...1.23...What I ate in a day as a Vegan...

...after water...vitamins and tea...I had a big bowl of fluffy white salty and buttery (Earth Balance-y) grits...

...then I had an orange for a snack...

...lunch was just some leftovers...sweet potato and sauteed green beans...and a big salad...

...and I had a big handful of the roasted pumpkin seeds...so yummy...

...and dinner was homemade pizza...I thought that I had some vegan pepperoni bits in the freezer...still left from the Asheville SDA store...but I was mistaken...I did find some ham bits though...so I went with that...

...sprinkled with the dregs of one bag of Daiya Mozzarella (those are the small bits) and the larger bits are the dregs of a bag of Trader Joe's vegan Mozzarella...

...and a good sprinkling of vegan parmesan as well...

...it was really delicious...I don't usually put any vegan meat on my pizza...usually opting for only olives and vegan cheese...so this was a nice change...

...and I took the leftover pizza dough...and smashed a bunch of vegan chocolate chips into it and just baked it alongside the pizza...

...and it made a pretty perfect pan au chocolat...

...what did you eat yesterday?...

~Have a lovely day!

...W.I.P. Wednesday...a Totally FREE fix for a loose ring...

...every year...about this time...my wedding ring starts to slip off my finger...because it's cold...

...my usual remedy is to slip it onto my index finger where it is a little bit tight...but there's no danger of it slipping off...

...not my photo...but the link to the photo is broken...

...a little bit of background on the ring...you can see that my wedding ring is just a plain gold (white) band...but that's not the ring that we ordered...it looked a lot more like the one above... and it was a matched set of course...with embossed diamond shapes all around the band...

...and during the hectic week of final exams and graduation that preceded our wedding date...we went to the Brendles (on Tunnel Road) right up from the mall to pick up the rings that we ordered...like...three days before the wedding...

...the jeweler took them out of the box...and laid them on a velvet tray...and they were so pretty...but....BUT...you could just tell that the Man did not like them...so we tried them on...and you could tell that he liked them even less...the jeweler picked up on this disappointment as well...and asked if the rings were all right...they fit fine of course...and I thought mine looked really pretty against my engagement ring...but the Man just thought that he was wearing a girl's ring...

...for some reason it was more important to me that the rings matched...so we decided not to keep the embossed rings and the jeweler was so good about it...he gave us a credit on the plain bands that we then picked out...and we were married with matching rings...

...and the irony of this story is that the Man lost his ring in the first 4 months we were married...haha...so I could have kept the embossed ring because our rings no longer matched anyway...

...anywhooo...back to the story...the new ring was not quite my size...it's an 8 and my engagement ring was a 7 1/2...so when I wore the engagement ring on top of the wedding ring it couldn't slip off...but I was always knocking the setting loose doing construction projects and such so I'd pretty much stopped wearing the engagement ring...

...and in the wintertime the ring started slipping off...usually in a glove...and so far I've always managed to find it...but the other day I almost lost it...I found it in the basket that I keep the winter gloves in....it had come off in a glove and then slipped out of the glove into the basket...so I decided that I needed something to make it just a little bit tighter...

...and I remembered how girls in high school used to wrap yarn around their boyfriend's class ring to get it to stay on their fingers...

...so I just snipped of a length of bamboo yarn...I wanted something natural and sturdy and washable...

...and just starting tying square knots around the band with the knot resting on the edges...

...until it fit a little more snug-ly...

...then I threaded the ends onto a needle and pulled them back under the wrapped threads...so there are no loose ends...

...and there you have it...

...the ring no longer slips and it's a totally free fix...and it's totally reversible as well...

~Have a lovely day!

...1.20...Over the Weekend...

...the weather is finally wintry here in North Carolina...

...and one of our sweet gardening parishioners brought us a bag of gorgeous turnips from his garden...so much prettier than what we can get at the grocery store...

...so we washed them and cut them up...

...and did the same with some greens...

...and cooked them in the instant pot...

...I made my Grandma's Chick'un and Dumplings...I used the Gardein Chicken strips...

...and I made two kinds of dumplings...

...the Man grew up with these thin strip dumplings...

...so I just roll the dough out thin and cut it into strips...and put them into the bubbly broth...

...but then I also made some of the poufy biscuit like dumplings that I grew up eating...basically just vegan biscuit dough...

...dropped by spoonfuls into the broth...

...and then each person can just choose the type of dumplings they want...

...it was delicious...

...and I took all of the apples we had left over from Christmas...

...peeled them...

...and cut them up...

...I debated adding the skins...but they were mostly golden so there would not be a lot of colour anyway...and I did not...

...this is the easiest applesauce ever...just cook the apples slowly...until they magically turn into sauce...or awesome-sauce...

...with all those goldens it was really sweet enough as it was...no need to add any sugar at all...

...then I made our favorite Tunisian bread...it's super easy and fairly quick too...

...that 'design' on top is just where I plopped it out of the bowl after rising...haha...

...I wanted the bread to go with the Florentine soup the Man made...

...it was so delicious...

...and I toasted a piece of the bread with some Violife cheddar...and that was really good...

...and we had a fire in the fireplace...the first one this year...

...and this angel and her Mama came to visit...and after cooing and squealing and playing...she conked out...and she's learned to suck her thumb...it's so precious...she'll be four months old tomorrow...wow!

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...1.17...Dinner and a Movie...

...we had planned to go out for pizza with The Airman's Wife and Baby...but decided to get pizza in instead...better for visiting and we get to watch a movie...

...so we got The Veggie Lover's Pizza without any cheese...it's yummy just like this...

...but I added some vegan mozzarella and vegan parm...

...and it was really...really good...

...and of course we let The Airman's Wife choose what to watch...and she chose Cuckoo...it's really funny...we laughed a lot...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend!

...Friday Favorites...Vegan Old Fashioned Cream of Tomato Soup...

...the Man and I were reminiscing the other day about North Dakota and some of the things that we only saw there...

...and one of them was this milky 'cream' of tomato soup that was served at just about every little North Dakota cafe...at ours it was only on Wednesday...

....and we laughed together about the first time that a young Airman ordered it with a grilled cheese sandwich...definitely thinking that it would be like Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup that he likes to dip his grilled cheese into...

...so I did a quick search of the interwebs...and found this recipe...and we thought "that is IT"...and I can finally try it...because it's pretty easy to veganize...

...I gathered the simple ingredients...only subbing Earth Balance for the butter, vegan broth base, and Almond creamer for the cream...

...following Julia's advice for tempering cream with a hot acidic mixture...I heated the cream and added several spoonfuls of the hot tomatoes to it...

...before I added it to the pot...

...it looks a lot like what was served in North Dakota...maybe a little richer and creamier even...what I remember from our cafe was milkier than this...

...served with saltines...just like at the cafe...it was so good and satisfying...

...have you ever had this type of Cream of Tomato soup before?...

~Have a lovely day!