Three Month Food Review...

Three months...Three months!!!! It doesn't seem like I have been writing this blog for almost 90+ days..

So I thought I would make a review !!!

Here we go!!

Being a new blogger with no photography experience is a challenge, but my motto has always been to go for it and learn from your mistakes, with that said, lets start!!!!!

Isa' Chandra Moskiwitz's chocolate chip scones......eh? I didn't like them. I prefered my recipe. But, if you are a first time scone maker, this recipe is easy. You don't have to form the scones in this recipe, you just drop them, like biscuits...

Pad Thai, this has to be the best one I have made yet. It has a long ingredients list but comes together fast and is a breeze to make.

Classic Dumplings, I had never made a vegan dumpling before, but I found it was simple to alter my original recipe with veggie broth, it was just as comforting as I remember.

Stromboli and Italian salad.....Classic flavors, My favorite meal

The only way I will eat a cow, Cake!!!! Totally homemade, totally delicious....not so great picture

"Chicken" Enchilada casserole, ooey, gooey and delicious!

Pico de gallo in my margarita glass...On a little side note, I forgot to put garlic in my pico, and I kept saying it is missing something to Kaiti and she looks at me and goes .....helllllooooo garlic!

The amazing stack of pancakes

The best vegan chocolate chip cookies eva!

My vegan shells

The sandwich that can never be.... no matter how many times I work it, it just doesn't work.

Chinese night with my daughters, the rice timbales were horrible btw..

Almond chocolate chip blondie

Apple pie

Vegan Epicurean's Porky Seitan Cutlets O.M.G!!! still one of my favorites

Homemade TVP Sausage gravy on biscuits

Super bowl Sunday, BBQ riblet sandwiches with coleslaw, broccoli salad, sweet potato fries

Going Banana's cake

Breakfast-Southwestern oven potatoes

Waffles with blackberry syrup

Cowboy potato chowder, carrot salad and beer bread

Isa's Chickpea cutlets, My husand loves them so much he requests them every week!

My version of Valerie's Tuna salad

Spring soup with orzo pasta

Watermelon and mango Lemonade @ our favorite vegan chinese resaurant!!

Lo mein

The absolute worst meal I have ever made.....Chicken rice......

Do not try to recreate your favorite childhood dish......sometimes it just isn't worth it!

My Beach House

I am a creature of habit, I always take down the Spring decorations and replace it with the Summer, and again in the fall and then again, in the winter....

I am as giddy as child in a candy store when Summer arrives!!!!!
It is my favorite decorating time of year.

Living in Kansas is tough...While it is beautiful and full of color, it isn't.........vibrant....
It is mellow and iced tea flavored....
Rolling wheat and sunflower fields sway in the breeze. Amish buggy's roll alongside cars on the highway....
And I am.....a Henry Matisse Painting with a splash of Salvador Dali, for good measure!
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Pretty soon I will start unpacking my most treasured pieces collected over the years and my home will echo the beach.....

This is very close to my staircase...actually it is exactly my staircase (borrowed picture from A Country Farmhouse) This year I want to paint the stairs black, with a sand or taupe colored paint for the walls, something soothing and resplendent all year round!

This is a dining set from Ashley Furniture that I am coveting at the moment. My dining room is huge and I need some heavy furniture to stand up to the opposing 15 ft ceiling... The want the 8 chair set!!

The matching Ashley furniture buffet, that would hold my sea shells and my mothers Fiesta ware!

I love this sign!!! I think it speaks of my life....

Here is an idea I found while cruising the web! I have never been to the ocean, but I have a beautiful collection of sea shells.....

See the bowl on the floor? I went to a garage sale years and years ago and found a bowl very similar to this bread bowl. It is hand carved and was made in the late 1700's. The owners of the house found it buried in the back yard and threw it in the garage sale for $2.00, My bowl is worth between $80-$120.00!!!!! YIPEEEE! I wonder how much they paid for their bowl?

I love the idea of sand and star fish, but I am sure my cats would be laying in it....

I adore this......Being a vegan I make sure that all of my shells and star fish were deceased on their own before purchasing, so it would take me forever to recreate this look....sigh...

Beach stones used as votive holders...I will be recreating this look. Chris and I went to Lake Michigan two years ago and collected rocks (illegally...oops! We didn't know until we got back to my dad's house) to put into glass vases.....

An R. Kenton Nelson print I would love, but cannot find anywhere.....

I have a tall vase exactly like this one but mine has a huge piece of white coral from Mexico in it, that I bought at a garage sale along with a piece of reef stone for $10.00 with sand!!

I love this so much!

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Soon, every room in my house will have shells in it.

Soon, I will wake up in the morning and open the windows wide, turn up my morning music to start my day and wander my house....

There is no other place in the world I would rather be than home on an early summer morning. It soothes me to think about it, the smells of fresh cut grass and lilacs floating through the windows, the cool wooden floors beneath my feet, and Michael Buble' singing quietly just for me!

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But....if ever I were to go visit the ocean....I would never want to leave.

I would spend my days combing for sea shells, walking barefoot in the surf, reading a book under a huge umbrella and watching the days begin and end on my beach.

I cannot think of a more perfect place.

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Except, perhaps my own beach house in Nickerson,Kansas

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Special thanks:

Completely Coastal for the wonderful pictures and idea's

http://www.completely-coastal.com/

A Country Farmhouse for her beautiful pictures and wonderful inspiration! http://acountryfarmhouse.blogspot.com/

R. Kenton Nelson, for your amazing natural talent http://eaesthete.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/bathing_kenton-nelson.jpg

Seriously getting with the program!

I have been falling of my vegan wagon lately... Since going back vegan after a 8 month hiatus after being very ill last year, I have been very wishy washy. I have essentially fallen off of my vegan wagon.

As some of you know who have been following me for awhile, I went vegan for health issues. I have Psoriatic Arthritis and is interferes with my daily life. Since going vegan, I have felt better than I have for most of my adult life. I have never had an issue with my vegan diet, until I had to stop due to anemia and a very low protein count.

I am guessing that my protein count is so low due to my zinc depletion. Psoriasis patients are all zinc deficient, that with my lowered immune system cause me to shake and stumble sometimes. At other times, I have a hard time speaking, especially if I am tired. Before I was ill last year, I was at my peak physically. I was healthy and lean, I could jog and had unlimited energy. Now I can barely stay awake during the day and I am awake all night long. I am ravenous all the time and craving dairy.... I never had this problem when I went vegan the first time and I am confused as to why this is so hard this time around...

So now this is it!

This is the time for me to stop and smell the hummus! I must stop nibbling and snacking, no more midnight snacks, no 3am snacks. No more meals of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or potato chips.

Actually, No more....

Tortilla chips

Soda pop

Popsicles

Ice cream

Ranch dip

oil fried anythings

French fries...OH GOD!!!!!

"chicken nuggets"

Oreo's

Nutter butters

Grape juice and crackers...my favorite snack

Excessive amounts of vegan butter on toast

Sugar

White flour

White anything

Coffee

or pizza

Until I can pull myself back into shape!

In the last two years since being on steroids and bed rest I gained a whopping 68 pounds, and enough is enough..

I am wearing a size 18....18!!!!!!!!

I am normally a 12/13...Holy Cow!

So why am I telling all of you this..... Because I do not want to be a fat vegan....I honestly do not want to be thought of as a healthy person when I feel so unhealthy....

You can be a vegan and be very very heavy...There is vegan junk food out there people, just ask me!

So here is my basic plan and will be modified after I write this out, because honestly this was a spur of the moment blog.

Eat breakfast before 9am everyday

Eat breakfast period...

Have a full lunch with a salad everyday.

Have two responsible snacks...fruit and nuts

Eat a small dinner with a salad

Eat no later than 5:30pm, even on weekends

Saturday is a treat day, and I can eat whatever I want within reason and it must be vegan...

WALK WALK WALK WALK!!!!

I must get back out there....

I am going to incorporate alot more raw in my diet. Cut back on salt, and drink alot of water...

There I said it.....Now I just have to do it!

Wish me luck, I want to be able to get into my adorable clothes again!~

Why the picture of Angelina Jolie?

Because when I am my normal size....that is what my body looks like! waaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Junkfood addictions proving to be very real!!!

I do not know what bothers me more, the experimentation or the gross neglect of peoples health to gain the almighty dollar!
When will people realize they are killing themsleves over something that is going to kill them?

Junk Food 'Addiction' May Be Real

By Jenifer Goodwin, HealthDay Reporter - Sun Mar 28, 2:03 PM PDT

- SUNDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) -- Obese people often say they'd like to eat less but feel almost powerless to stop indulging, and now new research suggests that explanation might be all too true.

A man is seen eating fast food on a street in Beijing. China faces a diabetes epidemic, a new report has warned, with rising obesity levels and an ageing population helping to trigger a major public health problem.
The theory stems from a study in rats. When researchers gave the rats unlimited access to a calorie-laden diet of bacon, pound cake, candy bars and other junk food, the rats quickly gained lots of weight. As they plumped up, eating became such a compulsion that they kept chowing down even when they knew they would receive an unpleasant electric shock to their foot if they did so.
Meanwhile, rats fed the human equivalent of a well-balanced, healthy diet -- and given only limited access to the junk food -- didn't gain much weight and knew enough to stop eating when they received the cue that a foot shock was imminent.
Even more startling, the researchers report, is that when they took away the junk food from the obese rats and replaced it with healthier chow, the obese rats went on something of a hunger strike. For two weeks, they refused to eat hardly anything at all.
"They went into voluntary starvation," said study author Paul Kenny, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.
So what might this say about human behavior?
Researchers aren't certain if the results apply to people struggling with their weight. But they say it's possible that a diet heavy in highly rewarding foods -- quite literally, sausages, cheesecake and other highly processed foods -- might cause changes in the brain's reward system for satiety.
When that goes awry, the result is not only that people gain weight, but that they feel compelled to seek out more and more junk food.
The findings were published online March 28 in Nature Neuroscience.
When researchers looked at the obese animals' brains, they noted there were declines in the dopamine D2 receptor that previous research has implicated in addiction to cocaine and heroine.
"A hallmark of drug addiction is that it leads to changes in how the brain's reward system works," Kenny said. "Addiction is a loaded term, but in this case, there is evidence of addiction-like adaptations."
When researchers artificially suppressed the receptor using a virus in the brains of other rats, those rats starting eating junk food compulsively.
"What we think is happening is that, as you become obese over a period of time, the D2 receptors go down, which plays a major role in becoming a compulsive eater," Kenny said, noting there are almost certainly other factors at play as well.
There also could be something in the accumulated fat itself that alters the brain's reward threshold, setting up a "vicious cycle" of overeating yet not feeling satisfied, said Pietro Cottone, an assistant professor in the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders at Boston University School of Medicine.
"The only way to return to normality is probably dieting for a long period of time to lose the body weight and not eating junk food," Cottone said.
This isn't the first study to find commonalities between the brain's reaction to cupcakes and illicit drugs. An earlier study by Cottone and his colleagues suggested that weaning rats off a high-calorie diet might lead to similar, though not identical, effects in the brain as withdrawing from drugs and alcohol.
In that study, researchers gave rats a regular diet for five days and then switched them to a chocolate-flavored food that was high in sugar. When deprived of the sugary food, they showed signs of anxiety and their brains acted as if they were withdrawing from alcohol or drugs. The study was published last November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the current study, the rats were raised on healthy foods, but their preferences quickly shifted when offered junk food. Throughout the day, they snacked and nibbled, rapidly bulking up. And the more they gained, the more they ate.
"That poses a huge conundrum for humans," Kenny said. "It shows you how powerful this behavior can become."
Dr. Julio Licinio, director of the John Curtin School of Medicine Research at the Australian National University, called the study answers "one of the many missing pieces in the puzzle of obesity and addiction."
"Now that it is clear that areas of the brain involved in addiction and also involved in obesity, the next question is: Why do those areas become dysregulated in some people, but not in others?" Licinio asked. "And importantly, why do some people who have a biological tendency towards addiction go to drugs, while others go to alcohol, and others go to food?"

This is what happens when life gives you lemons!

Hello my best bloggy pals!
I hope that you are wearing you PJ's and listening to some fantastic French music!!!
(just like me!!)

So I have been blazing through new recipes I have had since 4 years ago, trying to weed out the bad and keep the good. I have also tried some friends dishes (thank you Vegan Epicurean and Valerie) and created some of my own. I am a cooking machine lately. Especially since I am cutting down on sweets, I am not baking so much, which I miss terribly. For health reasons I shall forge onward! So today I wanted to try a vegan Enchilada recipe that called for use of the crock pot, and a tortilla soup that I have been eyeballing for about a year.

Sometimes in life things go bad...There is nothing we can do, it just happens and we can mope about it or we can gather up our wits and make it work....Today I worked it.....

Ok, so the soup recipe I have been salivating over has all the key ingredients to make an awesome soup. Fresh salsa, bell peppers, black beans, sounds yum, right....Well I do not know what happened, but oh Lord.... it was F.U.N.K.Y I know you are probably reading this and looking at the picture and looking at this and so on...But seriously take my word, this recipe needs a make over...BAD! I am not even going to post the recipe...it is that bad! But hey it is pretty!

This is an enchilada..this is an enchilada.......this is an enchilada? Are you hypnotized yet? Do you see an enchilada all round and beautiful???? What do you mean no! Sigh, ok......
This is an enchilada wanna be that is now a tamale pie, and it is a darn good tamale pie at that!

The recipe was a good one, it is loaded with tons of delicious goodness, but.....Either they did not use super fresh corn tortilla's like I do or they fried them first to make them sturdier, which is not an option with me... There was no way I could roll these bad boys up, so I made a layered pie. I loved the smell coming from the oven, it was tantalizing!
When I took off the foil though, I knew I was in trouble.. The corn tortilla's I use were made fresh yesterday and are delicate and light. When I tried to cut them, they just flopped and slid and melted into the spatula.....Ok, after that review, please still try them, it really is delicious!!!


Vegan Tamale Pie, (formally known as Vegan Enchilada casserole)

Ingredients:

2 cans diced tomatoes with juice.
14 oz. salsa, homemade or jarred
2 cans black beans, rinsed
1/2 bag frozen corn
1 4oz. can green chilies
1 1/2 tbls. cumin
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
18 fresh corn tortilla's
1/2 can large black olives sliced

Brandi's Enchilada sauce for tortilla's
1 can tomato sauce
tsp. cumin
chili powder to taste

Preheat oven to 300 degree's
Directions
In a large bowl, combine everything but the tortilla's and olives.
Dip your tortilla's in the sauce and lay across of a 15x 11 baking pan, top with bean mixture and continue layering until you end with tortilla's, your dipping sauce will almost be gone and you will need to use you fingers to spread around the sauce to cover the tortilla's. Top with olives and cover with foil. Bake for two hours. Top with fresh sliced avocado, soy sour cream and additional olives if desired.
So this is my life lesson for today.
My entire meal tanked. I could have just said to heck with it and not posted it, but this is what life has taught me. Just because something doesn't turn out the way you think it should, that should never ever stop you from making the most out of it!

I plated my disastrous meal like I would any other. With a little decoration and a little love anything can look beautiful!
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So when Life gives you lemons, make Tamale Pie and call it good!
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Life is about imperfections, it is what makes us who we are!

Cajun Tofu Sliders, Southwestern Sweet Potato Hash and Corn on the Cob!

Hello friends!

I hope you are enjoying your weekend!!!

It is raining cats and dogs here. There is no light to be seen... A dreary day in Kansas.

I know it is hard to be happy on a cloudy day, but I am jubilant! We finally finished painting Kaiti's bedroom, I am starting to get ahead on the laundry, the kitchen is semi clean, and my Golden Bell Forsythia is staring to bloom! Spring is with in reach!

But first, I must tell you that due to the horrible weather, all of my pictures are...well, kinda blah.. There is not enough light out to illuminate this house, and I have dim lights....

So I must apologize in advance for the poor picture quality.

On to the food!

I have had a recipe for about 3 years just laying around. I find it all over. In the office, in the bedroom, in the bathroom....? Yep everywhere. So I figured maybe it was an sign that I should make it. It is called Cajun Tofu Burgers and it said it was excellent....

Now I should tell you, I am pretty hard to impress. I am down right snooty when it comes to food impressing me, so being the curious girl I am, I set out to see if it made the grade.

Along with it, I wanted something exciting. I have never made sweet potatoes into anything.... but sweet potatoes, so I thought a southwestern hash sounded pretty awesome. Emma was here today so I put her to work making the hash. I also had some corn on the cob in the freezer leftover from last summer and I knew that would be a good veggie to go with our spicy dinner!

Here is the hash before going into the oven

Southwestern sweet potato hash
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Ingredients:

2 Large sweet potatoes, washed, peel left on, shredded in the food processor

1 red bell pepper, diced

2 medium jalapenos, seeded and sliced

2 cloves of roasted garlic, minced

1 medium onion, cut in half and sliced thin

Montreal steak seasoning to taste

Cracked black pepper to taste

Red sea salt to taste

Cajun seasoning to taste


Preheat oven to 450 degree's

Place ingredients in a large bowl, season to taste with spices. Drizzle with oil to lightly coat.

Bake for about 45 minutes, making sure to turn your potatoes so they do not burn.


The making of Cajun tofu burgers: Water chestnuts, carrot and celery in the food processor

Tofu and bread crumbs added with the veggies.

Finished mixture

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Cajun Tofu Burgers

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pound firm silken tofu, drained

2 carrots, peeled and grated

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

8 ounces can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped

2 cups fine bread crumbs

2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning

1 teaspoon salt, optional

2 teaspoons oil

Directions:
Place ingredients except oil in a food processor bowl and blend until well mixed. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large nonstick frying pan. Form 6 large or 18 sliders, flatten burger and brown for 10 minutes on each side. Serve warm with lettuce on a whole wheat bun or mini cocktail buns .

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Salsa mayo

1/2 c.vegenaise

1 super heaping tbls. salsa

Browned sliders

Getting ready to go in the oven to stay warm

Two sliders with salsa mayo, Southwestern hash, and Cajun spiced sweet corn!!

This unfortunately is the best picture I have. It was taken perched on the top of my staircase, on the banister . It is precariously sitting on a round decorative knob....lol

I served two per person...(kaiti ate 4...)

Review:

Ok this was not the best vegan burger I have ever had, and I would be pushing it if I said it was excellent. With that said, What this would be excellent as is a salmon patty. I know you are probably thinking she has lost her dang gum mind!

But honestly, when I tasted this it reminded me of my salmon patty recipe. My salmon patties were seriously pushing a gourmet title. I finally found the perfect way to make them and then...I went vegan..... I think if I add capers and my sauce, plus everything else that goes in my salmon patties, this could be a 4, maybe 5 star recipe!!!

Do I dare tempt it?????
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Let me know what you think...

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Yes or no????