Beeting Hearts and Half-Eaten Chocolates

Yes, I know February is over... all the Valentine's Day flowers have shriveled and died, the last few half eaten truffles have been forgotten in the heart-shaped box, and all the card companies have moved on to the next commercialized holiday (I guess that would be Easter?). But I still thought I would blog about an amazing dinner and everyone's favorite on Valentine's, boxes of chocolates.

For dinner, I made seitan piccata and stuffed mushrooms, both from the Candle Cafe cookbook along with roasted beets sprinkled with celtic gray sea salt and a dribble of balsamic glace. I had to use my heart cookie cutters on the beets, because honestly, when else can you use them if not on Valentine's day?
After seeing a post on the always fabulous Girlie Girl Army about the delicious treats from Allison's Gourmet, I decided to splurge and buy myself a box of truffles (thinking there was no way that John would figure out a way to get vegan chocolates). The box included three types of truffles (hazelnut, mocha, and almond) and three types of caramels (pecan, peanut, and chocolate) Next year I will be ordering a box full of the caramels (pecan was my favorite)! Not that I didn't like the truffles as well, but I had plenty of those to choose from....
Because to my surprise, John did a little online searching on his own and ordered me a box of truffles from Rose City Chocolatier. I was seriously impressed with his effort. This one had all kinds of flavors (hazelnut, vanilla, mandarin, coconut, pistachio, strawberry to name a few). Quality-wise they weren't quite up to the standard of Allison's truffles, but it was kind of fun to eat a box of chocolate the way I used to... take a bite and if it was a less than stellar flavor (the mandarin), I just put the uneaten half back in the box!
And as if I didn't have enough chocolate... I made chocolate covered strawberries drizzled with the last of my white chocolate chip stash. What the strawberries lacked in ripeness, the chocolate more than made up for in sweetness. The strawberries, chocolates, a bottle of champagne, and the Lush sex bomb bath bomb made for quite a relaxing evening.

Pillow of Love

Don't forget to enter for the $100 giveaway to Onlineshoes by Feb. 16th! See this post.

Time for another Work In Progress update.... I finished my love bear pillow for the Valentine's Day Stitch-Along. I was amazed at how fast the whole thing came together. Now I want to make room full of pillows!
Way back in December, I took a Valentine card making class with my mom and sister. I didn't exactly follow the instructions on all of the cards (like my heart skull and crossbones?), but I had fun with stamps and hole punches and glitter. After all that hard work, it's kinda hard to part with them!
Last night I finished the first of two nappy bags. Just in the nick of time too; my friend is due on Valentine's day! I really like the dragonfly pattern. I even modified the cell phone pocket to fit the my girlfriend's super cool iPhone that I wish I had. This bag is huge and has tons of space to stash all sorts of fun baby things... diapers, wipes, binkies. Crazy fun.
Tomorrow night I start another 3 week sewing class and I ordered my fabric for the project online at reprodepot. It's such a fun, whimsical print. I'll reveal what we're making when I'm done in a few weeks... (hint: it will be perfect for all the warm weather that's headed our way in the coming months)

This post is a part of Work-In-Progress (W.I.P.) Wednesdays where I share some of my projects that serve as a creative outlet for my mostly left-brained mind. I may be posting the results of finished projects, actual W.I.Ps, or projects that are on my to-do list. Be sure to check out others that are posting their projects as well!

The Results Are In

1473.5 lentils!! And the winner is the little one with her guess of 1400 lentils! And yes, I did count every last one myself (even the half) and it only took about 20 minutes. And because I was asked about statistics... I whipped out my fancy Vista version of excel and created yall a histogram showing the results. As you can see, there was a bit of a spread, but most people were in the 600-1600 range. The average guess was 1068, not too far off.


And because I didn't just want to give out just one prize, I did some random number generating to pick 5 others to get a small prize, the numbers correspond to the order guesses were sent in (or at least the order they are in for my excel spreadsheet! if you take the time and find a discrepancy, i'll send you a prize too)

So that would be ashasarala, lk, veggiegirl, animal-friendly (who coincidentally was the second closest), and chocolate covered vegan. And while I'm at it, I'll also send something to the low and high guess.... vegetalion and ruby red vegan. If you all send me your mailing address to aiellison26 at yahoo dot com, you will get a little something in the mail! I would send something to everyone if I had the time/money! It was great to see so many people comment, made me feel lots of love and helped me get over this....

And to end the post, a bit of a sad story. This chocolate molten cake kind of broke my heart this Valentine's Day....

It was supposed to be molten in the middle but it wasn't (no oozing going on in this photo) and the cake just plain didn't taste good. Maybe I let the batter sit too long? Maybe cook it less? Don't know what went wrong but I'm kinda sad about it. But I think it definitely deserves another shot!! (after all, it's a cake with veggies in it!)

Okay, bad to end a valentine's post on a sad note.... all I have to do is think of all the wonderful people in my life that I care for and things seem so much better :-)

Happy Heart Day

Even though Valentine's Day is pretty cliche, it does at least give us an excuse to bake things with all of those heart-shaped tins, cookie cutters, and muffin pans that we keep in storage for most of the year. (I'll post another heart shaped dessert tonight) Here's a valentine I got last week at our potluck from a full-of-energy vegan 3 year old!On the left are the self frosted peanut butter cupcakes from My Sweet Vegan that I made last night for my coworkers (as if they deserve it, but always need to spread vegan love). A hint about these.... if you have leftover frosting, save it and put more on after they bake!! And on the right are the cupcakes I made for the potluck this past weekend. I used the VCTOTW recipe, but used Hannah's MSV technique of cutting out the heart shape and filling with more frosting (as she did with her lemon poppyseed cupcakes).
And here's a fun thing I found on flickr toys....
There have been quite a few vegan related stories in the news for this Valentine's Day. One on the search for vegan valentine candy and NPR's story on vegan baking . I spotted urban vegan and her omniman in the NYTimes article "I Love You, But You Love Meat". This must be a common theme for food colums around Valentine's Day, because our local paper also did a piece on food issues in relationships. John and I were interviewed for the article, and we got a little blurb included in the paper, ironically enough right next to some instructions for making ham wrapped asparagus (what a way to ruin a perfectly good vegetable!). The quotes aren't the ones I would have chosen from our 30+ minutes interview, but I guess they wanted to make it sound "challenging", even though it usually isn't (not to say we don't have our moments). Here is the link, but to save you from reading the whole article, here's our few minutes of fame:

How about a vegan and an ominvore? Does love conquer all? Vegans, like vegetarians, avoid meat, fish and chicken. They also steer clear of dairy products, eggs, honey — in short, any food produced by ananimal.

Newlyweds John and Amanda Mariano were dating when "she tricked me,"John jokes, by turning vegan. She cooks for the pair and, because she's terrific at it, he misses meat less than he imagined.

Still, he conceded, "It's not easy. It's not like we argue all the time, but when we do argue, it usually has something to do with this."

Amanda, meanwhile, is working on being more flexible. "I wouldn't change John for the world," she said. "He's on his own journey and if he never goes vegan, I would never love him any less." (Peggy Grodinsky, Houston Chronicle)

Also just found out that I got a letter to the editor published in The Houston Press (independent paper) about a food editorial. I love how they call me a "mad vegan" (in the headline) to get reader's attention.

Vegan bashing: Well, it seems as if Robb Walsh is at it again. In his review of Dry Creek Café, he describes asking two waitresses — one "drop-dead gorgeous" and the other "cute" (I won't even begin to address his misogynistic undertones) — to choose between rotting animal flesh No. 1 or rotting animal flesh No. 2, only to discover that one waitress is vegan and the other a vegetarian. He then goes on to reminisce about the good ole days when he filed a police report against a vegan group for a death threat while living in Austin. Does he not realize, or care, that there are plenty of vegans living here Houston? Some of them, like me, even read his column every once in a while. But I don't think he'll have to worry about death threats in this case, since I'm sure eating all of those cholesterol-laden "triple bypass burgers" will send him to his grave long before any vegan could lay a hand on him. Veganism promotes nonviolence and compassion toward all sentient beings, even Robb Walsh. For the animals,
<3

I'll be updating this post with the winner of the door prize tonight. There's still time to get your guess in! Hope everyone has a Happy Valentine's Day!

Vegan Sweets and Eats Potluck! <3 And an Online Door Prize!

So I'm going to start off this post the same way we started our Vegan Sweets and Eats Potluck.... you get to guess how many chocolate mint lentils (you can buy them online here) are in the jar! Yes, you have a slight disadvantage in that you only have this photo (and at an odd angle too), but give it your best shot! I have a door prize to give out to whoever is the closest, so just leave your guess in a comment and I'll announce the winner on V-day. Those of you who were at the party are not eligible :-)


This was Society of PEACE's First Annual (which hopefully means there will be a second annual) Vegan Eats and Sweets Valentine potluck, hosted by yours truly! It was such a fun event to plan, what to get for door prizes, what food to make, and decorating the house with different shades of red and pink carnations (a much under appreciated flower).

To start with, the food. Everything was delicious. So many people kept remarking how good the food was and how we need to do these potluck things more often. I couldn't agree more. They are the perfect way to socialize with other veg*ns and get new recipe ideas. Below are only some of the dishes that we enjoyed, including raw cashew dip with fruit, hummus with pita chips and veggies, sweet potato fried, dahl, chili, stuffed mushrooms, and sushi. Not pictured were spring rolls, green bean salad, and some other Indian lentil thing that I totally forgot the name of (even though I asked two or three times)! Even though there was a ton of food, it all disappeared so quickly. Guess it was just that good.

To satisfy the vegan sweet tooth (cuz you know I have one!) there were dried apricots, two kinds of chocolate cupcakes, and peanut butter bombs. Thank goodness I saved a few cupcakes, the last one will be devoured tonight by me!!

After everyone stuffed themselves silly, it was time for door prizes! We had some great stuff; Cherrybrook Kitchen brownie, cookie, and cake mixes, Endangered Species chocolates, a Vegalicious calendar, a copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and the latest issue of Vegetarian Times.

Best of all, we had up for grabs some of the adorable artwork of Mrs. Cakespy! She did a custom mini-watercolor of a vegan cupcake baker, just for the occasion (you simply must enlarge it by clicking on the photo or the previous link to truly appreciate it's cuteness)! Lucky for you, she even has this design (and another cute vegan themed one) on her cafepress site in the form of a T-shirt and magnets. I picked up a couple of the magnets for door prizes as well.


And no one went home empty handed, Mrs. Cakespy was sweet enough to let me use the watercolor design on a Vegan Sweets recipe booklet that everyone got to submit their favorite sweet recipe to before it was printed. A cute and useful keepsake!


And there is another shot of the lentil jar for you to ponder over, enlarge, and count individual lentils (dang, I'm giving you ideas!). Get your guess in by 9pm CST on Feb 14!!