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..

My Minty-Lemon Lentils with Spinach

Right, this was kind of gross!  Joseph liked it for some reason.  I was kind of afraid to make it because it has mint in it and I know how I am with mint in anything that isn't toothpaste.  Aaaaaaaaaand, I don't like it.  It took me about half of the bowl to get used to the seemingly overwhelming mint taste, it was then that I could kind of enjoy the other flavors, like the lentils, which I apparently don't really like either.  Haha, at least Joseph liked it.  I'm making him eat all of the leftovers for lunch so I never have to eat it again.  

I'm so disappointed because it was SO promising!  Sweet potatoes?  Spinach? Vegetable broth?  Garlic??  My favorite things!!!  Unfortunately, it didn't have a ton of flavor except for the mint, which was (I believe I already said this) gross.  At least I know.

On a slightly different note, I decided last week that I would start cooking only vegan meals, and after seeing everything we didn't have in our cupboards for such a quest I had some very serious shopping to do.  While I was cooking said vegan meals this week I realized how much junk we DID have.  And it was seriously junk.  TONS of meat in the freezer, lots of boxed foods and JUNK.  So, I decided that we at least need to eat the meat in the freezer, so we've been having a meat binge the last coupe of days (hence the not posting our vegan delights).  We're finally kind of getting rid of the meat in the freezer.  SOO, we'll be making some of my favorite meaty meals a few days this week THEN we'll officially be vegan.  Wish me luck!  I already feel sick after eating so much meat.  We don't normally eat so much at once, but I just want to get it out of my fridge so I don't feel like I'm wasting it.  AHH.  At least, I'll probably never want to eat meat again after this.

My Polenta with Rice and Beans.

Last night we had some leftovers (because holy cow does this vegan food making thing make a TON) so tonight I made something absolutely del-to-the-icious.  Polenta with rice and beans.  WOW.

The polenta I just bought at the store pre-cooked.  It was in a meat tube-like thing.  Super appetizing sounding, I know.  I used that for the crust in the biggest pie pan I could find.  The stuff in the pot is brown rice, tomatoes, an onion, vegetable broth, water and chili powder all cooked until there was no liquid left. 

Then I mixed in black beans and poured that into the pie pan and put some salsa on top and baked!  On each piece served I put a dollop (best word ever) of avocado mixed with lots of lemon juice.  It was SO AMAZING.  

I would definitely make this again.  The avocado really rounded it out well.  Super good.  

AND I followed the directions to a 'T'.  I think I'll have to start doing that from now on because the results are quite good.  The weird thing is that I don't even miss the meat that would normally be in a meal like this.  It's all very filling and tasty.  I'm impressed.

P.S. if anyone wants to try making any of these recipes, just let me know and I can give it to you!  

Our spare time.

This is a random blogpost about things I've wanted to blog about but don't have a whole lot to say... so I'm putting them all together for one super-stupendous blogpost!

First,

Saoirse is majorly cute with this berry hat she has.  

Second,

our couch is falling apart.  In fact, there are (excuse me)  WERE giant holes in the cushions that I patched up by hand stitching on some.. patches then putting some liquidstitch stuff on there so it's extra not going to come apart.  Hopefully.

Third,

My neighbor was putting together a serious puzzle when we went over there about a week ago and I had an itch.  I NEEDED to buy a puzzle and put it together, twice.  So we went out and bought this 500 piece beauty and I put it together again the next day.  It was a lot of fun to do and even Joseph got in on it even after he explained to me that he is not interested in putting together a puzzle.  Oh the sacrifices he makes for me.  HOWEVER, when I was trying to take a picture of the moment we finished he thought it would be funny to make stupid faces.  He then confessed that he was trying to make his face really red but just ended up making weird faces for ALL of the pictures I took.  He is making a relatively normal looking face here.  He thinks he's SO funny...  *sigh* the problem is that I do actually think he's funny.  dangit. 

My Garbanzo Bean Loaf.

Last night was my first time cooking a vegan meal and I messed it up.  Haha.  It still tasted really good, but I have a problem measuring things - I just don't do it.  It wasn't until it was all mixed up and ready to go into the loaf pan that I realized that I had waaay too many garbanzo beans.  So it never set right and never *really* turned into a loaf and was just a hot delicious mess.

Sooo delicious.

So it was supposed to be a vegan version of meatloaf, something I LOVE.  It didn't really taste like meatloaf but it had the components and substitutions that somehow all worked together.  It was mostly blended garbanzo beans and rice which was the meat substitution with shredded carrots which I'm saying substituted the crackers and tomato sauce that substituted the ketchup.  I was very surprised by how WELL the tomato sauce stood out and tasted with everything!  Without that it wouldn't have been nearly as good.  All in all, I should probably measure things I put in the oven, but it was a tasty success!  

And we have TONS of leftovers.  

Another thing I forgot was sides.. I was so concerned with getting all of the ingredients for this that I completely forgot that you can't really eat meatloaf by itself nor would you probably want to eat garbanzo bean loaf by itself, so I opened a can of green beans.  They went surprisingly well together.  

All in all, I would definitely make this again.

Our whole foods plant-based diet.

I have one question.  Being one of the most advanced countries in the world, why do most people die from poor nutrition?  Most people die from heart disease and many die from diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and most of this is accompanied by obesity.

Joseph and I watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives a few nights ago and it left a pretty big impact on us.  Not that I hang on every word of a documentary - because you can make a documentary about anything you want to and talk about the results you want to (think "Michael Moore") but with this I do believe what they were professing, to be true.  It fits perfectly with what my church teaches with what is called The Word of Wisdom.  The diet (I hate using that word, it's more like, new eating lifestyle) is vegan (Joseph hates that word, it's more like, whole foods plant-based diet).. but when I picture someone who is a vegan I think of a hippy who does too much thinking and likes to hug animals and trees and has hairy pits. I want the world to know that my pits are not hairy, animals are okay and, well, I do like trees.  But I definitely keep up with the body hair thing.  My quest for a vegan lifestyle is because I have learned that animals and their byproducts are not something that we need to be eating regularly, in fact, we should be eating it sparingly.  If you want to good description of why I'm doing it, read this.

I have absolutely no idea and no experience cooking anything other than midwestern hearty meat and potato meals so this will be a challenge for me cooking things I've never even heard of before.  So I'll be blogging my daily struggle cooking for vegans.  I have the help of the ever-so-wonderful cookbook Forks Over Knives and will be cooking most of our meals from that.

Wish me luck!

It took me a while to realize the genius of this picture - eat before you cut yourself open.  Love it.

His portait.

Joseph so graciously accepted the offer to watch some kids while their mothers went to an additional Relief Society meeting last night.  Everything went well I guess and got a portait of himself out of the deal!

Kids are so cute.

I guess he was a robot that had lasers coming out of his nose (aka the mustache).