A while back I wrote this tongue-in-cheek post and reminded PETA that "sex sells".
Uh, based on their banned Superbowl ad, I guess they figured that out...maybe a little too much for their own good!
PETA, one thing is certain: you are edgy.
As I look back at your history of banned ads, I do see that you have indeed tried the "sex sells" approach before, so I do stand corrected.
Show us a picture of you from your childhood.
Here's me with my kindergarten "boyfriend" playing on our street in Detroit, back when the motor city was still golden.
Tonight I tried a recipe that just blew my mind. If you try it, I am sure it will blow yours too. Back when I was a vegetarian and even in my pre-veg days, one of my favorite Italian dishes was Pasta a la Vodka - penne pasta with a rich-creamy-spicy-garlic-tomato sauce simmered with vodka. Tonight I tried a vegan version from my new favorite cookbook, Veganomicon and I'll be damned if it doesn't pass for the dairy version. Only just imagine the health benefits when heavy cream is replaced with almonds. I know...I know...you're thinking, almonds? How in the world can that pass for heavy cream? I'm not sure myself, but let me just thank the authors, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, that it does!
from page 193 of Veganomicon:
Penne Vodka
serves 4
time: 35 minutes
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup vodka
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. salt
a few dashes black pepper
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil, plus a little extra for garnish
1/2 lb. penne pasta
Bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Preheat a saucepan over medium/low heat. Add the oil, garlic and crushed red pepper to the saucepan and saute for about a minute, until fragrant, being careful not to burn. Add crushed tomatoes and spices. Cover, and turn the heat up a bit to bring to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, add pasta to the water and cook according to package directions.
Once the sauce has simmered for 20 minutes remove half and pour into food processor or blender an add almonds. Blend until creamy and slightly grainy. Add this mixture back into the simmering tomato sauce on stove and stir until all sauce is creamy. If you own an immersion blender, you could add the almonds directly to the sauce and blend until creamy and only slightly grainy (I want an immersion blender!). Either way, the pasta should be done by now, so drain and set aside. Add the basil to the sauce and mix the sauce and pasta together in the pot. Serve garnished with a little extra chopped basil.
As the authors say, "No Brooklyn Italian restaurant is complete without this creamy tomato dish" and now vegans...or those who want to avoid cream based sauces don't need to live without it either! Salut!
This is my cure for what ails ya around that 2:00-3:00pm hour when you're feeling low energy and want to grab a soda, coffee, candy bar or other such caffeine laden treat. It's my afternoon pick-me-up smoothie. Technically, it's also my breakfast smoothie. It can be tweaked by substituting different types of fruit, or liquids (chocolate soy milk, orange juice, hemp milk , almond milk) and adding almond or peanut butter. I play around a lot with the ingredients but am always sure to add rice protein powder and flax oil or ground flax seed (for those healthy omega 3's) to every smoothie.
My Vita-Mix is my most beloved appliance in our kitchen because it creates such a consistantly smooth blend from frozen fruit and ice compared to any other blender I have used.
This afternoon's smoothie contained the following ingredients:
and resulted in this:
and best of all...this**:
**results not typical, your actual results may vary...in other words, don't sue me if you don't turn into Super Woman.
"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
"What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
"This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."
~Barack Obama, Inauguration Speech, January 20, 2009
AMEN!!!
Oh Happy Day!
Oh Happy Day!
Barack Obama is our President Today!
Two of my absolute favorite things in the world beside my hubby, children and dog are: CUPCAKES and TEA.
And enjoying both at the same time equals pure bliss!
Imagine my delight at discovering this little treasure on a shelf at one of our local antique/treasure/junk shops:
I took her home and named her "Isa" after the author of my all time favorite cupcake recipe book, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I am thinking some Inaugural Day baking and tea-tottling may be in order.
There is quite a lot to celebrate tomorrow!
Well, hello there, Dear Reader! You seem to have caught me during my "beautification" process.
Although it looks like I spread yesterday's truffle recipe over my face, the truth is not all that far off.
I am sporting a LUSH Fresh Face Mask...specifically the "cupcake" one - my favorite because it smells so delicious and does wonders for my skin. Just listen to these ingredients: Rhassoul Mud, Linseed Infusion, Glycerine, Talc, Cocoa Powder, Cocoa Butter, Fresh Mint, Sandalwood Oil, Vanilla Absolute, Spearmint Oil, & Peppermint Oil.
Smells good enough to eat...just like a real chocolate mint cupcake!
Today I went shopping at LUSH and had a grand time. I am not normally much of a shopper, but this is one store where I lose track of time.
I have been a proud, self-proclaimed, LUSH addict for over 10 years. I don't really have any vices, except for my LUSH addiction and the force is strong with that one!
I can still remember clearly the moment I stepped into my first LUSH store in Whistler, B.C. one Thanksgiving Holiday. I was with my mom, who I inherited the product junkie gene from, and we were over the top with excitement at our new find. The store was unlike anything we had ever seen or smelled before...such a feast for the senses. It was like a New York deli collided with a beauty lab.
There were slabs of hand made soap, ready to be cut, weighed and wrapped up in deli wrap paper. There was deep cooler filled with ice and an assortment of fresh face masks in stainless steel bowls begging to be spooned out and played with. There was a wall filled with troughs of colorful, fragrant bath bombs. A LUSH employee would offer demonstrations of their swirling, fizzing action in a hot pot of water, releasing their wonderful essential oils and herbs. There were pots full of moisturizing cremes, powders and solid massage bars that smelled good enough to eat. We knew we stumbled onto something unique and visited several times over our holiday and every return visit thereafter.
It would be over 5 years before a LUSH store would come to the United States, so I would shop online whenever I could and stock up when in Canada. Now LUSH has stores across the country and I am happy to see them doing so well here. They continue to innovate new products in a way no other bath & body company has. And I love them for that. I hope they always keep their creative edge and stay true to their inner LUSH.
Speaking of their inner LUSH, reminds me of MY outer LUSH...it's time for me to go wash this cupcake off my my face.
Before I go, wanna see the rest of my purchases from my visit today? I had some Christmas gift money set aside, just waiting for my little spree today. They had a buy 1 soap, get 2 free sale today...hence the piles of soap. I am so looking forward to shower time tomorrow morning!
PS - LUSH marks all their Vegan products clearly with a big "V" on their signs and in their catalogue, which is a real bonus when you're trying to find cruelty free beauty products.
Here's a recipe that will be sure to satisfy your next chocolate craving in one rich & delicious bite.
This recipe is fool proof, only requires three ingredients and results in a confection that passes as something you picked up in a fancy chocolate shop in the big city. I kid you not.
from the February 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times:
Vegan Chocolate Truffles
1/2 cup chocolate soymilk
1 12 oz. pkg. vegan chocolate chips
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1) Warm soymilk until hot to the touch. Set aside.
2) Melt chocolate chips in large metal bowl set over saucepan of simmering water, stirring until smooth. Stir in warmed soymilk until smooth. Cover, and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.
3) Place cocoa on plate. Shape chilled chocolate mixture into 1 -inch balls, and roll in cocoa.
I have a second batch of the chocolate mixture chilling in my fridge, ready to roll tomorrow morning. I am thinking of rolling them in coconut or nuts to have a few more variations. If there weren't kids around eating these, you could even jazz things up by adding in 2 teaspoons of a flavored liqueur, like Chambourd, Frangelico, or Kahlua.
Regardless of how you roll them, I think it's hard to mess these little melt-in-your-mouth wonders up...your fingers, however, might be another story.
My 7 year old and I just finished reading Holes by Louis Sachar and we both really enjoyed it. I chose this book because the main character, Stanley Yelnats (that's the same name forwards & backwards) lends himself beautifully for discussion and activities on character.
Thanks to his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather", Stanley is under the same curse that has followed his family for generations. Falsly convicted of a crime he did not commit, Stanley is sentenced to serve time at Camp Green Lake which is not a lake but a hard, barren, wasteland filled with holes dug by the boys at camp under the warden's command. Days after digging, Stanley realizes there's more behind the warden's purpose than meets the eye - she is searching for something important. As Stanley tries to dig up the truth, he unknowingly activates a chain of events that change his destiny forever! Stanley's rich character offers many hidden and surprising traits as the story unfolds and is perfect for diving deeper into the story element of Character.
After reading, we brainstormed a list of Stanley's "hidden" personality traits - those that the author did not explicity tell us but that we learned from Stanley's thoughts and actions. From there we created a "Hole" Personality Game where we cut out 9 brown paper circles each, taped them to a large piece of paper and wrote examples of Stanley's personality underneath 5 of the holes.
In the remaining holes we drew a picture from the story for fun or wrote something like "Sorry, nothing here- Keep Digging!" Then we exchanged game sheets and took turns flipping a penny trying to land on one of the holes with a personality trait underneath. Each time we uncoved a personality hole, we marked it and when we came upon an "empty" hole we left it untouched. The first one to reveal all five personality trait holes was the winner.
This was really fun and offered a great way to explore Stanley's character with my son. I was thinking that the setting of Camp Green Lake would be another good literary element to explore using this book. I think I feel a diorama coming on...stay tuned!
I'm talking a stroll down memory lane. Crissy was my favorite childhood doll. She was the doll who could grow long hair at the push of a button and then dial it back up into a bob and so on and so on. Remember her? You may have even had one yourself if you grew up in the 1970's. I really enjoyed my doll until I didn't listen to my mom about not giving Crissy a bath or washing her hair. Nope, I didn't listen and her growing hair feature never worked again - wahhhh!
Anyway, I thought of Crissy today when I was wishing that I could just pull long hair out from my head at a push of a button. It's been 4 months since my buzz cut to rid my hair of henna/indigo dark color and get back to my natural color. Although I LOVE seeing my natural hair color and not having to battle "roots" anymore, I get impatient with the growing process sometimes. And that's when I wish I were like Crissy. Yet, there would be something very disturbing about have a dial in one's back and eyes like those of a vacant Stepford Wife (no offense Crissy- please don't kill me).
