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By kilax, June 29, 2010 8:14 am

Do you remember awhile ago when I did a giveaway from CSN stores? The place that sells everything – dining room tables, rugs, a ton of houseware items… Well, they are going to let us review something – a Cuisinart Digital Kitchen Scale!

Steven has been making a lot of bread, but we haven’t shared any of the recipes yet, since we don’t have an exact way to measure the ingredients – now we will!

Do you have a kitchen scale? For what do you use it? Do you like to make homemade bread?

Comments (23)

By kilax, June 22, 2010 5:20 am

Well, now that we are done weeding, we won’t have to do it again, right?

Before

After

Pile of weeds – not as impressive as it looked in person!

Ha, I wish!

It really wasn’t that bad. We spent about two hours on Saturday pulling weeds in the hot sun*. Then we went back Sunday morning and spent a couple of hours planting our sweet potatoes, and various tomatoes and peppers (yeah, we’re a bit late on those), in the not so hot sun.

We started our sweet potatoes at home on May 15th (you can see some process photos here). They were ready to plant about a week ago. And they take about 120-150 days to fully grow in the ground, so it was time to get those bad boys in there! Maybe they will be done just in time for Thanksgiving?!

Waiting to be planted…

… and in the ground!

The soil in our garden is so wet and dense right now. It was a struggle to break it up to plant on Sunday. I spent a lot of time breaking up the soil with a shovel while Steven did the planting.

We planted a few kinds of tomatoes  (8 total plants) – lemon boy (3), heirlooms, red beefsteak, better boy and bonnie grape (2).

And we planted a few kinds of peppers (6 total plants) – big early red bell, bonnie green bell (2), yellow bell, purple beauty, and wenks yellow hots. And a little tiny basil plant (above the second “p” in “Peppers” in the photo above).

I hope our new plants are successful!

And our “older” plants? Well, some are doing better than others. The cucumbers and zucchini are going strong – no surprise there! The lettuce and onions appear to be doing well too.

The green beans and broccoli though? They seem to be struggling. And the carrots are coming along fine, it seems… only time will tell. Honestly, we have no experience in this and no idea what to expect!

I’ve been having a lot of fun doing all of this gardening! (That is, until I am dehydrated and hungry… hours in the sun make me cranky sometimes!) Like I said, I don’t really know what I am doing, but Steven is giving directions!

Do you like to tackle new projects, even if you know nothing about the subject?

Steven is really good at that. And like I said… I take direction. I told Steven I am the “Sous” gardener. Ha!

*I only had to call my grandma once to identify a plant. We were 99% sure, but I knew she had them (green beans) in her garden too, so thought I would ask.

Comments (16)

By kilax, June 21, 2010 5:25 am

I love summer picnic food – watermelon, strawberries, chips, cookies, fresh veggies, potato salad, hot dogs.

Wait! How does a vegan eat potato salad and hot dogs?

Veganize them!

We’ve been craving vegan hot dogs. There are a few varieties out there too! Our favorite is the Smart Dogs Jumbo brand. If you find them in your area, consider yourself lucky! We’ve only found these a few times, so we had to use the regular (smaller) smart dogs.

Vegan hot dogs don’t equal a complete meal though… what goes with hot dogs? Potato salad*! Steven came up with a really good potato salad recipe on the fly on Saturday:

Vegan Potato Salad

Ingredients:

• 6 potatoes
• 1/3 c chopped onion
• 1/2 c chopped celery
• 1/2 c chopped carrots
• 4 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1/2 c veganaise
• 1 1/2 tsp mustard
• 1 1/2 tsp celery salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• Paprika (for looks)

Directions:

1. Peel and wash 6 potatoes. Cut in to small chunks (your size preference) and cook in boiling water until almost soft.
2. Remove potatoes with slotted spoon and put in large bowl. Save potato water and keep it boiling.
3. Cut up onion, celery and carrots. Press 4 garlic cloves. Blanche all in boiling potato water, remove (you can dump the water now).
4. Mix potatoes in large bowl with onion, celery, carrot and garlic.
5. Mix the remaining items, except the paprika, together in a small bowl. Mix in to larger bowl with potato and veggie mix.
6. Cool (if you are patient enough).
7. Sprinkle a bit of paprika and celery salt on top. Enjoy!

Yum! This potato salad was so good! I love how Steven can just whip things together without following a recipe! And this could obviously be made with regular mayonnaise in place of veganaise.

And how did we dress our dogs? Well, Chicago style**, of course!

That’s with:

• a poppy-seed bun (almost purchased, oops!)
• yellow mustard
• chopped white onion
• sweet pickle green relish (forgot, oops)
• peppers
• tomato wedges
• pickle spear
• celery salt (oops, forgot again)

Notice something missing? No ketchup. I am pretty sure if you eat a hot dog with ketchup on it in Chicago you will get shot. Just kidding! I am not sure where the “no ketchup” rule came from. Don’t tell anyone, but we each put ketchup on one of our dogs and each enjoyed that one more!

What is your favorite summer picnic food?

*Real complete meal after we added the ice cream at the end. Ha ha.
**As close as we could get, anyway!

Comments (15)

By kilax, June 19, 2010 7:05 am

I wish I was good at telling stories. Does anyone have any tips for me? How can I get better?

Steven and I took a long bike ride yesterday in the beautiful sunny weather, then made our way over to the garden in the mid-afternoon to take care of this:

Our garden is in serious need of weeding. Unless you know what you are looking for, you can’t tell it’s a garden. It just looks like a wild, over-grown… mess.

Obviously, I have spent the past few weeks coming up with wonderful excuses as to why I could not weed the garden on that particular day. Too muddy. Too many bugs. Too late. Not enough time. I’m hungry. I’m moody. It’s raining. You get the idea.

So, we finally made our way over there yesterday (with a smile on my face). It was weird – it was beautiful and sunny all day, but as soon as we got in to the car to head to the garden, it got really dark. Optimistically, I told Steven we should just go, and if it started to rain, we would head home.

Ha.

We get there and Steven shows me how to pull the weeds out. I start to get in to the groove of it, wondering why I put it off for so long, it’s not that bad…

And the storms roll in. We notice there are very dark clouds behind us. And they are moving fast. We hear lighting, but there is no rain so we keep working (smart, I know). It starts to rain a little bit and we hear a strange howling noise. I run* to the end of the fence to see what is going on, and just see the dark clouds. I run* back to the garden and tell Steven I don’t see anything, and it starts to POUR. We pack everything up as quick as we can and start running* back to the car, which is pretty far away. We don’t make it. The cold rain and hail is hitting us hard so we have to stop outside of the police station.

You can’t tell, but the rain is pouring down and we are standing under a little awning (you can see that the trees are bent over).

And wait.

And wait.

A cop comes out to ask us what the hell we are doing. We explain. I don’t think we looked like gardeners – both of us had workout gear on. Another cop pulls up and asks what we’re doing there. We explain again.

And wait.

And wait, watching the lighting.

Then we nut up and make a made dash for the car. We’re completely soaked by the time we get there.

I think we spent 15 minutes in the garden, if even, before it started pouring**.

It sounds like it was a good thing I was not at work (and I wonder if this is why I didn’t have any work emails in the afternoon?). The wind was so strong (70 mph) that it blew windows out of the “Willis” (Sears) Tower. And apparently the commute was bad? I did say to Steven, “I can’t imagine having to commute home in this.” It’s one thing to get in your car soaking wet and drive a few miles home. It’s entirely different to sit on a freezing cold train for one and a half hours, soaking wet (been there).

So, guess what we are doing today?

Back to the garden…

Have you been caught in the rain lately?

*Ah, running. I am really itching to run again. It felt so good to run in the grass, in the rain. I could have stayed out there all day. Not sure how my legs would have felt.
**And yes, I realize all this rain is helping our garden. We haven’t had to water it in quite some time. I like that.

Comments (42)

By kilax, June 2, 2010 5:17 am

It’s been about three weeks since I tortured myself by running 10 painful miles* then using a hoe for 3 hours Steven and I planted our seeds/bulbs and a few things are popping up!

Okay, mostly onions:

some cucumber:

uh… green beans (PLEASE PLEASE GROW YOU LITTLE GUYS!):

And what has the potential of being lettuce** (my mom told me it’s not a weed if it grows in a straight line right where I happened to plant seeds):

Now, I have something really exciting/creepy to show you guys, but first, I must show you Steven’s watering technique:

(That is before we got smart and brought empty cat litter containers)

There is a big container of water for the gardens (and they village says they water twice a week) but the container is at least 100 feet away from our garden… which is a lot to walk when you have to make 5 or more trips carrying 2 full cat litter containers of water!

So we’ll have buff (or, buffer, for me) arms by the end of summer.

On to the exciting/creepy – when we were first planning our garden we decided to grow sweet potatoes, BUT, could not find the little starter spud things for them anywhere. Since Steven is super resourceful, he figured out how to make them at home.

You cut the bottom of a sweet potato off, and put it in a jar so that part of it is above water and part of it is below, like so:

We started the sweet potatoes on 5/8/10

After a few weeks, they start to look really creepy (picture taken 5/29/10):

They grow out these vines called “slips” as well as create roots through the potato.

Slip

Potato roots (and you can see a slip starting to grow)

After the slips grow, you take them out of the potato, put them in water, then the slip grows roots. Then you can plant the slip. We still have a ways to go. Only one potato seems to be a go-getter. The others are lagging.That’s okay – we still need to buy and plant tomatoes and peppers! It will be a late harvest!

I must be getting in to this whole “gardening” thing since I am watching the forecast and hoping for rain (okay, that might be because I don’t want to haul water…).

Any sweet potato recipes to share? I don’t think I have ever had one.

*I am not celebrating National Running Day… as I cannot run.
**Or as I told Holly this weekend, salad. Yes, I am growing salad.

Comments (31)

By kilax, May 24, 2010 8:44 pm

Look at what was in my Chipotle burrito tonight:

After I was served bacon and cheese on my salad for lunch, along with chicken as the main course, I took it as a sign from the universe. It is time to start eating meat again.

No more vegan Kim.

Ha! You guys know I am just kidding, right?!

I was served those things for lunch but I politely asked that they bring me a vegan dish (of course, this started a whole conversation I did not want to have with a bunch of people I just met!) and they did. And this burrito? It has Gardein “meat” in it!

Steven shared* this article with me about certain Chipotles trying this Gardein alternative. None of the locations are in Chicago, but you guessed it – there is one in Washington DC !

They call this fake meat the “Garden Blend” (see on menu below). I ordered it in a burrito, along with beans, rice, peppers + onions, guac, lettuce and salsa. YUM! It added a chewiness and spiciness to the burrito that was much welcomed. And it is a lot different than tofu!

I wanted to make sure to tell the manager how awesome I thought it was, in hopes they will continue to have it and bring it to other stores. He told me Dupont Circle is the only Chipotle that has it (contrary to the article) and that people come in from PA to eat it. He said they have had it four months and it has been a huge success.

Do you share product/service feedback with the provider – whether good or bad?

It’s really easy to share negative feedback on a product/service, but I try to share positive feedback as well. As much as we love to bitch, it is important to let people know what they are doing right! I will call the store owner tomorrow!

Now the question is, did I run far enough with Carla today to earn a burrito (and chips)? Ha ha… like I care! You will have to wait until Sunday to hear about my fun run with Carla! BUT, if you are a runner and looking for new blogs to read, check hers out! She runs in DC and is getting married in Brazil in November! I think her blog is very interesting!

Me and Carla after our super sweaty run

*Yes, Steven and I share blog posts with one another on google reader – ultimate dorkiness!

Comments (50)

By kilax, May 11, 2010 5:01 am

How did I end up with a red mark like this on my hand?

From being a ho From using a hoe!

Steven and I are participating in the inaugural community garden in our town this year AND WE ARE SO EXCITED!!! We think there are about 20 participants. The gardens are located right behind the police station (the station is behind the fence in the picture below). I like to joke that the cops are watching over our crops.* There are a variety in sizes of plots: 5’x10′, 20’x20′, and 20’x40′. We got a 20’x20′ plot and had to pay $35 – $10 of which we will get back if we clean up at the end of the year.

We have plot #6! I hope it turns out to be lucky #6. We are all the way in the back by the end of the fence (our plot in red below).

The photo above is what our plot looked like when we arrived on Sunday (after my 10 mile run, I might add). We had to break up all the soil, but all we had was a hoe. Hoe away, I did. Steven took measurements and put out all the stakes, and started planting. When I got tired being a ho using the hoe, I managed to dump too many seeds in one area helped plant too.

Halfway through, we had to borrow the shovel of the person next to us. I ran out of steam with that hoe (and the soil was really large and clumpy). Steven used the shovel then I broke up the clumpy dirt with the hoe.

Click to make larger and admire our beautiful work! Really. You WANT to click on this picture (Steven will be happy if you do).

But we got a lot of work done in 3-4 hours (photo above) – we broke up the soil and planted the following:

1. Onions
2. Two kinds of lettuce
3. Cucumbers
4. Zucchini
5. Carrots
6. Broccoli
7. Green beans

I know that sounds like a lot, but we are hoping just ONE** thing will grow. The sweet potatoes, tomatoes and pepper plants will go in later this month.

It’s not coming through in this post, but Steven and I have been talking about having our own garden for years, and we are excited this opportunity arose. We planned the garden out about a month ago and got all the seeds we needed and tools we could afford. We really hope we have a big yield of crop for us to enjoy and share with our friends. We’ll see what happens!

What are you growing in your garden? Or if you don’t have one, what would you grow? Or, do you think this is too much work? Ha ha.

And yes, I am a hypocrite about posting too many pictures.

A prize I found in the garden…

And what Steven found…

*We’ll still need a fence to keep the animals out.
**I am talking to YOU, green beans.

Comments (51)

By kilax, April 20, 2010 4:51 am

We haven’t tackled the fruit pizza recipe for about a year and a half. It’s a time consuming project, but oh so worth it.

I’ve actually posted the recipe for this in the comments section here, but I thought I would show you the step-by-step!

It’s basically a GIANT sugar cookie, with a creamy base spread on it, topped by your choice of fruit, then covered in glaze. Sounds wonderful, right? Separately, these ingredients don’t sound that spectacular, but once they come together, it’s like an orgasm a wonderful explosion of flavor in your mouth.

The base is made of cream cheese, whipped cream, powdered sugar and vanilla, but as you will see, I made one half of one of these vegan (yes, we made two – but the recipe below is for one pizza) by using pudding for half of the base.

Ingredients:

Your favorite homemade sugar cookie recipe or 1 (18 oz.) pkg. Pillsbury sugar cookie dough
Fruit of your choice (I usually use strawberries, kiwis, pineapple, blueberries and raspberries )

BASE:
4 oz. cool whip
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese
1/3 c. powdered sugar
1 T. vanilla
To veganize it: skip the cool whip, cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla. Use 2 packages of JELL-O vanilla instant pudding. Only add 1 1/2 c. soy milk total so it is thick.

GLAZE:
½ c. sugar
2 T. cornstarch
Pinch of salt
½ c. water
½ c. orange juice
½ c. lemon juice

Directions:

1. Roll cookie dough out until it is about 1/4 thick. Put it on a lightly-greased large pizza pan or cookie sheet. Follow baking instructions (takes a bit longer since it is so big); cool.



We made one pizza in a pizza tin and the other on a sheet, so the second one had to be trimmed. Don’t bother trying to get the shape right when it goes into the oven – make it a bit big then trim it. Who knows, you might end up with a big cookie smile.



2. Cut up fruit while the cookie is baking (warning: cutting up the fruit takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R!!!).



For two pizzas, we used 2/3 of a pineapple, 3 kiwis, half a bag each of blueberries and raspberries, and bits of 3 boxes of strawberries (there were leftovers – we’re picky about which pieces we use). I recommend fresh fruit, but I did have to buy some frozen this time.



3. Blend cream cheese, cool whip, powdered sugar and vanilla, and spread over crust. OR, make pudding mix and spread over crust.



Non-vegan base



Vegan base



4. Place fruit on base mixture.

Here’s a little animation for you!





5. For the glaze, mix dry ingredients together, gradually add water and juices, heat over medium heat to boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Cool and pour over pizza. Cool pizza in the fridge a bit (if you can wait!) then serve.

Be careful not to “brush” the glaze on, because it smears the colors of the fruit together!

Data wants to help. Sorry Data. You don’t have a hairnet on.

Like I said, very time-consuming*, but worth it for a great treat!

Does this sound good to you? What fruit would you put on it?

*It took Steven and me about 3 hours to make two of these. But I enjoyed it!

Comments (46)

By kilax, March 29, 2010 4:41 am

So, what crazy thing did Steven make this week…?

Vegan Sausage!

Steven has been finding a lot of recipes that call for vital wheat gluten, so he decided to make some and use it to make Vegan Dad’s sausage recipe (which I think Vegan Dad got from Post Punk Kitchen)! Vegan Dad’s recipe calls for vital wheat gluten that you buy (dried) in the store, so this was a bit experimental…

Making vital wheat gluten (seitan)

You use one full bag of flour to make vital wheat gluten (also know as seitan). You add enough water to make it into a big dough ball (add about one cup of water at a time, as you are squeezing it into the flour; repeat as many times as necessary).

Note: don’t attempt to make a “volcano” and mix it all together.

It will spill down the counter all over the floor…

… and make a huge mess all over the cabinets! Ha ha. Steven made this mess while I was getting groceries so I didn’t have to clean it up!

You add the dough ball to water and let it soak for about 30 minutes.

Then, you knead it under running cold water for about 20-30 minutes. This washing process dissolves the starch, leaving you with insoluble elastic gluten.

You know it is ready when there is no more starch to rinse out, and the water coming out of it is clear.

Making Vegan Sausage

We mostly followed Vegan Dad’s recipe to make the sausage. We heated up vegetable broth (only used 1/2 c. since using wet vital wheat gluten), soy sauce, oil, garlic, nutritional yeast and all the spices (we used 1.5x the spices called for). The original recipe does not say to heat it up, but it makes mixing it a bit easier.

You mash up some pinto beans,

pretend you have a vital wheat gluten lung,

and mix it all together and start kneaded/squishing it!

It takes awhile to get it all mixed together. Steven pulled it into a long snake shape and pulled it apart to make the sausages.

You put the mixture on tin foil and roll it up into a tootsie roll shape.

Then you steam it for about 30-40 minutes!

We pan-fried ours for a few minutes.

Then it was all ready to go!

We ended up with 6 sausages in the end (one not shown as it was in our bellies).

The sausages turned out tasty and chewy! Steven wants to work on the texture a little bit because he thought it was a bit too chewy (I like chewy. And Chewie!).

And because they have fennel seed in them, they have a pretty realistic “sausage” taste.

We have been looking to alternatives to processed “fake meats” so this is a great recipe to use! Now we just need to perfect our homemade bean burgers.

Do you eat much “fake meat”? Do you have any recipes with sausage in them to share with me?

So far, we have eaten these as brats, and plan to try them on pizza as well!

Comments (23)

By kilax, March 27, 2010 5:53 am

I didn’t wait too long to dig into my Newman’s Own Organic stash. In fact, my sister, Christina, and her boyfriend, Will, arrived for a visit on the day I received the package – perfect excuse to open a few things!

And open away we did… we tried quite a bit! There was so much though, that I will separate the reviews into a few posts, starting with… COOKIES!!!

In this post, I will review:

• Fig Newmans (Wheat-Free and Dairy-Free)
• Fig Newmans (Low Fat) not vegan
• Hermits (original)
• Hermits (ginger)
• Newman-O’s (original)
• Newman-O’s (chocolate)
• Alphabet Cookies (chocolate)

The exciting thing about Newman’s Own Organics is in the title… they are organic! So you don’t have to worry about what is in them. You can actually read the ingredient list without wondering what the heck some things are! Even though the calorie count is similar to their conventional counterparts, I didn’t feel awful after eating them (physically and mentally).

Click “continue reading” to read more!

Continue reading 'Newman’s Own Organic Review: Cookies!'»