How it all Vegan, my first vegan cook book...

So, this post is the first in what is going to be my favorite vegan cook books series of posts.This is my first vegan cook book. My first attempt at vegan was in about 2000 or so. First me, then my daughter, eventually my mom as well. It did not go well. I guess everyone was to used to eating and preparing meat and we were kind of at a loss. We only ate about 2 different meals. One was mashed potato mush. Which is pretty good but, not every day. It consisted of peas, gimme lean sausage, mashed potatoes salt and a lot of pepper combined not separate. I can't remember whose creation that was. It may have been mine. The other was a seven vegetable thing from a cook book of my mom's. I want to say turine but, that doesn't sound right because it wasn't a turine. I can't remember the name of the cook book either. Any way, after a while we gave up on vegan and went back to various degrees of vegetarian. Finally my daughter handed me a book about animal rights while we were at the book store and after reading a little bit of it I realized I wasn't going to be able to eat animals any more. So, I made a rule that I could eat what ever I want as long as it wasn't an animal. This attempt went quite a bit better then the first. My mom bought us our first vegan cook book which was this one. Things greatly improved. The pancake portion of the pineapple upside down pancakes is from this book. Two other recipes I love from this book are the peanut butter cups and the peanut soup with broccoli.
Other news I think I may make the food portion of this blog into a it's own blog. I haven't decided yet. Coming soon, a post about picking wild mushrooms and eating one that tastes exactly like rare steak.

Tales upon tales...

Synapses upon synapses

Thoughts

Blonde

Vegan summer vegetable pasta

Vegan summer vegetable pasta

Some more exciting recipes will hopefully be coming soon but, until then here is another one that is very easy but very tasty. I don't really have exact measurements for this one. The recipe is as follows...

zuchini
squash
red pepper
onion
garlic
fresh corn
salt and pepper to taste
cilantro
red pepper flakes or jalapeno if you want
Olive oil
White wine

Alright this is a rough estimate of what I put in here. I made this a long time ago and I don't make it the same way every time.

1. Step one make as much pasta as you think you will need. For this dish I like to use a large pieces of pasta as opposed to long skinny types of pasta.
2. While the water is boiling and the pasta is cooking slice all the vegetables, Zuchini and squash into bite size pieces, red pepper and onion julienne, garlic minced, fresh corn cut off the cob, diced jalapeno and chopped cilantro.
3. Heat olive oil.
4. Add garlic until it starts to bubble around the edges. Add vegetables in order of size. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. When it starts to get brownish or just soft depending upon your preference add a splash of white wine. Then add the cilantro.
6. Lastly add the pasta and toss.

You can top this with something like parmesean which I make by putting bread crumbs, almonds, salt, olive oil and brewers yeast into a food processor for a few seconds.
Coming soon vegan cook books, maybe a lasagna, some more art (which I think I might be better at then cooking) and I think I may have figured out how to post some music.

Tales from my sketch book driving to Boston...

These are some sketches from my sketch book that I drew on my way to Boston to visit my daughter. The 2 cats are from a photo of our cats Grey Beauty and Tigress that I made before I left and the rest were done in the car on the way here.

Doodling challenge...

This is my entry for this weeks doodling challenge for the doodling team I am on. The theme is The thing in the cup board. To view other entries you can look at the team thread which can be found here. http://www.etsy.com/teams/9581/doodlers-doing-doodles/discuss/9137753/

The Tourist Flinger

Let me tell you something about myself. Which is I don't like to drive. I really don't like to drive on expressways or in cities. However, recently I have had to make several driving trips to Boston. Believe me I am not complaining because Boston is a very beautiful city and my daughter is going to college there. One thing about Boston that you may or may not know is that driving there is crazy. The sky is full of bridges which I don't like and underneath there are tunnels  which I like even less.The first time we went for a few seconds I actually stopped the car and cried a little bit (kind of embarrassing)at a cross roads wondering which way would be worse more bridges? or more tunnels? At one point a guy smacked our car and yelled at us as he drove by.
The first time we went we stayed in a suburb called Malden, because it was less expensive then staying near the college. It was in trying to get to and from Malden that Dahlia and I discovered the tourist flinger.
It is kind of like a round about except that it doesn't go all the way around. So if you miss your exit you just have to take any exit and hope for the best.
The directions read take the second exit on the right. Basically we missed this exit pretty much every time we tried to return to the hotel. The Tourist flinger was only one way and every exit seemed to lead to a maze of one way streets so there was no way to retrace our steps. It took us any where from 1-2 hours to get back to the hotel even though our map quest directions told us it should take 20. Any way, as it turns out we misinterpreted the directions. I kept counting each road as an exit but, the first road was one way. I guess that would really be an entrance. So, it was the third road that was actually the second exit. Probably I shouldn't tell anyone this story. My daughter eventually figured it out. I mainly paniced and tried to avoid getting stuck under ground in more tunnels.
Any way, we spent so much money on parking and trying to find the hotel I have decided that staying in town is really not any more expensive then staying on the out skirts.
The above water color is a picture of the tourist flinger it is not quite as funny as I thought it would be. I guess you had to be there. Actually being there was really stressful but it was funny later.

Another ball point pen creation...

This is another ball point pen creation. This is not for sale because, I am not sure how long ball point pen lasts as in, will it fade in the sun? I thought I might show it to people anyway because, it came out pretty good.

Vegan caramel apple pecan bars...

More photos with my phone but they come out pretty good don't you think. So these are Vegan caramel apple bars. This is once again a variation on the macadamia nut blondies in Vegan with a Vengeance, This one is sort of a team effort. My daughter and I came up with this together and I think it is really good. This one involves co-co nut butter which makes really great caramel by the way. The recipe is as follows...

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup apple sauce
1/4 cup almond milk
1/3 cup canola oil
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 apple peeled and diced very fine
1/2 cup pecans

topping
3 apples peeled and sliced
1/2 cup pecans
4 TBSP co-co nut butter
1/2 cup maple syrup
4 TBSP brown sugar
dash of salt

1.pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all wet ingredients.
3. Sift in all dry ingredients.
4. Stir.
5. Add apple cubes and pecans.
6. Cover the top with the slices from the 3 apples.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
8. Combine all caramel ingredients and heat on medium heat until it thickens slightly.
9. After 35 minutes pour caramel over bars, you may have to press down top a bit so as tp prevent over flow.
10. Bake another 20 minutes.
11. They will still be a little soft let them cool for a bit before eating.

Field roast sausage pasta...

I guess it is Vegan MoFo which stands for vegan month of food. So I will try to post more recipes then normal this month as well as other information about vegan food. This is what I had for dinner the other night. Well actually pretty much all last week because now it is just me here and everything I buy lasts a lot longer. This is really about the field roast sausages I like. Most of the time I try to make things from scratch but sometimes I just want to eat right away and I want to eat these because I like them. These are vegan field roast sausages which come in Italian, chipotle, and apple sage. So any way this is pretty much the easiest pasta dish there ever was. Most of the flavor in this dish comes from the olives and the sausage. This I made with the chipotle sausages. The recipe is as follows...

olive oil
1 red pepper
1 sausage
1/2 red onion
3 cloves garlic
fresh tomato
Garlic stuffed green olives
pasta to serve 4

1. Cook pasta to serve 4.
2. Heat olive oil, saute garlic, sliced peppers, and sliced onion until it gets soft. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Add sausages and sliced olives.
4. Add desired amount of pasta.
5. Throw in diced fresh tomatoes at the end.

Tales in ball point pen on lined paper...

Happy girl, happy creature in the background...

taking a little monster for a walk...

the little monster...

Sad creature and sad creature...

little girl

These are a bunch of doodles from a note book. I guess ball point pen is not a real art supply but, I think it looks kind of good some times. Sort of half way between a pen and a pencil.

Star Rain...

I got the idea for this picture from watching The Elegant Universe. I painted it and then filled in the details with ink. As I was looking at it I thought what would make this more interesting? That is why I made the rain connecting the stars. Then I thought...that looks nice but what would make the sky look like that? Searching my mind I came up with a phenomena I am calling star rain.
When I watched The Elegant Universe there was a section about quantum particles and how they can be in 2 places at once and move forward and backward in time. If I remember correctly they also can create tiny wormholes when they come in contact with each other.
So the idea behind star rain is that the people of this planet have come up with a way to rearrange quantum particles to open up giant wormholes that would allow ships to pass through. Star rain is a visual effect created as the wormhole collapses and the particles return to their places.
So here is a water color of a young woman watching star rain...