The Fruits of My Labor

I got some serious knitting done this week. Three projects in all. That's a lot considering I normally take months to finish one thing because I am easily side-tracked. Plus, I usually have two or three projects going at the same time. Behold -My maracas (dirty!) are modeling this baby-sized devil hat. I made this for a friend's son to match the adult-sized version I knit for her a couple of months ago.

The lava lamp is wearing the black kitty hat I made just for me. Grrrr.

Wrist/arm warmers. The pic does no justice. These are actually bright lime green. Here's a close up of the thumb "split":
These aren't as long as I would like, so I am making a black and white striped pair to go all the way up my arms. I am going to need these this winter; it gets cold where I work.

What I have accomplished on my vacation:

1). I started my Christmas shopping (So early?! I know!)

2). Finished knitted arm warmers that have been sitting on my desk for over a month (Lime green!)

3). Fixed (possibly, cross fingers) wireless router problem after a week's worth of back and forth communication with the e-mail support peeps.

4). Vacuum and clean out car (Maybe wash it tomorrow)

5). Get nose pierced (See blurry pic; oh, man are they gonna love me at work...)

6). Finally organized all of the recipes I have printed off the interwebs into binders, neatly divided into sections.

7). Called friends/wrote letters; basically kept in touch, re-affirmed that I am still alive and kicking.

8). Applied for a new job. Sigh.

9). Realized that I am way to boring and domestic.

10). Turned off computer, went in search of a life.

Kitchen Gadgetry

I am on vacation all this week. It isn't a traditional vacation where I have my butt planted on a beach some place exotic, it's more like a vacation where I sleep in and knit. Yesterday I took a day-trip to a town 80 or so miles from home to antique and shop at a really great outlet mall. In this outlet mall is a kitchen store called Kitchen Collection. Here I found:

The Ulitmate 3 in 1 Caddy! It's a Wilton cake, muffin/cupcake and mini muffin/cupcake carrier for clumsy folk like me. I thought it would be expensive like all of Wilton's products, but it was only $20 bucks.

Here's the first layer, I guess; the cake platform

The muffin/cupcake tray

The mini-muffin/cupcake tray; one tray, two sides.

The whole shebang, locked into place and ready to go.

Mini silicone bunny pans. I am beside myself with glee!

Spoon straws! Perfect for shakes and smoothies!

Silicone measuring cups.

Sushi mold! For the totally inept! Hey, that's me! I am terrible at weilding a rolling mat. I always get my sushi too fat, and stuff falls out the sides. Now all I have to do is stuff rice and veggies and faux-meats into the mold and voila! Roll it up in some nori and chop, chop, chop!

This concludes yesterday's journey. Thank you *takes bow*

Frooty Muffins

I seriously have no idea what to call these since I deviated a bit from the original recipe. I started with a recipe for Cantaloupe Muffins from VegWeb. I am not a huge fan of cantaloupe so I wanted to add soemthing else to make it more tropical I guess. I threw in a small banana and added some Strawberry Banana Vitasoy to the fruit and pureed it all together. I used half spelt flour and half unbleached white flour, and 1/2 cup demerrara sugar and 1/4 cup sucanat. As always, I sprinkled the tops with demerrara before popping them in the oven. I was wary of the time it was supposed to take to bake them, so I watched them closely. They were ready to come out at about 15-17 minutes.

Mine got a wee bit brown around the bottoms, but that's okay. They are very sweet and not in a bad or overpowering way. Neither of the fruits is dominant in taste, giving them a very pleasant fruit punch kind of flavoror maybe like Froot Loops, with an underlying brown sugary taste. This was just a half recipe, so I got about 7 standard sized muffins. I can't say enough about how yumtastic these were.

An exciting find...

Okay, for some it may not be that exciting, but considering I leave in a very small southern town with not another vegan for miles, let alone anyone that knows what a vegan is, it was for me. My first thought was, 'Ha! A ccokie that I don't have to make!' The cookies themselves are very soft, and have a subtle banana flavor and a few nuts scattered about. Really, nothing special. I consider this progress. The next slightly larger town over from us has two health food stores: one ran by two old ladies, and the other a recent opening that carries so much more. I found these at the two old ladies' store. It is the first thing I found in there specifically labeled as 'Vegan'. I bought three, plus a soy natural fudge brownie that is also vegan, but I didn't get a picture of that before it was eaten. I would probably only buy these again if I was in serious cookie withdrawl and could not get to a kitchen to make my own. Not that they were bad, just bland.

Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Definitely not the best pic, but sadly the best I could do in my kitchen. Today's venture turned out pretty good. I fused two recipes together; one for Carrot Spice Muffins and another for Chocolate Wave Zucchini Bread. For the most part I followed the first recipe, just subbing zucchini for the carrot, then added unsweetened cocoa powder and chocolate per the second recipe. The only other change I made to the first one was to use soy milk instead of soy yogurt, since I didn't have any soy yogurt or soy sour cream (which I usually sub for yogurt). They turned out fluffy, and the chocolate was subtle. What really made them pop was the juicy raisins and melty chocolate chips intermingling together. I really dig the spicyness. Oh, and they are kind of good for you.

Apple Zucchini Muffins and Bonus Cookies

I love apples. I mean, love. I would take apples intravenously if possible. There is nothing better than a crisp, tart Granny Smith. I get a little weak in the knees for a Pink Lady. I recently got "Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk," a 'Zine created by a PPK alum. After flipping through it, I decided that I must make the Apple Zucchini Muffins before all else. Firstly, because I am an obsessive when it comes to muffins. Secondly, because I had never thought to combine the two. Why had it never occured to me?! I tweaked it a bit to my liking. I used half all purpose unbleached white flour and half whole wheat spelt flour. I put applesauce in place of oil, for an extra special apple-y treat, I cut back the sugar and added raisins. They are super amazing.

I made cookies too, and since there is no way on earth all this good stuff is staying in my house for me to eat it all, I am taking them to work tomorrow. I don't even think that my co-workers realize that they are eating vegan. They have no complaints though. I made Sour Cream Chocolate Chippy Chunky Cookies. I got the original recipe from here. I added the chunks myself. I had half a bar of Lindt 70% Cacoa Dark Chocolate bar laying around and a partial bag of Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. So I threw them both in. I used Toffutti Better Than Sour Cream, Earth Balance margarine and Ener-G for the egg. Well, half an egg in this case, though I probably would have been alright without it. I halfed the recipe, but only got 11 cookies. I made them too big, I guess, but who cares. They taste like you are chewing on a chocolate cloud of dreams and sugar...they kind of look like clouds too...