What's been going on

First off I need to tell you that I am a stay at home mom, trying to start a small at home business and raising two kids (three if you count the husband).  The last couple of days have been hectic as I have been working with a kids store in our area that I was hoping would carry my product.  And they now do, yyiiipppeeee.  I hand make personalize baby/child bracelets, teething necklaces and custom bracelets.   Here is the website,  http://www.bornbeads.com/.  As of today, you can now purchase teething necklaces and ready made bracelets for that last minute Christmas gift at Over the Rainbow here in Calgary.  Okay enough of my excitment, here is what I have for today.

Since this week has turned out to be so busy, I haven't really stuck to the menu I set out on Monday.  The last couple of nights have been slapped together meals, unfortunately one quite bad one last night.  Hopefully will be back on track tonight.  Here is what the daughter and I had yesterday for lunch:


We had edamome, marinated tofu with rice, yes that is white rice.  I had it in the fridge and didn't want to waste it.  We usually eat white rice at dinner (my husband in asian, he hates brown rice) but when it's the daughter and I, I usually make brown and enough to store in the fridge for the week.  I slathered the miso gravy on my dish and soon the daughter was screeching she wanted what mommy had too.  She ate it all up, have I mentioned the gravy is "TO DIE FOR".

For lunch today, we had some pasta noodles with a Vodka Tomato sauce, I added some hemp seeds to the sauce, they don't have a strong flavour so it blended in nicely.  The daughter kept looking at the little seeds but also kept on eating.  For tonight I am planning a pizza night, the son has drum lessons and by the time we eat dinner it's quite late and pizza is fast. 

Also the PCRM Physicians Committe for Responsible Medicine is launching their 21 day kick start program on January 1, 2010.  http://support.pcrm.org/site/PageServer?pagename=21day_vegan_kickstart.  There are meal plans, celebrity tips, community forum, daily messages to keep you motivated.  I signed up for this the last time around and it was very helpful and informative.

Lots today

I have quite a list of comments for today.  First, a couple of weeks ago I talked about grocery shopping and price comparisons.  I specifically talked about vital wheat gluten, at the time I thought Superstore was the cheapest, until I was at Safeway.  Well last week I was in Planet Organic (one of my favourite natural food stores) and found it for $8.69 a full $2.30 cheaper then Superstore.  It was a shock to me, as I always thought specialty food stores would be more expensive.  So word to the wise, even though they advertise cheap food prices, when it comes to the natural food section, please shop around, as they are not the cheapest. 


We experimented with the juicer this weekend.  We tried pear juice and it was a hit with everyone.  I do have a older not very well made juicer and it left behind ALOT of pulp, this is why I wanted a newer one.  The new juicer did a fabulous job of juicing all the fruit, out of 6 pears I had maybe half a pear in pulp.  Fantastic!  When I did the grocery shopping this weekend, I stocked up on oranges, apples and a pineapple.  We will do a bit of testing this week, I am hoping to get a leaf or two of spinach into one test.  Will have to be something green that we are juicing so the picky son won't notice.  Hehehehe. 


And finally to let you know about the "vegetarian" dinner I was served at my husband's company christmas party.  The first course was a salad with a side of potato based something which clearly had bacon in it, pass, but the salad was good.  The second course was a mushroom soup in a broth base, I have never had a mushroom soup in anything but a cream base.  This was very, very good and I am going to be doing some searching on the internet for a recipe today.  Then we had a sorbet to cleanse the palate.  Our main course was a baby carrot and two asparagus spears on top of mashed potatoes and then some sort of eggplant thingy in a pastry shell.  Absolutely no taste, no spice, no herbs, no flavour whatsoever.  It was very disappointing, I tried three bites to see if it got better, but no such luck!  I was hoping for a risotto, pasta, lasagna, something with flavour, sadly no.



Yesterday I was able to carve out a bit of time to do some cooking for the week.  I found two soup recipes in my "1000 Vegetarian Recipes" by Carol Gelles.  One was a Lentil Cauliflower Soup and then a Creamy French Lentil Soup, both sounded yummy.  When I cook, I sort of follow a recipe, so this time I did a combination of the two.  The combo soup turned out great and I was able to freeze two meals worth.  The second thing I tried to make was seitan, I got the recipe from http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=112.  It looked very easy, so away I went.  This was my first time making seitan and I had never tasted it before, so I am not sure how I did.  My version didn't quite look like the pictures I had seen, as for the flavour, it was good.  I fried a couple of pieces for dinner that night and had it with mushroom gravy, rice and carrots. 


So far this week I have planned:

• Roasted Vegetable Lasagna
• Pizza night
• Soup/Stew night with some good french bread (it's cold outside, good hearty soup)
• Seitan and mushroom Stroganoff

Again, not in any particular order.  Have a great day, stay warm and safe.

The juicer is here.....

The juicer is here, the juicer is here.  As you can tell I am very excited and so is our son.  He was the first one to have it out of the box, unfortunately I had no fruit in the house to juice, so off to the grocery store I go.


Now it's unpacked, washed and waiting to be used.  The juicer came with a disc of e-booklet's, they are funny.  First off there is four booklets, three are almost identical and then one on beauty treatments.  The pictures are from the 70's and the juicing recipes are almost all the same. 


So now starts the job of making sure that our picky eating son gets some good nutrients into him.  Not sure if you can survive on bread, butter, plain pasta, pizza and apples.  I bought him chocolate flavoured Ensure, to help him put on some weight and some added nutrients, he said it tasted yucky.  Tasted like chocolate milk to me, sigh!  Hopefully all my efforts and money, will be rewarded, probably not, being a mom is sometimes frustrating.


I am going to start out plain, apple juice, maybe try carrot, watermelon and grape.  I might need to get a second job to supply us with all the fruits and vegetables I will need to buy.


A recap on dinners this week, the Green Curry Deep fried tofu was a bomb.  I had never used green curry before and when I added it to the coconut milk it didn't turn any shade of green.  So I added another spoonful and then another.  Yikes, it was so hot we couldn't eat it, we had to throw it out.  Bless my husband who made a good effort at it.  I made french bread to go with the Guoda and Lentil soup and it was a big hit.  Well, except for the son of course, who just ate the bread. 


It's the company christmas party tonight, so will let you know what "vegetarian" dish I get served.  I will be trying the Sesame crepes with mushroom cream sauce tomorrow night.  Also Christmas decorating will be taking place over the weekend.


Have an excellent weekend everyone.  (my two followers)