Amarand Journal

Ah... Vegan comfort food!

I have been so incredibly lazy today.  I did spend about half an hour cleaning up the kitchen (kind of…), and I started a load of laundry (at 5:00), but other than that I haven’t really done much of anything today except up my post number on PPK’s forums.  Shameful…

In an effort to redeem myself, I decided to make a nice dinner for Sean and me, since the kidlets are with their dad this week.  I really wanted mashed potatoes, and I knew I had a few left that needed to be used pretty soon before they started sprouting.  I made them with some soy milk, Earth Balance margarine, and about a clove or so of minced garlic.  I made the basic broiled tofu recipe from Veganomicon.  Then I steamed some broccoli and cauliflower.  I put fresh garlic pepper over everything and sprinkled some crushed red pepper over the tofu.  Simple flavors, easy preparation, and delicious to boot.  And lots of leftovers!  All those things make me happy.  ☺

Creamy and delicious!

Sean put himself in charge of dessert.  He really wanted to try the whole Vita Mix ice cream thing again.  This time, we left the lid on.  *grin*  Yay no more broken tampers!  He was going to make strawberry, but we didn’t have quite enough strawberries for what the recipe called for.  So he added some peaches and a frozen banana to get the fruit weight up to where it needed to be.  Then he added some coconut extract.  I think that almond would have been nice, too.  He used what was left of the vanilla soymilk we made yesterday.  Despite running the blender just a bit too long (it shut itself off—yay overheating!), it ended up perfect as soft-serve ice cream.  The coconut extract was a little stronger than I would have liked—maybe we should scale it back a little bit next time.  But it was creamy and light without being overly sugary sweet.

I have decided that in the name of keeping myself sane, I’m going to start making a monthly meal plan.  I’ve had to throw away so much stuff that I bought and never used because I either forgot about it or changed my mind, and it’s just sickening to me.  I’m still going to try to incorporate at least one or two new recipes a week since we’re embarking on this vegan journey, though.  After all, when you eat the same stuff for 36 years, a drastic change like going vegan means you have to experiment to find what you like and what you don’t.  Without some wiggle room for experimentation, this new lifestyle could get really boring really fast.  And it requires more than just veganizing old recipes.  Doing this is going to make grocery shopping a lot easier, too, which will hopefully save us some money in the long run.

I’m not expecting myself to turn into June Cleaver overnight, but I am hoping that I’ll have made a decent dent in my new stay-at-home-mom persona by the end of the year.  So now I’m armed with a master shopping list, a 30-day meal planning calendar, and a dream…  Wish me luck!