Two Product Reviews

No pictures of food today, but I did want to let you all know about some fairly new vegan soy free products that have hit the shelves in the last few months.

The first is Soy Free Earth Balance, which I have finally been able to try, even though it hit the shelves in June. After eating it a few times on rolls and using it in a grilled "cheese" sandwich, all I can say is "Wow". This is as good as any margarine I have used and has no aftertaste, at least for me. It melts well, and is somewhat soft even right out of the refrigerator. I haven't tried cooking with it yet, but don't see that as a problem. The people at Earth Balance made it soy-free by not using any soybean oil, replacing the soy protein with pea protein and using sunflower seed lechitan. And they made the container red along with Soy Free on the label, so that you cannot miss it in the dairy section. For those of you that are soy allergic, this margarine is obviously a godsend, since it has no soy products in it at all. I found the price to be in line with the other Earth Balance products where I got it, but this will run you about 4-5 dollars for a 15 oz tub.

The other newer product is from Amy's and it is a soy free Chocolate Cake. (Picture borrowed from Amys website, forget to get one of the box.) I got one this past week, simply because I was tired of making my own dessert all the time. I would say that this cake is easily as good as or better than one could make at home. It is moist, and really tastes like chocolate. The best thing is that is requires no work to make. All you have to do is take it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator about 2.5 hours before you want to eat it. Then just slice and eat. You could take it out of the packaging, take it to work, feed it to your colleagues and they would never realize that it was not only soy free but vegan. The TeddyBear tried some and pronounced it most acceptable, which for him means that he likes it. And if he likes it, it has to be good (he's a picky eater),

So if these are not in your stores yet, just annoy management till they get them in. And better yet, get as many people as possible to annoy the store as well. In some places they will not stock soy free products because they have the idea that there is no market demand for them. Why don't you show them that they are wrong.

Salads for Dinner

Hi to all of you from hot and steamy Florida (except today it rains, go figure). Summer has definitely set in here with daily highs in the 90s, thunderstorms in the afternoon and tons of humidity. So hot and humid, that for the time being, I have decided to cook and eat hot food as little as possible, especially since I spend most of my days in an unair-conditioned apartment. That means that for the moment, anyway, I am living off of salads. At least I finally have my recipe book back, so that is a bit of help. This past week I made three, two of which make a ton, so I definitely have had enough to eat.




This is what I had for earlier last week. It is two of the salads I made for this week and a simple pizza made on some of my frozen Naan bread. The salad on the right is called a Basque Salad, and is something I found up at AllRecipes. It is a simple salad, with green peppers, tomatoes, onions, and cucumber in a simple vinaigrette. You guys should be impressed, I did all the prep work myself. The salad on the left is a Lentil Rice Salad I found up at vegweb. They’re both really good. The Naan pizza is just Naan, pizza sauce, and a cashew cheese. A very nice dinner to have on a hot night.

The Basque Salad has also been useful and other dishes as well. I have chopped up the veggies and made them into a sandwich. It also works well in a wrap.



As the third salad I made last week is called a Rainbow Chopped Salad, and I found it at Food Network, if you can believe it. It has bell peppers, carrots, radishes, and broccoli in an Orange Oregano Vinaigrette. I’m having it with a veggie burger I found up at vegweb. It’s really easy to make, stays together well, and freezes well. It also lets me put some mushrooms into my diet, since no veggies are stipulated in the recipe..

So as you can see, even though it’s hot and humid in Florida, I’m still eating pretty well.

Sorry to be Away Again

Sorry to be away again for so long. I had some minor computer problems in the last few weeks, which unfortunately turned major. The short story is that my computer went in to get the cooling fan replaced. That went fine, but once that was done and before it even left the shop, a resistor on the motherboard fried. Ergo, I no longer have my Toshiba. It is most likely reparable, but I don't have the money right now. So what did I do on Thursday, I went and had to use some of my savings to buy a new laptop. I spent more than I wanted to do so, but it was the only comparable computer to my Toshiba. Now I have a new HP TouchSmart. Believe it or not, I almost have it all configured and all of my files loaded (Thank God for external hard drives). I will have to re-buy my cookbook program and of course Office. All of that should all be taken care of by the end of this month. I also get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out in the fall. I even have a webcam, but no software. However, if I can get some software and it is not expensive, I might do some videos at some point in the future; but that is a long way off.

Unfortunately, I did not even take any pictures last week; I am really lost without a computer. So no new food share. However, I still have some from the week before and from the first two weeks after my assignment ended. I will get all that up this week. The Teddybear is off this week, but I won't do another week of omni friendly food, since it really isn't changing for us. I will get my catch-up ones out this week, and then I think my blogging will go back to doing it when I do something new or have a great idea. Hopefully that way, I will be a bit more consistent at this. I really envy CCV, I don't know how she does this every day.

P.S. I actually wrote this in Word 2007 and published it from here as well. I might get to like Word 2007.

Catching Up Again

Hi, guys. Sorry I have been away for so long. It was at first due to my new position and TeddyBear having his hours changed so that we didn't get home until after 7:30 every night. Which just left me with very limited time to do things, even cook. And then my assignment suddenly ended and just could not seem to get the energy up to write here, even though I kept taking pictures. My assignment ended two weeks ago today and I finally decided that I have to do more than read the news, read blogs, read books (finished Shogun, The Hobbit and completed Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings), apply for jobs and cook.

So here are some of the things I have done. All of these are from the last week of May until the 12th of June. And need I add that this is very picture heavy, so sorry about the slow load time for the page.


This is Colorful Vegetable Fajitas made into a burrito with rice, Galaxy Naturals Rice Vegan Cheese Slices in Cheddar.

This is the main box from my new lunch set I bought from Lunchsense.com. I just bought the inner boxes, but they have lunch boxes as well. All of the containers are Lock n Lock, so they will not leak. Here is is filled with Quick and Easy Vegetable Curry and rice.

This is the drink container from the lunch set, filled with chocolate almond milk.

Here is the complete lunch set, with the two small side boxes as well. As you can see the large box also has insets, so that you can bring two items in the box, if one wishes. However, it will leak since the top does not seal the dividers. Here the set is filled with Sloppy Sams, Angie's Dads Best Cabbage Coleslaw, sliced apples, walnuts and No Pudge Brownie Clone. It can be made vegan by omitting the egg whites and using a vegan yogurt, in this case vanilla coconut milk yogurt from Turtle Mountain.

This is a quick and easy veggie stir fry I made one night for dinner. It is just frozen japanese vegetables, diced and fried chickpea Burmese Tofu, store bought teriyaki sauce over rice.

Here are the Sloppy Sams again, with Harvard Beets and Angie's Dads Best Cabbage Coleslaw on the side.

Curried Eggplant Soup (with some plain coconut milk yogurt) with Harvard Beets and some steamed kale mixed with canned, diced tomatoes on the side. I made the soup for a food blogging event I planned on doing, but couldn't figure out how to do back links (annoyed).

Here is the Curried Eggplant soup again with a cheese quesodilla made with Galaxy Naturals Rice Vegan cheddar cheese slices. I liked the soup, but it was a bit to spicy for my taste. The next time I make it, I will use less curry.

Memorial Day Weekend

Hope you all are having a happy Memorial Day weekend. The rain, for a little while, has finally ended in the Tampa area. No need for us to think about building arks, just yet, anyway. However, I really should not complain since we really do need the rain. The drought has caused very draconian watering policies to be enacted, and they are not going away any time soon. However, hurricane season starts in one week and if we can get some tropical storms through that are rain events, that would help.

I didn’t do a lot of cooking this week, due to still recovering and also starting back at work. This was dinner on Monday. I had gotten some quinoa pasta as an experiment, due to a suspicion that the TeddyBear has some gluten intolerance issues. He didn’t like it, but I thought it wasn’t that bad. Here I am having it with some kale and diced tomatoes that I made over the weekend. I was just looking for something quick and easy to make that would also be nutritious. It was a nice filling dinner after a long day at work.

The Fronch Toast was my breakfast on Saturday. The topping is a Cinnamon Spiked Blueberry Sauce (along with some maple syrup) that I found over at FoodTV from Robin Miller. She uses it on frozen yogurt, but I like it on the Fronch Toast (VwaV) and it would be good on pancakes or waffles as well. An easy way to eat some fruit at your breakfast or brunch, and if you don’t like blueberries then the cinnamon is a nice touch.

Rice Milk Recipe and Some News

Rice Milk Recipe and Some News

I had high hopes for this week. Unfortunately, they got waylaid due to me catching either a really bad cold or possibly the flu (don’t know which one) from a recruiter when I went on an interview late last week. So, except for a few smoothies and odds and ends, I really have not eaten much at all. I didn’t even have coffee for most of the week. However, I am better now.

I did manage to get the rice milk recipe perfected before I got ill. Good thing, since I have been using so much of it that the mix is just about half gone already. And I just made it on Monday. The revised recipe is below.

Rice Milk Base

3 3/4 cup water
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup rice flour white
1/2 cup heaping, almond flour
1/2 cup light agave nectar
2 Tbsp coconut oil

Bring 3 cups water to a boil in a medium sized saucepan.

Add the vanilla and rice flour to 3/4 cup water, stirring thoroughly.

Once the water boils, stir in the rice flour mixture, stirring constantly with a whisk. Turn heat to medium-low and boil at least five minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick and no longer gritty.

Depending on equipment available:

No high powered blender:

Put almond flour, agave nectar and coconut oil into blender and blend till smooth (a Magic Bullet is fine). Add to rice flour mixture and mix with stick blender or regular blender until smooth.

High powered blender (VitaMix, etc.):

Let rice flour mixture cool. Add rice flour mixture, almond flour, agave nectar and coconut oil to blender and blend till smooth.

Once mixture is smooth and cool, pour into covered container and place in refrigerator.

Yield: 5-6 cups, probably closer to 5 ½ on average

To make rice milk:

8 oz
1/4 cup base and 3/4 cup water: mix till combined

16 oz
1/2 cup base and 1 1/2 cup water: mix till combined

It will separate in the refrigerator, but will remix quickly upon shaking.


This recipe mixes up quite smooth once blended and the almond flour is now emulsified enough that it blends easier into the rice flour mixture. The “milk” is rich enough that I drank it plain (no chocolate) and was quite satisfied. I have also used it in some cooking this week, for pancakes and some of Bryanna Grogan’s soy free mayonnaise, and it worked as well as commercial rice milk.

I had planned on doing my entry for the Tried & Tasted event, being hosted by Vaishali at Holy Cow!, featuring recipes from SusanV at the Fat Free Vegan blog. However, it is a month long event, so next week will have to do. At least what I had planned on making works for both my schedule this week and also my schedule for next week. If you would like to join in, check out the details over at Vaishali’s blog. This is the first time for me to join in one of these blog events, but to help show all the good things that Susan makes, and that she makes dishes that are either soy free or can be made soy free easily was a no brainer for me.

Now that I have kept you in suspense; the news is that as of Monday, I have a long term temporary assignment. It is at the same place where the TeddyBear works, but not in the same department. The pay is decent and due to this department being behind, I have to do a minimum of 8 hours of overtime a week, which will greatly help the paycheck. But it will greatly affect my cooking. Expect to see more quick and easy dishes. I have a feeling that the Chick-fu will become a more regular part of my diet, since it will be easy to make a meal around that in the evenings. I might also start to feature my lunches as well.

And in case you are curious what a bunny does to celebrate a new job. Why she goes grocery shopping and buys her new favorite ice cream, Coconut Bliss Hazelnut Fudge. It is quite nutty, chocolaty and satisfying.

See you all next week.

100th Post

Well I made it, 100. Does that mean I am now a serious blogger?

Sorry I haven’t posted this week, but I had to clear out the refrigerator first. There was no room for any new food. So I am giving you a bonus today, both lunch and dinner.

Lunch was very simple, a peanut butter sandwich and some of the Brooklyn Deli Macaroni Salad from VCON. The peanut butter is from Smart Balance and if you haven’t tried this yet, it is really good. The macaroni salad was a bit of disappointment. It tastes fine, but my mayo set up a bit too hard once the dressing was mixed into the pasta and vegetables. I am going to have to try this again with Bryanna Grogan’s soy-free mayo and see if that makes a difference.


Dinner was my latest attempt at the fish. I had hoped to announce that it was perfected, but again the base mix is to thin, even after mixing in 1 cup oats ground to flour. However, it did thicken up significantly when I mixed a portion of it with some breadcrumbs. The taste is just fine; it just needs to be stiffer. I have some other things that I want to work on, so this is going on the back burner for a bit. But don’t worry; I will come back to it.

All of you that are gluten free, maybe you can give me some help. Will gluten free bread crumbs act as a thickener like regular bread crumbs can? If they can, then I would be more prepared to say that this is mostly perfected. If not, then back to the drawing board.

Before I go, I would like to let everyone know that I am going from a 5 day post week to maybe once or twice a week. I don’t know yet if it will be done on set days, or just when I cook something new. Right now I am leaning to just putting up a post on Fridays, covering what I ate during the week. I am changing the schedule, since I think that at this point, I have shown that one doesn’t need to eat either tofu or tempeh as a vegan. Also since I do eat so many leftovers you will be saved from all of my leftover makeovers.

Have a good weekend.