Wednesday, February 13, 2008

officially winter

Okay, so we've been playing at winter here for a while--some cold, some flurries, our winter coats and hats and gloves. But, it finally hit for real. The roads are bad, and intermittently scary, there's real snow (I think I had about 5" at my house by yesterday afternoon). I even got to leave work early yesterday! What does all this mean to you? It just means that I'm planning on using it as an excuse for not blogging for a few days. That, and my uterus has been playing games (not fun games) with me for nearly a week now. I am a cranky, bloated, tender, crampy, uterachey, crompy monster. But, that said, I'm real glad to be back to bloggin'!

First of all, the vegan-flavor cupcakes for Kramer's birthday celebration. I ended up making a sort of "almond joy" type of cupcake. I made the coconut cupcake recipe from this blog. As for the frosting, I made a chocolate-almond flavor, and I just kinda winged it like she suggests. I used powdered sugar, Earth Balance, a little hemp milk, some cocoa, some vanilla and almond extracts, and just kept beating it and tasting it until I was happy with it. Then I topped them with the toasted coconut and slivered almonds. They were yum--and cute! Here's a close-up, and one of Kramer blowing out her candles.
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"blow like you've never blown before"
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Also, Taste of India was pretty tasty, but I don't know if there's a place that can unseat Udipi from the top seat in my heart for Indian fare in the 'Burgh.

Saturday Barbara (PYT) made a little light dinner and hung out and played Skip-bo with me while I complained about my uterache. Obviously, I am a big bowl o' fun around this time of the month!

Couscous with garlic and veggies:
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The next morning we made a big breakfast, and it was magically delicious! Sunday Brunch is my favorite meal of the week. She made her famous tofu scramble and some veggie sausages and coffee. I made some roasted dill potatoes, peanut butter-n-jelly french toast (from a recipe that came from a kid's cook book that my brother and I had when we were little), and some fresh-squeezed oj. So tasty and perfect for a chilly morning.
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Sunday afternoon we went to a Baby Party. It was for her niece Violet's first birthday. However, I mistakenly thought that it meant [Dress Like a] Baby Party, and showed up in a diaper and bonnet. Boy, was that embarrassing for the first meeting with her extended family!

[Just kiddin', folks. It was a really cute baby party with delicious cake, and hilarious baby antics.]

In other news, my sandwich addiction this week is egg salad with fake bacon. I had an "Egg Salad BLT" at Hoi Polloi last week, and had been thinking about it since. Also, E-dawg and I had been talking about subbing all or most of the mayo in egg salad for greek yogurt, and then Heidi posted another egg salad recipe a few days ago. So, I gave that a whirl. I used 4 eggs, 1 T. mayo, 2 T. fage 0% greek yogurt as the base. But, it just was a little too tangy, and not enough mayo-y for my liking, so I'll likely switch back, or at least flip-flop the mayo to yogurt ratio. So, to off-set the tanginess I added some minced sweet gherkin, some parsley and salt and pepper. It was good, but not perfect. Adding the fake bacon helps, though.
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Night before last I threw together a pasta dish with broccoli and a bastardized alfredo-type sauce. I didn't use a recipe, just threw some stuff together--a little half and half, a little marsala, a little parmesan, a little freshly grated nutmeg, a little garlic and onion, a little butter, some salt and pepper. It turned out pretty good!
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Tonight I'm doing some shopping for tomorrow's valentine's dinner with Barbara (aka PYT). I'm going to try the recipe that's on the cover of the new Vegetarian Times magazine for a vegetable wellington. Sounds deelish!

2 comments:

K.L. Holsopple, said...

Are those veggies on the cous cous in the shape of a heart?

Hummingbitch said...

I love Skip-Bo. Rock out loud.