My Hearty Minestrone.

I've never really liked minestrone, though, I only ever had it at restaurants.  But today was a chilly day and soup sounded good for my insides.  I absolutely had no idea how much I would love this homemade version!  It was great and very filling.  Everything I put into the pot (which, by the way, was an astronomical amount of food) made my mouth water.  Let's see, there were onions, celery, carrots, green beans, cannelloni beans, kidney beans, tomatoes, vegetable juice, cabbage (!!!), noodles, and seasonings.

It was super amazing and thick.  There were as many veggies and beans as there was liquid which I REALLY appreciated.  There's nothing more annoying than soupy soup.  It had great flavor and texture and everything.  This would be a great meal for large gatherings and big families because we have some very serious leftovers.  We'll be eating this for a few days.  

A good meal!

My applesauce.

I made Saoirse some homemade applesauce and it is really good!  I'm really excited about this because there aren't any preservatives in it and no sugar!  It's JUST apples!  The best part is that she loves it.  And of course I forgot to take any pictures.

All I did was google how to make applesauce and went here. Super easy.  Although I don't think this lady mentions how important it is to keep an eye on the water level, because it goes down quickly and it doesn't take long for your house to fill with the smoke of burning apples.  Just saying.  Strangely enough, slightly burned (I like to call them 'browned') apples taste pretty good, so I still made applesauce.

My life is amazing.

I'm playing a little catch-up with this blog post because I haven't posted anything in forever and a lot of food has been cooked and Christmas trees put up!!  

I'll get this out of the way first, I made the Split Pea Soup from our cookbook Forks Over Knives, it lacked.... almost everything.  It was really bland and very watery.  If I make this again I would add noodles and probably celery and ... just more vegetables or something.  And probably 2 cups less water. Soo not the best thing I've ever eaten.

THIS WAS DELICIOUS.  We were watching Destination Truth and were really craving a dessert, so Joseph looked online for some good vegan desserts because, if you don't already know this, every delicious dessert under the sun is made with butter and milk and BUTTER.  But! we found this recipe for cookies that was amazing.  If I remember correctly, it was 3 cups instant oatmeal, 3 bananas, some amount of prunes, 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or applesauce), 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg.  I put a little peanut butter in it as well.  If I were to make this again I would probably put some nuts in (I didn't have prunes so I have no idea if it's good or not).  This was seriously a delicious cookie and it made the house smell AMAZING.

Layered Tex-Mex Lasagna

5 stars. So good.  I really didn't miss the meat or the noodle in this!  It had pinto beans, corn, green chiles, corn tortillas, and some serious red sauce.  If you like your local mexican restaurant you will really like this, it tastes exactly like something you'd get there.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Our neighbors had us over for dinner on Sunday and surprised us with helping them put up their Christmas tree, BEST IDEA EVER.  Dinner was yummy and tree was beautiful!  Kendra helped me make some origami ornaments since we had three ornaments last year.  They turned out so amazingly awesome and now our tree looks fantastic!!!!!

Tim-Tam Slam.

Our neighbors, Adam and Kendra, enjoying their very first Tim-Tam Slams.  Aren't they cute?!

Haha, I don't even know what he's doing.

So I hadn't had milk in a couple of weeks and when we drank some at A & K's house it was so weird!  It was really strong and just kind of strange tasting.  I think I made Joseph drink some of my milk because I just couldn't handle it which is kind of exciting.  I love eating vegan meals and feeling generally more healthy.  We're not completely vegan yet because our supply of meaty and dairy foods seems to be never ending but in all the time we've been eating vegan meals we stopped drinking milk.  So I guess I'm just excited my body is okay with not drinking it and I don't really miss it too much anymore especially now that it tastes crazy.  

I LOVE MY BODY!  It really is kind of amazing how it knows things.  For example, Saoirse had her first taste of bananas about a week ago and she never really liked them much although I would force feed them to her everyday.  As it turns out they were likely causing an allergic reaction and she was super off the whole week until finally her body produced a lovely rash.  No more bananas, rash gone, happy mommy.  Well.... kind of happy, this means that while I'm breastfeeding her I probably shouldn't eat bananas either.  Bummer.  I guess Joseph will have to enjoy those cookies all by himself.  Anyway, I think she didn't like them because she already knew they were no bueno for her tummy.

P.S. A banana allergy is often accompanied by a latex allergy!  Weird.

My Wild Rice Stuffed Squash.

This was surprisingly wonderful and surprisingly cheap to make.  For the two of us it cost around 5 or 6 dollars.  It was also fairly easy to make, but I had two issues, number 1, Acorn Squash is almost impossible to cut in half and number 2, it took me almost 2 hours to complete this meal.  I think my lack of knowledge on leeks donated some of the length of cook time, I had to youtube how to cut/cook/whatpartdoyoueat.  Once I learned that it was a fairly painless process of waiting around for the squash to cook in the oven and for the rice to cook on the stove.  LOTS of waiting.  But when it was finally done it looked like a masterpiece.

I used half as many squash(es??) as it said to use but still kept the same amount of everything else.. so if you're planning on making this recipe I would double the amount of rice and all that if you're sticking with making the 2 whole squash.  The rice was just enough to completely fill two halves.

Look at that handsome man and his half squash-bowl.  

I highly recommend this meal!  It's very good if you have just 2 or 4 adults.  I'm not so sure this would be something convenient to make if kids were going to eat it, I feel like rice would be flung all over the place while they're trying to dig the squash innards out.

My Christmas project number one.

Yes, it is entirely possible that I was thinking about and decorating for Christmas before Halloween.  So what.  I LOVE Christmas.  I would be okay if it were a year-round thing.

The first project this year(!) was making a thing to go at the bottom of the door to keep the cold air out.  (Since we've already put plastic on the windows to insulate our little cave all we needed were some festive colors).  I was really diligent about taking pictures of every step in the process of making this up to it being about half done.  Then I forgot and it jumps from fabric scraps to done.  If it were only THAT easy..  also, sorry for the tiny pictures... I could do something about it, but, laziness has taken me captive and I'm afraid I'm far too comfortable in it's relaxing grip.

Look at that beautiful fabric!  I could cry.  I bought it at The Cotton Shop, one of the best fabric stores in town for $3.99 a yard!!! 

I cut the fabric on my brand new cutting board with my brand new cutter thing!!  

The excitement is nonstop around here, believe me.

Our front door measures 36 inches wide so I cute the fabric to be 38 inches long, next time, I will probably make it just a little longer.  Maybe 40 inches?

I pinned the long edge and sewed that beast.

Since eyeballing cutting a circle out of fabric is not my strong point I scoured the kitchen for something round and 14 inches-ish in circumference.  This lid was almost perfect. 

Two circles cut out for the ends!!

Short intermission... so I pinned one of the circles on one end (obviously doing all of the sewing inside out) and stuffed with fluff and hand sewed on the other end to keep it as similar looking to the other end as possible.  AAAAAAAND????

Voila!

Finished!  And it's definitely working too!  It's just a little warmer in our house.  It's a little more festive too.  :)  

It only took me about an hour or so to complete this entire project.  Soooo worth it, especially because it only cost me $7.50!

For my next project, I'll be attempting to make Christmas stockings.  Hopefully..

My not-really-vegan-but-WOW lunch for one.

We went shopping last night for some AMAZING ingredients for some meals this week, BUT I am also trying to eat what we have.   So I fried three corn tortillas with one egg a little salt and put half of an avocado on top.  It is incredibly yummy.  I almost can't stand it.

It may not be the best thing for my arteries or future nutritional diseases, but the immediate satisfaction I'm getting is quite good.

Also, I have a project I'm going to post soon!  I'll give you a hint, it's a thing that goes at the bottom of a door to keep cold air out and warm air in.  I'll give you another hint, I don't actually know what it's really called..