People continue to surprise me...

Final MoFo Post and Happy Halloween!

It's an odd thing. People continue to surprise me. Often in ways that leave me breathing a weighty sigh, it must be admitted, but not today. Today, I was pleasantly surprised and here's why....

I brought in the goodies I baked last night and we had a bit of a Halloween binge:




This was the finished cheesecake:



And here's a non-blurry shot of the fingers, complete with their spidery friends:



Thanks for the pix, Laura!

OK, so the other thing that was happening was that one of our 'corporate business partners' was bringing in lunch from Panera. I assumed that there would be nothing for me as Panera tends to use a lot of animals and their secretions as sandwich fillings, soups and the like. Plus, why would anyone think to get something separate for me?

Well, I was blown out of the water by the fact that when Bonnie arived with lunch, she'd brought for me some vegan tomato soup, a sourdough bread bowl, chips and salad. So within the space of 30 seconds, I went from having no lunch (the paninis of last night scarely lent themselves to offering leftovers!) to having a veritable feast. And it transpired that my boss had orchestrated the whole thing by calling her up and mentioning that I am vegan.

Now this is the sort of accommodation that makes me want to bake cookies and cheesecakes and cupcakes and whatever for these people Every Single Day. Because that kind of thoughtfulness and respect of my choices - even though they do not share them - are just a couple of traits that make the folks I work with the best on the face of the planet.

On the Eve of All Hallows Eve....

It's Halloween tomorrow so tonight My Beloved is bravely making do with a panini for dinner. It is - in my own defence - a mixed mushroom, carmelised onion and soy cheese panini, but a panini nonetheless. The reason? Well, I am taking some goodies in to work tomorrow and have spent the whole evening baking. Following my recent crowing about the pumpkin cheesecake I have been conscripted to make another to share with my friends and coworkers.

However, this cheesecake almost came out somewhat differently. Take a look at this and see if you can spot the difference:



Yes, it's tough to see it immediately. And even tougher when you're in the grocery store, it's the end of a long day, you have a 45 minute ride home, it's raining and you just want to get back to cuddle your pups and snuggle with your beloved.

But it is terribly important - vital, you could even say - to notice the albeit rather 'subtle' difference between these two lids if you are going to spare yourself the complete panic attack I had when opening up the lid for the pumpkin cheesecake to find this:



Cheddar.

Cheddar-flavoured cream cheese!

Not particularly useful for a pumpkin cheesecake. Good folks at Tofutti - what do you have to say for yourselves???

The gods were with me, however, as I had some spares. I mean, what's the chances of there being 2 spare tubs of vegan cream cheese when you need them????

That aside, last year at my first ever vegan Halloween party (sigh!), I made some Dead Man's Fingers (from Yeah that Vegan Shit) which went down a treat. They are surprisingly simple and fun to make, absolutely ghastly to behold, and mouth-watering to munch, so I made a batch to take to my work and a batch for My Beloved too. See here....





Hopefully our coworkers are not reading this tonight and spoiling the surprise for tomorrow!

Apologies for the short post, but it is getting late and I hear my bed calling softly to me......

Stay Vegan (and spooky), Friends!

MoFo Wednesday: Back to my Roots......

It's time for some dietary sanity.

Cheesecake??
Truffles??????

No wonder I'll never be skinny. Bah!

And so, last night, My Beloved and I returned to our roots.
No, not fish and chips and jam butties* but roots - root vegetables.

Now that the weathter's turned decidedly nippy, I am newly possessed by the need to roast things. Fortunately for all I am restricting myself to things within the Plant Kingdom...such as sweet potatoes, parsnips and carrots. Thus:




Peeled, chopped and tossed with some olive oil, salt, black pepper, rosemary and a few whole cloves of garlic, they went into the oven at around 375 for about 40 minutes and came out looking like this.



Although relegated to the status of a 'side dish', they paired really nicely with the samosa-stuffed baked potatoes (from the Vcon) and some simple couscous.



There were enough roasted roots and couscous for lunch today, which put a smile on my face and a grimace on those of my colleagues. Whole roasted garlic cloves...how to win friends and influence people....!

;)

Stay Vegan, Friends!

* Being Brits, fish and chips was a staple in our pre-vegan lives and 'jam butties' is not nearly as excitingly rude as it sounds - it simply means a jelly sandwich. So there!

MoFo Tuesday: Chocolate Truffles

In this final week of MoFo postings, I have abandoned any pretense of health and sensible nutrition, it seems, in pursuit of pure, unadulterated pleasure.

Of the 'Chocolate Truffle' variety, specifically.

I recently acquired - at the behest of My Dear Mama - a copy of the Artful Vegan, the cookbook from the Millenium Restaurant. It is splendid - full of juicy foodie images and beautifully elegant recipes. They are not exactly your typical 'mid-week, just got home from work, via the gym, still got to feed and walk the dogs and it's already 8:15pm' kind of fare, however. But, this weekend, I took the plunge in a very minor way by making these:



Chocolate truffles.

They are super simple but ridiculously delicious. Here's what you do:

Chop up 3/4 cup dark chocolate and 1/4 cup dried cherries, thus:




Melt them in a double boiler along with 1/4 cup soymilk and a 1/4 cup of rum. Stir gently until it looks like this...a marvelously melty choccie confection!



Add a 1/4 tsp chili powder for a bit of a spice kick. This is optional, but fun!

Refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Using a melon baller (or teaspoon), scoop out the thickened mix and drop into some cocoa powder, sweetened with a little powdered sugar. Roll into cute little balls, popping the first one into your mouth - just for 'Quality Control' purposes, of course.

Yeah.

The mixture should make about 16 truffles (-1 for the cook!) so there are ample to go around.

I substituted dried cranberries for the dried cherries as that's what I had in the cupboard, rationalising that - this way - there's a double serving of those wonderful antioxidents!

The end result was deep, dark and rich beyond words. The kick of cayenne (I had no chili powder as such) comes on afterwards, but it is unmistakable and surprisingly good.

If you want to try them for yourselves, this is the book for you:



Or come on over to my place - I have a whole batch just waiting for you!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Flying South for the Winter

Nothing speaks of the upcoming winter as much as the turning of the leaves, fields surreal with pumpkins, the grocery store plethora of edible squashes and the migration of birds (and visiting relatives) who - sensing the nip in the air - decide it's very much time to excuse themselves and return to warmer climes.

And so it was a bittersweet weekend: my (visiting) father-in-law flew home, albeit eastwards, rather than in a southerly direction, and I marked the occasion by baking my first pumpkin cheesecake of the season.

I took the recipe from Colleen's JOVB and - yet again - it was a triumph. Honestly, I have not found one recipe in that book that hasn't turned out exceptionally! Don't believe me? Pah - take a look for yourself!



Need more?




When I came to the States, one of the differences in food styles was the humble cheesecake. Now, in the UK, the cheesecake traditionally is not baked - it's more of a refrigerated thing. And so the American cheesecake could be a tad 'firm' for my tastes. Unless they were 'Cheesecake Factory' cakes of course, but that's a whole other story from my pre-vegan days.

However, Colleen's recipe bridges the culinary divide for me: yes, it's a baked cake but it is moussy and light and delicately creamy. It uses Ener-G Egg Replacer and I think it's this very component that makes it so delectably more-ish. The spices are perfectly balanced - cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger - and the graham cracker crust is wickedly sweet and delightful. In the past I used to make a double thick crust - using twice the amount of crust mix for a really firm base to my cheesecakes - but this recipe really does not need that, and heaven knows I scarcely require the extra calories! Mind you, if you're going to have some cheesecake, HAVE some cheesecake! And this particular one is ideal for a late autumnal treat!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Lemons fruiting in the summer sun

Risotto.

Even the name sounds vaguely exotic and mysterious, conjuring images of Tuscany, tree-ripened olives, flaggons of wine, picnic tables spread with linen cloths and lemons fruiting in the summer sun.

Or is that just me?

Well, whatever the case, it is an almost **transcendental** experience to have a meal fully prepared and waiting for me when I get home. But such was - again! - the case tonight. Man, I am a lucky gal! :)

I arrived home after a long day toiling with code and HTML email campaigns - yeah, right! - to find that My Beloved had prepared a summer squash, mushroom and lemon risotto. He was, methinks, demonstrating his culinary prowess to his (visiting) father, but hey I'll take it!

This was the result:



He paired it with a very nice South African (!) Sauvignon Blanc and had a backup Merlot waiting in the wings. OK, we didn't really _need_ the merlot, but it was a nice touch, given that it's coming to the end of the week and I am yearning - YEARNING - for the weekend.

I'm ticked tonight that I have managed to miss my first try-out at the Iron Cupcake Challenge, but I guess something had to give. Things have been busy the last few weeks, so I suppose that this slipped off the table. It's a shame, but it makes me determined to enter next month. Wouldn't that be something - if a vegan cupcake won?

:: smile ::

Stay Vegan, Friends!

On Weird Types, Curries and Cookies Sandwiches

After a bizarrely stressful day, culminating in some random man shouting at me on the street*, I arrived home tonight to find that My Beloved had made dinner. He'd started out with Sarah Kramer's Eggplant Bharta recipe, discovered we didn't have enough eggplant, combined it with an aloo concoction of some shape and description, added mushrooms and a side of chewy brown rice. And it was great. No real recipe, just good, honest, off-the-top-of-your-head kind of food. Like this:



A close up:



So to make some kind of contribution - unused as I am to having dinner fully made for me when I roll in from work - I decided to use up the chocolate-citrus cookies I'd made. Fortunately there were enough for all three of us, so I made cookie sandwiches with some Tofutti Vanilla Almond Bark Ice Cream, served with a side of fresh strawberries. Thus:



An easy, quick and fun dessert. And a way to strategically use up cookies which really need to be eaten, before I can make more!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

**************************

*OK, so here's the story. I went into Northampton to collect a bottle of my father-in-law's favourite tipple, Tio Pepe. Having parked, thrown 10c in the meter (for 12 minutes!), I made my way to the local wines/spirits store. On the way, I noticed a man having problems with 2 bags of groceries - the handle of one had broken and spilled his stuff all over the road. So, feeling like I didn't want to walk on by, I crossed over the road and asked him if he needed help. He turned to face me and said 'Are you talkin' to me??? Are you talkin' to ME???' in that kind of cinematic way. (I forget which movie it sounded like, but whatever that well-known movie was....)

I replied, 'Yes', because I was indeed talking to him....he being the one potentially in need of help.....To which he graciously replied 'Don't talk to me. Don't talk to MEEEEE! I don't talk to people!!!!!!'

And off he stalked.

'Oh, right', was pretty much all I could say in response. And then I wanted to burst into tears. Because it's pretty much been a day like that today. Full of weirdness. And silliness. And people jumping up and down about nothing at all. And questions screaming in my head along the lines of 'Why?????'

Why don't you talk to people?
Why do you eat a MacDonald's in front of me?
Why do you not see the connections?
Why don't you accept help you clearly need?
Why do you ridicule my choices?

Und so weiter. Und so fort.

MoFo Wednesday

Sad to say, I am not above the influence. The influence, that is, of brightly coloured, pretty packaging of the eye-catching variety, enveloping what is sure to be a sinfully delightful treat.

Unless, of course, those treats are Not Vegan, and then I barely notice them at all.

Or unless they contain vegan, but yucky, ingredients, like...oh...spirulina, perhaps.

And so it was with a certain level of bemusement that I found myself inexplicably drawn to Betty Lou's Northshore Smackers. Specifically the Chocolate Spirulina Patties.



Whaaaa?

Yes,it's true.

The friendly, bright yellow packet enticed me and I succumbed to its wiles.

And I am sooooooo glad I did. The patty tastes like it should be a 'naughty' treat, but is actually not too bad for you. Four grams of protein, 180 calories and 0 cholesterol (of course!) make this a nice little pick-me-up on a Wednesday afternoon.

Try one - you might surprise yourself and actually LIKE spirulina!

Stay Vegan Friends!

PS: In case you're interested, here are the ingredients as listed on the packet:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Chocolate Liquor, Organic Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Organic Vanilla), Organic Almond Butter, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Agave Syrup, Organic Oats, Organic Brown Rice Crisp (Organic Brown Rice, Sea Salt, Organic Brown Rice Syrup), Organic Gum Acacia, Organic Spirulina (1000 mg per serving), Organic Flavors, Organic Sesame Seeds, Organic Rice Protein Concentrate, Sea Salt.

Communing with Sea Creatures and Bakewell Tarts.....

I don't have much tonight - work was long, only marginally successful and the drive home seemingly un-end-ing. So tonight's offering is an 'encore presentation' of yesterday's bakewell tart. A reprise, shall we say, in raspberries and almonds. Here's a close up of the finished product...enjoy!



and more...



Am toying with the possibilities of quitting work, dedicating my time to veganizing old Brit recipe favourites, writing a highly acclaimed, super-popular and hugely profitable recipe book and retiring to a small island in the Caribbean. There to commune daily with the mischievious and enchanting sea creatures I have come to know and love over the last few years (in 10 day increments anyhow)...what do you think? Could this be a plan????

Please send answers on $150 bills to Cackleberry at the above blogspot address....

And Stay Vegan, Friends! :)

Monday MoFo

Today is Columbus Day in Massachusetts and it is also - coincidentally - the first full day of my father-in-law's annual visit. He loves to come over in the fall - autumn - and see the colours change, and yesterday was D-Day - Dad Day!

Now, although he is somewhat...shall we say?...'indiscriminate' in what he eats, he does love a good Bakewell Tart. And who can blame him? For those unfamiliar with this particularly English (British?) treat it is basically a pastry crust, spread with raspberry jam and a layer of moist almond cake, topped with a thick layer of icing and a cherry. Possibly the best known commercial brand is Mr. Kipling and they come in individual tarts like this:



I also remember there being a family-sized tart when I was a child, but perhaps they don't do these anymore. Anyhow, I would no longer recommend them as they contain eggs and milk and all kinds of non-vegan things, so I guess that's something of an aside..... Anyways, in preparation for my FIL's visit, I made a vegan version, which I swear and declare is better than the original. It uses a pate brisee recipe which I found on Vegan YumYum along with an almond cupcake recipe from Isa's VCTOW (is that the right abbreviation??? the enormously successful cupcake book!) and I have to say the result is splendiferous! Here's how it goes:

Make the pate brisee and line a tin with a removable base thus:




Bake blind for about 10 minutes on approx. 400 degrees.

When it's cool enough to handle, remove the baking beans and spread wth raspberry jam. Raspberry preserves. Or raspberry jelly - whatever they call it in your neck of the woods!



Then make the cake-y filling and spread on top of the jam/preserves/jelly. It is a basic almond cupcake recipe and I used the full amount this time which is equal to 12 cupcakes...but worth it! (Last time, I made the bakewell tart shallower and got 3 additional cupcakes out of the recipe, but this time I splurged!).



When it came out of the oven, it looked like this:



Once it cooled, I make a very rough and ready lattice in icing - powdered sugar mixed with a splash of soymilk - and that was that.





The cake part was moist and deliciously packed with ground almonds. The jam lent a touch of sharpness to the overall sweetness of the tart and the pastry was divine - just thick enough to hold together perfectly but not so that it risked dominating the dish. Both my FIL and My Beloved enjoyed it and I have to admit it's one I'll be making again.

OK, that's all I have today. Am back to work again tomorrow so there might be shorter posts this week - what with work and a guest in the house.....Am still thinking through my ideas for the Iron Cupcake Challenge...'cheese' is hard!!!

OK, stay vegan, friends! :)

TGI....P!

Yeah!, it's Friday!

There were times this week that this evening just could not come around quickly enough. Man, oh man, it's been...shall we say...'challenging'. However, here we are at last.....and in Massachusetts it is a holiday weekend: Columbus Day! Hurrah.

So, in celebration of having made it to this point in the week, I am making a pizza.

OK, it's a weak excuse, but I'm feeling that way tonight.

Weak.

Burnt out.

And generally tired of it all.

Work, that is.

So what is better, I ask you, than a cozy Friday night in with My Beloved, our pound puppies and a large vegan pizza? Especially as this particular vegan pizza is loaded with diary-free homemade pesto, thinly sliced potato (a la Vegan Joy), onions, jalapenos (well, My Beloved wanted them even though technically I suppose they're not super-compatible with pesto....sigh) and diced chunks of Vegan Dad's buffalo chickenless wings. And, as I type, a smattering of Vegan-rella is melting all over the top.

An aside: evestirs...did you try the Vegan-rella yet??

OK, so I hear the little timer beeping away meaning that the long-awaited pizza MAY be ready. Am off with the camera.....be right back!





And there's the finished product. Pix are hastily taken, but I am too hungry to bother with 'styling'. Let the munching begin!, says I....erm...anyone need a beer???

Oh, and Stay Vegan, Friends!

One Down, Three to Go

Squash. Everywhere I look in our (admittedly compact and bijou) kitchen I see squash.

And so I took it into my head to bake one of the cheeky little things for dinner and this is the result:



In essence, all I did was to split an acorn squash in half, drizzle the inside with a little olive oil, scatter on some salt, pepper and a tad of garlic powder, invert both halves onto a baking sheet and bake until soft.

While that was happening, I roughly chopped an onion and a pepper (colour = your choice) and sauteed them off in a little oil basil, oregano and thyme. I added some Gimme Lean (sausage-style), chopped mushrooms, sliced sun-dried tomatoes and a baby bok choy that struck me as a novel ingredient. (Although I guess celery would have been more appropriate!) As a side, I threw a mix of brown and forbidden (purple!) rice into a pan with boiling water and let it cook until chewy and beautiful to behold!

Pulling the end result together was simplicity itself: rice is rice, say no more. I spooned the stuffing mix into the hollowed out, baked squash and was dissuaded from topping with grated Vegan-rella by My Beloved who felt it would have been overkill.

And that was that. A really nice meal, pulled together fairly quickly (even quicker, I guess, if you microwave the squash - although I've never tried that so I can't really recommend it, as such) and perfect for a Wednesday night.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other three squash gracing the vegetable rack.....

Stay Vegan, Friends!

MoFo for Wednesday: The Utter Deprivation of the Vegan Lifestyle

Well, I struck out on the rhubarb, sadly. Everywhere I turned at the FarMar there were squash, squash and more squash, so I bought a couple...four, in fact....and am thinking about what to do with them. Two were acorn squash, one a butternut (which never fails to make my giggle in a most juvenile way) and the last was a Blue Hubbard squash, which kind of look like a deformed smurf head. Pictures will come later.

However, having commited to making a rhubarb bread, and having no rhubarb, I decided to try out the 'sister recipe' from How It All Vegan: Apricot Bread. Oh man, am I glad I did.

The original recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of nuts (your choice) but since My Beloved is not a nut fan, I decided to swap these out with 1/2 cup diced dried pineapple instead. The combo of the pineapple, diced dried apricot and the cup of fresh orange juice makes this treat heavenly. Would you just look at this golden-brown loveliness?.....



And it sliced delightfully - just look at that crumb....



And I simply could not confine myself to one lonely slice. Damn, I'll never be thin....



But I will always be vegan. And I will always laugh (surreptitiously) at those who say that veganism is about abstinence and deprivation. Bring it on, says I!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

All Hail Vegan Dad!

Over the weekend, I decided on an adventure and peeked out from behind the relative safety of my much loved vegan cookbooks to embrace a recipe or two from the blogosphere. I had stumbled, you see, upon one of my new favourite people: Vegan Dad. OK, so I don't know him personally and I am unlikely, I guess, to ever so do, however, I love his blog and was determined to test out a dish or two.

And so, in the best tradition of Saturday night 'junk food', I selected Boneless Chickenless Chicken Wings, seitan-based little morsels of delight and wonderment. Mine, not quite as pretty as Vegan Dad's, looked like this:



They paired really well with some twice-baked potato skins stuffed with garlic mushrooms and topped with Vegan-rella, thus:



And finally, celebrating the fact that we now have a broiler (a small miracle!) in an oven whose door actually closes, we also enjoyed a plate of nachos - tortilla chips, topped with a mixed bean-tomato confection and grated MELTING Vegan-rella cheddar cheese. See here:



No, I'll readily 'fess up and agree that it was not the healthiest meal I ever dreamed up, but My Beloved just was not in the mood for another plate of sauteed greens. And, on a Saturday night, who can blame him????

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Fun with Rhubarb!

MoFo: Day 3!

This has to be a very quick post as My Beloved is taking me back up to Northampton for a bite to eat. It's been a 'helluva week' at work and really we need to get a couple of beers and wind down a bit. So, instead of making the pasta dish we *were* planning, we're off for some sushi or a veggie burger or something easy and quick, made by someone else!

However, in order not to let the side down on the whole MoFo thing, here's a sneak peek at my plan for tomorrow. I am really hoping to go to the farmers' market in the morning to get some of this:

'Wait!', I hear you gasp, 'Rhubarb?!?!?'

Well yeah! I found this truly scrumptious recipe in - I think - The Garden of Vegan for Rhubarb Bread and I really - REALLY - want to make it again. This was how it turned out last time:



It was moist, sweet but not overly so, the crumb was well rounded, held a fantastic texture and it just melted in your mouth.

Well, in my mouth anyhow!

So it's on the menu again this weekend, as long as someone at the farmers' market can provide me with a few stalks of the red stuff.

Here's hoping!

Stay vegan, friends! :)

Happy World Vegetarian Day, 2008!

I am off to a blazing start on this MoFo Challenge! Today, dear reader, as you probably know is World Vegetarian Day and, in anticipation thereof, I devised a cunning plan. It was breath-taking in its simplicity: offer great vegan baked goods and they will come!

Yeah, and when they showed up, I also had available some brochures from Vegan Outreach and some podcast sampler CDs from Compassionate Cooks. Let me explain....

Last night I spent most of the evening baking. I made scores of mini chocolate-orange cupcakes, battalions of carrot cake mini cupcakes, great troughs of chocolate-raspberry chewie cookies and hods of ginger sparkle cookies. The overall haul looked like this:



and these were my supplemental materials:



and



Devious, no?

So, I arrived super-early at work to set it all up. We have a central cafeteria where everyone comes to swipe in, so that seemed like a logical place to host this 'event'. 07:40 in the AM (yeah, I said 'super early!) saw me spreading leaflets and CDs on the table, uncovering cakes, pinning flyers to notice boards and generally having a great time. As you can see, this whole event was carefully orchestrated. I took these pix and stole quietly away.

The general scene:



...and a close up or two:







Anyways, it was not long before folks were happily tucking into the food and by mid morning there was - by all accounts - only a single, solitary choc-orange mini cupcake left. People were obviously too polite to take the last one, methinks! At lunchtime, however, I peeped into the cafeteria to take stock and beheld a scene of utter devastation. Not a single crumb remained!

But even better than that, approx. two thirds of the outreach materials had been picked up and 24 out of 30 podcast sampler CDs had also been accepted. Which means, I hope, that the whole experience provided not only a mid-week morale boost and a tempting, semi-healthy snack but also great Food for Thought.

Which is, of course, what it's all about.

A great day to be vegan, friends!
:)

Not Your Momma's Cupcakes...

After something of a lull, I am back to blogging and hope that the upcoming MoFo challenge will reinvigorate me for two of the things I love best in the world: cooking great vegan goodies and boasting about them! I think I must already be feeling the effects because, at lunchtime today, I took a deep breath and signed up to become an Iron Cupcake.

Yes, you *did *read that correctly: an Iron Cupcake!

The website happily proclaims:

This is the central hub for the ultimate world-wide cupcake competition. A monthly ingredient, a monthly challenge, fabulous prizes, new ways to find other cupcake fanatics just like yourself.

And, as far as I can see, the idea is that each month a new ingredient is proposed for inclusion within those little packets of fun we call cupcakes. From the IC site, the challenge:

is a way for bakers from anywhere, all over the world, to take place in the ultimate flavor challenge and promote world peace, one cupcake at a time.

Last month's challenge was basil - a herb more commonly considered in connection with stewed tomatoes and with pesto than with cupcakes, I suspect. However, I learned of it through Vegan_Noodle and was inspired both by her creative use of this wonderful leaf and her subverse thumbing-of-the-nose at Hurricane Ike. So, now I want in! I have emailed the IC folks and begged to be included on their blogroll so hopefully we will soon see Cackleberry listed there too.

Bring on the next challenge: I am ready!

Oh, and Stay Vegan, Friends!

MoFo!

MoFo? Nah, not what you're thinking! In fact, this refers to the 'Vegan Month of Food' - for October this year! The idea is that we vegan bloggers completely inundate and overwhelm the blogosphere with accounts of deliriously delicious, fantastically fabulous, exquisitely edible vegan food....and I am in! I pledge to blog about food - specifically - every weekday for the month of October. For those of us who are 'math-challenged', that's 20 times within 31 days! But, you know what? I will do it.

Today, in preparation, I baked. Lots. And took pix to document this endeavor. On the menu were cranberry orange scones, low-fat banana and chocolate chip bread and vegan sausage and peanut butter biscotti - the latter for my precious pooches, Darwin the Dog and Sir Humphrey Hound. Facing the scones and banana/choc chip bread, My Beloved is speechless and managed to snivel only the following:

I want one. I want it NOW! And it's not fair, because I haven't had my dinner so I can't have my dessert!

There will be pix and recipes available during the month of MoFo...so check back frequently.

I am so excited I can barely speak - let alone type!

Stay Vegan, Friends!