Flippantly Vague Musings of a Quirky Vegan

Holidays make me eat too much!


Happy New Year to you all! I hope the holiday season was good to all of you, and many good vegan creations were consumed!

We had a very gentle New Year's Eve, just watching movies with the kids and making vegan chocolate cookie milkshakes. Both of our kids managed to stay awake until past midnight, but as soon as their heads hit the pillows they were happily snoring away.

My parents visited us here for a week, and it was nice to see them again. My eternally shy kids never completely opened up to them, but I think it was a great visit for all. One of the things my mom is currently addicted to is homemade Chex Mix, so we set off to make a vegan version of my own, since it has been a long time since I ate/made chex mix. We found vegan worcestershire sauce (yay!!) and used Earth Balance. Tasty and salty!For Christmas dinner, the three omnivores ate a roasted chicken with stuffing and gravy (booooo!), so I made my mashed potatoes and some steamed peas, and I cooked up one of my favorite veggie patty with some vegan gravy. It was fine by me! My mom and I did some shopping at Trader Joe's before Christmas and bought some cranberry orange sauce/relish for dinner, and it was great, but very strong. We ended up only eating a small portion of it, and I didn't want to waste the rest, so my dad said I should try making some muffins using the leftover sauce. I googled a few recipes and found one that worked pretty well. I modified and veganized it using what I had on hand, and they came out pretty good. They work well as a breakfast muffin, as they are slightly dense and not too sweet.The kids and I made an easy food craft project out of pretzel rods that I dipped into melted chocolate and rolled into some crushed toppings such as Fruity Pebbles (not the healthiest of treats, but fun nontheless), sprinkles and peanuts. Messy, indeed. These were good to give as fun treats to neighbors with kids.
Here is a gift I bought for myself this year: Vegan Shoes!! Happy Holidays to Me!
I also made some of VWaV sparkled ginger cookies for the first time. Darn tasty! I tucked a few into some gift baskets as well, but kept the majority for myself. Naughty me.Note the new plate! My sister gave me some new fun plates to add to my quirky plate collection for Christmas! This is the more serious of them...but still nifty!

Speaking of my sister...and cookies...she also had a big bag of vegan cookies shipped to me for the holidays! Oh lordy, as if my butt wasn't big enough! Sunflour cookies rock my world. Lemony Lemon, peanut butter, chocolate chip and german chocolate. And, ummm, the are all gone now. Yep, I ate them all, with just a smidge of help from the kids.
Today I finally joined the pack and made the tofu quiches created by Susan at Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. I eliminated the bell pepper and mushrooms and added in some spinach, sundried tomatoes and green onion. Mine were kinda skimpy compared to hers, but they are pretty good. I may pop them back into the oven before I serve them again just to firm them up a bit more, since I never liked my eggs even remotely loose in my prevegan days...they had to be super dry and very firm. I may also drop the amount of nutritional yeast down next time, just because I know the rest of my family isn't as open to nut. yeast like I am. But all in all, very good!
And I will leave you with how one of my kids opened her presents this year: