vegan chai

mmmmmm, pumpkin-y

okay, seriously, i'm going nutso for pumpkin right now. i've been craving pumpkin stuff, and i keep not doing anything about it, but Yesterday That All Changed! i finally finally FINALLY made my favorite pumpkin muffins (from vegan with a vengeance) and they are sooooooo delicious. it feels like forever since i'd eaten them. and! i had some leftover cream cheese frosting from saturday's carrot cupcakes, so i've been making my pumpkin muffins into "dessert breakfast" for the past two days. hee.

in the meantime, i'm also really wanting to try some pumpkin crumb cake (veganomicon) and pumpkin spice bread (joy of vegan baking). i wonder if i could make my husband sick of pumpkin if i just went to town on the pumpkin tip. because also! also! there is this delightful-sounding recipe for pumpkin butter. oh my gee, it sounds so tasty.

i swear, if i went back in time about three years and told my past self that i would become a drooly pumpkin fangirl, i never would have believed my future self. but for reals, i'm all about it these days.

the "pardoned" turkeys

okay, before i get to the turkeys, i wanted to say (in a post, rather than only in the comments) that my blog-reading-internet-friends are awesome. thanks for all of the sweet and supportive, and even feisty, comments about last night's entry! hee. i know it wasn't a big deal, and it's silly to care (and i succeeded in un-caring, for the most part), but still, it was nice to hear from all of you. you're the ones i care about, anyway! xo

so! turkeys! i stumbled across this article the other day and i thought i'd share it, in case anyone else was interested and hadn't seen it... it's about the turkeys who are "pardoned" each year in that weird presidential ceremony. the article talks about what happens to the turkeys afterward, and i have to say i was at least slightly surprised--not only about some of the details about the turkeys' new lives, but also at some of the almost pro-AR slant seen in the story. the author definitely snuck a few things in there that made me happy. anyhow, have a look if you like.

i'll be writing soon about farm sanctuary's annual turkey adoption, but i'm waiting until i decide who to adopt, as is my custom. heh. 

belittling random internet strangers

my first thought when i saw i'd gotten 11 comments from the same person early this morning was that a spambot found me. my second thought was that perhaps someone stumbled across my blog through vegan mofo, and wanted to comment on several things at once. it definitely didn't occur to me (until i read said comments, of course) that they might all be from a random person who wanted to point out what an uneducated slob i am. i went from bewildered to amused to annoyed in the span of about three minutes, and then just decided that it was silly to even care. i've left them up for now in case anyone else wants to enjoy the crazy. i'm going to take my uneducated ass to bed now.

going to burst

i feel like i ate a mountain of food tonight, and i guess that's because i kind of did. i went to the coffee shop this evening and had a chai while i was there, after slamming a big glass of water at home. then, when i came back from the coffee shop, my husband had made an awesome pizza (which i ate half of)... and a small pile of raw carrots and broccoli with dip. and then more water. we went for a quick walk with maia, andwhen we got back we decided to go ahead and polish off the mississippi mud cake (we had 5 pieces left, but in our defense, they were smallish pieces) so we could wash the pan. ha! oh, and i had a small glass of chocolate silk to chase the cake down. *urp*

hipo hyfryd truffles

okay, i stumbled across a box of these truffles the other day, and due to some awesomeness that transpired, i got to take them home with me. for free. yay! anyhow, they first caught my eye because the logo is adorable. the next thing i noticed is that everything is spelled all crazy-style (i.e., in welsh), which further piqued my interest. and THEN i realized it was a box of truffles, with the most-amazing-possible-flavor clearly labeled on the front: cinnamon spiced. i mean, come on! are you kidding me? it was almost like they were sent straight here for me. so i asked about them, and was told to go ahead and try one, and in fact, why don't i take the box home? *swoon* 

so i should probably skip ahead to the part where i tell you how delectable they are. the chocolate is amazing, and the center is smooth and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. the flavoring is subtle, but fantastic. i'm told the maple syrup flavor is also to die for, and a friend of mine tried the coconut and liked it a lot. word on the street is that these will be available in the US soon (through vegan essentials), so keep an eye out! they rock.

free bakery! kinda.

so after we hosted our brother-in-law's birthday dealie today (we just did simple snacks, gifts, and cake), we decided we were hungry for dinner and my husband didn't feel like making it. fair enough. so, we called in an order at one of our favorite places, a tiny little co-op & cafe nearby (the whole menu is vegan or nearly-so, and tons of it is organic. yum!), and i went in to pick up the food. my husband ordered a tempeh reuben and a side salad, and i ordered the veggie burger and a berry smoothie. 

when i arrived, they were just about to wrap up my order, and i spied a tray of cardamom scones with chocolate chips. hello! so i asked for one of those as well, and then went into the co-op side of the joint to pay my bill. ((of course i picked up a couple of cartons of peppermint chocolate vitasoy while i was there--how could i not?!)) after bonding with the woman who does the ordering over our mutual adoration of said vitasoy, i went back to the cafe to pick up my bag. but i forgot to double-check the bag, and alas, when i got home i realized that i was cardamom scone-less. *sniff* 

however! i called, and they were very sweet about it. i really didn't feel like driving back over there now that i was home with our dinner, but they told me i could swing in tomorrow and pick up some bakery. i can't wait!

new stuffs: the update!

okay, i went a little wild at vegan essentials and got a bunch of stuff that is new (to me, anyway). i haven't tried any of it yet, but here's the rundown...

for the people in our house: crumblz (peanut chocolate flavor), annie's bunny fruit snacks (the berry assortment), strawberry jello, leahey mac & cheeze, leahey gravy packets (one brown, one golden), and a new lip gloss in vanilla chai.

for the animals in our house: ami kibble, evolution kibble, vegedog sprinkles, vegecat ph sprinkles, doggie sudz shampoo, and a little tonic to aid itchy doggies. heh.

...and not new, but awesome anyway: liz lovely cookies (peanut butter chocolate), pumpkin doughnut holes, contact lens solution, and a billion sjaak's peanut butter cups, caramel cups, and mint chocolate cups.

i can't wait to start taste-testing everything! in the meantime, though, i'm finally going to get around to baking, because we're having a little celebration for my brother-in-law's birthday tomorrow afternoon. i'm going to make carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (either in cake or cupcake form; haven't decided yet) and a mississippi mud chocolate cake. yay!

sharing the food love

have you ever met a new vegan and then just inexplicably started spewing food ideas at them? i did that tonight, and even though it was sort of the point of us getting together, i still felt kind of silly a few times. i swear, i'd be talking about something totally normal, and then i would bust out with, "and OH! have you tried those back to nature peanut butter sandwich cookies? they're like nutter butters except OMG!" or "did you know there's vegan mayo? actually there are two popular kinds and my favorite is vegenaise because..." or "there are these awesome crackers called crispy wheats and they're SO good with hummus!"

it was like all i could do is shout random food ideas at her, the poor girl. luckily she was a good sport, and she actually started writing things down. ha! i also branched out beyond food (because she asked) and prattled on and on about lotion, lip balm, makeup, perfume, and over the counter medication. but talk always returned to food, what with the tofurkey deli slices and the bean & avo burritos and the trick of serving vegan chili to omnis when you're looking for a simple meal idea. i couldn't stop myself; it was as if i had food-tourette's. eventually we made a date to go out for dinner sometime (so she can try tempeh and/or seitan and/or something else she's never had before) and then follow that up with some grocery shopping. awesome.

new stuffs

i'm planning to do a little power-shopping at vegan essentials on friday, and i'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations. it seems like lots and lots of new things have become available lately, and i haven't tried most of it. heh. i think i'm going to be on the lookout for those crumblz dealies that seem like vegan butterfingers--how awesome do those sound? and i think there's also a new mac & cheeze mix (an envelope maybe?) on the market from leahey gardens... unless i totally just made that up off the top of my head. i know they have some gravy packets that look good... hmmm... well, if i'm not wrong, i'll probably pick up some mac & cheeze, but otherwise, just gravy. ha! 

what's new out there that you're dying to try, and/or what's new that you have already tried and heartily recommend?

the 2am sparrow

maia and i are having some difficulties with the bedtime potty trip. namely, i've spent the last two nights standing in the yard with her for 25-30 minutes, waiting for her to hurry up and go already, so that i can go to bed. it is beYOND frustrating. the first night i actually threatened self-harm, and she finally went. i tried it again the next night, but apparently she learned that i was crying wolf because it didn't work. 

so tonight i decided to try a new tactic, which was to just let her out the door while i stood inside and watched her. when i sent her out at 12.30am, she stood pitifully on the stairs and bumped her head into the screen to be let back in. i waited for a few minutes, then gave up and let her back in. when i sent her out at 1.30am, she did basically the same thing. i sighed (loudly) and let her back in. in the meantime, i'm staying up later than intended and watching teevy so i can distract myself from how frustrated i am. finally i wanted to be done watching teevy, so i sent her back out again at 2.15am. this time i stepped outside with her, but only onto the patio; not into the grass or anything. guess what, she stayed right next to me, apparently oblivious as to why we were outside. i once again threatened self-harm, she once again ignored me, and i stood there trying not to cry out of frustration, when suddenly something came whirring through the air at my head. 

i ducked, instinctively, and it flew right past my head and over maia. i almost thought it was a bat, except that the flapping seemed too loud. well, it landed on the driveway, and sure enough, it was a sparrow. just as soon as he landed, he flew toward us again, this time right toward the sliding glass doors, which he bumped very softly and then flew toward the neighbor's house. he landed on the side of their brick for a moment(!), then flitted away again. maia was totally fascinated, and i was a weird mixture of shocked and concerned. what the heck is a sparrow doing flying around my yard at 2.15am? i have a feeling he was disoriented by our gigantic motion light in the backyard, which probably accounted for the crazy-flying. anyhow, i gave up on maia, took her upstairs to bed, and went back outside to try and track down the birdie. alas, he was nowhere to be found. hopefully safe up in a tree somewhere, getting some sleep!

p.s. dear maia, please don't pee in the house tonight, thanks very much.

coat voting has ended!

oh man, oh man, i just checked the vaute couture site and the voting has ended. i'm so excited/nervous! i had a really rough time choosing, but eventually winnowed it down and picked one coat in each category, and now i'm just on pins and needles. which ones will win? what fabrics will they choose? when will they be created? how many will they make? how many dollars will they cost? so many questions. i shall try to be patient.

office snacks

i'm just curious: what sorts of things do you stash at work for snacking? i am one of those people who always has a luna bar in my purse or in a drawer in my office somewhere, and i also almost always have chocolate in my mini-fridge. other than that, though, i tend to rotate. sometimes i have a box of crackers, sometimes peanut-butter stuffed pretzels from trader joe's, sometimes raw almonds. i always bring a lunch when i go to school, but i like to have something squirreled away in my snack drawer at all times, for snack emergencies. what am i missing? 

surprise comfort food

i've been craving mac & cheeze lately but i keep not making it (i'm sensing a theme here with my posts). i have two favorite kinds (if that's possible), and part of it is that i can't decide which one to make, but the other part is that, as documented, i've been a lazy lazy lazybones. back in my pregan days, i think i ate mac & cheese almost once a week. that all ground to a halt when i went vegan, but eventually i found great recipes, and yet i've only been making it "now and again," and i'm not sure what my problem is. i LOVE mac & cheeze. i guess it truly is just a testament to my laziness. 

anyhow, tonight my husband started whipping up some dinner in the kitchen, and i headed upstairs to fold laundry. eventually the smells from his cooking made it upstairs to me, and the scent was really yum. when he called me downstairs to eat, i said, "it smells like my grandma's house at dinnertime!" which is probably weird, but it's true; it was reminiscent of some random collage of childhood memories that included "yummy cooking smell" at grandma's. anyhow, he unveiled the source: impromptu potatoes "au gratin," which he made with some kind of cheezy sauce, and it was sooooooo good. warm, delicious, and starchy, just like i like. it wasn't mac & cheeze per se, but it satisfied my craving just the same.

wanting to bake

i keep meaning to bake, and i keep not doing it. i went through a month or two during summer when i was dying for cake, but never made one. i've craved my peanut butter bars more times than i can count, and never made them (and those don't even require actual baking, for goodness sake!). i semi-regularly want cookies and then decide it's too big of a pain in the butt to drag out the mixer and play cookie-sheet-tradeoff for an hour. i know, i'm lazy. and now that it's officially fall, i keep wanting pumpkin stuff. pumpkin muffins, pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes, pumpkin coffeecake, you name it, i want it. i officially have two new cans of pumpkin, and i'm fully stocked on flour and sugar, so i have no excuse. i need to bake something this weekend. 

seasonal soymilks

one of my sweet pals alerted me to the fact that chocolate peppermint vitasoy is already on the shelves in our teensy tiny co-op! HOORAY! i'm so excited i don't even know what to do. but then that reminded me... i haven't seen pumpkin spice silk around yet. has anyone? is it going to happen again this year? it wasn't my favorite thing straight (it was fine, just nothing i got super-excited over), but i thought it was really tasty with chai. 

a fashionable vegan winter coat?

okay, my old posts (mostly from last year, but also the year before) about vegan winter coats are suddenly getting a bazillion hits again, so it must be that time of year... new and old vegans alike, searching for the perfect vegan winter coat. as i've said before: vegan coats are all over the place, but vegan coats that: (a) can stand up to a tough winter, AND (b) are fashionable, are a lot tougher to find. i about went crazy the past few years, until i finally found two--two!--last winter. hooray! i ended up with a long primaloft-filled casual-ish coat by merrell, which appears to be no longer in their line... and i also bought a really nice peacoat-styled primaloft-lined coat from the north face, who are selling it again this year. neither of them was exactly what i was looking for, but both were cute enough in my book, and also extremely warm. i was really happy with them last winter, and i'm excited to wear them again once the weather starts bumming me out.

but wait! what's this? apparently some company i'd never heard of before today is trying to turn the vegan tide of winter coats toward the chic and fabulous. they're sponsoring some sort of designer contest where people get to vote on three different categories of winter coats, and the winner(s?) will evidently be sewn and sold. i know next to nothing about this, except that it's kind of awesome, and who doesn't like voting on stuff? if you're like me and you're dying for a selection of purty vegan winter coats to choose from, go here and click on each category to vote for your favorite vaute coat, el coat, and awe coat. let's see what happens next!

red beans & rice

so, we went out for fancypants lunch today, as a bit of a delayed celebration for yesterday. we went to a really nice, relatively new all-vegetarian (and mostly vegan) restaurant on the other side of town. i've been there twice before, and they have great food. it's a little bit on the pricey side but we consider it a splurge, so it's okay. anyscoot, today i was in the midst of deciding what to order (leaning toward the dhal) when our server came over to tell us the special. amusingly, it was red beans & rice, which sounds simple but the description also sounded delicious. the kidney beans were simmered with some chopped tomatoes, red onions, garlic, and various other spices and good stuff that i'm forgetting, and then all of that was spooned over brown rice. i decided that sounded awesome, so i ordered it, and i was not disappointed. i loooved it, and there was so much of it that i probably took 60% of it home with me (for dinner tonight, yay!). we've made red beans and rice a couple of times at home, and today i was reminded of how easily pleased i am. yum, yum, yum. super tasty and good for you, to boot! 

they also gave us a complimentary mini-scoop of their babaganouj with crackers, and i surprised myself by not only tasting it, but liking it. generally speaking i think eggplant is a big YUCK and i've tried babaganouj before with no success, so they must be doing something right. aside from that and my entree, i had a small cup of their signature soup, which is a lentil soup with some veggies and a vegan cilantro sour cream--very tasty. we also tried their green limonade, which our server recommended. i was expecting something like fresh lemonade, but greenish instead of yellow, in a tall glass full of ice. imagine my surprise when it showed up looking more like a glass of wheatgrass juice... or what i imagine wheatgrass juice to look like. it was a vibrant grass green, totally opaque, and really, really tart (i'm really more of a sweet person than a sour person). and there wasn't an ice cube to be seen, so there went my hopes for dilution over time. hee. it wasn't bad; just sour. definitely interesting. i think next time i'll try their homemade almond milk instead--probably more my speed.

four years

today is my fourth vegan anniversary (and also ryan at vegblog's!), hooray! i mentioned last year that i always hope to do something exciting and special on my anniversary day, but i usually end up doing a bunch of not much. evidently, i suck at planning. i had visions of spending my day today going out for yummy pancakes in the morning, then going to an awards ceremony this afternoon (yay me!), and then maybe going out for fancypants dinner tonight. instead, we both slept for crap last night because our doggie has colitis (yay) and we did nothing this morning but call the vet (husband) and sleep in (me) and shower and get ready (both of us). we went to the awards ceremony, but my husband had to leave early to take maia to the only available appointment (he was able to see my award, at least), and then after all of that i went home to change clothes and then just came back to school. celebratory, no?

i am in a funk lately. you may have noticed this from my posts, because i keep whining about blending in and feeling on display and nervous all the time. i'm sorry; no one likes a whiner and i hate that i've been taking that tone. i think i'm stressed out about a variety of things, which in turn makes me angry and upset because Sabbatical Is For Not Being Stressed Out and here i am, all riled up. i have been feeling alternately unimportant, misunderstood, not good enough, silly, stupid, and useless lately. and i'm learning more and more that i'm one of those people who just wants everyone to like her, and to achieve that goal, i end up constantly shelving my actual thoughts and/or feelings, shoving them down for the "greater good" or to resist "making waves" or getting anyone upset with me or who knows what the hell i think i'm doing. i don't know. so today was supposed to be this Big Exciting Day, what with the (actually really big-deal) award i was receiving, and the big 4th vegan anniversary, and instead i was feeling weepy all morning. so stupid.

i went to the ceremony and sat in the front row with the other honorees, and tried to calm my own nerves--to center myself and make myself enjoy the moment. i succeeded after awhile, and my mood lightened a bit. i socialized a little and tried to let go of all the negative blah that has been bothering me lately. there was a man playing jazz guitar as "mood music" before the program started, and he seemed like a really neat guy. unfortunately for me, i'm so not a fan of jazz, but still, he seemed nice. he played before the program, and then he also played throughout, every time a recipient would walk up onto the stage and get their award--kind of like when a movie star comes out onto a talk show. he just played unrecognizable (to me) jazz riffs, but a different one for each person. it was kind of a cute and quirky touch. anyhow, when it was my turn, they read a bunch of jive about me and put a massive picture of my noggin on a huge screen, and then asked me to come up on stage. as i stood up, i waited for my jazz riff, and was totally pleasantly surprised when cute jazz guitar dude broke into here comes the sun by the beatles. it made me smile and it tOtally lifted my spirits. i know this is corny and magnificently lame, but seriously, it made me really happy. he played it for my whole little walk up onto stage, and kept playing until i walked back off. awwww. i wanted to hug him.

thanks for brightening my day, jazz guitar dude. happy anniversary to me.

the peanut butter update

okay, so back in august(!) i complained that my longtime peanut butter standby, maranatha no stir, had ceased to live up to its no stir label. i'd been eating it for quite some time (like, a couple years), and then just like that, every single jar we bought was totally soupy. like, couldn't take it out of the jar with a knife or it would spill onto the edge of the jar, the counter, the plate, and so forth. in other words: bleah.

i am a peanut-butter-in-the-cupboard kind of girl. i hate storing peanut butter in the fridge, even though that is what 95% of people will tell me to do. if i store peanut butter in the fridge, it gets too stiff and it tears my bread. i eat pb every single day of my life, pretty much, so i'm kind of persnickety about these things.

i got a few recommendations, and also went back to a brand i'd liked before--whole foods 365 organic, which i believe is a re-brand of the whole kids label i'd liked a couple of years ago. well, unfortunately, i kept finding soupy "no stir" pb, and i was getting super frustrated. i've spent the past two months playing the "put it in the fridge so i can spread it, take it out so it softens up enough" game, and it's been driving me batty. i really really liked the 365 organic, taste-wise, but it was soupy. grr! my friend chris says she gets the exact same stuff and hers is just fine in the cupboard, which makes me want to cry. anyhow, i kept moving along and tried two others: earth balance and smart balance. the earth balance was tasty, but also quite soupy. boo! but the smart balance? i believe we have a winner!

from the label it looks like science peanut butter, but it tastes great, and it's totally shelf stable. there are only four ingredients, it comes in creamy or crunchy, and it comes in small or medium jars. hooray! we went through one small jar of creamy and it held up throughout, so we went ahead and bought some more. here's hoping my luck holds! 

(i know i'm going to go back and try that 365 organic again, though, because i can't stand knowing that it works for someone else and not for me.)

coming soon...

i don't have it in me tonight, but i believe my Great Peanut Butter Saga is over (at least for now), so i'm posting this as a promise and obligation to tell you all about it. tomorrow. at the moment i'm exhausted because we spent all day at a "greyhound gala" and it's a lot more tiring than you'd think. in other news: maia can run 35mph. it's true! she was clocked by a radar dude and everything. okay, stay tuned for the peanut butter update tomorrow.

dinner with strangers

i always get myself a little worked up when i have to share a meal with someone for the first time. tonight, we went out with nine new someones, so i was a bit nervous. at least one of them knows i'm vegan (although she only found out a couple of days ago, and hasn't talked to me about it at all), but i don't know if she mentioned it to anyone else. we met everyone at the restaurant and due to a series of clusterf*cks we were nearly 30 minutes late, which of course added to my feelings of self-consciousness. i haaaaate being late. anyhow, they waited for us and i did my ordering thing, and as usual everything was pretty much a non-event. i was seated at the way end of the table, so i doubt anyone even really heard what i ordered. there were a few dicey moments when talk turned to ingredients of food--the guy next to my husband has a bugaboo about high fructose corn syrup (and with good reason), and we somehow ended up talking about peanut butter, which you know i have strong feelings about--but all in all, my veganism remained untouched and unspoken. i also panicked when a small group started comparing their dogs' diets (this was a greyhound group again), but we also escaped that one. i need to stop being so paranoid about what other people think. it's exhausting.

cakey surprise

my husband surprised me with food again today, after i slept for twelve straight hours(!) and still felt tired(!). he brought me some soup--a vegetable gumbo--and a chocolate banana smoothie. the soup was spicy and it seemed to help kick some of my congestion, which was fabulous. he also surprised me with an exciting new discovery: the vegan bakery in our town has added a (seasonal?) cake to their lineup! they usually offer a carrot cake, which isn't really my thing... and a banana cake, which is delicious and i love it. so when he pulled a little cake out of his bag of tricks, i immediately thought it was the banana cake, and i got all excited. but then i realized that the color was all wrong, and that the frosting looked different. lo and behold, what he really had was a pumpkin cake! oh em gee. now that it's fall i'm totally craving pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cupcakes and pumpkin silk chai and the whole deal. we've never seen a pumpkin cake from them before, but this was really good. they even sprinkled a bit of... cinnamon? nutmeg? on the frosting. mmmm. we ate half of it for lunch dessert, and the other half for dinner dessert (it's a small cake, people). deeelish!

still here, still feeling like crap

thank you for all of the suggestions on what to eat! i think i am a freak of vegan nature, in that miso soup does nothing for me. don't tell! it's just basically "salt soup" to me, and i'm not much of a salt person. hee. but i loved a lot of the other suggestions! my husband actually surprised me with some moroccan chickpea soup this morning, which was awesome. he also got me a delicious vitamin C smooothie and a bean burrito, which i couldn't finish and saved for dinner. other than that i just had one of my honeycrisp apples (yum!) with a bit of peanut butter. i still feel like garbage, so i might end up trying some of those other suggestions tomorrow. gracias!

i feel like crap

i've been home feeling progressively worse all day. favorite things to eat when you feel like garbage: go!

apples!

today i went to pick up some groceries, and i had a list and everything, but as i approached the store i remembered that i wanted to pick up some apples. our co-op has a really good relationship with a local orchard, so every fall the co-op gets bunches of apples from them, and today they had about five different varieties at 99 cents a pound. yay! unfortunately, none of those were honeycrisps, and those were the ones i was specifically thinking about getting, so i had to buy those at a higher rate. anyhow, my usual favorite apple is fuji. they're crisp and sweet, which are my two favorite things. i used to be a nothing-but-granny-smith girl, but then suddenly my tastes tOtally changed, and i couldn't stand the tartness of a granny smith apple. it was weird, but such is life. so now i've been a fuji girl for quite a long time, and i dally in honeycrisps when they come in season. 

but today, faced with the 99 cent per pound apples, i decided to be a little daring and pick up a couple more varieties after nabbing a couple of honeycrisps. in honor of my sister, i got one of her favorite--golden delicious--and then for no reason in particular, i also grabbed two cortlands. i have no idea what they even taste like; they just looked adorable and i grabbed them. here's hoping they don't suck!

in other random apple news: as much as i love apples, i much prefer to eat them sliced than as a hand fruit. i'll eat it out of my hand if i have to, but if i'm at home and i have a sharp knife, i always slice them. is that weird?

zensoy pudding

i really love zensoy chocolate pudding. anyone else? i used to eat jello fat-free pudding pretty often in the pregan days, so i was really excited when i found zensoy pudding shortly after going vegan. i liked it pretty much immediately, and nowadays i almost always have a 4-pack in the fridge. you know, for creamy chocolate emergencies. i've never tried the other flavors (mostly because i think i've only ever seen two flavors at the store, and chonklit is my fave), but hopefully they're all as tasty as the chocolate. plus: adorable panda on the box! what's not to love?

tings: not just for peoples

i've already blabbed about my love of tings, but i recently learned that maia loves them too. awesome! one of her very favorite treats comes in a crinkly-sounding bag, so lately she has taken to trotting over with a hopeful look whenever a bag crinkles. this is amusing in itself, but even moreso because avery likes to run in whenever he hears maia's treat bag crinkling, because it sounds like his treat bag. so we've been giving avery treats for absolutely no reason, just because we were getting a training treat out for maia. avery thinks it rules. anyhow, i digress. 

the other day i went to get my bag of tings out of the cupboard, and maia heard the bag and came trotting in and then did her cute little greyhound-approximation-of-a-sit, complete with her paw lifted in the air. she looked so hopeful! i told her they were for me, and walked across the room. she followed and then showed me her best "lie down," again with the hopeful face. i finally caved and gave her one, and she loved it! i gave her two more (after she "earned" them with a sit or what-have-you), and had to cut her off. heh. for the record, avery likes them too, but the most he ever does is lick them. finley, who i swear is fueled only by sheer love and affection, doesn't care about them at all.

post secret and other randomness

to stay on-topic and keep with the spirit of vegan mofo, let  me just say that my husband prepared a delicious lentil pilaf for lunch today. as far as i can remember, we have never made lentil-anything at home before; usually i end up eating them in restaurants. i'm excited because i know they're good for us, and it's always nice to have a little variety. yay lentils! ooh, wait, i have eaten lentils at home before: amy's lentil soup. but that doesn't really count, because my husband doesn't think soup is a meal (ugh) and he usually only eats soup if we make a big-deal from-scratch soup, which i love and he tolerates. oh! and i mustn't forget the delicious but wily and evasive chocolate lentils. i've eaten several pounds of those. anyhow...

the other random thing i wanted to mention was this amazing story you may have already seen, about a guy who saved his adorable little dog from a shark attack. what you may not have seen (yet) is the interview with said guy and said adorable little dog. it's very cute--you should watch it!

all righty, so on to the thing i promised i would blog about last night. i would imagine that most of you are familiar with post secret. for those of you who aren't, it basically started out as a social experiment-slash-art project, wherein frank warren distributed postcards to people in washington, DC and then waited for them to come back to him, emblazoned with secrets. now it's 4 years, 4 books, and 250,000 secrets later, and post secret is an international phenomenon. there's a blog, a myspace page, a facebook page, and frank tours around the country, talking to people about the project. i "discovered" post secret through a friend (i think? i honestly can't remember anymore) back toward the beginning, and i've been totally fascinated with it ever since. earlier this semester, i learned that frank warren would be coming to campus, so we bought tickets and went to see him last night. 

i went into the whole thing brainstorming ideas for how to write a paper on the secrets. it's not really up my usual alley, since i'm more of a quantitative-survey-type-research-person, but i was thinking about ways to code the secrets in various ways, looking for a bunch of different stuff (interpersonal-communication-related stuff, natch). i brought a notebook to the talk, and i sat there jotting down a bunch of ideas before it started. i was seriously nerding out, y'all. but then the lights went down,  a video played, and frank took the stage. the lights never came back up, and i was all thwarted, whining but how will i take notes?? in my head, but i'm kind of glad, in retrospect. it forced me to sit and just listen, which is harder to do when your mind is racing and you're taking notes. anyhow, it lasted about 90 minutes from start to finish, and it was so interesting. frank warren is an extremely sincere, soft-spoken, friendly person. it was great to hear him talk about how the project grew from something that he "led" to something that he now "follows." he talked about the act of writing secrets as transformative, and he talked about the project as art, and he shared some of his favorites. some of them made me laugh, and some of them literally gave me goosebumps. one of them made me tear up.

at one point frank stopped talking, and invited people to come up and ask questions or share stories (or whatever) at one of two microphones. everyone was hesitant at first, and then all of a sudden--almost like someone had opened a secret door--there were people flooding the aisles to get in line. several people asked questions, like where do you store all the secrets? and have you ever read a secret that made you angry? and some people just shared funny or cute stories, but there were also quite a few who decided right then and there to share their own secret with the room. the first one to do it really changed the tenor in the room, but it was a brave secret to share and also a sad one, and it made me instantly want to reach out to her. people clapped for her and when she came back to her seat, she was only two rows ahead of me. i stared at the side of her head for awhile, wondering if i should talk to her afterward, when suddenly i saw a man come over and hand her a note. apparently i wasn't the only one. some time later, another girl shared a terrible secret in a shaking voice, and she nearly started crying, and so did i. she came back to her seat and all i could think about was going over to hug her. this happened several more times over the course of the next 20 minutes or so, but those two girls were the most poignant ones for me. 

frank did a book signing afterward, and as a segue he showed one more video as he made his way back to the signing table. during that time, one of the girls slipped away to get in line, but the other one stayed in her seat. after the talk was over and people started either getting in line or leaving, i saw a few different people go up to her and either say something sweet, or give her a hug. i didn't, but i really wanted to. it was one of those times when i felt really self-conscious even though it was stupid to do so--she was the one who was brave and vulnerable, and here i was too nervous to go up to her. 

anyhow, it was a really, really cool evening. i was touched many times by the secrets we carry, and by the sadness that so many people feel when all it would take is to open up and share, to help that sadness go away. and i'm really proud of all of the people who felt safe and empowered enough to share their secrets last night. i think frank warren is definitely onto something.

technical difficulties

whoa, i finally got into typepad after about a billion tries, and now i'm tired and want to go to bed. i have no idea what was going on. i promise to post in the morning. i'm not sure if/what i'll say about food, but i did go to a really cool event earlier tonight, so i'll definitely talk about that. good night!

it's time for vegan mofo!

so, i've been doing this "blog every day" thing ever since NaBloPoMo last year (read: almost a full year!), and even though i don't always make it before midnight, i always get a post in before heading to bed. i know sometimes they suck, but to me it's about creating the habit and keeping my flow going, because in the past i've gone months with my blog being stagnant and i hate that. anyhow, the Vegan Month of Food is in full swing as of today, and i signed on to participate, because i figure i'm blogging about eating or drinking half the time anyway. heh.

i'm going to kick off my mofo with a question, as strange as that may be. it's about hummus. i love hummus, and i'd like to take a shot at making some from scratch. i have chickpeas, and i have a food processor. what i want to know is: do you have a favorite stand-by recipe? i probably have a hummus recipe in every cookbook (and believe me they are plentiful, but that's probably for another post), but i thought i'd poll the crowd first, in case there's a good go-to among them. let me know what you think! my snacktion is on hold until i hear from you!