Beyond Willpower

I spent all week long preparing for this party, cleaning, baking, cooking, buying goodies and snacks and it went off without a hitch! I'd like to thank my husband Joey and my friend Bri who helped so much! I made vegan samoas, buckeyes, mint chip cookies, wedding cookies, and peanut butter blondies. I also made ham for sammiches, vegan chili and vegan buffalo chicken dip, the last two were especially well received, the buffalo dip was pretty much gone by the end of the night, and I had made a GIANT pot of vegan chili, which people were taking home at the end of the night. I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Oh, and I almost forgot, as a last minute thing right before people started showing up, I made roasted brussel sprouts (and added cauliflower), and did them up maple glazed style. Soooo good! Unfortunately I got distracted by entertaining (I haven't had a blog for awhile) and TOTALLY FORGOT to take pictures! :( Either way, it was fun, we drank, and p...

So, I'm having a holiday party this coming Saturday. I have a bunch of friends who all have different dietary restrictions/choices. I'm trying to cater to my vegan and dairy free friends as well as my high protein diet friends who are trying to cut out carbs! I have decided to make two different types of cookies, Lazy Samoas and mint chip and I'm making peanut butter blondies and also buckeyes. I'm super excited. All of these recipes will be coming from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar Food wise, I'll be making vegan chili, and roasted ham to be sliced for sammiches. I have a cocktail style dip and vegan buffalo chicken dip. I've made the vegan buffalo chicken dip twice, once with seitain (this did not turn out well, sorry T.J) and once with smart strips 'chicken'. That came out FANTASTIC! We did buy some groceries for the house today as well, and we are making veg choices when eating out, and then eating the left over meat that's in t...

So another on plan day, hurrah. :) Tonight I'm making avocado pesto pasta from a recipe I got from the website: www.chefchloe.com Doesn't it look amazing!: Be sure to check out her website if you haven't already! So I know that my sudden interest in baking is probably not the best thing for my diet. BUT, last night I made peanut butter blondies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar . They are one of my absolute favorite recipes from that book. Anyhow, I somehow managed to eat some and stay within' my calorie range yesterday and I left some for Joey and took the rest to give away at work. There is ONE left. It's for tomorrow. Half of it, the other half is for joey. :) Anyhow, so I'm feeling so into baking ever since I found a flour to gluten free flour conversion chart ! I used it last night for the blondies and it WORKED> Came out far better than the previous method I was using: Guessing! :( So, last night I ordered Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The Wo...

So, there has been some ruckus around here lately. I was cooking for a friend recently and the carbon monoxide detector went off a bit after our meal. It was a reading of 77 in the hallway and 256 in the kitchen. (It should be 0 at all times.) So, I called the fire department. They said it was coming from the kitchen and might be the stove. I was told to open all the windows and that the gas man would be coming. Let me just say, I rent. I've lived in this place, with this stove from surely 1970 (it was that awful goldenrod color) for 13 years. The gas man said it wasn't the stove, but that the gas line needed to be replaced anyhow. It may have been the carbon build up on my pots and pans burning. The landlord's son in law came to replace it and saw what awful shape the stove was in. It's always been crooked and the oil in a pan will all fall to one side, and the feet on it were so rusted there was nothing that could be done to even it out. The oven never worked righ...