Easter Brunch

Happy Easter to everyone! We had a really good Easter complete with brunch, a bike ride, church, and a really good dinner.

We don't go to church until one o'clock so we were pretty hungry. Since it IS Easter, we decided we wanted to have something good and Easter-y (what? That's an adjective, right?) rather than just snacking. While I did important things like read vegan food blogs, Zach made us some real good french toast. In fact, it was so good that I forgot to take any pictures of it.

He used one egg (1 tbsp flax + 2 tbsps water), 3/4 cup of soymilk, a tbsp of cinnamon, tbsp of sugar, dipped the bread in it, and sprinkled powdered sugar on top when they were done. They were really good! We saw a recipe that called for bananas in the toast, so we might give that a try next time.

Our local grocery store Broulim's sells this great bread called Grandma's for only $1.99, so we always buy that. We really like both the whole wheat and sprouted grain.

happy earth day!

(photo courtesy of: here)


Learn how to celebrate Earth Day right by visiting this website!
Also, a lot of people are having picnics, but I'll be at work all day, so have a picnic for me.

Hummus: reunited and it feels so good

Zach and I ate a lot of hummus while we were in Oklahoma and on the way home. When I was in 11th grade, I probably ate a hummus sandwich every single day. It's so good and not so bad on the health side of things. I've only ever made it once and it was a raw zucchini hummus. I thought I'd give a go at it while I have time (school starts on Tuesday!) and I made some low-fat hummus based on this recipe.

The recipe is really simple:
Can of garbanzo beans-- $1.09
a small handful of cilantro--59 cents
2 cloves of garlic (I might recommend one more, but I just threw in some more recipes to give it a little more flavor)--50 cents?
a whole lemon's worth of juice (a BIG lemon!)-- 59 cents?
Salt, pepper, & cumin to taste

I just played around with everything until it tasted how I wanted it to taste.

vegan dreams.

I've always said that the three things I missed most as a vegan were frozen yogurt, mac and cheese, and spaghetti-o's. Thanks to this perfect little vegan cafe/bakery in Salt Lake called City Cakes, the first two vegan dreams were fulfilled.

And just now I went over to theppk.com and found THIS!!
We will definitely, definitely be making this soon.


(photo link)

Fast Food!

This is a really cool list of the vegan options at different fast food restaurants. They didn't mention this, but Red Robin (my FAVORITE restaurant) usually has a vegan Boca burger. The one in Idaho Falls stopped serving them for awhile, but I requested them so often that they brought them back. I don't eat fast food very often, but this is nice when you're feeling lazy or are on the road.

http://godsdirectcontact.us/com/vegetarian/abc/veganeatinginanyrestanrants.htm

oh, polenta, you are so good!

My fondest (and only) memory of eating polenta in pre-vegan life was at a firehouse dinner when I was a kid. I probably ate it on a paper plate, too. Well let me tell you: have I ever moved on. We eat on real plates last night! Also, our polenta was a little more...refined (although it still came in a package).

We found the recipe on fatfreevegan.com: here.

It was real good. We chopped up the packaged polenta into little squares and used a ton of spices on it like rosemary, thyme, basil, and some other good-tasting things. We used about two teaspoons of each and used less than a capful of olive oil so the polenta wouldn't stick. While I was doing that, Zach sauteed onions, garlic, mushrooms, kidney beans, and veggie broth. It was a really fast dinner which helps when you're feeling reeeeally lazy because you laid in bed all day ;)

Also, I wanted to eat a lot of it because it tasted so delicious.

$$$:

Polenta-- $3.09 (faster, but buying a big bag of polenta and making it yourself is probably cheaper).

Onion--39 cents?

Kidney beans-- 59 cents

Mushrooms-- 70 cents

Spices, spices, spices

Vegetable bouillon-- 99 cents

Curry Lentil s^$%

Hello Everyone,
We are back to cooking. Hawaii was pretty cool, but now we're back and its time to make cheap vegan meals again.
We're trying to live on a budget and not spend lots of money. One way to do that is to cook things you already have in the house.
A few months ago we bought a bag of lentils and haven't really used them so we decided to use them. I didn't really like any of the recipes we found so we made our own. It's curry lentil stuff.

We boiled 2 cups of lentils. We added a few tablespoons of curry paste to the water as it all cooked together. In another pan, we sauteed onions with a can of cilantro-lime tomatoes. We threw about four tablespoons of curry paste in there because you can never have too much curry paste (actually you can; after some protest from our stomachs, we are taking a little break for a few days). When the lentils were cooked, we added the tomato/onion/curry mix to it, covered it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
While that was simmering, we made the world's easiest bread. Every once in awhile, we use recipes from a really cool money-conscious blog called 30 Bucks A Week. They had a recipe for chapatis which is like a very easy to make naan or a thicker tortilla. It was really, really good with the lentils and tasted better than just eating it straight off the fork. We ate the lentils over quinoa, too.

$$$:Lentils-- Really cheap in bulk. Maybe $1.50/lb or less.
Canned tomatoes--$1Onion-- ~30 cents
Curry paste-- $3, lasts forever
Minced garlic-- We bought a little jar for $1 and it lasted about 2 weeks
Quinoa-- We got a big bag at Costco for $9. We have had it since January and we still aren't done!

Chapatis-- water, flour, and salt! (You just throw everything in the food processor until it forms a sticky ball, let it sit on a floured surface underneath a towel for 15 minutes. Shape into little tortillas and cook on the stove top on both sides, switching when bubbles start to form.)