Newlywed, Newly Veg!

Afternoon, friends! Hope you’ve had a great day so far.  Ours has been productive.  My mom, Ryan and I took a 3 mile walk with the dogs this morning, and then Ryan and I headed to Relax the Back!  He got a gift certificate for RTB from my parents for Christmas, so we wanted to order him a new desk  chair before we head back up to PA this weekend.  He has a lot of back problems, but he thinks that a lot of it is because of his old, no-support desk chair that he spends a TON of time at.  Hopefully the new chair he ordered will make a big difference!

When we got home, it was lunch time.  I decided to make something new: egg salad!  Eggless egg salad, that is.  This turned out pretty good!  The recipe:

Eggless Egg Salad (enough for four big sammies)

1/2 block 18 oz. firm tofu

2 celery stalks, chopped

1/4 tsp. turmeric

1/4 tsp. paprika

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. tamari

1 tbsp. sweet relish (optional…but good!)

1 tbsp. Vegenaise

In a bowl, crumble the tofu with your hands into smallish chunks.  Add the rest of the ingredients and stir well until everything is incorporated.  Enjoy!

The line-up:

The salad:

The sandwich:

Doesn’t this pic look like a big mouth? Or is that just me?

It was good!  My mom ate it for lunch too, and she gave it two thumbs up.  We were saying, one problem with vegetarian/vegan foods is that people insist on comparing them to their non-veg counterparts.  Does a Boca burger taste like a big, juicy hamburger?  No.  But does it taste good?  Yes!  To me, it’s important to understand that, while a chickpea cutlet might not taste like a pork chop, it still tastes good in its own way.

In the same way, although I wouldn’t say that this tastes exactly like egg salad, it’s close enough, and it’s delicious regardless!

Hope you’re having a great day! See you for dinner tonight.  I think we have plans to go see Up in the Air with one of my friends and her beau, so I don’t really know what dinner will hold for us. 

See ya!

Remember when Alan Thicke used to host that show?  We recreated it at Katherine and Kevin’s house tonight, giant dry-erase boards and all!

But before that…vegan cupcakes took over my world!!!

Can I just take a minute or two to give props to this:

That would be vegan cookies ‘n cream buttercream frosting, my friends.  It is every bit as dreamy as it sounds.  I would bathe in this frosting, if bathing in frosting were more socially acceptable (and why isn’t it?).

For our dessert dish, I made the basic chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, topped with vegan fluffy buttercream frosting, which, with the addition of Newman O’s, became cookies ‘n cream frosting. 

These cupcakes were pretty easy to make—just following directions, really!  Isa and Terry give great, easy-to-follow directions for each step of the baking process. 

I would have taken a picture of the batter, but Ryan was too busy making out with it. Here are the cupcakes, post-baking, though:

And the frosting, mid-whip:

Frosting, post-Newman O’s:

And finally, here they are.  Pretty little things, aren’t they?

A gaggle of cupcakes (I believe that’s the scientific term):

For dinner, we headed over to Katherine and Kevin’s house for some dinner and “lighthearted” Pictionary.  Hey, at least no one got hurt!

Katherine had cooked up some delicious portabella burgers, along with sweet potato fries and a salad.  Delicious!

When we got there, the “burgers” were still on the (indoor) grill:

Pregnant lady at work:

For pre-dinner munchies, we had chips, salsa, and hummus:

The chips were a brand I hadn’t tried before.  Have you seen them before?

They were a fun oblong shape…wacky!

Before too long, dinner was served:

The group:

Dessert time!

Game time!

For Pictionary, we divided up, girls against boys.  The game started out nicely:

But it didn’t take long before things got ugly The boys ended up beating the girls by the TINIEST hair of a point.  I see a re-match in the near future.

The dogs were involved too, of course:

All in all, a great time was had by everyone!

Hope you’ve had a good night!  See you tomorrow, friends!