Sweetness

It's a cold and rainy day, so what better way to spend it than in blogger land? I have been spending the majority of my meal time recently cleaning out and using up most of my parishable food beacause I am moving and I don't want to have to worry about it en route to my new house. I also have had alot of sweets lying around from the holidays. Just when I thought I had taken care of most of them, I got an awesome belated birthday gift basket from my cousin in New York. The gift basket is from Pangea, and it is full of all kinds of "confections with a conscience".

Here is a closeup of the gift basket. Very pretty. Closeup shot of all the treats (clockwise from top): Vegan Marshmallows, dark chocolate w/almonds,
dark chocolate w/pecans and raisins,
chocolate peanut butter cups, chocolate beans,
White Chocolate Rice Crunch, jelly beans, vegan donuts

Before the rain and cold even came, I was in a soup and bread mood. At a recent trip to the farmers market, I picked up a large bag of broccoli and cauliflower florets. After eating steamed and sauteed florets for about a week, I was starting to get a little bored and decided to finish it off in a thick, hearty soup with a recipe from Vegweb- Cream of Broccoli Soup.
I would change a couple of things, such as one less carrot, and more nutritional yeast. Also, I stirred in 1Tb of tahini in the end. I also served it over quinoa the next day, which made it like a hearty stew. The Mission Fig and Kalamata Olive tapenade on the bread was probably my favorite part of the meal.

I woke up one morning craving baked goods. After one of my late night blog reading binges I came across this recipe from Webly on Fuled By Popcorn. So, I decided to drag my ass out of bed and bake this easy sounding recipe. Easy it was, and very versitle. Throw ingredients into a blender, and then mix it all together, and voila! I ended up using white grape juice, raisins, walnuts, and put strawberry-rhubarb jam on top of the muffins. Then, I took the other half, added some more flour, a titch of baking soda, and some hemp seeds and baked it into a bread. Both were pretty yummy. I enjoyed the muffins best. Very moist, especially with the jam on top. Oh yeah, and with the bread is a glass of fresh apple, mixed berry, grapefruit juice which I made with out new Juiceman Jr. I can't get enough of fresh juice.

I started teaching myself to knit from the book Stitch 'N' Bitch. It is one of the easiest books to follow, and really fun to read. After one week, I am confident in my ability to knit a few rows and make a swatch. The problem I am faced with now is purling, and- more importantly- binding off. So, after proudly coming to the end of my first swatch, I became frustrated when trying to learn to bind off and then seeing it unravel before my eyes. I'm not giving up yet.