Crackers
• Hummus with Pita Chips (I bought a ton of pita chips a couple months ago and they still haven't expired so there's no better time than the present to use them!)
• Fruit (grapes, strawberries, watermelon)
• Blueberry Smoothies (I got a bunch of blueberries on sale in June and froze half)
• Beanfield's Bean and Rice Chips (Pico De Gallo flavor) - I bought a 6 pack of these last month and we're still working our way through them. I'll be blogging about these soon.

And that's it! I didn't make the crab cakes from last week until Sunday so we'll be munching on those throughout the week as well. For 5 weeks of shopping my goal was to spend $50 a week or $250 in total for the month. This week I ended up spending $43.57 at Whole Foods and $17.68 at Publix. Which means I spent $61.25 this week. I really took for granted how much money we save every month when my daughter is eating at school 5 days a week! We are very fortunate that her school provides great vegan meals and we only have to bring a back-up snack in case the class is having goldish crackers or something with dairy in it as a morning snack. I've decided, in an effort to save even more money, I'm going to start making her snacks from scratch and sending those to school with her. Now that I've taken my IBCLC exam I have more time on my hands so this shouldn't be too difficult and if I would have done that this month I would have saved about $15 in the budget. Overall for 5 weeks I spent $273.63. So I went a little over $23 over budget. For a first timer to this new budget I think that is pretty darn fantastic. I'm tempted to change my budget to $60 a week but I really want to continue to commit myself to making the most out of each ingredient, even while working on new books and recipes, so I'm going to stick to $50 a week for now. I hope this has been helpful to you! Next week I'll be going step-by-step through exactly how you can make the changes necessary in your own life to get your grocery budget in check so stay tuned!