Happy 30th Anniversary and St Patricks Day

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. Wow! It is hard to believe it has been that long. The years have been great. We have so many wonderful memories and more love for each other everyday. Isn't it strange how the longer you are married the more you fall in love?We became sweethearts 31 years ago. I am so glad that my dreams came true. That my knight in shining armor came and took me to be his bride. Our oldest daughter could not be with is as she lives in Texas, but we received a happy phone call wishing us a "Happy Anniversary". Thanks Dana and Jac! Our youngest daughter surprised us with these beautiful flowers along with a homemade gift and card. The words on the card
are perfect. I hope you all can read it. DD loves to wood burn and made this beautiful plaque for us. Around the edges she put the word love, in many different languages. I hope everyone can read it because it is beautiful. She said she ran out of room and had to put the date March 17, 77 instead of March 17, 1977, but we don't mind. Thanks BB! Here me and DH are with our flowers and gift. As you can see in the picture I am a blubbering idiot. Of course if you ask anyone in my family they will tell you that I cry at the drop of a pin. I won't tell anyone, but DH has gotten very tenderhearted over the years and he too, tears up in touching moments. (and commercials, television programs, stories in church.... the list goes on and on) Oops! Sorry Yogi, I guess it isn't a secret anymore.

I am so proud of our girls and thought I would share their happy faces. This is our oldest daughter, Dana. I keep asking for her to send pictures, but her and her sweety are so busy. Hi Dana and Jac! Send momma pictures!

Here is BB, our youngest all dressed up to go to a St Patrick's Day party with her sweetheart. She was very inventive this year. She dyed a white halter top forest green, sewed on stretchy sequence, made matching wrist bands, sprayed her white flip flops green, and cut shamrocks off the tinsel and glued it to her cheeks. You look cute BB, great job!

Ok, I guess that is enough of the bragging momma for now. On to FOOD! I decided I was going to get a head start on some cooking for the week, but did not accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to. Anyway, nothing real exciting, but tasty for sure. I had some potatoes that were beginning to grow. I usually use organic when ever possible, but we were given 5lbs of russets and they seem to begin growing much faster that our usual organic Yukon Golds. I also had some fresh chives that needed to be use. Our family loves mashed spuds, which is what they will have this week. I added "no-chicken" broth and a tiny bit of plain soy milk and mashed away. Then stirred in some finely chopped chives along with salt and pepper. My next adventure was to use up some veggies that screaming "use me". I diced up 2 pounds of carrots, 3 small sweet potatoes, a cup of onion, about 10 or 12 cloves of garlic, and some red and orange bell pepper. Tossed them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted them for 30 min covered at 425 degrees, lowered the temp to 375 uncovered them and let them cook another 10 min. or so to get some nice carmelization. They taste like sugar. BB, the youngest, is not crazy about cooked carrots and she said she will be eating these for sure. We go through steamed veggies in this house like crazy. I cooked up 6 pretty good size zucchini and the last 3 tiny, yellow, crookneck squash. I was going to make stuffed acorn squash for dinner, but my mom came over and gave us dinner money from my her and my dad Thanks mom and dad! We don't have any vegan restaurants near us, but I tend to be inventive whereever we go. We all know that it is a hit and miss with most restaurants. We ended up going to Chili's. They have a meatless black bean burger that is really good. I ordered just the patty along with 2 sides of steamed broccoli and corn on the cob, hold the butter. I forgot to take my camera, but I promise it was really good. Omni man had his usual meat and potatoes with corn. Chili's has nothing in the way of desserts for vegans so we came home and I made Chocolate Agave Cupcakes from VCtotW. They call for 1 cup of unbleached flour, but I used half whole wheat pastry flour and they turned out great. In fact, they are too rich for me, but I enjoy savory over sweet 98% of the time. I cut the recipe in half and baked them in my mini-tart pan. Then I frosted them with your typical "butter" cream frosting made out of Earth Balance and vegan sugar. After we took the picture we decided they should at least have something green on them for St. Patrick's Day so we cut more lil shamrocks from the tinsel and decorated a few to be festive.

That is about it for today. Thanks for putting up with my lengthy post. I hope everyone had a fun, safe, and yummy St. Patrick's Day.

Curry Vegetables, No knead bread, Blueberry scones, White Bean Stew, Apple Swirl Bread, and Crispi Squares

First I want to thank everyone for their kind words while I have been down in the dumps. Not working on my blog made me feel even worse since people were coming to visit and I was invisible. Yeah, I know it is sweetheart day, but DH is at school, DD is with her sweetheart, so I am home alone with the perfect opportunity to update my blog. Here are some pics of what I

cooked over the weekend.

Curried vegetables with couscous

I steamed up some potatoes, broccoli, and green peas. Added some garbanzo beans, curry powder, garlic, salt and pepper and a little H20 to keep is moist. I cooked up some couscous too. When everything was done we poured it over the couscous and dinner is served. DD said it was pretty spicy, but loved the couscous. DH was not thrilled due to the fact that cooked broccoli was in it. He is a cooked veggie hater. Loves them raw, tolerates cooked corn, peas, green beans, and spinach, but that's about it. At least he eats them raw. Anyway I have eaten this for 4 days now and love it. You gotta love leftovers.

Here is a recipe that I got from Bryanna's blog. (Sunday, January 28, 2007)http://veganfeastkitchen.blogspot.com/ I was so excited. "NO KNEAD" BREAD! I figured I would follow the recipe to a "T" then if it turned out start tweaking it. This is a picture of the dough after 15 hours of sitting in my oven over night. Looks cool with all the bubbles. That means my yeast it good!

Here the bread dough is after the first fold.

After the fold and getting ready to rise and go into the oven.

( I followed Bryanna's suggestion to use wheat bran)

Here is the final product. The recipe says to bake it in a 6-8 quart cast iron, enamel, or Pyrex pan. WOW!, the biggest pan I have is a glass Pyrex dish that is about 2 quarts. Problem? NOPE, use two smaller pans and here you have it, NO KNEAD BREAD.

Here is it cut. You can see all the tiny holes looks good huh?

Boy, I thought so, as you can see below. This was my lunch. Squash, roasted tomatoes on my newly baked bread and grapefruit supremes. It only took one bite. YUCK! The crust is fabulous. The inside of the bread feels like the fake food you buy your children to play kitchen with. I don't understand how something that looks this good can be sent to the round file so fast.

On to something yummy. These are Jen's Blueberry Lemon Mini-Scones from her book, Vegan Lunch Box. http://veganlunchbox.com/ I did a bit of tweaking with the recipe. I made them with all whole wheat pastry flour, skipped the lemon zest (DD not crazy about lemon) and cut the recipe in half. They turned out good. I think next time I will shorten the baking time a couple minutes. They seemed a bit dry. All and all I will make them again. Next time DD will have to put up with lemon because I love it. 2 Pt's per serving on WW

Before cooking

Fresh out of the oven!

More soup. This is Susan's White Bean Stew, http://www.fatfreevegan.com/beans/white_bean_stew.shtml

I left out the lemon juice and used homemade white beans instead of canned. Fantastic soup. Like Susan says, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE AMOUNT OF GARLIC. I used one whole bulb, 14 cloves and it tasted perfect. I made some 9 grain pita chips to go along with it.

3Pt's per cup on WW



Apple Swirl Loaf from Dreena's book, The Everyday Vegan.

I feel bad because someone recommended this recipe to me and I can't remember who. So who ever it was my DH thanks you, DD thanks you, and I thank you. Of course we thank Dreena too!This bread is awesome. No words to describe how moist and flavorful this bread it. And get this, only 1T. of canola oil. I followed the recipe to the "T" This is definitely a keeper.

OK everyone, last but not least, by any stretch of the imagination are Dreena's Crispi Squares from Vive La Vegan. Yep, you guessed it I finally got my book. Yeepee! Now for the funny part. I had bought organic Crispy Brown Rice cereal by Erewhon just for these squares. I had also bought organic puffed rice for another recipe, which I have now misplaced. Guess which one I ended up using? Yep, you guessed right. Puffed rice. My DH cracked up, but said, "I was expecting rice crispy squares, but these are really good!" They are very tasty, but they stay soft. Not too soft to hold their shape or for little hands to hold them while eating them so no worries. I followed the recipe except I added toasted walnuts instead of almonds. I love that these are made with maple syrup. Great flavor, great recipe! Oh and thanks to this recipe I am not addicted to Hemp seeds. they have a wonderful nutty taste.

16 servings = 3Pt's on ww

Close up shot. See the little puffs? hahahahaha I feel like such a dork.