Monster post: Treats, Sweets and Some Real Food, Too.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. My brother-in-law and his wife headed back up to Seattle late Friday night because Max had a lot of stuff to get done for a work project that was due today. Sadly, they missed out on weekend brunch. Now, I know this is going to be, like, the third time in the past month I've posted pumpkin pancakes using the VwaV waffle recipe, but this time there's a twist:



A new, fantastic way to use up extra cranberry sauce! Katie's cranberry sauce was dee-lish and I had to figure out a way to eat some more, since Jim won't help in that department. It was very yummy, alongside our standard rosemary potatoes.

Jim and I got to go on a little road trip on Sunday to Eugene, about 2 1/2 hours south of Portland. We finally sold a car that we've been trying to sell for a few months and the buyer, who lives in southern Oregon, asked if we could meet halfway. The weather was looking ominous, so we didn't get to do much exploring, but we did make a stop at a bakery that I'd heard much about, Sweet Life Patisserie . It is a hopping little bakery that offers quite the spread of vegan treats.


This isn't the best photo ever, but it gives you an idea of the amazing and beautiful cakes that were all vegan. All of their cakes, vegan and otherwise, were really well priced, too, with whole cakes ranging from $15-30. Not too shabby.


This is a shot of some Mexican chocolate pots and chocolate dipped cookie sandwiches, both of which are vegan.


Some muffins and some incredible looking cinnamon rolls, schmeared with a thick vegan frosting. Wowzers! Jim and I were overloaded with options!

Jim really wanted something savory. Unlike me, he can't eat sweets on an empty tank. This was a Mediterranean pizzatta:

A soft, doughy roll smeared with hummus, spinach and roasted red peppers.

I'm a full believer in dessert first, so I got a pizzatta to go and indulged in a slice of possibly the best cheesecake I've ever had:

This was a tofu-based cheesecake. I didn't really think it was possible for a tofu cheesecake to taste good, let alone unbelievable! It was truly creamy, flavorful, sweet without being too sweet and just plain heavenly. The crust had the occasional little granule of salt, making it a fantastic taste experience. Sweet Life is clearly a hot spot in Eugene, at 4 on a Sunday the place was packed and we had to sit outside in the chilly weather to get a seat.

Last night, after getting home from our trip, we started decorating our tree! This is the first year in 2 years that we've had a regular tree setup because Linus is so crappy with it, but I really, really wanted a tree. So far, so good.

It's over half decorated, minus about a foot and a half of the bottom to minimize destruction via chewing.

I gave Bindhi the aerial tour of the tree. She liked sniffing all of the ornaments.


Today I did some bulk cooking. I had a few random ingredients that I wasn't sure what to do with, so I turned to my trusted friend, Martha Stewart.

Let me take a moment to talk about my serious love for Martha. Many people criticize her and dislike her, but I genuinely respect her from the bottom of my heart and this is why: She came from a generation of women who began to shun the domesticity usually associtated with women and then the tide began to change and people looked down their nose on domestic things like cooking and crafting. Martha stepped up and showed that you can be a successful business person and still enjoy making table centerpieces. I spent a large portion of my adolescence feeling ashamed that I liked to do things like decorate cookies and make handmade gifts because I felt this societal pressure that I was supposed to be "beyond" that. Thankfully, people have hung in there and now there is a whole crafty industry thriving from what I trace back to Martha's trailblazing. You can have your cake and eat it, too, so to speak. You can be an independent woman and a feminist and you don't have to reject things that are historically "girly" to do so. Because you have the choice of whether or not to do it in the first place. So that is why I love Martha Stewart, even if she eats meat and can be a bitch. You can't be perfect, I suppose, and at least her daughter is a vegetarian and got Martha to swear off fur. It's a start.

Anyway, I had some mushrooms I really needed to do something with because they were on their way out. A quick search her website came up with this recipe for Mushroom Barley Soup.


I altered the recipe by using 2 cups of sliced, chopped fresh cremini mushrooms instead of the dried ones and instead of using some sour cream, I just whisked the flour and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch into 1 cup of soy milk and added that to thicken it. I also pureed a couple of cups of the soup to really make it hardy and thick. I cooked up some wild rice to pack it up with for a very stick-to-your ribs meal that reminds me of Minnesota winters. I can never eat wild rice without thinking of Minnesota.

Then I wanted to try cooking with millet, which is new to my cooking and this recipe also used up a stray sweet potato that was lingering in my pantry as well.



These are millet Veggie Burgers. I didn't have any parsley or peas (how did I run out of peas?!), but otherwise I stuck to the recipe. This makes 8 really big patties, so next time I will halve the recipe. We really liked them a lot. The sesame seed oil along with the spices created a truly complex flavor. They are like other typical patties, a little delicate and I recommend refrigerating them for at least an hour. We just had them on a toasted Dave's Killer Bread baguette with baby romaine lettuce, tomato and the standard fixin's and some green beans, or as Jim decided to rename them tonight, green French fries. The boy is weird.

After dinner we had to have dessert! I couldn't leave Sweet Life having tried only one treat, so we got this chocolate raspberry cake to go.

It was just as heavenly as it looks, if a tad too rich, but it was good for sharing.

Breakfast muffins: I got to use up some more homemade marmalade with these Orange Marmalade muffins from May All Be Fed, the recipe portion of a John Robbins book.
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The recipes in this book are really well-rounded and this particular muffin recipe has no added sugar, it uses the marmalade and orange juice for sweetness. They are yummy, but next time I'm going to add some vanilla to make them taste like orange creamsicles. I plan on doing more cooking from this book soon, it's been getting neglected on my book shelf.

Okay, now I've been up far too late! I need to go to bed, so I'll respond to comments on my previous post tomorrow. Night!