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Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

Friday, July 5, 2013

The Packing Chronicles, Part 3, Final Installment

Read: The Packing Chronicles, Part 1
          The Packing Chronicles, Part 2


The Packing Chronicles, Part 3

The Final Installment

Packed, Moved, and Adjusting

It's been a couple of weeks. I'm not only all packed, but all moved. Where to, you ask? Well, not Hawaii, that's for sure. I finally heard from them (via snail mail) and they selected another candidate. It sucks, yes, but I'm over it, honestly. So I've moved in with friends just outside of Pensacola. I'm staying there until August, and after that it's all up in the air. In the meantime I'm working at Panera Bread and also at UWF (Housing gave me a job until I find something else). So if August rolls around and I'm still without a job (by which I mean still with only my two current jobs and no other offer) then I guess I'm sticking around Pensacola, but just not sure where.

Packing went well. I have more stuff than I thought and have realized that not everything will fit in my car at once. Not sure how I will move when the time comes. Things to be determined when I know where I am moving to.

The Two Job Lifestyle

It's not pretty and it's not glamorous. That is for sure. It's not like I haven't done this before. I enjoy it overall. Two days a week I work only at UWF from 8-5. Normal. The other three days I usually start my work day at Panera at 5 AM and work until 1. I then work at UWF from 2-5:30. Since I moved I now have a longer commute (seriously it went from 3 minutes to almost 30 depending on the time of day) I wake up at 3:45 AM when I need to be at Panera at 5 AM. The days that I don't have to be up so early? I wake up generally before 5 AM without an alarm.

I love working at Panera Bread. #PaneraLife


Independence Day Baking Adventures

I had zero plans for the Fourth of July. Shocked? I'm not. So what did I do? Baked. Shocked? I'm not. I woke up at 4am without an alarm. Great time to bake. By 10am I had baked and decorated a cake, baked cake pops, started dipping the cake pops, and even took a nap.








So I baked a firecracker cake. Yum!



And some cake pops that I arranged like the flag.



And some red, white, and blue cookie bark.



Hopefully your Independence Day was not as wet as mine. It's been raining nearly nonstop (though it stopped in time for fireworks to happen). I went out for a drive and saw lots of fireworks everywhere. And hit the beach. The Gulf is quite rough thanks to the storms. The drive was a wonderfully boring adventure.


My First Instagram Video:





Sunday, June 16, 2013

The Packing Chronicles, Part 2

Read: Packing Chronicles, Part 1

Packing Chronicles, Part 2

This past Friday, I gave myself three things I wanted to accomplish over the weekend:
      1. Dye my hair
      2. Cook/bake all the food in my apartment
      3. Apply for jobs
 Things from that list that I actually accomplished this weekend:
      1. Dyed my hair
      2. Attempted to cook/bake all the food in my apartment

Operation Dye My Hair

So I successfully dyed my hair. I've had the hair dye since before graduation because I had wanted to dye my hair for graduation. Clearly that happened. It's a medium auburn brown. So really it's just my hair color (maybe a tad darker) with a hint of red.

Just a hint of red. Easier to see in sunlight.

Operation Cook Everything

I decided I would cook/bake all the food in my apartment so that I could start packing my kitchenware. This way all my food could be in the freezer and all I would have to do is microwave it. Then I could pack up my pots and pans, most of my dishes, most kitchen utensils, and other kitchen stuff that I wouldn't need. Well, Operation Cook Everything was a bit more of an undertaking than I thought it would be. Plus, I actually have a life (surprising, I know) and didn't want to spend every minute of the weekend getting adventurous in the kitchen. What I accomplished to cook/bake:
          • Lots of macaroni and cheese
          • Lots of fried rice
          • Vegan chocolate cupcakes with almond "buttercream" frosting
          • Coconut cupcakes
          • Couscous
          • Quinoa with black beans and corn

Vegan chocolate cupcakes.

Coconut cupcakes and vegan chocolate cupcakes

Coconut cupcakes with coconut pecan frosting and topped with shredded coconut.

Operation Get A Job

Well, I looked at job postings. That's as far as that went. A little lacking in motivation at the moment for that. None of the jobs really appealed to me, and I guess I shouldn't be picky, but whatever. Something will happen. Speaking of jobs, I had a dream last night that University of Hawaii offered me a job and I couldn't decide if I wanted to accept it or not. I woke up feeling completely stressed out - not a great way to wake up. Also, not really sure what that dream means other than I have no idea what I want to happen.

The Packing Continues...

So I'm hopefully going to go full force with packing this week. I have clothes, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, and not much else to pack. Oh yeah, and a fish tank. I started preparing today to move my fish tank over to the Housing office, who are inheriting my fish tank because I really can't move with it since I don't even know where I'm moving to. When I say I've started preparing to move the tank, that includes buying a new fish... because that's logical. Oh well.

Meet Cyrus. My new fish, that will soon become Housing's.


My packing/moving advice continued:
3. If you don't want to be distracted while trying to pack, just break up with your computer. By which I mean the battery is dying and needs to be replaced. Not a big deal, it just needs to be plugged in all the time. So, charger stops working. Told my computer that I think it's right about us needing a break. Unlike TSwift, we are getting back together as I gave in and ordered a new charger. I'm lucky enough that I can borrow a work laptop in the meantime.

Monday, June 10, 2013

World War C3 (Caramel, Chocolate, Cocounut)

As I look at the aftermath of what appeared to be World War 3 between Caramel, Coconut, and Chocolate; I realize that I learned a few things today.
  1. I do not have a long enough attention span to toast coconut without burning it.
  2. I do not enjoy melting caramels.
  3. I am never ever ever (hope you sang that TSwift style) making homemade samoas again unless someone pays me (and I promise it will cost more than buying them from Girl Scouts).
So I've been meaning to bake samoas from scratch since sometime in February or March when I found the recipe on Pinterest. (Thanks a lot, Pinterest).Well at first I couldn't make them because I really needed a double boiler or a heatproof bowl. Had neither. Ordered one. Then I just didn't have the time, knowing it would be a whole day of baking. Well now I needed to empty out my baking cabinet so I finally decided that today was the day to get adventurous in the kitchen.

Delicious, homemade Samoas.


5.5 hours later I have about 4 dozen cookies, my kitchen is a disaster, and I have enough ingredients to make at least a half batch of these. Well, I'm going to cut my losses and not bake any more (see list above). They're delicious, but the effort and the mess are not worth it. I'll stick to buying these from the Girl Scouts.

They look so nice here.

They lost some shape when I moved them to the cookie sheet. Oh well.




Completed the messiest step...


As for some other updates: I have not heard from Hawaii. Alaska turned me down. Binghamton University emailed me to say they're still interested, and wanted to know if I'm still interested. Good timing, I think. I have 3 boxes packed for shipping (if necessary), one packed for storage at home, and I have a huge collection of stuff to go to Good Will. I've made decent progress.

Oooh and my hair is getting decently long (relative to where it was in December, of course). Not that you care, but I'm excited about it.

See?

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Packing Chronicles, Part 1

Packing Chronicles, Part 1

So I'm moving! In case you didn't already know that. Where to, you ask? I'll let you know when I know. That's right, I've been packing up my apartment (read: my life) and am getting ready to move to a place to be determined. As you know it is potentially Alaska or Hawaii (still awaiting their calls). If that doesn't work out, then I'm likely staying in the Pensacola area, living with friends, and working at Panera Bread. Sounds like a not so ideal plan, but some days it's the plan I'm most excited about. Everyone keeps asking me which job I'd prefer. Some days it is Hawaii, some it's Alaska, and others it's neither. It's complicated and my emotions are a roller coaster basically (Army Wives isn't helping!)

I hate packing. I like the actual idea of moving, but hate the actual process of moving (except for the awesome road trips involved sometimes). Knowing this about myself, I start packing nearly a month ago, meaning I started gathering packing supplies, getting rid of stuff I don't need, and "organizing" (read: destroying) my apartment. The real packing has been occuring in the past week or so. Really I only have two and a half boxes packed. Not much I know. I am however proud at the amount of stuff I'm getting rid of, but still amazed at how much stuff I have. I'm making progress, but it's slow. I gave myself a move out date... June 18. We'll see if I stick to that, and we'll see where I'm going.

2 full boxes. Not a  lot accomplished.

The start to my list of packing/moving advice:

1. If planning (or potentially planning in my case) to ship boxes to your destination keep an inventory of what you put in each box, and instead of labeling the box with what's in it label it with a number that corresponds to the inventory list. This makes your boxes less vulnerable to theft.
2. Don't get really distracted by something. In my case, it's Army Wives. I watched the first three episodes last Wednesday night and am now about halfway through season 6. Yeah. Packing gets a little distracting from watching Army Wives. haha
3. To be continued... (Apparently I'm not full of advice right now.)

So with all this packing, I'm trying to get rid of all the food in my fridge, freezer, and cabinets. So the next couple of weeks will consist of whatever concoctions I come up with. A couple nights ago I made brownies from scratch. I tossed in some walnuts and some sprinkles. I got a little bit distracted and cooked them a bit too long (see #2 above). So they tasted good, but they were dry. So what could I do with them? Realized I had some whipped cream and cherries that would go well with them. Then I realized I also had chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, and more sprinkles. So really all I needed was some ice cream. Bought ice cream and brought it all over to a friend's where a group of us had an impromptu sundae party. Worked out well.

Tonight's dinner was an interesting concoction. Made a tuna and green bean casserole. I used ziti, tuna, green beans, cream of mushroom soup, cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan cheeses, paprika (of course), and panko bread crumbs. Probably not the combination of ingredients you'd immediately think of, but it turned out to be delicious. So this one is a success. Hopefully I'll have other successes as well.

Doesn't look or sound like much, but it tasted great!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

My Vegan Vacation

Note: For those of you who have said that you haven't been able to comment, I think I fixed that issue.

My Vegan Vacation: 4 Days in Melbourne, Florida

So I chose October as my month to go vegan because it didn't involve major food holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...) so I shouldn't run into many speed bumps. Well, I hadn't thought about the fact that I was taking a long weekend to go down to Melbourne to visit my undergrad for my sorority's alumni weekend. I had a fantastic weekend and was so happy to see so many of my Alpha Phi sisters. Love them.
Sunrise over I-10.

Food was complicated over the weekend. Thursday I drove down and brought food with me for the road trip (7.5 hour drive) so that was fine. Left super early in the morning, but I love driving before the sun is up.


Thursday night I went out for Mexican with a friend and easily found a vegan option, and the waiter assured me it was dairy-free. Friday breakfast consisted of a bagel and some coffee with a friend at Panera, of course. Breakfast was a little late so I didn't eat lunch. Dinner was the challenge. Alpha Phi was hosting the 3rd Annual Red Dress Gala, a formal dinner fundraiser to raise money for the Alpha Phi Foudation in support of heart health. My sister, Norah, who is wonderful and was in charge of the event worked so hard to get a meal I could eat. The hotel that the event was being held at clearly did not understand what it means to be vegan. My salad consisted of watered down lettuce with two slices of tomato. I say watered down because I thought at first that they had drizzled it with oil for dressing, but no they just soaked the lettuce in water. No dressing. I squeezed lemon juice onto it to add some flavor and ate the tomatoes last so that I got the most flavor at the end. I was a little worried about what would come next. The entree they served was a plate of vegetables. Just vegetables. They were delicious, and I was grateful to have them but there was nothing else. No rice. No beans. Nothing but veggies. I'm clearly a rabbit. My friend next to me has a bunch of allergies so she also got a special meal. They served her after me and she got a plate of veggies and rice. I looked at her plate and said "Why can't I get rice?"
Norah and I. She's awesome.
My plate of veggies. Delicious. Not fulfilling.
 Saturday was a lot better for food. Lunch consisted of a BBQ at the APhi house. BBQ doesn't typically scream vegan, but my Little was awesome and made me a vegan dish. She made this pan-asian noodle dish which was delicious. There was also fruit, and a salsa dip that I could eat. That worked out well. For dinner I had a fantastic veggie wrap at bar and restaurant we were at for dinner. Thanks to the website barnivore.com I can easily look up alcohols that are vegan friendly so that is always helpful. Sunday was the drive back and I didn't really eat much other than chips.

I didn't have a chance to go food shopping since I got back until tonight. So Sunday night and yesterday consisted of leftovers. Tonight though I made a vegan version of Rocco Dispirito's Sweet and Spicy Linguine alla Vodka (which has no vodka in it...). The recipe calls for yogurt and I didn't have soy yogurt, nor was I able to go downtown to Ever'man's to get some, so I experimented and mixed a little bit of vegan cream cheese with some soy milk. It seemed to make the right consistency so I gave it a try. It was delicious. And I tweeted about it and Rocco retweeted it which kind of made my night because I'm in love with him. Maybe tomorrow I'll post my modified version of the recipe. It really was good and it's pretty low in calories. Rocco has really great low-cal recipes with his Now Eat This Diet.
  
The sauce came out great with my yogurt substitution experiment.
Finished product.



Put it in some tuperware and brought it to my office for dinner.
That's all for now. I had a fantastic trip and made the best of it as a vegan. I didn't starve so I'd say it's a success. Look for some more posts soon.

Me and some wonderful ladies at Red Dress Gala.

Loved this in the Florida Tech alumni magazine.


Thursday, October 11, 2012

My Life Month as a Vegan Day 11

Looked great. Tasted afwul.
Okay so tonight I had the biggest vegan fail ever. Seriously, I made three different meals for dinner because the first two went almost directly into the trash. So I started off with some apple cider tofu. I found the recipe from VeganDad and it looked so delicious that I thought I'd give it a try. Fail. I used less apple cider vinegar than the recipe called for and all you could taste was vinegar. So after a bite of that I threw it out (there was no salvaging any of it) and moved on to the next try. I had some tofu noodles and I made a "cream" sauce. Cooked up the noodles, poured some sauce over them, and topped it with some vegan-friendly meatless meatballs. I learned that tofu noodles are rather disgusting. The sauce and the meatballs were great, but they were ruined by the noodles. So after that I was tired of cooking. Heated up some leftover chickpea cakes and a few more meatballs and that was my dinner.



Last night I had a successful dinner attempt with only one try. I made some stir fry with bean sprouts, baby corn, mushrooms, water chestnuts, tempeh, and served it over rice. It was rather delicious, something that was super easy to make, and another one of those foods that you can just use whatever veggies you have.

Delicious tempeh stir fry which I served over rice (and have several servings of leftovers).

So one day last week I had the realization that since it is now October it is Mallomars season. If you're not aware, Mallomars are a delicious treat from Nabisco that is basically a smores cookie. It's a graham cracker-like cookie topped with marshmallow and covered in a chocolate coating. They are delicious. Over 70% of them are sold in the NY Metropolitan area though, so they are hard to come across down south. They are also only made from October to May since they melt so easily in the summer months. I got a packed from Mama Ceal this week and of course it had a box of Mallomars in it because she always sends me some when it's Mallomars season. Well, at least they don't go bad so they will be an amazing treat after my Vegan Pledge is over.
Sad that I can't eat Mallomars. They will make for a great post-vegan celebration.

Last night (or this morning rather) I had the sudden urge to bake cupcakes. It was 2am. I almost did, but then my rational thoughts took over and I knew that as soon as I would put them in the oven I would have the sudden urge to sleep. So I passed on that, but I plan on making some more chocolate cupcakes this weekend and possibly some cocount cupcakes as well.

Haven't had any other exciting vegan cooking extravaganzas. I'm hoping for some deliciously successful cooking adventures this weekend. And maybe a meal out at Sluggo's.


Here's the trailer to Food, Inc. It's a great documentary that has encouraged me to be a conscious consumer. I'm not trying to turn everyone (or anyone) vegetarian or vegan, but you should know where your food comes from and how it gets to you. I think I may see a documentary day coming up soon. This weekend perhaps?

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

My Life Month as a Vegan Day 8

Hey look at this... two days in a row for blog posts! Go me!

So yesterday I had my first vegan baking experience. It went really well. Yesterday morning I went shopping at Ever'Man's in downtown Pensacola, which is a natural foods store. I was so happy there. They just have so many options for vegans and I loved it. Can't wait to go back.

Just out of the oven. Baked a minute or two too long.
I first made some chocolate cupcakes from a recipe I found from Oh She Glows. I baked them a couple mintues too long so they were a little overcooked on the outside but still so delicious. The almond "buttercream" frosting was delicious, but a little too almond-y for me. So I think next time I might do half almond extract and half vanilla extract.

Frosted. I even got some vegan sprinkles which were the ugliest colors ever, but still good.


I also gave chocolate chip cookie dough truffles that I found a recipe for from Chef Chloe. They were delicious. I brought them to my staff meeting this morning and people loved them. They were super easy to make too.

The best part about vegan cookie dough is that you don't have to worry about eating raw eggs.

Cookie dough in the freezer.

Halfway there. Look delicious.

Seriously so good. They were a hit.


I hadn't thought about dinner last night until I was hungry so I needed to put something together pretty quickly. I made a portabello mushroom burger which was delicious.
My delicious portabello burger. Threw on some vegan cheese, sliced tomato, and veganaise and mustard. Yum



Today for lunch I made myself a tofurkey sandwich. I had some Italian deli style tofurkey, along with some tomatoes that I sliced up, some vegan cheese, and veganaise and had it on wheat toast. I was a little worried about veganaise at first because it just sounds gross, but it's just an oil based spread and it tastes just like mayonaise. The sandwich was really delicious. It was a nice change for lunch.


Tonight for dinner I really wanted to make some soup. Today felt like fall so it was definitely a night for soup. I even wore jeans and a pair of boots today. I'm so happy the fall weather is here (I just wish I was up north to really experience fall). I made a simple vegetable soup. The thing I love about making soup is that you can just throw in whatever you have. So I used vegetable stock and water and added potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, celery, Great Northern Beans, mushrooms, and seasoned it up. It was delicious and I made plenty so I could freeze some of the leftovers to have another time.

I love to freeze it in individual serving size containers so that I have ready to go meals whenever I need them.


Hope you've enjoyed! More posts to come soon!

Sunday, October 7, 2012

My Life Month as a Vegan

So for the month of October I have decided to go Vegan, and I think I'll blog about it! Yay blogging! because I'm one of the worst bloggers in the history of blogging. So this past week has been a bit busy which made my first week as a Vegan a bit challenging, but I'm hoping to put up a new post every 2-3 days (we'll see how that goes...).

The first couple of days of Veganism was rough because I hadn't gotten the chance to go grocery shopping for vegan-specific items, and my supply of food in my apartment wasn't very Vegan Friendly. Once I got a chance to shop it became so much easier.

For breakfast I haven't been doing too much since I don't generally eat breakfast anyway (most important meal of the day, I know). I have been trying to eat some oatmeal most mornings though and I add a touch of brown sugar and cinnamon to give some flavor (cut up some apples for it too if I happen to have any).

My favorite oatmeal. No surprise that it is Irish. :)


Lunch has mostly been salad. I've been eating most of my lunches at the campus dining hall and my option is limited to a terribly bland salad. I'm hoping to do something else for lunch this week.

The dinners is where it's been at this week for me. The first night after shopping I needed a quick, easy meal so I made vegan sloppy joes from a mix I had gotten. It was real easy to make and I served it on some vegan wheat bread. It was very delicious and the leftovers made for a wonderful midnight snack the following night.

The sloppy joe mix on the stove. So easy to make.

Sloppy joes served on vegan-friendly wheat bread. Delicious.
The second night I also needed a quick meal since it was a class night for me. I bought some Amy's vegan stir fry frozen meal. It was rather delicious and perfect for when I was in a rush in between finishing my paper and going to class (yes, I was procrastinating...).

Friday night was the Homecoming Tailgate before the men's soccer game (we won!!), but a tailgate doesn't sound like a vegan's dream dinner. It wasn't. I did find the chips I could eat, and we did have vegan burgers. Too bad the buns weren't vegan, but luckily I brought my own vegan bread. :) That worked out for me.

Yesterday I went to my supervisor's house for his housewarming party. We had pre-established that I needed to bring my own food so I brought some Creamed Kale and Cajun Chickpea Cakes (both recipes courtesy of VeganDad). I brought plenty to share and everyone who tried them seemed to love them so I call it a success. I thought it was pretty delicious.
Creamed kale. Yum.

Cajun chickpea cakes. So delicious!
Okay so that's all for now. More to come in the next couple of days (including some vegan baking attempts!!)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Crazy Unproductive.

I had planned on being super productive today. I was going to write two papers that I have that are due tomorrow. Well I wrote one. I do however have plenty of time tomorrow to write the other one (which is only a first draft anyway so it doesn't need to be perfect). So how did I end up being so unproductive today? Well my day started off pretty early. I was awake around 6 (might have something to do with me being in bed at 9pm). I went to Church for the 8:30 mass. After that I ran a couple of errands. Then I met some friends for brunch at The Fish House. I had a delicious vegetable frittata (I love that word) and a bottomless mimosa (which at some point I had to let it reach the bottom). After that I ran back to my apartment to change into my Batman costume. Yes, my Batman costume. Then I went and met some friends at the Gulf Breeze Zoo for a fun day of "Boo at the Zoo". Had a great time there. People loved my Batman costume. One kid asked his mom if I was the real Batman (success!!). There was a little girl dressed as Batgirl who asked me if I was Batgirl. I told her I was Batman and she said I couldn't be Batman because I'm a girl. Well I'm wearing the Batman costume so deal with it! I did not say that, I just laughed and said 'Okay, I'm Batgirl.'

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 16

So that was the majority of my day. I came home and wrote my one paper in just a couple of hours. Made myself a quick dinner. And then made this delicious chocolate chip cheesecake dip for our Halloween party in class tomorrow. It's delish. I must resist eating it all before the party. So as my day was not nearly as productive as I intended it to be (which I'm fine with because I had a GREAT day) I decided to find a TED talk that was totally irrelevant to my life and maybe just a little crazy. I think it turned out to be a whole lot crazy and I really can't even begin to discuss it in depth. It's a talk by Joshua Walters on being crazy. It's crazy, it's funny, and you can definitely get something out of it, but I'll just let you do that on your own. So enjoy. (It's another short one too.)



Oh and as for Snowtober back home, it's not going so well. Connecticut is now faced with it's worst power outage in history (beating out the record set by Hurricane Irene not so long ago). I know that 99% of my town was without power, and it's now down to 97%. The power companies have said that it will be up to a week before full power is restored. My parents have borrowed a generator from my brother so they can at least have the necessities. It's pretty rough up there though. So for any of you up in the Northeast, I hope things get better for you soon. Stay safe.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

It's mutual.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 4

So here's the talk for today. Let me warn you first: it's a long one. It's about 20 minutes long, but believe me it's worth it. Mark Bittman (a food writer for the New York Times) talks about what's wrong with our diet. He touches on a lot of good points, reasons why I'm a vegetarian. What I like about it, though, is not that he's saying be a vegetarian (because he's not saying that), but that he's just talking about what is wrong with what we eat and how and why we should change it. Our country's agricultural system has gone to shit, which I mean figuratively of course (although quite literally when you think about livestock being raised while standing in their own feces). As an alumna of the National FFA (Future Farmers of America) Organization, I hope to see our agricultural system improve.

So I hope you watch this video in its entirety. I hope you'll eat organic, eat local, eat sustainable, but most importantly just eat healthy. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend the movie Food, Inc. It's a great documentary about the food we eat and the agricultural system.




Now onto the word of the day. An important word it is today...
--
Agreement. Decision. I think it's time to come to a mutual agreement. I'm not so into this dual blogging thing I've got going on. My blog has agreed it is going in a better direction (clearly I made up a mind for my blog) and I've agreed that I hate building off of this one word thing. Agreed. Decided.
--
Well, there you have it. I have decided (and apparently mutually agreed with the mind of my blog) that it's time to remove the one word aspect to the blog. I think that my blog is far better with these 30-day challenges now. So mutual is the last word I'll be using for my blog inspiration. It doesn't mean I'm leaving oneword.com behind. Seriously, give it a try. It really helps your thoughts to just flow. Which ironically, using it for my blog makes my posts not flow... If you're terribly upset by this mutual decision between me and my blog (again I apparently gave it a mind of its own...) feel free to let me know and I may consider giving it another go. Although, who actually reads this anyway? Especially after I just asked you to watch a guy talk for 20 minutes. So I applaud you if you not only read my blog, but made it this far.


On another quick note that goes back to the food thing, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, or just looking to eat healthy there's a few blogs that I think you'd be interested in. I think some of them are on the list of links on the right of my blog, but here they are anyway:
Love and Zest (this one's by a registered dietician so there's some great healthy recipes and isn't specifically vegetarian but does have some v-friendly recipes)
Green Gourmet Giraffe (all vegetarian, some are vegan and some gluten free)
Simply Sugar and Gluten Free (recipes free of refined sugar and gluten, not specifically vegetarian, but some recipes are v-friendly)
Vegan Dad (all vegan, but delicious)