Two Vegan Boys Weblog

How was your weekend? Our’s was slow. I did some cooking and baking as usual. First with the food. A friend of mine brought over some fresh spinach from her garden. How awesome is that? I made a lasagna recipe from vegweb. It was delicious. The recipe is called “Cheesy Lasagna”. It calls for nooch in the dish. It was so good. We didn’t miss any other type of cheeze it it. And it made a ton. I also made some pretzels for Josh from the cookbook “The Joy of Vegan Baking”. I love soft pretzels. I seasoned them with cinnamon sugar, some with sea salt and the others with garlic. Delicious dipped in a spicy mustard. I also made gingerbread scones from the same cookbook. They are so tasty. I added dried cranberries. Yum! I love this time of year. Pumpkin season, cranberry season. It is oh so good.

You will have to excuse the mediocre pictures.  The food was delicious.  The pictures, crappy.

Lasagna

Gingerbread scones

In our city we have what is called “Freecycle”. I check the website often. It is similar to craigslist, but it is people giving away free items or stating what they need. I checked Saturday morning and a daycare/eco-school was having a garage sale and they said that after the garage sale, come by and get the leftovers for free. Josh was working and had our vehicle. I called him and asked him to go over there on his lunchbreak to see what goodies they had. Score! He came home with a new sandbox with a cover, a brand new bike rack still in the box to hang the bikes on in our spare room since we do not have a garage. We got a board game for Arthur, a cute sweatshirt for Adam, some records, a Marx brothers movie poster framed for the boys room, some picture frames to put the boys pictures in, some speakers to hook up to the dvd player so we will have more of a surround sound effect in our living room and some random art pictures. One was a giant nicely framed painting of sunflowers, not really our theme but it looked like a Van Goh. I told Josh we would call it a Van Doh! As in Homer Simpson and I would hang it in our spare office room for the random art gallery wall. The other was a pretty cool water color painting of an old village. It reminded me of a South American village.

Today we took Zeke to the vet for his shots. He is such a good boy. He gave everyone he saw kisses. He is the best birthday present ever. I had to order his heartworm meds today. Geez. That stuff is ridiculously priced. Well worth it, but wow. I mean it is costly. I ordered it from the discounted pet med store, but still. Ugh.
I am off to make some grilled cheeze sammiches for dinner. Yum. Josh is working late, so it is me and the little guys. I am also making some pumpkin spice bread per Josh’s request. Such an easy request since it is delicious.

Hope you have a lovely evening.

peas and love….
Krys and the boys

Animal crackers that is. Yesterday I made flax seed animal crackers. The recipe comes from “How It All Vegan”. They were delicious. The boys loved them. Arthur kept saying “I need another animal cookie”. They were seasoned with garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Adam kept signing “eat”. It is such a healthy snack too. I used my farm animal cookie cutters. It would have been easier cutting squares, but cookie cutters are so much more fun. As you can see, there is a barn, a cow, a pig and a sheep. Arthur loved eating and playing with them. I also made some mocha chip muffins from VWAV. I love these muffins. And I made some banana bread. I use the recipe from The PPK. It is simple and delicious. Why all the baking? In an effort to avoid doing laundry, I really dislike doing laundry. I wanted to at least do something productive, so I baked.

I just love casseroles. They are like comfort food to me. Warm and filling. Last night I made a Mexican casserole. It was just something I threw together. And it was awesome. We all enjoyed it and it made a lot. Yum!

Mexican Casserole

corn tortillas

1-12oz pkg burger crumbles

1 small onion, diced

oil

taco seasoning

1 1/2c dry pinto beans, cooked, drained and seasoned

cheeze sauce (I used sauce recipe from The Garden of Vegan, double the recipe)

2 cans rotel tomatoes w/chiles-pureed in the blender

Preheat oven to 350F. Saute burger crumbles and onion in oil and taco seasoning. Set aside. Lightly spray a 9X13 casserole dish. Pour a thin layer of rotel in bottom of pan. Start with a layer of tortillas, I used 6. Next a layer of beans, then burger crumbles, drizzle w/cheeze sauce. Pour more rotel sauce on top. Layer with tortillas. Repeat with beans, burger crumbles, cheeze sauce, rotel and tortillas. Repeat until you run out of beans and burger crumbles. Top with tortillas, pour the rest of the rotel sauce on top. Then drizzle remaining cheeze sauce on top. Bake in oven for 30 minutes. Garnish with fresh tomatoes, cilantro and “sour” cream.

Adam seems to be feeling better. Thankfully. We plan to take it easy the rest of the week and weekend. Poor guy. He was just miserable. I hate to see my boys under the weather. Thank you for all the well wishes.

I went to the grocery store last night while Josh watched Adam. Athur went with me. He had fun. I decided to go early since I would be solo with the boys this weekend and didn’t really want to take Adam out anywhere. Since it is cold and flu season. I prefer to keep them indoors. And no storytime tonite due to Adam recooperating. The local library has “Pajama Storytime” on Thursday evenings which is awesome. We go to storytime and then checkout books. Arthur loves it. Unfortunately it will be postponed. Hopefully next week.

This was disgusting. Well the smell was anyway. Yesterday Zeke came in from playing outside and he smelled like death. The smell was so bad my nostrils were on fire. I thought maybe it was his breath and he ate something out of the compost. Josh came home and could smell him too and we saw a small white streak on his back. That was where the smell was coming from. Apparently he got sprayed by a stink bug. Oh my, you cannot even understand how foul he smelled. It was awful. I kept telling Arthur “don’t pet Zeke, he smells like poo poo”. We bathed him and had a good laugh later. Geez.

I can’t believe the weekend is already here. This week has seem to gone by so quickly. Josh has to work Saturday, again. Boo! I hope to make some animal crackers with the boys and let Arthur paint.

Hope you have a lovely day.

peas and love….
Krys and the boys

Yesterday I made soup. Tuesday is always soup day or crockpot day. I made the roasted garlic white bean soup from VWAV. It is such a good soup. I served it with foccacia from V-con. I subbed sage for the rosemary. Arthur loved the foccacia. He is my carb kid. He saw the bread and said “I need that”. He is so funny.

In other news, Adam is sick. Poor little guy. He seems to catch everything. He suddenly came down with a fever Monday afternoon and had a rash on his legs. The doctor wanted to see him ASAP. He said there is some nasty stuff spreading around and wanted to make sure it was nothing serious. He said the rash looks viral and to treat the fever and push fluids. Ugh. He seemed better yesterday, but then the fever showed up again and he had a fever this morning as well. I hope my baby bear gets well soon. Needless to say the rest of the week will be low key as well as the weekend.

I am off to eat some breakfast and check on my baby bear. Hope you have a lovely Wednesday.

peas and love….

Krys and the boys

That’s right. It’s Elmo. Here is the cake I made for Adam’s first birthday. My baby bear loves Elmo. He can say around 4-5 words and one of them is “Elmo”. Arthur told me that I needed to make little brother an Elmo cake. So, I did. Vegan of course. It took forever to decorate, but well worth it for my little guy.

Good morning. How are you today? TGIF! It was a bit chilly this morning so I am warm in some nice pj’s and a cup of hot breakfast tea. Love it!

Good morning. How are you this Thursday morning? I am great. I am excited because some friends in my surrounding neighborhood want to start a dinner coop. Yippee! Homecooked meals for free. It is like going out to eat, but with no bill. I love it. And they are willing to go vegan for this coop. Even better. I love trying new vegan dishes. I can’t wait.

Speaking of food and cooking. Last night I made a Szechuan dish. It was so good. I used some fresh green beans and eggplant I bought at the Farmers Market last week. I added some tempeh that I marinated in tamari and baked. I sauteed the veggies in some sesame oil, added the tempeh and poured a Szechuan sauce over the veggies. Letting it simmer for a couple of minutes. The Szechuan veggies were served over brown rice. Oh so good. I am looking forward to leftovers today. Here is the Szechuan sauce recipe. Easy and delicious!
Szechuan Sauce

4T rice vinegar

3T fresh ginger, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1t red pepper flakes

1c water or veggie broth

4t cornstarch

3T tamari

2T Sriracha sauce

2t turbinado

In a small saucepan, combine broth with the cornstarch. Whisk to dissolve the cornstarch. Add all the other ingredients. Bring to a boil. Lower to a slow simmer. Stir until thickened. Pour over veggies. Making sure everything is coated. Serve over rice or noodles.

What are your plans for Halloween? We were supposed to go to a party but Josh has to work. So the boys and I will stay home and pass out candy, run to Nana Donna’s to say “hi” and let the boys trick or treat at her place and the neighbors and then I have some cleaning and things to do since we are having people over on Sunday. We bought the boys a pumpkin yesterday and Arthur is so excited about it being carved. He and little brother are going as superheroes. Arthur wants to be Spiderman and he informed me that Adam needed to be Superman. I found a cute Superman shirt with a little cape attached to it for a $1 at the thrift store. And Arthur recieved a Spiderman costume for his birthday. I am going as a devilish gal. I will wear some red sequin devil horns, and a tail. Simple and cheap. Josh’s work is having a Halloween contest. So, tomorrow morning I am waking up with him to help him get ready. He is going to be a modern day Snow White and the ladies he works with are the dwarves. He looked so funny last night putting on the clothes and wig. Geez. His co-workers will be laughing so hard they won’t get anything done.

Well I am off to eat some breakfast. Hope you have a lovely day.

peas and love….
Krys and the boys

Good morning. I am up way to early. I would prefer to still be in bed being cuddled by our new dog and two lazy little boys. Oh well, that’s not going to happen. How are you this Wednesday morning?

Today starts a “65 Day Challenge”. I posted it on Facebook and was excited to see some of my friends participating. Seeing how I want to save money and the fact that our economy is still in the crapper, I figured “why not?” What is the “65 Day Challenge” you ask? Well here goes. For the next 65 days, I am not going out to eat. The idea is to see how much money you would really save eating at home. So, when you are tempted to go out to eat, put the money you would have spent in a jar or if you use a credit card, write down on a piece of paper how much you would have spent dining out including tip. Place it in the jar. On New Year’s Eve, open the jar and see how much dough you saved, or tally up what you would have spent on your credit card. It will be well worth it. Remember, next time you want to go out to eat, think twice. Make a sandwich, thaw something out of the freezer or throw toegether a quick meal. You in? Keep me posted.

Now, onto the food. Tuesday is soup day or crockpot day. I was feeling like a mushroom soup of some type. We went to the Farmers Market this past Saturday and bought half a pound of cremini mushrooms from the local mushroom farmer. I made soup in the crockpot. This is a “everything but the kitchen sink” type of soup. I got various veggies from the freezer and fridge and rummaged through the pantry. It made a lot and it was very good. I froze part of the leftovers and saved the other leftovers for lunch today. I served it with the oat bread I made on Monday. Oh how I love comfort food.

“Everything but the kitchen sink” Mushroom Soup

8c veggie broth

1/3c yellow splitpeas

1/2c TVP chunks

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 onion, chopped

olive oil

1/2lb cremini mushrooms, chopped

3 carrots, sliced

1/2c wild rice, uncooked

1c green peas

1t pepper

1t salt

3 sprigs fresh thyme

Saute garlic and onion in the olive oil until soft. Now throw everything in the crockpot. Cook on high heat for 8 hours. Once finished, remove thyme stems. Serve with some crusty bread. Easy and delicious.

Well I am off to do some chores. Hope you have a lovely Wednesday.

peas and love….
Krys and the boys

Hello. I am back to cooking in my kitchen after a week long holiday. I am glad to be back. I made lemon poppy seed muffins, cranberry orange scones, applesauce muffins and oat bread yesterday. The applesauce muffins and oat bread were thanks to DJ. I saw she had made them on her blog and they looked fantastic. Plus the boys love anything applesauce. I made mini muffins. Arthur likes to call them baby cupcakes. It is a great snack. For dinner last night I made some cajun spiced roasted acorn squash, some balsamic green beans and baked maple orange seitan. There was not a recipe for the seitan. I just pretty much put the seitan in a baking dish. Added maple syrup and orange juice with a little salt and pepper and fresh thyme on top. I baked it for 30 minutes uncovered. It was quite tasty.

Well as you know, we have a new member of the family. Zeke the dog. He is awesome. With a new dog comes more dog food and vet check-ups which means spending money. He is well worth it. This all being said, I am finding ways to save money, for him and our savings account. Plus our economy is still in the crapper. So, I am going to avoid dining out for the next 65 days. That would mean no going out to eat until the New Year. Not unless someone offers to take me to dinner. My birthday is next month. Wink wink. Seriously though, I will not dine at any restaruants, all the cooking will be done at home. I also plan to make everyone’s Christmas gifts. I think handmade gifts are great. And it is more meaningful. Another way I plan to save some dough is go volunteer at the local farm Smurfette volunteered at a while back. If you vonlunteer a Saturday morning at the farm, you get an arse load of free veggies. It is fun getting to be a farmer for the morning, you get free veggies and it didn’t cost you a dime.

Well I am off to fold mountains of laundry from our trip. Hope you have a lovely day.

peas and love….

Krys and the boys

As most of you know, we were on holiday last week. It is good to be back. Our trip was awesome. We went to Las Cruces, NM. While there we went to White Sands National Park. It was so beautiful. The whitest sand you will ever see in your life. All that was missing was the ocean. We went to a rescue zoo in Alamogordo, NM. The boys loved it. While in Alamogordo we took the boys to a toy train museum. Arthur was in heaven. They had trains there that were over 100 years old. New Mexico is so lovely. There are moutains in every directions. On our way back to Texas we stopped in West Texas. We stayed in a little college town called Alpine. For a small Texas town it is very progressive. There were some awesome historic buildings, cute cafes and little shops and a wonderful view of West Texas mountains. On our last day we woke up early and went to the Fort Davis Historical Park, we stopped by the Davis Mountains State Park. It was great. It is crazy to see a sign that says look out for bears, mountain lions and havalinas. Thankfully we did not run into any. We had a picnic at the park and then headed to the McDonld Observatory. It was very cool to see. I wish we could have been there at night to observe the stars through the giant telescope. We really enjoyed our trip. After driving 1500 miles it is great to be home. The boys did so good on our trip. I was very impressed since they were in the car for so long.

Oh and I forgot to mention driving to New Mexico.  Leaving our city, you never realize how beautiful your state can be until you get out into the rural areas. Driving into west Texas was great.  We also stopped by the Guadalupe Mountains which ranges from Texas to New Mexico.  All the way to Carlsbad.  They were phenomenal.  Arthur told us he was going to climb the big mountain.  So cute. 

And there was a funny yet scary part of our trip.  Scary then, funny now.  When we left early Sunday morning, Josh strapped the double jogger onto the top of our vehicle.  We were driving down I-10 somewhere in West Texas.  And the speed limit is 80mph.  Crazy.  We were going about 75 or less.  Well we heard this giant thud and we looked at each other like “oh crap!”.  Josh looked in the rear view mirror and in the right lane of I-10 there was our double jogger sitting there.  It had flown off, opened up and was there on the highway.  Scary!  Thankfully it was Sunday and there was minimal traffic.  Josh ran and got the jogger.  It had some road rash but no serious damage.  Whew!  No injuries, no new jogger.  He strapped it down again.  Of course we stopped in El Paso and bought some more bungee cords.  Yikes!

Josh running down the shoulder of I-10 with the jogger. 

The Guadalupe Mountains. El Capitan.

White Sands, NM

Arthur making sand angels.

Alpine, TX

Sunset

Funny sign

An artist painting a beautiful mural for a restaraunt.

Fort Davis National Historic Site

The Davis Mountains

The McDonald Observatory

Our trip was awesome.  We took over 200 pictures.  We brought all of our own food.  We estimated that we saved around $350 by bringing our own meals. And honestly, the Southwest isn’t the most vegan friendly place.  At least not the places we travelled.  I am glad to be home and back into our daily routine.  It was fun.  Now I am off to the kitchen to do some Mofo cooking.

peas and love….
Krys and the boys