Biking and Cabbage

Today I decided to be a little adventurous. Had my super awesome breakfast and then decided I must go to Ikea. I didn't really have a lot I wanted to buy from Ikea but I love going there and wandering around. I also decided I should try biking there. I've ridden a bike before but not as my get from Point A to Point B transportation. I've also never ridden in the street before. I hate to say it but I think the last time I rode a bike outside was when I lived in Houston and it was legal to ride on sidewalks. I was extremely cautious about this whole experience. I wore a helmet the entire time and did a quick test run around the neighborhood. I also didn't make any left turns. Next thing I knew I had my backpack on and I was off. It wasn't bad. I was either on back streets in neighborhoods or in a well marked bicycle lane. When I did get over to Ikea the last little stretch was a hill next to a freeway. I decided I walk that. I wouldn't want my legs to give out on me on my way up.

It doesn't look that steep in the picture but it was enough to make me nervous. So I walked over the hill and explored Ikea and the mall on the other side.

 I even found a cute little bakery but alas, no vegan baked goods. Don't worry. I'm making these soon. I've found some great stuff on the internet I want to experiment with.


After I got home I was starving so I whipped up what I like to call the Everything but the Kitchen Sink Stir-Fry. It consisted of some carrots, some broccoli stalks, cabbage, cucumbers, tofu, kelp noodles, seaweed, pickled ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil. I don't really have a recipe. I just took everything I had leftover in the fridge and used it.

The tofu takes a bit of time for preparation. I had bought the tofu yesterday and so I took it out of the container and the water and then set it on a plate. I found another moderately heavy plate and put that on top. That helps to drain the water out. After dinner I dumped off the water and cut the tofu into strips and on very low heat I browned the strips in a non-stick pan. Don't use any oil because the tofu will absorb that. I kept turning them a lot so they wouldn't stick or nudging them around the pan.

 I heated up some sesame oil in a pan, sauteed the cabbage, carrots, broccoli, and cucumbers. Next I added the seaweed, kelp noodles, soy sauce, pickled ginger, rice vinegar and tofu.

The pickled ginger totally made it for me. It is not a pretty dish but it was tasty and hit the spot.

 Next I want to start experimenting with Ethiopian food.

Street Art

While it has been nice to spend some time in the suburbs of Oakland and enjoy luxuries like Target and Ikea, I am definitely ready to get back to my tiny apartment above the Smoke Shop in the Upper Haight. One of the things that I really love about San Francisco is the sense of community, creation and the art work that is everywhere.

This is just a little bit of the street art I get to see every single day.

Favorite Meal of the Day

BREAKFAST!!!!! Greatest meal of the day and the most important. I've always been a big breakfast person, even before trying to be a vegan. I love pancakes, french toast, bacon, eggs, breakfast sandwiches, eggs benedict, crepes etc. I love brunching with friends outside in the sunshine with a crisp bellini. Just try to stop me. So since I decided to go vegan I knew I had to find a way to start my day off right. It's nothing fancy, doesn't take a lot of time to prepare but it fills me up and keeps me going.

It's just Grape-nuts mixed with Granola, then I add fruit on top(I usually do a peach and some strawberries). Lastly I finish it off by pouring some soy milk or coconut milk or whatever milk I'm drinking that week over it. Recently I decided to make my cereal even better by adding a spoonful of Sunflower Seed Butter and a tablespoon of Chia Seeds. I'll get a picture of that soon. I really like Chia Seeds because they form a gel around the shell when wet and act like tapioca. I personally prefer the taste of Sunflower Seed Butter over Peanut Butter though I don't know much yet about the different health benefits of both.

I also heat up in a pot on the stove a combination of 3 parts Coconut Milk and 1 part Almond milk and add it to espresso for a vegan latte. And since the Coconut Milk and Almond Milk are already sweet, I don't need to add sugar. Some people do all Almond Milk or Soy Milk. Soy Milk keeps burning the bottom of my pan so I stopped using that. You can also microwave it. Needless to say I have a decadent coffee drink in the morning. I can't help it. I need coffee in the morning and I didn't want to give it up and this is a really tasty alternative.

Day Off!

So today is my fantastic day off. I spent my morning being pretty lazy and watched a movie while eating my power breakfast. My power breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. It is simply grape nuts, some Bob's Honey Granola, a piece of fruit cut up and a spoonful of sunflower seed butter. One day I'll post a picture but I keep forgetting because I get so excited about eating it. I did also decide to experiment with making a Seaweed Salad. Since I'm staying in Oakland watching my friends dog, I have to take a new bus to work and it goes right through Chinatown so I decided to stop and check out the seaweed selection.

I found a bag of dried and stringy seaweed in a corner store for a dollar and decided I should give it a try. I have no clue what kind it is since I can't read chinese but it looked like it would work and was such a small investment. Next I got home and put my seaweed in some water to hydrate it. After it was soft, I put enough for me to eat in a small mason jar. I would say approximately 2 cups of seaweed. The rest I kept to the bare minimum.

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame seed oil
Black sesame seeds for garnish (I ran out of my tan ones)

Considering the seaweed smelled like the bottom of a lake before I added the other ingredients, I was pleasantly surprised by the final product. I added everything, shook it up in my mason jar and had it for lunch an hour later.

Mockery Creme Brulee

So I have a bit of a sweet tooth and my absolute favorite dessert is creme brulee or a simple egg custard. So I found a very simple recipe for Vegan Creme Brulee.

1 13.5 ounce can coconut milk

¼ cup + 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar

1/8^th teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

¼ cup + 2 Tablespoons vegan milk of choice (I chose coconut)

4 Tablespoons + 1 ½ teaspoons corn starch

3 Tablespoon light brown sugar

4 Tablespoons vanilla sugar 

Mix together ¼ cup of the coconut milk with the granulated sugar, salt, vanilla extract, coconut milk, and cornstarch.

Next heat up the remaining coconut milk and the brown sugar on medium heat on the stove and add the mixture slowly. It should start to thicken.

Finally put it in ramekins or mason jars or a bowl etc and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours or until firm.

For the crispy top you can either  sprinkle the custard with sugar and then take a torch to it or if your container is safe for the over, you can sprinkle it with sugar, turn the oven on broil and place it on a pan close to the top to burn it. You just want a quick scorch. You don't want to cook the whole thing. I didn't do either. I lack a torch and over safe ramekins. The final product is more like a coconut pudding rather than creme brulee. Also, the coconut flavor of the pudding chills out over the next day or so. I've also been eating it with little bites of peanut butter. You can mix in chocolate chips (Trader Joe's makes vegan ones.), toasted coconut, little marshmallows, almonds etc.

French Toast Fail

Every Saturday morning my boyfriend and I make French Toast. We've been doing this for about 7 months now so when I decided to try being vegan we actually had a conversation about french toast. At first I said I would just eat oatmeal and he could still make his french toast. Then I found an simple recipe to make vegan french toast and he said he would try it. So here it is-

1 banana

1 cup coconut or almond milk

1 Blender

6 slice of bread (we used 3 vegan nut bread slices for me and 3 classic white bread slices for him)

We put the banana and the coconut milk in the blender and pureed it until it had the same consistency as normal french toast batter. You are free to add more or less of either one depending on your personal taste.

Now the hard part. We set the burner on medium low and adjusted from there as needed. When you lay down the bread on the pan make sure you give it time to brown on the bottom without burning it. I am a premature flipper and would lose half the banana batter on the pan. 

I personally like the nut bread because it has more structural integrity. The white bread acts like a sponge and sucks up everything and you have to be very careful not to destroy it. My boyfriend also didn't like the fact that the middle stays a little soggy. He wants it completely dry all the way through. I don't mind the moisture. Even with normal french toast I think he tends to overcook it to the point of it being like dry toast. 

So in an attempt to fix the soggy bread dilemma for my boyfriend, we decided to improvise and make the batter thicker by adding flour. I don't know why but we thought this would keep the white bread from absorbing as much of the batter but it didn't. This was flawed logic. The flour ruins the taste in my opinion and doesn't help at all. In fact the middle was soggier. Before it tasted like banana bread. Now it tasted like flour. I think my boyfriend liked the flour. It was hard to tell. It didn't fix the soggy middle. Kudos to my boyfriend for trying something vegan with me. I personally like the original recipe of just banana and coconut milk. My boyfriend needs his eggs. 

Back in the Saddle

It has been a few months since I've really done anything artistic besides the homework that my teachers gave me. So yesterday I started working on a new cartoon. All I've really managed to do is create my two main characters. Since the last cartoon I made had so many scenes, I wanted to focus on something that had a single location.

I like the bug the best.