Nomz

Mix peanut butter with maple syrup and pour it over oatmeal with bananas.

that is all I have to say.

Post soon, gotta recipe/camera

:)

A New Breakfast

 Oat bran has been all over the blogosphere...especially on Heather Eats Almond Butter, so I decided to get some yesterday. I cooked about 1/3 cup with some nutritional yeast, (it was good!) a teaspoon of peanut butter, and toppings were unsweetened coconut and homemade carob walnut granola. Yum!! Like my Tinker Bell spoon?

I have this week off school, so I can actually find some time to blog! I'll just be hanging out with friends, doing an online class, and probably baking...more than usual. :) Speaking of which, I made these Chocolate Thumbprint cookies last weekend for my soccer team. They were so good!

Oatmeal :)

Hello everyone...I have a serious baking bug today. Thats not good.

Lately I've been having a lot of oatmeal. (Yeah, I used chopsticks...uhh) Usually plain-but last night i drizzled some homemade peanut butter and apple chunks on it. Yumm.

Not a whole lot to talk about. If I give in to my baking bug then I will.

Plans for today? Get school supplies for 2nd semester, maybe get a fuzzy sweatshirt. Lazyy sunday. :)

CAMERA RESOLVED....

Hello all! I had a snow day today!! Just thought I'd awkwardly throw that in there.

I have a new camera. We will not talk much about this. Its the same kind as before, only in blue :) Heres a recap of my camera mishaps if you care/are bored.

1. Red camera is dying

2. New camera #1!

3. The camera cord is gone

4. Found it. Joy.

5. So now the camera is gone.

6. And found again.

7. The camera died.

For the sake of my sanity and lack of sleep, I'll let you consume (no pun intended) these photos without much explanation.

Roasted red pepper hummus. Nom.

Barley casserole with tahini dressing from The Kind Diet.

Peanut butter/agave rice krispie treats (some w/chocolate) from The Kind Diet. Nomnomnom.

Another form of art: A painting I did on a deconstructed shoe shelf!!

A weird abstract painting.


Vegan ice cream! Almond dream. With coconut and almonds and a strawbery. Nomz.

Well, before I sign off...a recent dillemma (sp?). I had some soymilk in cereal the other day, like I normally do, (almond most of the time, but there was a sale on soy) and felt somewhat nauseous the whole day. I thought it was just a little cold, and didn't think much of it. The next day, I had some tofu at dinner, and for the rest of the night, was in excruciating pain!!! The day after that, I had a small sprinkle of soy sauce on lentils. As soon as I finished eating, the thing came back.

I'm going to give up all soy for a while. Vegan, no soy. Haha right. But as I decided upon giving up soy for a while, it occured to me that maybe I should just give up some other stuff too. All white sugar? All white flour? Should I go macro again? (didn't really talk about it, but it did happen haha.) I'm just confused about what I should do.

I gotta clean a little and go to bed, but I'll see you guys tomorrow :)

A quick update

Hello blog world, I am alive.
And working on the whole camera situation as well! Other than that, there has been lots of baking and cooking going on. I made banana butter yesterday, as well as orange scones and lemon poppyseed muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. I made lentil soup from a new cookbook the other day, which has just been devine! Yeah, a lot of cooking has been going on. But also cleaning-I cleaned out the entire fridge and freezer of failed experiments, questionable looking things, etc. Our fridge is soo empty! I think a trip to whole foods is needed fairly soon...
But off the topic of food, the last theater production I was in just ended. It was so much fun-I barely had time to even do a little update though on the blog!! I've decided against doing the spring musical, as much as I want to, my schedule is changing a lot for school and I want to try something different.
I was also thinking that this spring, something fun to do would be to pursue my baking more, but maybe start a mini-business with it. My sister had asked me if I baked something for her once a week, she would pay for the ingredients or some portion of the money. That kind of sparked the idea, maybe just having friends email me about asking for baked goods. But I'm not starting some huge business or anything...keep in mind I am in high school!! Any thoughts or tips on that?
This week is going to be crazy, I may not have the chance to update so much because it is...

FINALS!
Yup. So much fun. Half days never sucked so much. But after it's all over I'm sure the feeling of ease and de-stress will be awesome. I'll talk to you guys (whoever you are) soon.

My friends, honeycrisp and maple.

Hello readers!! How has fall been for everyone? I've been enjoying tons of honeycrisp apples with cinnamon and walnuts...


It's dark in my room...the pictures aren't PERFECT.
I baked up a batch of these delicious pumpkin oatmeal cookies!! So perfect. I gave them out to friends at school. The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, and I always add a tablespoon or 2 of nut butter, for flavor. I used Mighty Maple this time! I'd never tried it, and it's super yum. It has the texture of Jif peanut butter, but the taste is OUT OF THIS WORLD.

I also tried this, which has been talked about on tons of other blogs. Little did I know it was made right here in Michigan!! I liked it, but it was a bit grainy. The taste was great though-so many different kinds of seeds and nuts. I'll have to try their other flavors.

I would show you a picture, but uh...yeah.

I always take these pictures early in the morning or at night, so theres no natural night! Ugh!! That's why they are blurry/ugly/dark. I'll try to improve.

Schools been good this week, but I'm so glad tomorrows Friday!! I don't know if I'll have much cooking planned for the weekend, but maybe for the sake of the blog I'll do something fun! We have our first grades mailed home tomorrow...I'm pretty confident with the way they'll turn out. But who knows, right?

Fall is such a great season in my opinion...I love the cool weather where you can wear a sweatshirt with flip flops and still be OK. Halloween is always really fun, and I still have to make a Thanksgiving plan! That'll be fun. So far in advance though... I never think that far because things always seem to come up. Winter is fun, but its just so dark, and before you know it it's pitch black at 7:00.

I have a little homework to finish up, and I hope to post for the weekend. I'm doing a 5k on sunday, so there has to be some post regarding that! See ya :D

Nice to see you again, blog.

Hi guys! Camp was so fun...if there are any readers from cabin 13 then this is a shout out to you! I had such a good time hanging out and working hard to put on a great concert on sunday, even though 7 1/2 hours of singing a day was hard work. I think choir is going to be really good this year.

I love them! I'm on the far left on the bottom.
Shell on the beach!

For the food sitch: I brought these snacks, and finished everything except one lara bar and 2 rice milks. The delicious rice crisp bars were enjoyed by people in my cabin, as well as being eaten by myself:)

The food at the camp was...*to put it nicely* not the highest rated by campers...The great thing was that there was a salad bar available at lunch and dinner, loaded with lettuce, assorted veggies, hummus, garbanzos, kidney beans, TOFU!, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and plently of dressing options. They also had peanut butter, and I liked to mix a little of that with soy sauce to make a dipping sauce for my tofu. I was very happy and really only ate that for lunch and dinner-I changed it up between the options, and I didn't think the food was ALL that bad :D

On sunday, my parents came up to see the concert. They took me out to dinner (how nice) at a place about 25 minutes from the camp, and it was lovely! I got brown rice with sauteed seasonal vegetables (zucchini) with hummus, and a small side salad with a yummy dressing. The portions were really small, but everything was so fantastic. There was also this cute loaf of bread which I sampled.

Of course we couldn't just leave it.

I arrived home today and relaxed a bit, had some rice (I was seriousley craving whole grains since I had nada at camp) and caught up on blog posts.

My dad and I went shopping at a really cool, new asian market right near our house. I loaded up on napa cabbage, daikon, hijiki, kombu seaweed, a large bag of brown rice, barley, black eyed peas, rice syrup, mirin cooking wine, miso paste, umeboshi plums, carrots, celery, black sesame seeds, and my dad got a crunchy rice snack (which had wasabi so I didnt eat it) and maybe one or two other things, not really sure :D

We also stopped by Hillers to get sunflower seeds, collard greens, a bag of cereal, and my dad got granola, and a couple other things. I went to bed bath and beyond to get icing decorator tips and bags, and muffin cups. YAY!

I cooked a lot this evening, made gomashio, toasted seeds, and prepared a delicious dinner for myself.

Brown rice with a little gomashio, some seeds, chopped daikon, and scallion. Steamed collards and napa cabbage drizzled in sesame oil and seeds, and a small cup of miso soup with some daikon. So healing :D
I think I made enough brown rice for a week, or more! Yum. Its so delicious and healthy.

I have some fun food posts coming up soon after the weekend or so, but before then I'm not sure...I'll probably not be able to contain myself and bake something. So talk to you later blog!

Thank you for reading (:

Away to camp...again!!

Yes, I'm leaving tomorrow to go to a choir camp for 1 week up north. Our schedule is waking up at 6, doing calesthetics, breakfast, 4 hour rehearsal, lunch, then break. Oh then more rehersals :D

What have I gotten myself into.

Anyways, why not I talk about food to ease the pain of that regimine?

Some snacks I'm bringing to camp-homemade instant oatmeal, peanut butter cookie lara bar, crispy rice treats, (this version with almond butter and raisins! Yum!)

New obsession: tamari roasted sunflower seeds. Courtsey of The Kind Diet.

For lunch today, I enjoyed a mini ezekiel tortilla with smashed black beans, 1 clove garlic, gomashio, soy sauce, and a little sprinkle of sunflower seeds. Plus arugula and 1 leaf of basil.
A little salad with arugula, carrots, cherry tomato, lime juice, and a tiny dollop of tahini dressing.

mmm....

I *think* I can bring my phone to camp, (not sure if I will...) but I'll be off blogging for a week. See you guys after then...thanks for reading :D

The baking chronicles

Helloo everyone! I really am posting a lot lately...well I bake a lot! Oh you know that. I took the blondies to the wedding shower, and there were definetly plenty of other desserts. The spread was lovely, as well as the shower.

They're house was so photogenic...so pretty!

And so is my niece! Christina is so goregous.
Today my lifelong friend Hannah came over for lunch. We went to whole foods, and got ingredients to make...

FALAFEL!!

We didn't deep fry it, but we pan fried it on both sides and it was quite yummy. Also some tahini dressing and hummus, mixed veggies, and pita. Great meal around 2:30!

The colorful spread...sorry blurry picture!Tahini dressingHannah-filling her plateFRESH!

My plate
A new addition to the condiment palate-GOMASHIO! Gomashio is a salty topping made up of 18 parts sesame seeds, 1 part salt. I think mine was more like 10 parts sesame because I didn't get enough, but it's a great way to add flavor to a dish without too much salt. Its surprisingly salty for being so low in salt. Just toast sesame seeds, grind in a mortar and pestal with the sea salt. Pretty easy and makes a great topping to vegetables, rice, or anything else you like.

Of course we got the baking bug...
Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (adapted from The Kind Diet)

1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup maple sugar (org. evaporated cane juice for me-maple sugar is too $$$!!)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. fine sea salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup safflower oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. molasses
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F'.

Combine the oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the syrup, oil, vanilla extract, and molasses. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir to combine. Fold in the chocolate chips. Using your hands, roll tablespoon-size scoops of dough into balls. Place the balls onto the prepared baking sheet and press down slightly on the balls to flatten the tops. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer cookies to a baking rack to cool completely.

I also did a few with raisins and peanut butter...these cookies were great! The amazing thing about vegan batter is that you can eat the batter and not feel bad about the eggs. LIKE.

They turned out really big and I made a few smaller ones too. Definetley reccomend these!