Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Bargain Shopping, Insanity, and MoFo

Fellow vegans, I am still on a bargain high from my weekend of grocery shopping.  I think most of y'all know that few things thrill me more than an extremely good deal  If you know where and when to shop, groceries on clearance are your bestest friend!

On Sunday night, Era and I headed over to Ralph's (a local grocery store).  Era saw this Modern Marvels about cheese and felt he needed some.  I figured I'd go along because they are the closest store in my area that has Daiya.  We don't normally shop there because the prices are pretty high.  But two glorious things happened this trip.  First, they finally are stocking Tofurky Pizzas!  We were so stoked that we bought all three flavors.  Then, we realized that they had a whole selection of vegan soy/seitan products on sale.  Italian sausages for $1.25, Yves deli turkey for 99 cents, and Tofu Pups for $1.25!  We bought four of each and froze most of them.  It was a treat for us because we don't really buy convenience foods normally.

Sabra hummus!

Yesterday I started Insanity again, after having to stop due to an injury.  This program is seriously no joke.  But I absolute adore the intensity.  So more food journaling should be coming.  I pretty much took the summer off from working out and doing food journals.  Fall is here so I definitely have renewed energy.  Take a look at yesterday's lunch:

sourdough bread, Italian sausages in marinara, VT cheddar cheeze, olive medley, hummus, grapes

Vegetarian Times cheddar cheeze

I really like the cheddar cheeze.  I think it absolutely shines paired with mustard (especially brown deli mustard).  I had it in a grilled cheeze today on sourdough.  Awesome sauce!

Kittee testers (washing greens for gumbo, King Cake)

Lately, I've been cooking a lot.  This is what I love about Fall.  It's cool enough to spend hours cooking.  Above is a mosaic of some Kittee testers.  Mostly King Cake, but there is a sink full of greens for a gumbo I ate yesterday.  Very good stuff!

Speaking of testers, I revisited one of my favorite cookbooks to test for: Viva Vegan.  I made the arroz con seitan last week for the Britney episode of Glee last week!  No theme.  I just wanted good food to go with possibly the best episode EVER!  Seriously...love the steamed white seitan so much!

arroz con seitan

I also delved into 500 Vegan Recipes.  I've made recipes here and there for this book, but I almost never have ingredients for food that isn't Mexican or Indian.  True story.  I did end up making the white pizza last week.  Really good!

white pizza

I feel like this is the longest entry of all time, but I did want to remind everybody that Vegan MoFo is just around the corner.  If you haven't already done it, please sign up here.  Also blog, tweet, and facebook it!  This is the 4th edition, and it is going to OWN!  I've been collecting ideas all year, and I hope to do some things that I've been excited about for a while.  I'm going to organize my ideas tonight.  What about you?  What ideas do you have for MoFo themes?

9 comments:

Andrea said...

Your photo of arroz con seitan gives me one more reason I should probably buy the cookbook. Every time I see a photo of one of the dishes, it makes me hungry.

dreaminitvegan said...

Your VT cheeze looks so good, actually the whole plate of food looks great. That would be a great appetizer plate to have with wine.

I heard Ralphs has a big variety of vegan foods but we don't have Ralphs in this part of CA.

Jen Treehugger said...

Thanks for that link for the cheddar cheeze recipe - it looks awesome - the whole plate does. That's my favourite way of eating - lots of different little bits and bobs and OLIVES!
I'm thinking of doing an A to Z theme for MoFo this year - but I may change my mind between now and then who knows. LOL!

Anonymous said...

I haven't come up with a MoFo theme yet, but hopefully I will think of one soon. It would really help me come up with ideas for posts. That King Cake looks so yummy! I haven't had one of those in years. Did you hide a plastic baby in it?!

River said...

Those veggie meats were a steal! Wow! I'm totally jealous! We had to pay way too much for Tofurkey sausages last week. Meh.

That cheddar cheeze looks awesome! I'm going to have to make me some. I love cooking with agar!

Arroz con Seitan makes me droooool! And so does the pizza! I had white pizza for the first time yesterday and I loved it!

MoFo? I'm going to make recipes from other blogs and write very short posts with a picture of the noms and a link back to the original posts. That's the plan, anyway!

Rose said...

It all looks so good. Especially that cheeze plate! The cheeze looks so perfect. I wish I could snap my fingers and have that plate of food appear before me!

Amandah said...

Your blog is so fun! I'm also (half) from Texas! Excited to explore all of your food:) check out my blog sometime!

Anonymous said...

RYC: Thanks, and I appreciate the comment! I've grown so fond of that square that I'm trying to find a good use for it. Still haven't untangled that knot though.

You know, I've never participated in MoFo before, maybe I should consider starting this year. Of course between MoFo *and* NaNoWriMo, which I'm also doing, my November's going to be serious business!

Anonymous said...

I too have been thinking about Vegan MoFo 4 a lot lately. I also want to do some themed posts. Some of the ones I want to do are: best of posts culled from previous blog posts; Theme nights like Mexican night and Italian night, casserole night, etc and perhaps some vegan food reviews and cookbook reviews.