A belated Happy New Year!

Well, we made it back last Saturday…and returned to a foot of snow that had to be shoveled. Ugh. But the vacation was great. I hung out at my parents’ house for two weeks and pretty much did nothing. I ate, I slept, and watched TV. Basically I enjoyed doing nothing dissertation-related for the entire time. Nice.

I don’t have a lot of food pictures, but here are a few that I managed to take. First up, agave nectar cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World. For the icing, I melted unsweetened chocolate and added some vanilla and agave and played around with it until it tasted good. Then I topped those with walnuts. My Dad has Type II diabetes so he was allowed one of these for dessert for Christmas. The cupcakes are incredibly moist…I couldn’t believe it. A bit pricey to make, with the agave nectar and all, but they are worth it for a splurge.

For Christmas dinner I also made the infamous smlove pie from Veganomicon. Oh..my..God….this is my idea of heaven. HEAVEN. I used a chocolate cookie crumb crust instead of a graham cracker one and all the chocolaty nutty goodness was so amazing.

New Years Day my Grandma came out with my aunt and uncle and cousins for her birthday dinner. I wanted to make her a birthday cake, so I made a vanilla cake (from VCTOTW again) with vanilla icing, and coated it in toasted coconut. I’m not a huge coconut fan, but she is, and hey, it was her birthday afterall. She seemed to like it. The icing wasn’t the best, but that was my own fault.

Now, after all of those pictures of sweet goodies, on to my goal for the coming months: my official wedding nutrition/exercise regime. I have gained a few pounds over the past few months. Not a lot, but enough that my pants are a wee bit tight and I just don’t feel comfortable in my clothes. That and my wedding is quickly (eek!) approaching…only 7 months to go, which is terrifying as I look at the huge to-do list. Anyway, my plan is pretty simple:

• Write down EVERYTHING I eat
• Unlimited raw veggies
• Limit intake of white flour, sugar, coffee, and alcohol
• Cardio 4x/week, strength training 3x/week, stretching 7x/week
• Stop boredom eating!!

So we will see how that goes. Wish me luck! I’m not looking to lose a whole lot of weight, ideally I would like to lose about 10-15 lbs as well as get into shape.

Oreo Cake!

First of all, I apologize for not updating in awhile. Truth is I haven’t been cooking much. I’ve been so busy that dinner is usually leftovers pulled out of the freezer. Which doesn’t make for an interesting blog post. But here is something that is always interesting: birthday cake.

It was the bf’s birthday a few days ago and I waned to make him a cake. He simply adores the cookies and cream cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World, so I knew I wanted to transform that into a cake. What resulted was a ridiculously delicious, and deadly rich, Oreo cake. I doubled the cupcake recipe to make two 9″ layers. I made a double batch of the vanilla buttercream frosting. I poured a chocolate ganache over the frosting and topped it all off with crumbled Oreos. In retrospect, it was probably almost TOO much, it was hard to eat more than a little piece. And I love sweets. All in all it was a success, the bf loved his cake and everyone kept telling me how great it looked.

MoFo Wrap-Up (and Halloween cake)

Wow…I really dropped the ball on the last week of MoFo. My only excuse is that I had a very important committee meeting for my Ph.D. dissertation this week and that ate up a LOT of my time. But I don’t feel all that badly because I reached my goal of 20 posts. All of you other MoFo-ers, I really enjoyed reading your blogs and congrats on a job well done!

Anyhoo, so yesterday was Halloween. And so I made cake. I usually don’t make cake since it’s just the two of and half of it gets wasted, but I wanted to use my new orange and black coloring gels (no, they’re not at all natural, they’re chemical, for shame..).

I was going for a scary melty-cake kind of look. I think it worked. At first the bf just thought I was horrible at cake decorating…I had to explain that I was trying to make it look that way. Sheesh.

It was my first time actually writing on a cake. Clearly I need more practice.

Oh, and check out the lovely job on our pumpkin that the bf did:

Farewell…and Cupcakes

So this upcoming week I will actually have a reason for not updating…the bf and I are off to a conference in the U.S. I am insisting we go to a couple of vegan restaurants while there…I can’t imagine going in to a place and being able to eat anything on the menu. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that. All the choices…I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.

Anyhoo, I made cupcakes over the weekend. I felt like baking but I didn’t know what to make and I asked the bf if there was anything he really wanted. He said cookies, but then I told him that was too boring. So then he came up with Cookies’n'Cream cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World. I know I’ve already posted these from the first time I made them, but they’re that good, they deserve another post.

yet another bbq post…

Last night we had some friends over for a bbq. One is a vegetarian and the other is an omnivore. So the bf grilled up some hamburgers, but I made Susan V’s seitan ribz. This was my third time making them and I can’t get over how amazing they are. Everyone, veggies and non-veggies, loves them. I was out of bbq sauce and didn’t want to run to the store, so I whipped up a batch of backyard bbq sauce from veganomicon.

To go with the dinner I made the lentil salad, also from Veganomicon. I think I overcooked the lentils a wee bit. It was good, but I like my lentils to be chewy in a salad. Oh well, good to know for next time.

For dessert I made Cookies and Cream Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World. Honestly these were the best cupcakes I have ever had. Hands down. I only made 6 because there was only 4 of us for dinner and I didn’t think 12 would get eaten. Big mistake. We ended up having to split the last two in half.

Cupcakes to Cure Loneliness

What do you do when you are bored, not tired, and lonely because your SO is out of province? Well, you could make cupcakes. I just got Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World from the city library. I don’t usually bake with nuts when the bf is around (allergies), but I do love peanut butter & chocolate (what sane person wouldn’t?) and thought I would take advantage of his absence. And so, I made the Peanut Butter Bombes.

They were pretty good. I halved the recipe and I think I might have mixed up some fractions, but they were still good. So I ate way too many while watching Iron Chef re-runs and now I have a tummy ache. Hmm, perhaps next time I decide to make cupcakes to cure loneliness I should exert portion control.