Merry Christmas!

Can't believe there's only one card left on the Advent Garland. We've enjoyed having a couple of extra days with Daddy at home. (That's Ryan, to you.)

Tonight, for supper, I made Pizza Bagel Wreaths. My sister Cary sent me this link for the idea.


For tomorrow, Ryan has requested cheeze fondue, and we'll eat up our veggie tree tradition, as well.

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I hope that everyone has a wonderful December 25th, whether you celebrate the holiday of Christmas or not! Those of you who do celebrate Christmas, may it be very merry. I hope you all feel very blessed today and every day. 

Pumpkin & Spider Web Shaped Pizza

Friday night, we enjoyed Vegan Planet's idea for Pumpkin Face Baked Oatmeal. Tonight I continued to borrow her fun ideas with these pizzas. And I even got a, "You're the best Mom ever," out of it, so thanks, Robin.

I used this recipe for the crust and followed VP's "orange" idea of blending cream cheese with tomato sauce and cut olives for the facial features. I used my pumpkin cookie cutter to make "little pizzas."

I also made two larger (dough rolled out and cut into circles using my Kitchen Aid mixer bowl) pizzas. I piped a garbanzo bean/nutritional yeast cheeze sauce for the web and used her spider idea.

Heading back into the kitchen to start making some of Forks and Beans amazing-looking candy bars for tomorrow!

Happy New Year!

I'm not quite sure how I let 3 weeks pass by without a post. The month of December hasn't included my most shining moments as a wife, mother, friend, or blogger, apparently. I've been sort of unmotivated and blue and down-in-the-dumps and pathetic. Sometimes you just want to BE blue or lazy or pathetic, but the hard (and actually, good) thing about having kids is: you've got 6 little eager eyes staring at you at 7 in the morning, "What's for breakfast?", "What are we doing today?". You have no choice but to remain on top of things for their sakes.

I said to my husband one night, "I have a confession to make. I didn't get out of bed until 9, then I just stumbled downstairs just long enough to make oatmeal bowls for the kids and turn on a movie for them, then I stumbled back upstairs to watch t.v. until NOON." Maybe other stay-at-home moms do this regularly (and, hey, no judgment here!) - but not me. (I'm also their home school teacher; we have a lot to do!) That day was me at rock bottom. I've slowly crept my way out of my fog, and hopefully I'm back to myself. This is the perfect time for a few New Year's Resolutions.

But first...here is what New Year's Eve looked like for the vegan and so forth family.

Homemade Pizza

Whole wheat crust, marinara sauce, kale, shiitake mushrooms, black olives, garlic stuffed green olives, chopped broccoli, cheddar and mozzarella Daiya, tomato slices, and spices. The kids had alternative versions. My 5 year old doesn't like kale or tomatoes, and my 10 year old wanted cheese, olive, and mushroom pizza, with the veggies raw on the side.

Root Beer Floats

...for Ryan and the kids (I abstained.) - this is a HUGE treat because we don't generally let them partake in carbonation of any sort. Organic Vanilla So Delicious and Virgil's Natural Root Beer ("so rich and creamy, you'll swear it's made in heaven" - so says the bottle).

And several rounds of Pix Mix!

Pizza, floats, and Pix Mix! - we know how to party around here.

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays - I've read several posts so far, and I look forward to catching up on your others. I have OCD enough that I do things like, "Well, I can't blog about today because I haven't blogged yet about yesterday." etc., and then before I know it, 3 weeks have went by. So I'm jumping back in, and hopefully...I'll even be back...tomorrow, perhaps? Have a great New Year's Day!

A Little Sister Vegan Love

My most exciting food discovery this week was:

Beet cookies!

My sister Cary (who is a vegetarian) made them for us. (We were all visiting my brother, who lives halfway between us.) I loved these! They have a really fun (sort of spongey) texture. They are not overly sweet, rather plain like a biscuit, but I just couldn't get enough of them. She got the recipe from Weelicious (a fun kid food site), and she wrote about making them here on her blog.

Speaking of sisters...

I've mentioned before how happy I am that my youngest sister Tracy is vegan again. She is also very good to me. We met up at Whole Foods one day, and she invited us (the two youngest kids and me) back to her house. She made this barbecue chick'n pizza, using Gardein Buffalo Wings (without the sauce that comes with it). She spread pizza sauce on the crust, along with Annie's BBQ sauce. It was delicious, and since then, I've already made another pizza just like it.

TIP OF THE DAY: There is a $1 off printable coupon at gardein.com right now. They are also having weekly giveaways during the month of October for really great prizes.

She also invited us over to our Mom and Dad's house one night for homemade spring rolls. She worked all afternoon, chopping the ingredients (such as onion, bell pepper, carrots, cabbage, avocado, basil, cilantro, pineapple and other fruits - maybe pear, etc.). I had never put fruit in a spring roll before, and now I always will. She also had the thin cellophane noodles for the spring rolls, as well.

Doesn't that tofu look amazing? She baked the strips with a peanut sauce she concocted out of peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sweet chili and hot chili sauces, and vegetarian hoisin sauce.

It was set up so everyone could make their own spring rolls.

My contribution to the meal was miso soup. That's it right there (next to the peanut dipping sauce). What? Does that not look like soup? Yeah, I clearly put too many noodles in the pot. I planned on the miso liquid to have some tofu chunks, a few spinach leaves, and light on the noodles. It turned into a noodle dish, which was fine because it tasted good.

I'm looking forward to what my sisters make me next.

Pesto Pizza and Kabobs

Vegan MoFo continues...here are a couple of meals we've had lately...(and, incidentally, here is an article I just noticed on MSN: Meatless Meals: The Benefits of Eating Less Meat)

Saturday, I made a typical pizza like this one...and then I experimented, making pesto pizza. I spread Meditalia basil/pine nut pesto over the crust and topped that with spinach, zucchini, walnuts, asparagus, and little Daiya cheese. Next time, I would only add the asparagus partway through the baking process; it got more done than I would have liked. But it was delicious.

Ryan and I both declared this to be a meal worth repeating often. I discovered that Tornado LOVES raw asparagus. I, honestly, would have never thought of eating asparagus raw. He ate so many stalks it prompted me to google whether it was okay to eat so much raw asparagus. I wish I had Tornado's palate. He seriously eats healthier than I do.

Spaghetti with kabobs...I just grilled a bunch of pineapple, artichoke hearts, tofu, and zucchini and squash from my dad's garden and set it out on the counter with some olives and cherry tomatoes and let the kids make their own kabobs. They went back for multiple skewer refills.

See, I told you my momma was a vegan softie.

She surprised us this weekend with a carrot cake she bought at Whole Foods.

Thanks again, Mom!

Here is a list of all the Vegan MoFo participants.

They Say It's My Birthday

In honor of my 34th birthday...33 years ago today. Some things never change.

homemade pizza for supper...365 pizza crust, Eden Organic pizza sauce, grated zucchini (a great way to hide a vegetable - grate zucchini or squash on pizza), spinach, tomatoes, pinto beans (not usually a pizza topper but I had lots of extras left over), red bell pepper, green and black olives, broccoli, artichokes, Tofurky kielbasa, Yves meatless pepperoni, and Vegan Gourmet cheddar and mozzarella

Chocolate mousse pie, made with Wholly Wholesome Organic Spelt pie crust. In food processor, blend two packages of firm or extra firm silken tofu, melt 2 cups (I actually didn't measure, something like that) chocolate chips (I mixed chocolate and carob chips) in microwave then blend with tofu and a few teaspoons of agave nectar.

I ground up extra chips in food processor to crumble on top...Soyatoo and strawberries on the side.

I had some help blowing out my candles. I had to cup my hands over my candle to keep the little anxious blowers away until I'd completed my birthday wish.

Birthday wishes are very important to me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

our table Tornado and I decorated; all of our wonderful Valentine's Day cards on display

This has been a very long week. I felt close to breaking down at times. Yesterday, a wailing sort of sound actually escaped from my mouth at one point. I felt like I could just fall into a heap on the floor and cry and wail. I didn't. Just sayin' I could have.

Ryan has had to work late every night for two weeks, at least. Dash became sick around Tuesday, and he's just getting over it. I slept with him, in his twin bed, three nights in a row. I think I woke up every hour. He threw up for a couple of days, and I was certain that stomach bug was going to infect us all. However, I took him to the doctor on Thursday, and he was diagnosed with a throat viral infection.

Add in a few other appointments and errands I had to take care of this week...this morning, there were not many clean dishes left in the house. There was barely an inch of counter space left uncovered. If you've seen my house, you know there's a LOT of counter space. (Ryan and I worked together on the house this morning and made a pretty good dent.)

I'm not really sure what happened this week (and, oh yeah, for three days, I have had a terrible crick in my neck and back; I've been walking all hunched over and doing the whole body turn)...I say all of that to say: IT WAS TIME TO PARTY.

heart-shaped veggie pizzas

That's Sissy telling me that it was hot. She was LOVIN' the raspberry lemon-aid.

chocolate fondue for dessert

Grandma saved the day. I hadn't even had time to think about any special activities for the day. She had mailed us all of the red heart containers that are sitting on the table above. Inside each container was a joke written on a tiny strip of paper. The answer was written on another tiny piece of paper inside. We opened them up and read them throughout our meal. The kids loved it! Thanks, Grandma!