Backlog Photos Of Foods I Ate.

When my husband cooks for me, he almost always makes me pasta. This is a simple spaghetti with marinara (we buy Gina Rispoli, Newman's, or Mezzetta) and Trader Joe's meatless meatballs. Very hearty and filling.

Homemade sandwich on whole grain with Tofurky italian deli, Chao cheese, avocado, red onion, lettuce, tomato and Vegenaise!

Awesome sandwich.

Had my sandwich with a cup of Annie's tomato soup. This is so good if you don't have time to make your own soup.

Last Thursday was my birthday and I made my own cake! Chocolate with penuche frosting. I got the frosting recipe from a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook. It's a brown sugar frosting that is sooooo good.

My dad bought me a birthday pizza from Domino's. Thanks Dad!

For my birthday weekend, my husband and I spent time in Santa Barbara. We ate at the following restaurants:

British fish n chip shop. The chips are so good.

While my husband ate fish n chips, I had chips n baked beans.

At The Natural Cafe there are some good vegan options.

Like this sandwich. It's called the "Local's Favorite". Ask for no mayo and get a side of tahini sauce. Such a good little spot to grab lunch.

On our last night we hit up Galanga for amazing Thai food.

Spicy Mint Noodles with tofu. Make sure to order without fish sauce and egg.

Delicious veggie red curry. No fish sauce.

My plate. I was so full afterwards. Can't wait to go back to SB!

Pizza with Trader Joe's vegan cheese.

Made this pizza for myself tonight after a pretty rough day. I used Trader Joe's vegan mozzarella which is interesting. It got sooo liquidy when it melted. It was sloshing out the sides of the pizza as I cut into it with a pizza wheel. Wacky. I like the taste. It has a very cheesy salty flavor. Pizza from school cafeteria comes to mind. It's not bad at all. Quite good actually but way too liquidy when hot out of the oven. I didn't give it a chance to cool so maybe if I had, it would have firmed up a bit. I'll see tomorrow as I have stored the leftovers for lunch. So far, Follow Your Heart is tops as far as vegan cheese goes.

Creamy Cashew Leek and Spinach Pasta with Tempeh Bacon.

Hey guys, here's a great pasta recipe that uses a vegan version of creme fraiche. You basically soak about 1 cup of cashews in hot water for 30 minutes, drain and then blend with 1/2 cup water, 2 TB lemon juice and a couple pinches of salt. Then you cook up some leeks, garlic, spinach and mix in with cashew sauce. I added tempeh bacon to mine. This is optional.

Some ingredients: spinach, vegan cheese and pasta. You will only need 1/4 cup cheese. Save the rest for pizza later in the week!

Chop up your leeks (I used 2) and garlic (2 cloves) . Quickly fry up the tempeh bacon that has been cut into bits.

Saute the garlic and leeks in olive oil over medium high heat. Once leeks have softened, add half a bag of spinach that has been roughly chopped.

This is what your cashew creme fraiche looks like all blended up.

Stir the cashew sauce into the leeks and spinach. It'll be very thick. At this point you can add some unsweetened soy or almond milk to thin it out, or even hot water. Add the 1/4 cup of vegan cheese. Season with salt, pepper, a squeeze of lemon, red pepper flakes.

After the sauce is nice and hot and creamy, mix in the pasta. Add the tempeh bacon bits.

Eat!

Lentil Stew.

Made Moroccan lentil stew last night and it was delicious as usual. I love lentils!

Eating vegan at Islands.

Basket of fries are a must!

No Blame Veggie Tacos. Order without the cheese. I switched out corn for flour tortillas which was a personal preference. It would have been great with corn tortillas too.

Mai Tai!

River Cottage Veg Chili and Fat Free Pineapple Coffee Cake

I opened up RIVER COTTAGE VEG today and picked out the chili recipe because I had similar ingredients and it sounded like it would be good with baked potatoes and corn tortillas. Mmmm! The recipe calls for pinto beans and zucchini which I substituted kidney beans and carrot. It came out delicious. First time I've ever added red wine to chili. I added a bit of chili powder because I felt like it needed it.

And because I can't live without cake, I made a fat free cake which I got from The Fat Free Vegan blog. I've been making so much cake for the past few weeks/months that my dresses are fitting kind of tight lately! I've made this recipe probably 8 years ago when I first went vegan. It uses pineapple and apple sauce for the fat and has much less sugar than a normal cake. It was good then and it's good now. It's got a 'chewier' consistency than normal cake (probably because I used tapioca flour for the egg replacer) but it is a nice sweet treat without the guilt!

Armenian Lentil Soup, Garlic Cheesy Bread, Cake!

Armenian Lentil Soup recipe from The Happy Pear cookbook. It's got red lentils, potato, carrot, swede (my addition, it called for celeriac which I didn't have) onion and dried apricots. It's lovely and smooth after it gets blitzed in the blender. Very tasty!

Garlic cheese bread again!

Plain vanilla cake with vanilla icing and sprinkles.