i burned myself like and idiot

Tartlettes with tomatoes and artichokes

It has rained here for what seems like weeks. Not only is it making me severely depressed, but it’s making me into one of those people that gets depressed and then eats. Everything. I can’t stop thinking about food. I pulled out all of my recipe books looking for yummy new things to try that wouldn’t appeal to only me as so many of my recipes are kid-repellant. You see, I’m one of those people who, before I turned vegan, would buy a bucket of organ meats from a local butcher and fry them up with some oil. So you can figure that I’ll eat just about anything. Unless it has onion, then I’m out.

So, I’m looking through my books and watching the Food Network at the same time in hopes of seeing something worth veganizing. Sandra Lee had some wierd tarts on in which she just bought a can of giant biscuits, flattened them a bit, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled Italian seasoning, dotted with sliced grape tomatoes and marinated, quartered artichoke hearts and dusted with…I don’t know, I think it was gorgonzola, then she baked them until they were brown. Wow, that was a mouthful.

Brownie Bites from Hannah Kaminsky

I went to my local grocery looking for biscuits in the can without any animal products and the only ones i could find were- believe it or not- the croissants. A usually very buttery pastry had not one hint of butter anywhere near it. All the others had either skim milk or beef tallow. Gross! So all in all, these were super easy and the kids liked them too so i get bonus points for that.

I recently downloaded Hannah Kaminsky’s “Lunchbox Bites” and am currently making my way through all twelve recipes. Here we have the ‘brownie bites.’ They were super yummy.

The next thing i decided to make was the ‘cashew cardamom cupcakes’ from VCTOTW. I bought this jar of cashew butter months ago. It’s been collecting dust and frankly I’m sick of looking at it, wondering what the hell I’m going to with it. I left out the cardamom because I’m a cheapskate. Plus, I couldn’t find powdered soy milk to save my life so I just made the frosting the way I make peanut butter frosting.

Cashew butter cupcakes

So, my love of Trader Joe’s has only grown over the months and here’s yet another reason: Trader Ming’s noodle boxes. They cost a buck and they take two minutes.’Nuff said. Carb-counters be damned! My question for you is this…how do billions of Asians exist on a diet of mostly noodles and rice and stay so damn skinny? It’s not about the carbs, fatsos! It’s about being active and not eating like every meal is your last.

Good news! I discovered an Asian market in Orland Park! The bad news? A lot of their stuff isn’t labeled. Like the label on one item said ‘ingredients: sugar, flour, rice, water’ and there were clearly some type of red beans and raisins or currants in there with that stuff. It looks like a lot of the items are flown in from Hong Kong or wherever they don’t have to be so descriptive on their labels and that makes me nervous. The good news? I got so many different sized rice sticks/noodles

Trader Ming

that I can live on pad thai and pad see ew for the next month! I also got lots of wrappers for sushi rolls, or in my case, not-sushi rolls. Woot!

Just a couple more things I wanted to share with the class. My oldest kid turned 16 yesterday. Please don’t remind me anymore that I have a sixteen-year-old. It’s not good for your health. I also discovered these adorable little mini cans of soda from Jones at my local supermacado. They come in four different flavors that I’m too lazy to get up and go look at, so you get a picture.

Jones Mini Halloween Sodas

People like Jones sodas because they use cane juice instead of refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup, but the corn people are now running a campaign to let the people know that in moderation, high fructose corn syrup is not bad. I don’t care really. I don’t drink soda except for maybe once a month and I figure the stuff’s not going to kill me. I made my own ketchup once, it was awful. I bought the organic stuff but it was way overpriced. When shopping for a family of five, it is damn near impossible to find the stuff I want without additives, hydrogenated this or that, high fructose nonsense, etc, without spending like $200 a week. Try to be me for a day, I dare you.