Who Likes to Rock the Party?

So, how's it goin?  It's been a while.  I've been holding off on blogging because I don't have any complete thoughts right now.  I do have a bunch of small thoughts, which I will gladly share with you in listy format...sorta.

Last weekend we had some people over and I have something else to add to the vegan tested, omni approved category: that raw cashew cheese au poivre I've talked about fanatically (again, I used water instead of rejuvelac)!  It was the talk of the night.  They barely even touched the dairy cheese, but demolished the vegan stuff.  I don't think I'm gonna purchase dairy cheese for parties anymore.  Even though Era's a pescatarian, he rarely eats cheese and a party is completely possible without it.  The past several parties have proven that omnis seem to like my vegan cheese ballz and spreads better anyway.  Hee hee.

Last night we went to a party/fundraiser for the school Era teaches at.  Two cool party ideas I picked up: place food in multiple parts of the house and decorate with wine bottles.  I usually just throw some chips in the living room and keep the rest of the stuff in the kitchen, but they did a good job of putting a bit of everything in all the conversational hot zones.  It was very welcoming.  And because they were having a wine and beer type atmosphere, wine bottles were placed on shelves and tables throughout the house because they didn't have a bar.  If you wanted to open a new bottle, you just brought it to the kitchen and opened it.  Love that idea!

I recently bought a Pro Bar on a whim while at the grocery store.  It's a meal replacement bar.  I managed to devour the cherry pretzel one.  SO effing good.  My latest mission is to see if I could somehow recreate it at home.  I just can't justify three bucks for a bar that I could make at home.  But this was good...a bunch of seeds and nuts, dried cherries, chocolate chunks, pretzels, peanut butter, etc.  Mmm.

In completely asstastic news, I shopped while hungry (I know) and finally picked up these herb dijon breasts by Gardein.  I'd been eyeing them for awhile.  Unfortunately, they were so freaking horrible that I don't know if I could buy anything from them again.  The texture was great.  The flavor was vile!  It tasted nothing like mustard...just saucy and bitter.  Blech.  Era tried the bbq one and said it was horrible too.  Boo to that.

That's all for now.  I have a ton of new cookbooks that I haven't talked about yet.  I just bought 500 Vegan Recipes and Authentic Chinese Cuisine for the Contemporary Kitchen.  So excited about these!  My tester copy of VCIYCJ came in a few weeks ago so I'll talk about that sometime this week.  Also this week, I'm gonna be talking about holiday plans and party stuff.  Cuz I like to rock the party!  One more week until winter break.  Hell yes.