A new laptop! Woohoo!

Ever since my daughter knocked over my laptop and ruined the monitor, I have had a hard time with the blogging. My desktop is slow and uncomfortable, and I don't like to blog at work, so I have just been finding it all too much work. On Friday, though, I got my tax refund (thank you, new house!), and yesterday I got a new laptop. I am just amazed at how quickly technology moves on--I got my old laptop only two years ago, and this one has lots more memory and hard drive space, plus facial recognition for logging in, and probably other things I have not discovered yet, for $150 less than I paid for the other one. Yippee!

On the eating front, we have been doing pretty good. I am still cooking more, to avoid the expense of eating out. My biggest habit change that I am so proud of is eating breakfast at home. I had gotten in the habit of waiting until I got to work to eat breakfast, because we were so rushed in the mornings. However, that means being up for about two hours before I ate anything, which is terrible for my metabolism, and making poor choices, because I was starving by the time I ate. Lots of greasy hashbrowns with eggs, biscuits, donuts, and other heavy, unhealthy foods were had. Now I have cereal with rice milk, or oatmeal cooked with maple syrup, dried fruit and cinnamon, or a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and a banana, or a fruit smoothie. Much better choices!

On a completely different note, I have to share a picture of my almost vegan desserts from the after-Thanksgiving meal I had with friends the first weekend in December:

Don't those look delicious? The first one at the top left is my almost vegan dessert--a pumpkin bread pudding. I used soy milk, but I went ahead and used the eggs in the recipe. I have not been brave enough to experiment with egg substitutes for cooking yet. Scrambled tofu for brunch? I got that down pat, but not so much on the cooking subs. Next is urban vegan's cranberry upside down cake which was absolutely scrumptious, as expected. Front and center is the Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake from the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen (not a fatfree recipe!). That is very nearly the perfect dessert. It's rich and delicious, and I really couldn't eat more than a small slice at a time, because of the richness. Everyone loved it, vegan or not.

Okay, I have gained about 5 pounds just looking at that picture and thinking about how good those desserts were, so I need to go do some exercising! Hopefully I will be back here more often with the new laptop--I've missed it.

My Backwards Dinner

The kids are at their dad's for the night, so I had dessert first. I was really excited this weekend to see the coconut milk ice cream at Whole Foods this weekend. I was looking forward to it all day at work, so I decided to dive in as soon as I got ome tonight. Oh my goodness, was it good! So creamy, no soy taste, just about perfect. I had to stop myself from devouring the whole pint, but I am looking forward to being able to have it again, so I was able to take only one serving and put it back in the freezer.

Why do I get to eat dessert first, when I won't let my kids do the same? Because I knew I was making urban vegan's delicious 30 minute Polish meal. I didn't get a picture, but it was awesome! I added cried cranberries to the carrots, and used baby carrots rather than slicing whole carrots, but other than that I pretty much followed the recipe as is. Oh, and the first time I tried to toast some walnuts to throw in the carrots, I accidentally turned off the wrong burner, so they burned, while I lost cooking time for the carrots. It all turned out very good, though, and I caught it before it got too bad. I had to throw out that batch of walnuts, but I didn't ruin the pan or start a fire or anything.

I tell you, having my own house is so good for me--the kids weren't here, but I cooked a real meal and washed dishes, two things I used to avoid when the kids were gone. I ate out a lot, or made sandwiches and left the dishes for the next night. So, healthy delicious eating, saving money, cleaner home. All in all, a definitely good thing!

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Yesterday I cooked twice. I worked from home, so I decided to cook lunch, too, and freeze some of the leftovers. I made the Red Lentil and Cauliflower Curry from Veganomican. I had made it before, but just from what I had on hand when I went searching in the cookbook. This time I actually planned ahead to make it and went to the store to buy all the ingredients for it. It was good last time, but this time it was even better. The parsnip was good--I had only had parsnips once before and I don't think that was a good recipe. I remember thinking it was weirdly textured and bland, but it really worked in this recipe. I got an Anaheim chili, which isn't quite as hot as the jalapeno or serrano recommended, because I think the kids may eat some when I thaw out the remainder. I have to warn you, though, they are still plenty hot enough to set your eye on fire if you touch it without washing your hands. I learned that the hard way well after I was done eating, while I was on a work phone meeting. People are asking me questions, and I am trying not to scream while frantically searching for the nearest washcloth to help rinse my eye out, with impaired sight since I couldn't open the one eye. Not something I recommend. Be careful with chilis!

I had it with some garlic naan from Trader Joe's. Doesn't it look delectable?

And for dinner, I made my friend Andrea's favorite dinner (well, her favorite dinner that I cook, anyway): Curried Stir-Fried Noodles with Vegetables. No picture of this one, but I can assure you it was very good, as usual.


See all these fresh veggies? I feel so healthy! And full.

Cupcake party!

I got a copy of Vegan Cupcakes take over the World something like a year ago. I wanted to make all of the cupcakes right away, but I have really gotten out of the habit of baking. So, I showed the book to some friends, and they were enthusiastic, too. We picked out some recipes, and made vague plans to have a cupcake party.

This weekend, we finally did it.

I invited two friends over, and they came with their two children each. S invited 2 friends, also. So, we had 11 people in my small kitchen. Well, we mostly kicked the 4 boys 7 and under out to play, but at one point we did have all three adults and all 4 girls crowded around the table. I was in charge of reading the recipes, washing measuring cups, and fetching spoons, forks, and various other implements to mix, measure and taste.

We started with the sexy low fat vanilla cupcakes with fresh berries. The girls made these under my supervision, and then we kicked them out, too. I think I may have underestimated my ability to handle chaos, but it really wasn't that bad once we got things calmed down for a bit.

We made gingerbread cupcakes with lemony cream cheese frosting, and chocolate cherry creme cupcakes with vegan buttercream frosting. This all took a lot more time than I thought it would, but it was so much fun! Most everyone had three cupcakes, one as we finished each batch. This isn't quite as unhealthy as it sounds, since we used whole wheat pastry flour instead of the all-purpose white flour, and at least there wasn't any high fructose corn syrup in anything. But mostly, it was so fun and delicious, we didn't care about the calories or sugar or fat!

My favorite was the vanilla with fresh berries, Tracy's was the gingerbread, and Andrea's was the chocolate cherry cream. This is not surprising, as those are the recipes we each picked. But they were all amazing, and we are definitely doing this again! I have my eye on the orange pudding filled cupcakes. We are thinking about an adult cupcake party with black forest cupcakes (the choc cherry cream made with cherry brandy) and maragarita cupcakes. I feel very in this cupcake trend, which no doubt means it is pretty much past the height of trendiness. No matter, I love the cupcakes!