Another giveaway!

I really like giveaways. I never win, but they're fun and exciting. And this one sounds really tasty.

So if you're interested, go ahead and read this one

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. And it'll probably be a while more before my next one. I'm just busy with Christmas. I've hardly done any shopping yet...

Raw for the day

So it seems that I can't be raw for a day as often as I'd like, (Once a week) because I tend to want to make things that have a variety of vegetables, so I can really only be a raw foodist for a day within a week of going to the store, which I don't do every week. So it will be less often than I'd like, but it'll still happen when I can. Maybe I'll do more raw meals to make up for it, rather than whole days.

Anyway! This week, for breakfast I just had a huge pile of sliced strawberries. It was really good.

For lunch I made raw sushi. Filled with carrot, red bell pepper, and green onion. I was a little upset that all of my avocados weren't ripe. But oh well. Cucumber or sprouts would also be tasty in the sushi. I'll tell you about the pate below.

Raw sushi is definitely not as photogenic as regular sushi, but it sure tastes good!

For dinner I made some raw wraps. Filled with nut pate, green onion, basil, carrot, red bell pepper, and tomato. All wrapped up in collard greens. Cucumber, sprouts, and avocado would also be a nice addition.

For the nut pate, and the pate for the "rice" for the sushi, I soaked a cup of cashews, and half a cup of almonds for an hour. Then I put them in the food processor and chopped them up pretty fine. Then I took away about half, and with the remaining half in the food processor, I added lemon juice, basil, tamari, a tiny bit of garlic, water and a little onion, and blended it up. At first I was worried, because it seemed really heavy, and just too fatty for sushi, and I was worried it would go horribly as sushi rice, and was regretting I tried nuts rather than sunflower seeds. Once I actually made the sushi though, it was totally fine. Then with the other half of the blended nuts, I added tamari, basil, bell pepper, and onion. I then added some of that to the "Rice" pate because I needed more of that, and to give it a little more flavor.

The nut pate for the wraps was really, really good. The pate for the sushi was also good, but not especially great. Although using nuts worked, I think next time I'll use sunflower seeds.

I have so many posts to do! I should start posting like crazy. But I'll probably be too busy to, being Christmas time and all.

Product review: Daiya vegan cheese

The other day I got a half pound bag of shredded Daiya vegan cheese. (The mozzarella kind)

I tried it uncooked, and it was pretty good. Similar to real cheese, but maybe a little tangier? But I've heard a lot about how awesome this cheese melts, so I had to make something with it.

I made quesadillas. One with just cheese so I could properly judge the cheese, and one with onions and kale to see how it went with other things.

Again, it was a little tangier than real cheese, but I still really liked it. It melted really well, and was stringy even, and I think I even fooled my dad for a second into thinking it was real cheese. I liked it on its own, but I think I liked the one with the onion and kale a little better.

Unfortunately, when it got a little cooler it started getting a little rubbery, but it was still good, and re-melted just fine.

Melted and stringy. I had fun pulling off the top of the quesadilla to see the cheese strings.

Then a few days later I tried it on mini pizzas. One plain so I could judge the cheese, and one with sun-dried tomato and onion. They were both great. Pretty much the same conclusion as with the quesadillas. And I left one for later, to see if it would be good as cold pizza. It didn't really, it was a little rubbery, but I microwaved it for a few seconds and it was delicious again.

Cheese strings!

I think I like this better than real cheese, it doesn't taste exactly the same, but it does taste similar, and it tastes GOOD. And it also doesn't taste over-processed and low-quality. (Yes, I'm snobby sometimes)

I still have a little left of my half pound bag after three mini pizzas, and three quesadillas. But I didn't add very much cheese.

Can't wait to try the cheddar! Next time I'll get a bigger bag and freeze some.

Miso soup

I was planning on doing a post today, but after the last one being so short, I decided to give you two short ones.

I was having lots of miso soup for a while, miso, garlic, ginger, wakame, tofu, green onions, and whatever else I felt I needed to add. Not so much anymore though, I'm all out of miso. And I didn't see any at the store today, but I was in a hurry. Two of the grocery stores I go to don't carry miso, but this third one did, so if they stop carrying it, I'm going to be annoyed.

But if you have some miso, you should make some miso soup, because it's really easy, warm, delicious, and nutritious.

Just boil some tofu, add in wakame (Seaweed used for soups), turn the heat off, and start dissolving your miso in it, and add your green onions, and whatever else you like. That's it.

Pumpkin-spice hot cocoa

This is actually from a week or two ago, but I just never posted it for some reason.

It's just some regular hot cocoa, whatever you like, with some pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves stirred in. It was very nice and comforting, and it's always nice to have a little variation if you're having lots of hot cocoa. (Which I am, because it's been below freezing for a few days, I think we broke a cold record today)

How to make vegan truffles

I am a vegan who loves chocolate. Especially truffles. And not low-quality milk chocolate, but maybe not too dark, either. And I can't really afford the 1-2 dollars a SINGLE vegan truffle generally costs.

So, what to do? Make your own! I do this fairly often, and they're better every time.

And also, a couple weeks ago I stumbled across this. I thought it was a great idea, but much too expensive. So why not make my own advent calendar?! I've already got the chocolate down pretty well.

So I contemplated what I would put the chocolates in so the days would be separate and I could have separate doors, worth different truffles for different days. And I eventually came up with plastic bead boxes! (Something like this. You should be able to find things like that for about five dollars at a craft store) Mine was clear plastic so I painted it with "Glossy red" spray paint on the outside to make it more festive, and so that you wouldn't be able to see inside the box. If you want you can decorate it more by painting on christmas trees, santa, whatever you like. Then measure the size of the separate pockets, and cut 24 pieces of paper to that size. (Preferably green paper!) Then write on one side of the papers a number, one to twenty-four. Set it aside while you make your chocolates!

First, you should probably choose what kinds you want to make. I made almond bars (Turned into almond clumps though... Whoops), peanut bars, peanut butter cups, almond butter cups (Well, I was going to, until I found my almond butter moldy...), coconut balls, chocolate covered candied ginger, orange truffles, lemon truffles, mint truffles, coffee truffles, pumpkin truffles, cinnamon chocolate, and chili chocolate.

I'll start with the truffles, since I was making a dozen different kinds, I didn't make many of each kind.

First you melt some chocolate. I used some high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips, and melted them in the microwave, but if you can remember to stir the chocolate often, you can do it on the stove, which you'll need to do later anyway.

Once you've got some melted, I took about a quarter cup of the melted chocolate for each flavor. For the pumpkin ones I just mixed the chocolate with pureed pumpkin to taste. Then let it cool while you make other flavors. Then for the coffee, make some espresso, and add that to your chocolate to taste. Maybe with a tsp or so of coconut milk. Let that cool. Meanwhile you can make your orange, lemon, and mint ones. Just have three small bowls with about a quarter cup each of melted chocolate, and add a tablespoon each of coconut milk and melted vegetable shortening or margarine. (I used shortening because I can't find unsalted margarine) Coconut oil might work too. To each bowl. Mix it in, then flavor them to taste with lemon extract, peppermint extract, and orange extract. Mix them up and let them cool. By now, or maybe a little before, your pumpkin filling should be not hard, but sort of doughy, and you should be able to roll it into small balls without making a mess, if it's still melty and messy, let it sit longer. Once it's good just roll it into small balls and put it on some wax paper, parchment, or foil. Repeat with all the flavors. Be sure to separate the flavors so you know which is which. I usually just put each flavor into it's own section on the foil, circle the section, and write what flavor it is in marker. Then put them in the fridge for a while, while you can clean up a little, and then start melting some chocolate in a pot on low. Preferably the smallest pot you have, so you can dip them without using a ton of chocolate.

Here are my little balls of filling.

Then I dip the top in the chocolate, grab it with chopsticks (With the dipped end on top) and swirl it around in the chocolate until coated, and put it back on the foil.

There are some. Then when you're done with that, if you want you could melt some dark chocolate and decorate them with swirls, zig-zags, etc.

Refrigerate, and viola!

Now here are the peanut bars. Put some peanuts on some foil, in a single layer, but tightly together. Then thinly drizzle the top with chocolate.

Once it's hardened, should look something like this on the other side! Do the same for the almond bars, or to make almond clumps mix chocolate and almonds together and lay them on some foil and let harden.

Chop then into bite-sized pieces.

Here's how I made peanut butter cups before. Probably a similar concept for almond butter cups, maybe with more powdered sugar or cornstarch.

For the coconut balls, just mix some dried coconut flakes and chocolate, let cool a little, and shape into balls.

For the ginger, just dip some crystalized ginger in some chocolate, and let cool.

For the cinnamon chocolate, mix cinnamon to taste with chocolate, and spread shin on some foil, and score it. Same deal for the chili chocolate, just with cayenne instead of cinnamon.

Here is the finished products. Half of them at least. I didn't get pictures of the rest for some reason. Just the truffles, coconut balls, and chocolate covered candied ginger.

On the back of the paper doors, I wrote certain December events. Birthdays mostly, and also what kind of chocolate treat they got that day. I taped them to each little pocket and filled them with the chocolates.

Here they are in the box! This container only had twenty pockets rather than twenty-four, so two doors were double-doors. and I wasn't able to give it to my friend until the third, so I just skipped those days.

Then I taped the doors closed. Here it is! when you fold down the door to get to the chocolate, the other side of he door tells you what kind it is. (As shown on the first day, with a pumpkin truffle!)

I made two for my friends, and since I only had two boxes, I just have chocolates, rather than an advent calendar. I'm happy, and so are those two friends.

Hope you enjoyed! Now go make some chocolates! And feel free to make whatever chocolate creations you like, not just what I made. Let me know what you come up with! I tried a green tea truffle once, I liked it, no one else seemed to though! But remember, truffles don't always come out perfect, it does take practice, but don't fret, you'll get the hang of it!

Vegan feast

Okay, I'm finally posting about the vegan feast. The feast is in celebration of my, and two other friend's vegan anniversary. This is our second year.

We had ten people, I think. Four vegans, two pescatarians, three omnivores, and a LOT of food.

And I actually didn't take any pictures there... But, I have a couple pictures from before and after....

I made some roasted veggies, this is them before baking. They're in a nice autumny marinade. It's made of balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, garlic, plenty of sage, thyme, oregano, cinnamon and olive oil. It might make a nice autumny balsamic salad dressing...

The roasting veggies in question are yams, carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, zucchini, onion, and red bell pepper.

I also brought some stuffed acorn squash. (Yes, this is the same photo I used before)

Some mushroom gravy. (Same photo again)

And a pumpkin cheesecake! The whole thing was devoured.

Other foods were mushroom soup, onion bread, chocolate bread, two Tofurkeys, stuffing (Which was actually really good! I usually don't like bread stuffing because it's usually like bread glop, but this wasn't at all gloppy, and really good!), mashed potatoes, homemade zucchini and onion pickles, (Which were good, but were a frightening yellow color. I think they used a bit of turmeric), pumpkin cookies, pecan pie, apple pie, and that is probably it. Oh my goodness there was a lot of food.

Dealing with Thanksgiving leftovers

I don't know about you, but I'm still swimming in Thanksgiving leftovers. And after eating the same things for a few meals, I get tired of them. So then I decide to make different things with the leftovers. I usually just make soup, but this year I've got soup, and veggie burgers!

I don't usually have the patience for making pie dough myself, so I occasionally get someone else to do it for me, and then I can also make single-serving pot pies, and freeze them. So if you have the patience to make pie dough, or can convince someone else, there's another idea for you! (That can use up roasted veggies, and gravy)

First, we can start with the burgers. I totally made this up, and they came out pretty darn well!

Makes about a dozen fairly small burgers

1 cup mashed potatoes

2 cups roasted vegetables

1/2-1 whole cup of whole wheat flour

Panko

Tiny bit of oil

Herbs and seasonings of choice

If your mashed potatoes have skins, or large chunks, puree it in a food processor, and put it in a large bowl. Then put your roasted veggies in the food processor, and pulse until mostly pureed, but also with many small chunks. Add it to your bowl, and add the flour, and seasonings of choice. (More on that later)

It should be a nice dough, not very wet, but wetter, than say chocolate chip cookie dough, and it should look something like this:

You might need to add more flour depending on your veggies and mashed potatoes, but you can always play around with the recipe however you like.

Then put the panko in a shallow bowl and shape the dough into burgers and ten coat it in the panko. Then add a tiny little bit of oil in a cast iron pan, and cook them until golden brown. I tried with and without panko, and with panko, I liked it better, and it didn't stick to the pan nearly as much, but if you don't have any, it'll be fine without,

Cook until golden brown. (The far right one does not have panko, the other two do)

Tada!

The recipe is pretty bland without the seasonings, but I left it that way so you can play around with the recipe and have it taste however you like. I did many variations, one with just a bunch of herbs and garlic powder, some with some curry powder, some with some coriander, cumin, garlic powder and cilantro, and my favorite of the bunch, herbs, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and miso. Heck, you might get something tasty by adding gravy and extra flour. Keep in mind that after being cooked, the flavor of the seasoning is more subtle than when you taste the dough.

I put most of them in the freezer, and I bet they'll be great out of the freezer, too!

Let me know what seasonings you try and like!

And here's the soup:

Thanksgiving leftover stoup: (Stew/soup)

3-4 cups vegetable broth

1/2 cup long-grain brown rice or half a cup barley (If you've got some sort of leftover grain dish, you can probably use that, too!)

2-4 cups roasted veggies (Depending on how many veggies you like in your stoups)

Few large leaves of chopped kale

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

Thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Put your broth in a medium pot, along with the rice or barley, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring it down to a simmer, and cook until the rice is tender. Meanwhile, chop your veggies into fairly small pieces. Once tender, add all remaining ingredients. Cook for a couple minutes until everything is warmed. Best served with a good sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

If you've got some leftover Tofurkey or something, you could probably add some chunks of that as well.

I still have no idea how to deal with leftover stuffing. If you've got any ideas, let me know.

I'll probably post about the vegan feast tomorrow. Until then!

Thanksgiving

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and great company and food.

This week is a very busy one, and lots of feasts! I've had two already, and I've got another one tomorrow. On Thanksgiving I went to a friend's house to celebrate there. Then we celebrated at our house with family, and a couple friends, and tomorrow, some of my vegan friends are throwing a vegan thanksgiving/vegan anniversary feast. It's not all vegans though. Omnivores are also invited, as long as they don't bring any non-vegan food, obviously, and no disrespecting the cooks and hosts by adding cheese, butter, et cetera to your food. This is the 2nd annual event, and last year it was great! I can't really remember what we had last year, but I know this year I'll be making a pumpkin cheesecake, oven roasted veggies, and mushroom gravy. The host will be making a Tofurkey or two, cranberry sauce, and I believe a salad, and maybe something else. Another guest will bring stuffing, and a pie. And another guest will bring some kind of dessert. There will probably be even more than that, but who knows.

Anyway! No point in guessing what will happen, when I can find out and write about it tomorrow. Instead I can write about what has already happened, yesterday and the day before.

I suppose I don't have a lot to talk about Thanksgiving day, I was with friends, we had lots of food, not a huge amount of vegan food, but a reasonable amount, and I was still well fed. I had mushroom soup, an attempt at wonton soup, that sort of didn't work and turned into dumpling soup, cashew rice, salad, cornbread muffins, and roasted veggies. There may have been more, but that's all I remember. We all talked, hung out, ate lots of food, etc. It was really fun, and I got to catch up with a couple friends who I don't get to see often.

Then yesterday, our Thanksgiving with my mom, dad, brother, grandma, grandpa, and two friends, we had LOTS of food. We were trying to have a fairly small Thanksgiving feast this year, but really, we should have known that just would not work.

Mom made the turkey, turkey gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and pumpkin bread. (Yes, she goes a little crazy in the kitchen)

My grandma made fruit salad, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow.

I made Oven roasted veggies, stuffed acorn squash, mushroom gravy, and pumpkin cheesecake.

I may have forgotten some, but can you really blame me with ALL of that food?

I did not get many pictures. But they were of very tasty, pretty things.

Everything was vegan but the turkey, (Obviously) turkey gravy, some of the stuffing, pumpkin pie, plain cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow. Still plenty for a feast for the vegan.

Here's my mushroom gravy. It was really, really good. I loved it, the pescatarians loved it, and at least some of the omnivores loved it. The only feedback I heard of it (Which was quite a bit) was love of it.

Just saute some mushrooms, onions, and garlic, I like lots, but some people might not want so much. add as much as you think looks good. Keep in mind it'll cook down though. Once they're nice and cooked, maybe browning a little here, caramelizing there, start seasoning them with a bunch of herbs, I used sage, thyme, oregano, basil, and I think a little rosemary, and pepper. Then add a bunch of water (Or vegetable broth), mix it around, then add some vegetable bouillon to taste, some flour (Start with a little, you can easily add more, but it's more of a hassle to add more water, bouillon, and herbs) Keep in mind that as the gravy cooks, it will thicken more. I like a pretty thin, chunky gravy, but if you like a thick gravy, add more flour, if you like a smooth gravy, you should be able to blend the gravy with a handheld blender until the consistency you like. Serve over biscuits, mashed potatoes, over fake or real turkey (For those omnis reading) or whatever else you like gravy on.

Then I made a bunch of stuffed acorn squash. I was planning on stuffed pumpkin, but the stores have not had any since Halloween, and since I was in DC at that time, I don't get to enjoy any non pureed pumpkins this year, which I'm a little annoyed about. But I'll get over it. I can at least eat lots of other Winter squash.

There's a picture of the lot of them at the top of the post.

The stuffing is fairly similar to the stuffing in my zucchinis, but slightly different. Mainly wild rice.

This filled four acorn squash with a bit extra, so I think you could do a half batch and probably fill about three.

1/2 cup wild rice

2 cups long-grain brown rice

2 cups vegetable broth

1 bell pepper (I used red. I prefer the taste to most colors, and the color looked really nice)

1/2 a large zucchini

3 small carrots

1 small onion

Drizzle of olive oil

1/2-3/4 cup pasta sauce

Probably about six acorn squash (Unless you want extra stuffing)

Whatever seasonings you have on hand (I used sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, cayenne, nutritional yeast, and cinnamon)

A little panko

Rinse your wild rice a few times in warm water, add it to a medium pot, add your brown rice, vegetable broth, and three cups of water, bring to a boil, then simmer, and let it simmer, stirring occasionally until the water and broth are absorbed, and tender.

While that cooks, you can chop your veggies (bell pepper, zucchini, carrot, onion). Once that's done, drizzle your oil into a pan, heat up to medium-high heat, and then saute your veggies, until almost tender. Meanwhile you can cut your acorn squash in half, and scoop out all the seeds and fibery stuff. Then your veggies and rice should be done about now, add them to a big bowl, add your pasta sauce, seasonings to taste, and mix it all up. Adjust seasonings if you'd like. Oil the inside of your squash slightly. Then scoop your rice mixture into the acorn squash, heaping it a bit, and then sprinkle with panko, and a little nutritional yeast. Put them in a pan (I think a lasagna pan would be best, but any high rimmed pan should do. and add about an inch of water in the pan. Careful not to get it on the inside of the squash, and put it in a 400 degree oven, until the squash is tender, and the panko is slightly browned. If you're stuffing is getting browned faster than your squash is cooking, turn the heat down a little, if your squash is getting tender faster than the stuffing is getting browned, turn the heat up a little.

And a note about the pumpkin cheesecake, with many recipes from that blog, the photos look GORGEOUS, and then I make them, and they're pretty but not as beautiful as in the picture, but this cheesecake really is as pretty and delicious as it looks. I make it for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, basically whenever I'd want to make a cheesecake or a pie. It's really really good.

By the way, I think yesterday was my second year vegan anniversary! I have been a vegan for over two years now! Hooray! That's definitely something to be thankful for.

I'll be posting about the vegan event in a few days! Sorry for the lack of photos, I'll try to make up for it with lots of photos of the event tomorrow.

Raw for the day, week two

I think I'm going to be keeping the tradition of being a raw foodist for one day a week pretty regularly. I skipped last week since I was at my grandpa's house, but I think I can continue fairly regularly. I think I'll generally do it on Tuesdays.

Here's what I had this week!
For breakfast I had some dried blueberries and a clementine. I'm not much of a breakfast person as you've probably noticed.

For lunch I made raw tacos. Filled with walnut taco "meat", marinated veggies, guacamole, and tomato.

For the taco "Meat" grind walnuts until it's in fairly small pieces. The size may vary depending on your personal taste.

Then season it to taste with nama shoyu, cumin, coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, and whatever else you like.

For the marinated veggies, Thinly slice sweet onion, pepper, mushrooms, and zucchini. (I used a good handful of mushrooms, a quarter of a large onion, a red bell pepper, and half a large zucchini, but do whatever ratio you like) Then marinate them in some nama shoyu, minced garlic, cumin, coriander, and cayenne. And marinate for a few hours. I marinated them about three and a half hours, and that was pretty good for me.

They shrunk down considerably after being marinated. The bowl was overflowing a little before marinating, and now they're a but lower. There's some marinade in the bowl that I might use in a sauce or a soup.

Then make some guacamole. If you have a recipe you like, use that. I usually just mash some avocado, add some finely chopped onion, cumin coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, cilantro, and lemon or lime juice. Sometimes I'll add some tomato or salsa.

Then lay out a nice head or two of romaine, that will be your taco shell., the walnut meat, the marinated veggies, guacamole, and chopped tomato.

To make a taco, take a large romaine leaf, and fill it with all the ingredients like you would a taco. Eat up!

Not the nicest picture I've ever taken, but they were delicious!

For dinner I was planning to make Gena's raw peanut noodles. But I really wanted some curry, but obviously that isn't raw. So I thought about just making it, and I could just deal with just being raw 'til dinner. Or I could have curry for dinner, and have a raw dinner the next day, but then I had the idea to just make some raw spaghetti, and make a curry sauce. Which I did, and it was really good! It wasn't totally raw since I used canned coconut milk, which I don't think is raw, but next time I can probably use some soaked cashews.

I made the sauce with coconut milk (Replace with soaked cashews and possibly some water to make it totally raw), curry powder, white miso, garlic powder, lemongrass, a tiny bit of lemon juice, galangal powder, ginger powder, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I just mixed it in a bowl, but a blender would probably work better, and is necessary if using cashews.

Then I spiralized some zucchini, tossed it with red pepper sliced, sliced mushrooms, thinly sliced carrot, and green onions. I think some snow peas would be a nice addition also.

Then I packed some of the leftovers in a container for my dad to bring to work. The sauce in a separate little container so the veggies don't get slimy.

Someone is giving away a copy of Vegan Lunch Box Around The World!

The giveaway is here.
You just need to follow the blog if you aren't already, Post a comment, post about the giveaway on your blog, and comment on the giveaway with a link to your blog post, and saying if you began following the blog. All in different comments apparently! The winner will be announced on November 30th!

Staying with my grandpa for a few days

Tuesday to Saturday, I was staying with my grandpa. We played with the dog and the cats, burned a pile, and just spent time with each other, but we also ate lots of delicious food! (More on that later)

Here's my grandpas sweet chocolate lab, Sara.

And one of his two cute cats, Lucky.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good photos of her looking at me. Or any photos of her sister.

Back to the food! For lunches we always had sushi, because, well, we both just really like sushi. We usually had some edamame and gyoza to go with it.

We had quinoa sushi filled with grated carrot, green onions, and avocado.

Since we get up at pretty different times in the morning, we had our breakfasts separately, most of the time, usually leftovers from dinner the night before.

The first dinner was yellow curry with brown rice, which for some reason I didn't photograph. Maybe I forgot. Here's a photo of a different curry!

I think the one we had had potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, and probably some other things I can't remember. It was a tiny bit spicier than I'd like, but I'm a wimp, and maybe that helped me become slightly less of a spice wimp. We can hope.

He had these greens in his fridge which I thought looked really pretty, so I photographed them. Four different kinds of tasty salad greens! Yum!

And here's what I made them into: A nice salad along with onion, carrot, pomegranate, and a homemade herby balsamic vinaigrette.

And with a tasty brown rice jambalaya with pepper, zucchini, and onion.

The next night we had minestrone soup, a nice salad, same thing as the night before but I remembered the avocado this time, and some bread. The minestrone had Carrots, onions, potatoes, zucchini, broccoli, kale, and whole wheat pasta.

Then I decided I'd make some pancakes for him. With warmed maple syrup (The real stuff) and some margarine. The recipe will be at the end of the post.

My grandpa doesn't really seem to like snacks, heck he usually doesn't even eat lunch, unless I'm around, but I do, so I snacked on pomegranate seeds and dried blueberries a lot. They're really a gorgeous fruit.

I also found lots of mushrooms in the yard. I thought about bringing some home to see if I could figure out what kind they are and if I was sure I could eat them, but most of them looked slimy or a bit past their prime.

There were WAY more, but I didn't really want to photo all of the different kinds. There was a ton of them in that spot. And in a few other places too.

Dinner on the last night was stir fry.

Made with snow peas, carrots, red peppers, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. (Not from the yard!) It was nice and colorful. I also added some noodles and sauce after that point, but the photos didn't come out well. Steamy foods are hard to photograph!

I really had a great time. I got to be with my grandpa, Sara, the cats, and my grandpa even made Jasmine (My bunny) a cage so she can come when I come, and not have to be without me while I'm there. She also really likes grandpa, Sara, although she's very nice to Jasmine, Jasmine doesn't like her too much, Sara can get a little too friendly, and start licking Jasmine's face and pushing her over. The cats and Jasmine have not met, since my grandpa lives on a big property with lots of wildlife, and the cats are there to keep the rodents away, so I don't think introducing them to Jasmine would be a good plan.

And as promised, a great recipe for delicious pancakes! Not totally perfected yet, but pretty close! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Whole-wheat pancakes:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Scant 2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Generous sprinkle of cinnamon

1 1/3 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup melted vegan margarine (Half a stick)

Whisk the flour through cinnamon together with a fork until fluffy and there are no clumps. Make a well in the center and set aside.

In a separate bowl, or just a measuring cup, whisk with a fork the soymilk, vanilla, and melted margarine until mixed, and then add to the dry ingredients, and whisk it together until mixed, but don't over mix it or they will not be wonderful pancakes.

Using a measuring cup, pour the batter into a fairly hot oiled pan. If you want to add chocolate chips or fruits, now's the time to do it! Once golden-brown to your liking, flip them over, and do the same on that side. Then serve! I like mine with warmed maple syrup, a little extra margarine, and sometimes some chopped fruit.

Yum!