Vegan Valentine's Sugar Cookies

I am so happy that I was able to veganize my favorite cookie recipe. The sugar cookie recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. This recipe made me realize that I did like sugar cookies if they were made properly, and not just some bland cardboard grocery store cookie. I used Earth Balance margarine for my fat and flax seeds for my egg replacer. The cookies are delicious. And I was able to find on the Internet that I can use my Ener-G egg replacer in place of meringue powder, so I also made my own royal icing for my cookies. Mark has had 5 since getting home from work 1 hour ago, so I would say my cookies were a success! Happy Valentine's Day!

Fajitas Ole!

One of our new favorite dishes is my veggie Fajitas. I make them with seitan marinated in Simply Organic Fish Taco seasoning, sweet peppers, mushrooms, red onions, carrots, lime juice, cumin, cilantro, and coriander. They're delicious, especially with a big serving of fresh guacamole. YUM!

Vegan Valentine's Chocolates

Mark & I ordered some awesome chocolate collections from one of our favorite Vegan grocers Food Fight! We got the 16 Piece Belgian Chocolate Assortment and the Sjaak's Organic Chocolate Assortment for our special treats. We each had one from the Sjaak's tonight, I had the English toffee and Mark had the raspberry truffle. I loved loved loved mine, it was lovely toffee with a slight coffee flavor, delicious. Mark's had dried raspberries on top and lovely raspberry truffle flavor. We can't wait until tomorrow for our next chocolates!

Tempeh Scallopini

Tonight we had leftover Tempeh Scallopini from the Candle Cafe cookbook. Last night I served it with roasted potatoes and collard greens, but tonight we had it with my vegan spaetlzes and a green salad with carrot and beets grated on top. The recipe from the Candle Cafe once again made no sense and seemed to have it's directions out of order. However the ingredient list made sense & I was able to make a delicious dish for 2 dinners & 1 lunch. YAY! The recipe called for lots of shallots, garlic, and mushrooms. And the tempeh really soaked up the sauce overnight, so it was much more tasty today than yesterday. This is definitely a do again...provided I tweak the recipe a little more.

Fancy Schmancy Cheesecake

We had dinner with some friends tonight. They made us some awesome pasta with yummy veggies. Very good :-) So we brought dessert. I decided to make a lemon tofu cheesecake with blood orange glaze. I got the recipe from the Candle Cafe cookbook. The cookbook isn't really great on instructions, for instance it never tells you what temperature to bake the cake at. But the cheesecake turned out delicious. It should, it was made with Tofutti cream cheese instead of just tofu. One slice is probably a heart attack. The blood orange glaze was made with arrowroot and turned into something that looked like slime from Nickelodeon's You Can't do that on Television. I think next time I make it I am using cornstarch instead so it would thicken, not slime. The cheesecake was a big hit though, between the 4 of us, we ate 1/2 a cheesecake. So definitely a do again!

Cheesecake and midlife crisis

Well I am making a cheesecake to take to a friends for dinner tomorrow. If it warrants mention tomorrow...well I'll mention it tomorrow. Right now I'm worried.

Midlife crisis...I suddenly got the hankering to look up the Beatles on Youtube (my latest addiction...Youtube that is). And it suddenly hit me my childhood is over. The world I knew is over. There is a new and horrible world waiting for me. Maybe part of it is the loss of innocence. I mean wars are nothing new. But everything seems meaner, more cruel now. Reality TV, wars, Reality TV....global warming. I miss my high school bedroom with my larger than life size poster of the Beatles, my love of a young 21 Jump Street Johnny Depp & Richard Greico, Pearl Jam before they were, Chinese Sandals, cutoff jean shorts with black tights in the middle of an Ohio winter, marching band playing Do Me while it still played on the 92Q (the cool pop radio channel)...
And now we're left with a world of worse than the Running Man, bad weird weather that won't quit, war after war that mean & accomplish nothing. Except for Mark & my dogs...I want my old life back. If I could take them back to my little bedroom with me...with my single futon, my stereo w/ record player, my Cure albums & my Beatles fascination...I would. This reality sucks... We (Mark & I back in the hot & heavy dating phase) shared my single futon before...I say lets go back. Dogs are always welcome! Anyone who wants to join us is welcome. I say 1992 rocks! Well not really...but I was in another world then & as they say ignorance is bliss.

PPS...Can I mention I did a spell check on this blog post & the stinking program doesn't know what a Beatle is? As much as it hurts me to say this...the Beatles were big...40 years ago...and a spellcheck on Blogger doesn't know how to spell it? Am I old or does Blogger's spellcheck just suck?