I came home from school today and checked my mail and there was my very own copy of Vegan Lunch Box waiting for me! I was so excited. Kevin laughed at me... but I don't care. The only way it could be better would be if there were pictures of every lunch box, but obviously that isn't feasible... I haven't made anything out of it yet, but I'm very excited to start cooking.

I made a huge dinner today. I made seitan, with my own recipe for the broth you cook it in. It's a mix of the "meat" broths in LDV, and it gives the seitan a good all-round flavor so I can use it for anything. I also made mashed potatoes, broccoli and miso-good gravy from Everyday Vegan. It was very good, so good in fact that I forgot to take a picture... I did however take a picture of dinner a couple nights ago when I made the mock clam chowder from LDV. Very good too. I'm loving food lately :) I've made the chowder before, but then I used firm tofu. This time I used firm silken tofu which I felt gave a better imitation of clams.


I firmly believe that peanut butter was created to be combined with chocolate, so I made some peanut butter cups from HIAV . These might be one of my favorite recipes in this cookbook. The peanut butter cups are so creamy and delicious, but for some reason they didn't turn out as well this time as they usually do... I must have added to much butter, or the graham crackers were ground finer then usual. It doesn't matter they still taste amazing.

Very yummy :) Thank you Sarah & Tanya.

A horrible thing happened yesterday. Rex, my cat, loves to sneak out every now and then, so yesterday he went tearing out the door and down past the other apartments (we live in an apartment building). He loves it when you chase him, so I took off after him. He turned around and went to run past me and back inside, unfortunately we both stepped to the same side and I stepped on his paw with my big clunky boots. I felt sooo bad. I hurt him pretty bad, but fortunately nothing broke. I was sure I had crushed his paw. Today he seems almost all better, though I think his paw is sore. I still feel horrible, but at least everything ended well.

I'm back and I've made cookies!

These are the chocolate chip cookies from Vegan with a Vengance. These are one of my fav. cookies. I think the only other ones that come close (that I've tried) are the revenge cookies from La Dolce Vegan, these are also slightly healthier.

I substituted about one third of the flour with whole wheat. My boyfriend, Kevin, doesn't like it so I try to sneak it in whenever I can.



For dinner today I made quinoa with mexican seasoning, fresh tomatoes and avocado drizzled with lime juice with refried beans on the side. I love Mexican flavors and this meal was super quick and so yummy. I used quinoa instead of white basmati rice because quinoa makes me feel better, I love the flavor and it's a whole grain.

The refried beans are from a can because I just can't seem to find a recipe I like. If anyone has one they'd like to share please let me know. I love refried beans.

And because he's my baby, here's a picture of my cat. He loves the box. He's so cute.

I'm sick... Usually I swear by miso soup and ginger tea when I'm sick, but this time I don't have a fever or anything I'm just really sick to my stomach and I have aching muscles... So I'm eating rice, relaxing and trying to get better. I'm not going to bother putting up a picture of the rice, because it is quite boring, but it works wonders for my stomach. Will start posting amazing pictureas as soon as I get over this bug.

I was checking my regular blogs yesterday and it turns out that vegan lunchbox lady (Jennifer)'s cookbook is done! I ordered a copy (of course) and now I'm super excited. Books ship on november 15th. Check it out!

I've also received an excellent offer from one of Norways largest engineering companies to work for them this summer and possibly write my masters thesis for them. I'm so excited (a lot of excitement lately, lol). It's such a wonderful opportunity and if they like me it may very well lead to a full time job when I'm done with univeristy.

I am making food, just bad with taking pics. I'm loving nori lately. There is something about it that just satisfies me... Yummy. Will post foodpics soon. I promise.

Is there anything better than a healthy desert? A healthy desert that tastes awesome. I have been adding more raw foods to my diet for a while now, and today I finally made a desert that people at my raw forum have been raving about. It's from Alissa Cohen's book: Living on Live Foods and it is amazing.

You take one peeled lemon, half an avocado and half a cup of soaked dates. Blend it till smooth and eat. Wow! It takes all of five minutes to make and I love it. It's healthy, raw and so good. Here's a pic.
It doesn't look very yellow, or very yummy, so you are just going to have to trust me. I was very skeptical for a while but now that I've finally tried it I can't believe ow good it is.

I also bought some phyllo dough and made apple streusel and spanacopita from Dreena's cookbooks. Sorry, I can't remember which one but the food was great. I have pics of the streussel, but not the spanacopita.

There is something about apples and spices that is so wonderful to me, especially in the fall.











My youngest brother was visiting about a week ago, and I made him the french toast from Vive. He is 13 and he loved it. On his way to the shower he saw me putting tofu in it and he wrinkled his noes, but after he tried it he told me it tasted just like regular french toast. You can't get a better compliment then that. Try it guys!

I got tagged by Melissa so this is a lits of the five things I think everyone should try before they die:

1. Artichokes.
And I don't mean the canned ones or the ones you get out of a jar. I mean fresh artichokes. I love them boiled till tender, then I eat them with garlic butter or olive oil. There are of course lots of other wonderful things to do with them, but I think they are perfect on their own.

2. Asparagus.
Few things represent summer to me as strongly as asparagus. I used to eat them with holandais, but now I love putting them in just about everything. Such a wonderful, crunchy veggie.

3. Spinach.
If I had to choose one veggie I can't live without I think I have to choose spinach. I've loved it for as long as I can remember.

4. Avocado.
This fruit (yes, it is a fruit) can be used for just about everything. It is a great source of fatty acids and vitamin e.

5. Seaweed.
It weirded me out at first, but I truly love the flavor of seaweed. It is also a great source of minerals.

Ok, so a very short post, but it's been a long day. I really did want to post this list though. I love food, and I'm sure there are many other things I could have added, but I think these are probably my top 5.

One of the things I love about vegan food is that you combine side dishes and you get a meal. I guess the same applies for omni food too, but most omnis would miss the animal protein, where as I love that I can have mashed potatoes and gravy, salad and brussel sprouts with onions and spinach and be able to call it a complete meal. I do generally try to add something more protein heavy to my meals, like beans or tofu or seitan etc, but sometimes I just can't be bothered. And let's face it, I did have both cashews and avocado in this meal, so there are some protein heavy foods.

This was dinner today. A side salad and whole wheat pasta with cherry tomatoes and pesto, oh and nutritional yeast. I happened to hear about this whole wheat pasta on tv the other day and decided to try it. Very good, and definately more healthy. The salad is just baby romaine and baby spinach topped with Drenas sesame lemon vinagrette in EDV. I liked the vinagrette, it would be awesome with cold buckwheat noodles and some veggies.



A girl's gotta have her dessert. These are from Vegan with a Vengance. I halved the recipe, because to many cookies are not good for the size of my butt... They do taste good though.

Two days a week I have yoga class, so I try to eat fairly early to avoid a full stomach in class. This is a dish I made this week before class. I liked it because it has a lot of fresh veggies, quinoa which is a whole grain and tofu. I like making stuff like this with lots of different healthy ingredients that is quick and tastes nice. I usually just see what I have left in my fridge and throw it all together because I hate throwing out food.


One of the problems with fall is that I often come down with a cold that just won't disapear so I like to use a lot of fresh ginger and garlic. This dish I made to bring to work so that I would have a decent dinner there. It's rice, ginger, garlic, miso (another wonderful cold-busting ingredient), soy sauce, spinach and tofu. I had silken tofu in my fridge that needed to be used. I was hoping that the tofu wouldn't disintegrate too much, but that didn't work. Instead of tofu chunks I ended up with a risotto looking rice. It tasted delicious though, so I didn't mind that it didn't turn out the way I had planned.


A quick healthy dinner that tasted very good. I needed something substantial yesterday as I was going to several parties and would be drinking alcohol. This was perfect. I really love potato wedges that have been roasted like these. It's a good variation and you just pop the potatoes in the oven and don't have to worry about them anymore.

I decided to make som real wholesome food yesterday so I got out Vive and made the Rosemary tofu balls and served them over pasta. I didn't use the vinegrette because I forgot and was starving so I just ate them. Wow! They were really good. The texture wasn't very meaty or firm, but they tasted delicious.

Making the "dough" for the tofu balls.

Finished tofuballs ready for marinara

Finished dish with pasta, sauce and tofuballs

I also made the choc chip cookies from Vegan with a vengance. I didn't take a picture though because I messed them up. I forgot that I didn't have any baking soda left, so I used a little baking powder (knowing it wouldn't really work) and they were super flat... but still very good.

I'm finally back. It's been a crazy summer with lots of working, traveling and cooking too, just not very much blogging. I've been working at my university, doing research for one of the prof's there. It pays a fair amount and it's great experience, which is good as I have to have 12 weeks work experience to get my masters. I'm pretty sure I have enough now to fulfil the requirements so that's nice.

I also spent some time traveling. I went to Sweden for a short trip to Gothenburg. I was supposed to see the Stones, but as Keith Richard had an incident with a palm tree (what's up with that? The guy is almost 70...) the consert was cancelled. I went anyway as everything was already booked. It was a nice trip. I also went to western Norway for some hiking. I went to Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen) a very famous norwegian tourist attraction. I've never actually been there before, but as my mother was taking the trip with a french girl staying there this summer I decided to come too. We took some amazing pictures, and the hike wasn't bad at all. Well worth doing. Here are some pictures

In the picture above you can actualy see me and my mother standing in the middle of the rock. I'm on the left.

We also hiked Kjerag, which was a lot harder than Pulpit Rock, still fun though. Kjerag is not to far from Pulpit Rock. It's in the inner most part of the fjord. We went to Kjerag first then took the ferry through the fjord (a beautiful trip) to Pulpit Rock.

Here are some pictures of Kjerag

I do have a food pic today too. The first one that I've taken with my new Nikon D50 camera. I am very excited about it and it does take beautiful pictures.


This is todays dinner. I wasn't feeling very creative, and as I made a ton of rice salad yesterday from HIAV by Sarah Kramer (I love bringing it to school as lunch) I decided to have that along with some tofu (inspired by Dreena Burtons recipe on pg 158 in everyday vegan, I can't remeber the name of the recipe). On the side I have a salad with homemade crutons, baby spinach, romaine and pinenuts topped with Dreenas creamy ceasar salad dressing, also EDV. It was very yummy and fast as both the rice salad and the ceasar dressing were already made.