I just had a delicious cup of Masala Chai Tea. I’m not used to high-caffeine drinks, so when I have even a bit, I’m bouncing off the walls. I can barely sit still at work this morning. Thankfully, I’m sitting on my yoga ball, so I’m putting my energy to good use.

Ingredients to make the best Chai tea EVAR:

Chai tea (of course)

Silk vanilla soymilk creamer

Generous helping of raw agave nectar

Something to munch on….I’ve got almonds (this is optional!)

My most favorite tea in the whole world:

Jasmine Pearl Green Tea

I drink this pretty much every night. Just the smell of it puts me in a coma, its that good. I put a dab of raw agave in it to enhance the flavor, and that’s all it needs. My family calls me Mr. Tea whenever I make a pot. I pity the foo who’s never tasted this tea!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July, and a safe one! I drove out to my friend’s house in Riverside to enjoy the holiday. We were treated to 2 different fireworks shows, all from the comfort of his backyard! Great conversations, great company and great food…..didn’t leave their house till 2 in the morning…..late night for me, I’m usually in bed by 10 pm!

What does this statue have to do with 4th of July? Absolutely nothing, but I love it and had to share it =)

While my friend and his wife are omni, they were very considerate in providing vegan options for me and also for my friend Matt, and so I had a vegan boca chik’n burger (which Matt brought) with hummus, avocado, onions, and corn. Sooooo good! It was getting toward night time, so the pictures of the patties on the grill didn’t turn out very well but I got some good shots of the condiments….and fireworks!

This is just too beautiful and awe-inspiring not to share. Link to the full article: Golden Ray Photos of Amazing Mass Migration

“It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.”

This photo is truly amazing:

Now that I’ve jumped head first into the wonderful world of food processors, my next move is to start juicing and get a blender that isn’t 30 years old!

So….I’m looking at this juicer, which one of my yoga friends says is a great one:

And for a blender, I’m looking at a Cuisinart Smooth Operator blender/smoothie maker. It is 56 oz and 1500 watts of pure pulse power. Fortunately I can get one of these for free from work using my “award points”.

Opinions? Advice? I’m hoping this is a good one!

Festive Casserole……great for festive occasions! Today is indeed a festive occasion: I finally got a food processor! Yes, I’ve entered the 21st century. I made this recipe once before, about a month ago and let me tell you, grating/shredding the beets was HORRIBLE without my handy dandy food processor. It took about an hour to shred everything. With my food processor, it took about 10 minutes. Food processors really are cruise control for AWESOME.

So…..on to the dish. I found this recipe on the Yogi Tea web site. It is a fairly ayurvedic-friendly recipe (garlic is a no-no in the ayurvedic diet), but I veganized a few of the ingredients. The vegan cheez is what makes this dish so great. I pretty much use the Follow Your Heart brand exclusively. The key to making this cheez taste really good is to melt it till its bubbly.

Ingredients:

• 4 beets of assorted colors (I did 2 red beets and 2 white beets)
• 1.5 lbs carrots
• 1 bunch green onions, finely chopped
• 3 onions (I chopped one onion normally and food processed the other 2 until they were minced)
• 3 cloves of garlic (I like mine fairly large, but you can mince the garlic if you want)
• black pepper to taste
• Braggs Aminos, sprinkled to taste (this is a healthy and low-sodium soy sauce)
• 1/4 cup olive or canola oil (for use when you sautée)
• 2 packages of vegan jack cheez

Directions:

1. Scrub beets and carrots, but don’t cut off stems or roots.
2. Steam whole beets for about 15 minutes, then add whole carrots and steam until tender/firm
3. Rinse in cold water and remove the skins (I use one of those hand skinner tools)
4. Separately grate the beets and carrots (in your handy food processor!)
5. Marvel at how bloody your hands look from the red beets
6. Place in casserole dish, mixing lightly so the colors are distinct.
7. Sautée onions and garlic in oil until golden brown
8. Gently mix the onions and garlic with beets and carrots, layering cheez in as well
9. Sprinkle with pepper and Braggs Aminos (or soy sauce if you want to go the less healthy route)
10. Cover entirely with the grated cheez
11. Cook in the oven at about 400 degrees for around 5 minutes, then broil until the cheez is bubbly
12. Enjoy!

Tonight was the June OC Veggie meetup. My friend and co-organizer, Alia, is in Guatemala right now, so I wanted to keep this meet low-key. Haha, nice try! Ended up having about 30 people attend. Great crowd and everyone was friendly and having a good time.

This meetup was held at Au Lac, a very popular vegan/raw restaurant in Orange County. Their raw menu is incredible, and the presentation is very artistic. I had the curry “chicken”. I’m addicted to curry; I couldn’t help but order it…again. Good times and good company! Next month, Alia will be back and we are going to have a potluck. That’ll be a great opportunity for everyone to mingle a bit more.

My latest routine has been to have 3 squares of chocolate after dinner. I’m not much of a dessert person, but this chocolate has me hooked. Its gotta be the best chocolate I’ve ever had. I especially like the Raspberries In Dark Chocolate. All organic, vegan, and fair-trade. And I love the added touches they include in the wrapping. It not only looks visually appealing, but on the inside is an excerpt from Don Juan, by Lord Byron. How cool is that? Being an English Lit major, I find it to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen on packaging in a long time.

So if you see this in the store and are wondering if you should try this brand, I have to highly recommend it!

I’ve been really busy with the beginning of the summer semester that I haven’t had much time to cook. Well, I’ve been cooking plenty, but I haven’t had very much time to actually take quality photographs of the stuff I’ve been cooking. But anyway……

These pancakes were really good! Rustic chocolate chip pancakes. The “rustic” means that they don’t look too pretty, but they are very good, and they’ll really stick to your ribs! I’m not sure where that expression came from originally, but I saw it on a Disney cartoon a long time ago and I always say that when I make pancakes. So anyway, they have chocolate chips in them, chopped hazelnuts and some grated and chopped almonds.

Ingredients:

1 cup pancake mix (I used Arrowhead Mills)

1.5 tsp. egg replacer (mix with 2 tbsp. water)

1 tbsp. canola oil (organic….the non-organic kind is very very bad, most likely genetically modified)

1 tbsp. agave nectar (the raw version is my favorite, as I’ve mentioned before)

2/3 cup soy milk (this is more like a minimum, I ended up using about a cup of soy milk, both the normal and vanilla variety for extra flavor)

1/4 tsp. sea salt (if desired)

hazelnuts, almonds, dark chocolate or carob chips (add as much or as little as you like; I tend to be fairly heavy-handed)

Directions:

1. Stir all ingredients until lumps disappear
2. Let batter sit for one minute
3. Cook on preheated lightly oiled griddle or pan, turning when bubbles form on surface and edges begin to dry.
4. To ensure they cook all the way through, I usually use my spatula to poke a sliver in the center of the pancake, so that heat can move through a little better.
5. Enjoy!

People look at me like I’m some form of mutant for speaking out against honey. But in order to maintain such an intense level of bee farming, lots of bad things need to happen, and it usually starts with pesticides.

My opposition to honey is more self-serving and less altruistic than it might appear, although don’t get me wrong, I advocate for the fair treatment of honey bees simply for the fact that they are our friends and neighbors and deserve a good life.

Every third bite of plant matter you eat has been pollenated by bees. They make a great deal of our food supply possible. Without bees, food costs would rise considerably.

So when we are seeing a 60% disappearance of bees on the West Coast, and a 70% disappearance on the East Coast, that means something is seriously wrong, and those kinds of number are, well, significant.

I hope those little guys can pull through, and I hope beyond hope that humans, in all their ignorance, will stop using pesticides. I will never understand the logic in poisoning food so that you can eat it.

Link to a good article: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/06/honey_bees.html

Hey everybody! I’ve been lazy these past few weeks! At least as far as posting any recipes. I’ve been cooking plenty, and experimenting with new recipes, but I guess I’ve just been a little too busy living life to stop and take a few pictures. Between juggling a job that I love, yoga, and cooking, I’ve been a very busy (vegan) bee. But I have been trying new recipes and I wanted to perfect them before photographing and sharing them. So, I haven’t been entirely lazy! Upcoming recipes I’ll be sharing are: Yogi Bhajan’s Onion Soup recipe, Vegetable Beet Casserole, and some more German/Yugoslavian/Croatian traditional dishes that I’ve veganized. Can’t wait to share!

My stereo was on, and somewhere between listening to The Cure and Depeche Mode, the idea of making a blog entry about my favorite cereal combination popped into my head. I love to mix Nature’s Path Organic Flax Plus with their Organic Hemp Plus Granola cereals. So delicious! And the soy milk adds that extra zing that makes this my preferred breakfast item.

I hope everyone’s Memorial Day weekend is going great!