When My Sweetheart Turned 20…

…I refused to bake him a cake!

I swear it’s what he wanted. For his birthday last March, he requested a raw chocolate cake, rich and decadent with no baking involved.

This was based on the Mocha Cake recipe in Sweet Gratitude: A New World of Raw Desserts. I covered it with Chocolate Glaze, Mocha Cashew-Free Frosting, and sliced almonds. I spoil my baby so.

Dates, coconut oil, almonds, cacao, and cold-pressed espresso were blended into a dense fudgy cake. Can food be sinfully nutritious?

And those are normal-sized birthday candles. This was a special tiny cake just for the two of us. And all the leftover Chocolate Glaze was for me. I can drink it like coffee.

What Didn’t Make the Cut: Rice Meatballs & Vegan Month of Food

I suck at blogging. My perfectionist nature means that the imperfect photos, the underdeveloped recipes, and the just not-too-interesting don’t make it to the blog. And all this means that 90% of my cool food discoveries are not represented here. What a shame, because this past year has been awesome. This blog is supposed to support my idea that life as a vegan can be as fun and crazy as anything.

It’s Vegan MoFo time! This month, hundreds of bloggers will be churning out vegan food posts like there’s no December. Each day of November, I’m going to join them by sharing something I’ve done or eaten this past year. I don’t have time for new ideas and recipes, of course.

My favorite source of recipes is… other blogs. They’re free, unique, modern, and usually accompanied by pretty photos. In August I tried out this Steamed Sweet Rice Meatball from Kitchen M.

When a recipe calls for some kind of ground meat, I usually mix up TVP with wine or beer, broth, soy sauce, onions, garlic, pepper, and other spices, herbs, or vegetable juices. Sometime I’ll form an actual recipe.

I left out the eggs and cooked the “meatballs” inattentively, so they were crumbly and ugly, like my mind on a Friday afternoon. But sweet grains from heaven, they were tasty.

5 Smashing Pumpkin Recipes from Whole Foods Market

Lover that I am of food and pumpkins, I cannot resist any recipes featuring my favorite cucurbit. While Whole Foods Market’s website has a trove of vegan recipes stressing natural/organic/healthful ingredients, the following do not specifically sport the “vegan” tag. But why let that limit your culinary progress? Here’s how I did these:

• Turkey Pumpkin Chili—Substitute the turkey with mushrooms, tempeh, or your own choice of vegan “meat substitute.”
• Pumpkin Bread Pudding—I used Ener-G Egg Replacer for the eggs, coconut milk for the half-and-half, and coconut cream for the cream. I also tossed in two handfuls of golden and dark raisins. Serve warm with love.
• Pumpkin Chocolate Cake—Just forget the eggs. Sweet and moist and not too high in fat, this cake is a great snack for a fall afternoon.
• Creamy Pumpkin Brown Rice—The aroma of pumpkin cooking into a creamy, risotto-like supper for a drizzly autumn night drives me wild with happiness.
• Pumpkin Streusel Bread—I actually used crushed Cheerios in the topping since I had no walnuts or chestnuts, doubled the apples, and substituted canola oil and Ener-G Egg Replacer for the butter and eggs. Results were irresistible.

But there are even more pumpkin recipes to explore! I haven’t had the time or money to try them yet, so it’s up to you to make these vegan and delicious:

• Pumpkin and Mushroom Pie
• Pumpkin-Cream Cheese Truffles
• Roasted Pumpkin Bisque
• Date and Pecan Pumpkin Squares
• Easy Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake
• Pumpkin and Millet Muffins
• Pumpkin Apple Pie
• Vegan Pumpkin Pecan Pie is already vegan, how about that.

Vegan Chocolate Reviewer: Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Wedges

Life is being a distraction right now. But chocolate is a nice distraction from life.

Product: Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Wedges
Price: $3.49 for 3.5 oz at Trader Joe’s
Type of chocolate: 70% Belgian cacao
My notes: Aroma of cocoa. Shiny, plasticky surface. Very soft and chewy bite, uncomplicated rich chocolate flavor.
Overall rating (out of five stars): ***

See how my teethmarks sank smoothly into the wedge before it broke? That’s a soft bite.

Don’t forget that there’s a second layer of wedges under those, making for 16 per tin.

Baby Bok Choy Salad with Wakame

Makes about 1 quart

1 lb baby bok choy, thinly sliced on a diagonal
2 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp ume plum vinegar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp brown rice syrup
1 tsp grated ginger
1 oz dried wakame, cut into small pieces
3 scallions, sliced diagonally
3 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds

1. Rinse the bok choy well and spin dry. Set aside.

2. Whisk together sesame oil, ume plum vinegar, soy sauce, rice syrup, and ginger. Toss with bok choy and wakame, massaging the dressing into the greens with clean hands. Toss with scallions and sesame seeds.

3. Allow to sit at least 15 minutes before serving, or store in refrigerator until needed. Eat cold salad with hot or cold brown rice or soba noodles.

Vegan Chocolate Reviewer: Alter Eco Dark Mint Chocolate

Product: Alter Eco Dark Mint Chocolate
Price: $3.99 for 3.5 oz at Whole Foods
Type of chocolate: at least 61% cacao from Bolivia
My notes: Strong mint scent upon opening wrapper. Smooth and dark appearance. Fairly soft snap and bite, but it was a hot day. Very light, almost like aerated chocolate, with fine grainy texture nearly like Taza stone-ground chocolate. Initially mild mint flavor that fades to pure chocolaty-ness. Addicting.
Overall rating (out of five stars): ****

Read about Alter Eco’s take on practicing Fair Trade.

Summer in So Cal

First stop: San Simeon & Hearst’s Castle.

Going south along Highway 1 will give you such beautiful and extraordinary views of the California coast.

The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in the evening.

A photogenic automobile in Pismo Beach.

Views at the mission in Santa Barbara.

The view of Los Angeles from the Getty Center.

Enjoying the view from the Getty Center.

Delicious veggie burger and green tamales at Hugo’s in West Hollywood. This place has dozens of hearty and healthy vegan options, all clearly marked on the menu. My boyfriend and I agreed this place had the best-tasting veggie burger either of us ever had. The tamales were pretty darn special, too—full of fresh savory vegetables and a cheesy topping of what I suspect was Daiya. These were the best photos I could get because these scrumptious plates disappeared in a mad lip-smacking blur.

Miles of wind turbines greet you to Palm Springs from Highway 111.

My guy and I indulged in a vegan bacon cheeseburger and the Sicilian pizza at Native Foods Café on E Palm Canyon Drive. On a 90° night this water-misted oasis offered this vegan an unrestricted menu of everything from burritos to strawberry shortcake. Was this just another heat-induced delirium, a fantasy? Without my photos, I couldn’t be sure it was not.

If you’re ever in Palm Springs, I also recommend koffi for a frozen slushy heaven of iced coffee and soymilk to keep you from disintegrating in the mid-morning sun.

Unlike me, some things thrive in the heat of Joshua Tree National Park.

Vegan Chocolate Reviewer: Chocolove Coffee Crunch in Dark Chocolate

Product: Chocolove Coffee Crunch in Dark Chocolate
Price: unknown price (bought for me) for 3.2 oz at Cornucopia (local health food store)
Type of chocolate: 55% cacao chocolate from Belgium
My notes: Smooth and glossy appearance. Soft bite with pleasant crunchy coffee bits. I expected a mocha-like taste, but actual flavor was mild chocolate with an intense coffee accent. For a dark chocolate, the cacao content was low and I was reminded of a cheap candy bar, but better. Couldn’t tell if my subsequent “high” was from the coffee or chocolate.
Note to self: Coffee and chocolates alone would make an excellent brunch.
Overall rating (out of five stars): ***

Every Chocolove bar comes with a love poem printed on the inside of the wrapper. I never enjoy it as much as the chocolate.

Vegan Superburger

From top:

• Homemade burger bun (recipe from vegweb.com)
• Follow Your Heart Vegenaise
• Chopped cornichons
• Sliced tomato
• Sliced red onion
• Yellow mustard
• Ketchup
• Vegan burger patty (from my own recipe)
• Wild arugula
• Black pepper
• Melty White Cheez ( recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak)

Pineapple-vanilla floats

• 1/2 cup vanilla soymilk
• 1 cup soda (I used mango-flavored)
• Pineapple Sorbet (recipe from Great Chefs Cook Vegan by Linda Long)

April Showers

…bring May flowers. The indoor, clean-and-sudsy kind of shower just helps you smell like flowers and other sweet things.

From top to bottom photo:

• Juicy pear and dewy florals fill the air when you lather up with this creamy French-milled soap bar. Magnolia Pear 8.8 oz soap bar by South of France.
• Get refreshed and clean with Trader Joe’s Tea Tree Tingle Body Wash. Peppermint and eucalyptus wake up the senses and lighten the mind.
• Close your eyes, and a shower becomes a wash in a luscious vanilla bean shake. Giovanni Cleanse Body Wash in Hazelnut Vanilla.
• Homemade citrus-olive oil scrub: Mix several heaping teaspoons of coarse or regular sugar with 2 Tbsp olive oil and the zest of a grapefruit. Add several drops of a citrus essential oil (e.g. lemon, bergamot) to cover up the smell of olive. Chill in refrigerator before using as a body exfoliant.
• In the evening, turn out the lights and shower by the dreamy glow of a candle. Surround yourself with steam and the aroma of fresh figs as the soft light dances on your glistening skin. Pacifica votive candle in Mediterranean Fig.