Where to Start...

(Note: This is obviously being written by the sister that is not going raw, as I think each one of the photos below would not be included in the raw food diet. Just thought I'd clear than up right now, in case anyone reading this thought that Tracy had changed her mind!)

I made Wheat-Meat Cacciatore from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. It was OK, but found myself thinking back to a comment I remembered before about slow cookers. On someone's blog, I think they said that all slow-cooker stuff tastes the same. I disagreed at the time, but found that this recipe tasted exactly like my Half-Day Ratatouille from the same book, despite having completely different ingredients. I didn't find that it reminded me of my mom's cacciatore that we ate as kids (with gross chicken), so I'll have to try and re-create that with seitan instead.

For my snacks this week, I made these fantastic Chocolate Banana Muffins from a recipe I found on the Fat Free Vegan's site. I had my doubts that were was no oil, but they were great! Since Kyle would also be snacking on these, I also threw in some chocolate chips. They were SOOO good!

Speaking of Kyle, it was his b-day this past week, and he asked me to make a cake. He loves carrot cake, but I knew that I couldn't take that on. As a result, he asked me to make my applesauce cake into a b-day cake. So I multiplied the recipe by 1.5 and poured into two 8-inch cake pans (lined with parchment paper with pan sides oiled), and baked for the same amount of time. For icing, I used the Vegan Buttercream from VCTOTW, and piped some chocolate ganache from a parchment paper tube (note: those blobs with squiggles are supposed to be balloons). It tasted great.

On Friday night, Kyle and I ate burgers, and I made Potato Subji as a 'different' side dish to our regular potato wedge fries. No idea where I got the recipe from originally, but it's one of my comfort foods. I don't think Kyle would consider it to be one of his however :( I think I used too much turmeric. In case you're wondering what the black things are, they are popped mustard seeds.

And finally, la pièce de resistance...I did my first gym workout of 2007 today. Sam and I decided to do a workout, then treat ourselves to Starbucks. On the way to Starbucks, I was starting to feel a little guilty about working out, then ingesting a calorie-laden drink, but somehow got over it. What I was not expecting was this:

A VEGAN LOW-FAT CHOCOLATE BROWNIE!!! I couldn't believe my eyes. I had to order one (and clearly I'm the only one in Barrhaven that had, since the edges were quite dry). It wasn't horrible, but tasted like a brownie I would make, so my $1.95+tax was not wasted. I was just so surprised and excited to see something vegan in their dessert case!!!