Girl Scout Cookie Sale, Chocolate Pie, Magic Bullet and more

Saturday, daughter manned a Girl Scout Cookie booth. Anyone want to buy a cookie? Daughter did well, but I'm glad the cookie sales are over.
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Both kids did well in their piano festival, too. They each got 49 out of 50 with a "Superior" rating. Daughter had some memory baubles in her piece that cost her a point, and I can't remember why son lost his point. But I was proud of them.
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Sunday, the kids and I made a "chocolate cheesecake" (I think I got the recipe off vegcooking.com). We made it for a birthday dessert since my folks were coming over. It was really soupy when I pulled it out of the oven so I was afraid we were going to have chocolate syrup in a graham cracker crust, but it firmed up as it cooled. It was really good--it would have been better if I had gotten some Soyatoo whipped topping at the store. No one could believe it was Tofu.
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Hubby went ahead and got me a Magic Bullet blender--mom had said she'd chip in. She said that they couldn't afford to get it for me right now so they'd split the cost with hubby, instead. So when they got there, mom changed her tune and said that, instead, they were going to take our family out to the tepanyaki restaurant for my birthday. I appreciate it, but I can promise that will cost more than my Magic Bullet did. Also, I am glad we weren't depending on the money they were going to chip in or we'd be SOL.
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I exercised today and Saturday but took Sunday off. I am doing well.
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And, by the way, the Magic Bullet is getting a work out. Everyone had their own smoothies last night. Kids each had a smoothie this morning. I had blended banana quinoa for breakfast and asparagus soup for lunch. And hubby and kids each had a smoothie this afternoon.
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Dinner tonight was home made multi-grain biscuits, TVP sloppy joes, and asparagus. It was pretty good. (Especially the biscuits)
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Well, that's a fast wrap up.
I think hubby wants to go to WalMart as soon as son gets done with his homework, so
Ciao for now.

Chocolate Give-away, exercise, and my new peeler

First of all, I was perusing CCV's blog just a few minutes ago and she is having a Jocolat bar give-away. If you want to participate, here is the web address. http://chocolatecoveredkatie.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/so-what-about-this-chocolate-giveaway/ (Sorry, I don't know how to do links, so I just copied and pasted the URL.)
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It's a great blog. I visit it regularly. She had a recipe for Tofu pudding--basically just blended silken tofu with flavors. I had it for an afternoon snack yesterday--mine was tofu, cocoa, agave, and a splash of vanilla. It was really good. Who would have thought that something that simple would be that good?
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I'm really proud of myself. I have exercised 2 days in a row. Last night, daughter and I exercised while we watched Biggest Loser--about 35 minutes worth. And today, I exercised after the gals at the office went to do lunch and errands--about 30 minutes worth. I don't know why I have such a hard time exercising. I feel so much better after I do it, but I can't seem to get motivated to do it regularly. It's frustrating. I would really like to be a runner. I have daydreams of myself jogging out in the sunshine with our pup. But the reality is that I am so self conscious (I still see myself as a fat chick) that I only jog on the treadmill or in place in the living room. I am going to try to exercise more regularly.
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I was also proud of my daughter for exercising with me. We did it as sort of a game. I need to do that with her more often.
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Last night, daughter and I played with the Titan Peeler. I still love the peeler, but the jury is out on the julienne cutter. We were playing with the dinner potatoes--peeling, making "chips", making hash-browns, etc. All of the product went into the curry to cook. And all of the little bitty potato pieces cooked down to make the sauce really thick.
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Today, I julienned a zucchini for my lunch. It takes longer than my julienne attachment on my mandolin, but the clean-up was so much easier. Also, the shreds are a lot finer using the Titan. I like it, I'm just not sure if I like it better than my mandolin.
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Well, I ought to get back to work.
Ciao for now.

Superbowl party and revisiting "restaurant reviews"

OK. First things first. I went back and read my restaurant review post and something stood out to me. So let me clear something up. This is regarding "A Taste of Thai". The restaurant owner is totally allowed to have his own point of view about his customers. I just think it is extremely poor business practice to make fun of some customers when other customers are withing hearing distance. Even if I hadn't been included in the group he was talking about, I still would have been offended thinking "gee, if he talks bad about other customers, what is he saying about me when I'm gone." So I'm not saying he's not entitled to his opinion, I'm just saying that he was exercising extremely poor judgement. Whew, that's out of the way.

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Now on to the Superbowl Party! I don't really care for football and fortunately, hubby doesn't watch too much of it either, but we do usually watch this one game of the year. (Actually, I do more reading and paying attention to the commercials that I do watching football.) I made the cake pictured above, nut cheese, and guacamole (all vegan, of course).

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Then we had a light dinner (bocca burger and broccoli--kids and hubby had chicken nuggets and broccoli) at the start of the game. Around half-time we had cake. And in the last half, we had popchips and nut cheese and guacamole.

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The game was actually good. I watched more of it than I usually do.

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And then, just before bed, I have to admit it, we had cake and ice cream (rice dream for me). Oh well.

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So today is going pretty good. I'm having a hard time getting my mind around a spreadsheet I need to get done. I might get it about half done today, but it's going slow.

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For food, I had coffee and banana oatmeal for breakfast and spinach salad and home-made whole wheat/oat flour bread w/ margarine. I was going to have a sandwich and then I realized about 11:00 that I had no bread so I made the whole wheat quick bread (I posted a recipe here a while back) and used 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 oat flour. It came out really good. I didn't even bother with the sandwich fixings it was so good.

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I'm going to make a curry tonight. I'll finally try that curry paste I got at the Asian food market last week.

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Well I'm off again.

Ciao for now.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! My Daughter decided to get her hair cut short on New Year's Eve. She had never had a real hair-cut up until August of 07. Her hair was all one length and went half way down her butt. Then she cut it to like the middle of her shoulder blades. Then in December of 07, she cut it to just touching her shoulders. Then in August of 08, she cut it to a chin-length bob with bangs (her first bangs). And now she decided to do short all over. It is so cute. (I keep saying "she cut it"--actually we had a stylist cut it.) The picture is her outside the mall right after she got it done.
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For new years eve, we had my folks over and had sparkling juices (grape, blueberry, and strawberry), veggies with a red pepper nut cheese for dipping an chocolate fondue with brownies, graham crackers, marshmallows, bananas, and strawberries for dipping (only the marshmallows and brownies weren't vegan--I didn't eat those). I know it's hard to imagine, but the veggies hardly got touched while the chocolate and goodies disappeared in minutes.
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I didn't have cocoa butter so I used coconut oil for the chocolate--here is what I did:
coconut oil (melted to a liquid in the microwave)
maple syrup
cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder)
Whisked them all together (adding first more syrup and then more cocoa powder until it tasted good).
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I put it in the fridge until we were ready for it and was surprised at how hard it got. It melted nicely over a candle, though (my fondue pot can use a candle for just melting or has an alcohol burner for actually cooking--I learned the hard way that the alcohol burner is not for melting chocolate.) I'm thinking I could have put soy or coconut milk in for more of a milk chocolate.
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Then the folks went home, hubby and I went to bed, and the kids stayed up to watch the new year in the central time zone. (that put them to bed at 11-ish in our time zone.)
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On new year's day, we were just lazy for a while and then took a drive to look for the deer. They winter around our area.

This is a deer that was by a pond right next to some people's house.
These were some rock people and a rock cat that someone had built up on the side of the canyon. I had never seen them before even though we had been on that road before so I think they were new. Pretty Cool!

Here's the sunset. It was pretty overcast so the sun made beautiful colors on the bottoms of the clouds.

We had a really nice drive and the kids made the most of their new cameras. I would guess that we saw a total of like 30 deer--some were nice bucks, but we couldn't get close enough to get really good pictures of them. The kids each took probably like a hundred or so. Good thing they are digital cameras so I don't have to buy that much film or pay for that much developing.
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Today's going pretty good, so far. I've gotten lots of work done, I ate the left-over veggies from Wednesday for my lunch, the kids aren't fighting too awfully much, and hubby is at work.

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Well, I had better go and get back to doing something.

Ciao for now.