SHAMROCK SHAKE-UP!

Hello Friends!

One of the hardest things about being dairy free is not being able to participate in certain holiday grub. Prettymuch every holiday offends and I end up eating salad with olive oil and lemon (awesome dressing for DINO kale, not tuscan!) and maybe hummus. Yep.



However, I am here to solve at least one holiday craving:

VEGAN SHAMROCK SHAKE!!!

(This is an adaptation of one of my fave vegan/raw restarant's recipes, from Sun Cafe, in Studio City, CA. )

The original recipe calls for some random items that I'll leave to the restaurant, and frankly make the shake unreal sweet and thick like a McDonald's shake, that I can never finish, and that says something!
Mine is a little lighter and has less hard-to-find ingredients, and that's okay.

• One Banana
• however much frozen spinach you can stand (1/4-1/2 cup maybe?)
• 8oz -ish UNSWEETENED almond milk
• 1/8-1/4 tsp of peppermint extract (you can totally use real mint leaves, i just used what i had)
• 4-5 ice cubes
• and I added the Spectrum Organics Chia/Flax/cocoa/coconut blend for some extra omegas! 1Tblsp 

clockw from  top L: Young slama, eldest slama, papa slama, my slama

Holy cow. I'm going to go drink my delight now!  And on actual st. patty's i'm going to laugh as Chris's hockey team (who wears green uniforms) totally catches both of the teams they are playing off guard by pinching. There isn't a penalty signal for pinching, so i will laugh. BWAAHAHAHA

Procrasti-blogging and procrasti-waffles!

My busiest days are definitely my unscheduled days. #makingalist
— BeccaCuellar (@BeccaCuellar) March 4, 2013

To Do: 

(before I mentally prioritized... because I couldn't get out of bed to get my planner)

1. Eat 

2. Go to Yoga

3. Set up Etsy page

4. Send things to friends in the snail mail. 

5. Empty storage unit for preparation to move. 

6. Choreograph like, a whole song.

7. Pick age-appropriate songs for teaching.

After mental urgent vs. important discussion and lots of facebooking/twittering/instagramming/pintrest-ing:

(in that order and then back and forth for the next 1.5hrs)

"Don't try to do it all today, you weren't really scheduled to be anywhere all week, after all..."

Age-old time-management punnet square.

Pick something to do that is due soon, i.e. urgent. 

1.Eat, Make yummy waffles (get sidetracked and write blog about getting sidetracked and making yummy waffles)

2. Dance stuff, because it's due way sooner than any of the other things on the list.

leave for tomorrow:

1. Eat, it'll make everything easier to do and plan...

2. Yoga, better timing than today. You're going to dance tonight anyway!

3. Empty storage unit, that's gotta happen sooner than etsy-ing. 

BOOM!

WAFFLES!
Anyway, I've been obsessed with this waffle topping amazingness all weekend. When I find something I like, I eat it a lot!

Easy energy-health packed waffles

 2 Van's Gluten-free, everything free Waffles
1-2 Tblsp Laura Scudders Peanut butter (nothin' but peanuts!)
1-2 Tblsp Maple syrup (the nice kind my mom buys when she's staying here, because it doesn't have all sorts of gross fillers)

 and an optional assortment of fruit. my go to in the AM is a banananaaa!




directionals:
bake waffles.
spread pb on waffles, just enough to fill some of the holes, not too much, gets real aaron burr real fast.
drizzle maple syrup
voila!

Oh, and now I'm going to go make those waffles, and freakin' eat them!

all things cheese. nut cheese?

HAHAHAAH, that sounds gross. (I'm still laughing)

We are getting ready to move and my cookbooks have all been packed. LAME. So, I'm trying to find my favorite recipes online....Which are not showing themselves--well at lease the specific one i'm looking for.  Gravy that tastes like Ikea's swedish meatball sauce!

However I found a website that shows some of my fave vegan cookbooks, pictures of the completed recipes, and reviews--but no gravy. I'll keep searching but I guess I'll have to wait to cook in the new kitchen... when we find it.

Of the recipes on this tease-site I look forward to trying the pimento and tempeh cheeseball for the superbowl!

I also want to try to make Chloe Coscarelli's  spinach artichoke dip. I hope it's different than the other recipes I've followed, because it may as well be made with real cheese for all the flatulence that ensues.

Have a lovely, Cheesus-filled day!

Sweet Potato cookie CRACK

So, I love sweet potatoes... and I love cookies.

bam. CRACK.

I used this recipe, but I used all the rice flour I had left and added bob's red mill GF Biscuit mix. I don't like any of the bean-based flours, they taste green. I don't know how to describe it in any other way, but my grandma used that terminology when roasting peanuts. Raw. It tastes undone. Anyway, Rice flour IS actually awesome and fluffs up nicely. As long as garbanzo or fava bean flour is a small amount of the mixed flours, it should be fine. 

I also used vegetable shortening instead of butter/coconut oil, and agave nectar instead of sugar. I added agave after I pulsed the dry ingredients and added the shortening, to gauge how moist the dough was getting. 

And by moist, I mean, crumbly like the recipe says. I'm amazed the dough worked, and I'm also amazed I didn't burn them, since I've burned everything I've made the past few days, thanks to TRUEBLOOD.

It gets super sticky, so I may have used 1-2 Tblsp, rather than the 3-4 Tblsp of fine sugar.  

No, they aren't too sweet, but they do the trick. And I'm still going to eat them all in one day.

HAPPY HORMONE SURGE!

Starting Over

It's that time again. January.

Everyone I know is starting the new year over. Whether it was full of good things to continue, or bad ones to let go. Time to start anew, without judgement, because we all are.

Instead of resolutions, I am taking a cue from my day job, and setting intentions:

• CREATE A WEBSITE FOR MY WORK.
• That was #1

• Finish what I start.
•  SO many unfinished sewing/crafting projects!
• Life gets in the way, which is awesome.  

• Chase my dreams. 
• Maybe not chase, but reach and take steps to get closer.

• Take smaller steps, bites, whatever. 
• Live like a student with a spongy, open brain. 

• Choose love over anger, hate, ignorance. 
• We are all just trying to get by, a little niceness never hurt anyone. 

Foodie + science geek = heaven at the Exploratorium!

This is SOOOOO neat!!

I love cooking, and I love eating, and I luuurrrrvvve science!! vegan cooking (experimenting) is really a science. Learning to replace animal-derived ingredients is not just a flavor thing, let me tell you.

Most people who enjoy cooking will tell you that it is aallllll chemistry. I REALLY liked chemistry in high school, probably because my teacher was a burned-out hippie with big white hair, and a rainbow lab coat. On the first day of class he wrote "ACID" and "BASE" on the white board and asked us to respond with things that we thought of when seeing these two words. Us  10th graders said "Milk," "Litmus test!!" "pH balance!!!" and he responded with, "Hasn't anyone ever heard of dropping acid? Come on!"

Ha!

The next time I thought of chemistry was when I saw it as an option on the GE requirements list. MUCH to my surprise, all of the chem classes were full. (I really thought I was the only Nerdy McGeekPants obsessed with plating pennies...) SO, I took three geology courses (because my other secret passion is rocks...) and learned a WHOLE lot about the state of California. Now road trips are rich with descriptions of the formation of all mountains and fault lines in sight. My favorites/ones I always drive over are San Andreas Fault and Bay Area Fault lines. And of course my OBSESSSION with liquefaction:  What happens when you build land on water?

Geology Rocks. We did sooo many experiments with food! including one with oreos... subducting convergent boundaries, where we would take one cookie off and try to scrape the frosting away to imitate the accretionary wedge. (snarf.)

The point:  I always get there eventually!
At San Francisco's Academy of Science Exploratorium there are exiting events for geeks of all ages! But, for the sake of this post/blog, there is an event coming up called Gastronomy in San Francisco which is literally the science of food! I REAAALLLY want to go! Who wants to join me?

and i'm totally making these oreo sugar cookies when I get home! 

Wow, tangential tendencies!!!

I hope my loud clothing distracts you from my awkwardness!

A few years ago, my mom showed me a 12-year-old's style blog, Tavi Gevinson's style rookie. I was totally baffled and HOOKED. I know I had style at that age, but I don't think I could write the way she did when I was 12. When I was in middle school, I collected all sorts of strange objects that were ties to childhood when I was dreading growing into a young lady.  Quarter machine rings, and OH the rubber rings that came with  Hard Candy nail polish, and Barbie shoes....Barbies. Those were hard to get rid of. We still played with them in secret, but justified our actions to ourselves by saying we were re-styling them, by cutting their long manes into butch pixie cuts, because what did we know about cutting hair!?

My best friend and I were effected by our mothers collective eclectic style. A little old, a little new, a little flea market, a little chic boutique-ing. We both wanted to look different than everyone else, so much that we both chopped out hair into barbie pixies too! (which neither of us will EVER do again... for fear of looking like we'd been attacked by a lawn mower) At least butterfly clips had been invented to soften the blow. My hair was just long enough to put some gel and random sparkly clips in to call macaroni.

Every attempt to make ourselves blend in was really a ploy to stand out. Don't look at my awkwardly almost-grown-up body and unibrow, but look at AAALLLLL the necklaces I have on, and my really huge pants!!!

SO,  the point of all this jabbering:  My mom sent me a video of Tavi! A closet interview!! I was so excited to hear her voice, and I TRULY enjoy how often she discusses "aesthetics".

Tavi Gevinson Closet Interview (vimeo, so I don't think I can imbed. SORRY!!!)


I completely understand what she's saying. I know the feeling of wanting to look interesting to deflect insecurities. that was my life in high school! She says she collected insults and came back fiercer the next day.  The best ones I got were "did you get dressed in the dark," and "so, do you just roll around in a pile of clothing and wear what sticks?" (oh and that lawnmower one? that was from an ex boyfriend. clearly not a match made in heaven).