I'm Coming Back to the Blog World! Well...Maybe.

So I've been absent for a long time and a lot has happened since I last posted. To be honest I don't know why I stopped posting. I think I just got busy. Then school had to come around and I had to start doing the public schooling instead of me attempting(meaning failing) online schooling. And look at me now school is almost over, so maybe I'll have more time to blog on here again! I may not though considering I run 3 tumblr blogs, twitter, instagram, and I have to deal with my facebook. I've also got a lot of other hobbies to do. I've missed the food blogging scene though, the community it has is amazing(I'm guessing it still is). I've missed writing(not essays) too!

Well lately I don't eat very vegan anymore. I'm still a vegetarian and I've introduced more dairy into my life. Which I'm kind of sad about, but it's hard to ween off of it especially being my age. I've also stopped making any food. I've been mostly eating out, which is super costly as most people know. It also seems like whatever I do eat it is repeated and bland. I haven't been eating much vegetables. I've even let myself forget the exact time for roasting certain veggies! Which is not a good thing. With eating out and such I've definitely gained a lot of weight. I've stopped exercising and doing yoga so now I'm more close to 140 pounds now because of this. Which I'm not excited about...at all! I always thought that when I'd go back to school I'd be moving around more so I wouldn't have to deal with a whole lot of exercise because of all the walking I'd hope I'd do. I was wrong, obviously.

Anyways what I hope to get out of this blog again for me to find my love for food again and become interested in it and to be excited again for my meals. Also maybe to help me keep track of the way I eat and exercise. So hopefully I can be healthy again. Well if I can accomplish this we'll see, but for me to start writing on this blog again I'm not sure how much I believe I will.

Healthy PB Coofins with Hints of Banana and Cinnamon.

I couldn't think of a shorter name to call these cookies/muffins that'd describe them enough. They aren't quite a peanut butter cookie and have more of the texture of a muffin. So therefore here became the Healthy Peanut Butter Coofins with Hints of Banana and Cinnamon.

I started out looking for a great recipe for cookies. Little did I know my results would give me a nice moist coofin. The great thing about coofins if they pair well with jam. You could even, if you'd like make your own PB &J coofin sandwich using this coofin as the bread. Sound delicious, right? Onto the rest of this story....

I wanted to find a recipe for cookies that are healthier then your regular sugary ones. So I found these peanut butter cookies from  Heidi at 101 Cookbooks. Those looked nice I thought. I didn't want to use oil this time though. I was about to use applesauce in replace, but my apple sauce in my fridge was slightly moldy(yuck). That idea went out the window. I had one ripe banana on the counter staring me down not to waste it. So the banana was mashed and used. Once I used that everything else in the recipe changed slightly or you could say more then slightly so much that they aren't even really a cookie or even remotely close to the recipe I found besides the peanut butter and maple syrup pretty much.

I'll admit I can't follow someones recipe for the life of me. My Dad keeps saying "when baking, things need to be exact or it won't turn out right". In my defense I say "I'm learning from my fails". Which is absolutely true. I am becoming a better baker and learning what things work and don't in baking. Lately I've become rather good at baking and coming up with more of my own recipes. Which is a lot of fun, it's nice to share something and to be able to call it your own.

Now finally my Healthy Peanut Butter with Hint of Banana and Cinnamon Coofins. I hope you make up a batch soon and try not to eat them all at once. Don't forget to share too!

Healthy PB with Hints of Banana and Cinnamon Cookies

yielded about 19 cookies for me

1 3/4 cup spelt flour (you could easily use whole wheat pastry flour or maybe others)

1/4 cup golden flax meal, regular flax meal works fine too

1 cup peanut butter, I used crunchy

1 very ripe banana, mashed 

1 cup 100% pure maple syrup(Can be subbed with agave)

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

3/4 tsp salt (I used less since I'm a little more sensitive to salt)

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees F

Combine the wet ingredients; mashed bananas, maple syrup, peanut butter, and vanilla into a bowl and mix tell some what combined. In another bowl add the dry ingredients; flour, flax meal, salt, and baking soda in to another bowl mixing thoroughly. Slowly combine the dry ingredients to the wet. This will form a super sticky dough(I highly suggest putting it in the fridge for a while before working with. I didn't put it in the fridge and it took me a while to form them on the sheet.). Drop the cookies onto a oiled baking sheet or a parchment covered baking sheet. 

Cook for 8-12 minutes depending on your ovens or the size you made the cookies. Keep and eye on them so they don't burn! Because who would want burnt cookies? Certainly not me!

P.S. These cookies make a great before or after a work-out snack! Or even a snack in general when you don't want anything overly sugary, but want that subtle sweetness. 

Seabirds Food Truck.

        I am such a bad blogger, I know.....that's another topic though for some other time. Over the weekend if you didn't hear about it in Salt Lake City we were lucky to have some food trucks storm in. They we're all on the Food Network's reality show The Great Food Truck Race(or at least that's what I think it's called) for it's second season. What ever truck sold the least was booted off. I wasn't in town on Saturday to get something from the trucks, but I was happy to find out they stayed Sunday. I got home and had just enough time to figure where some of the trucks may be. They all had a challenge (I think) called a bump challenge so all the food trucks would be switching locations a lot. It made it harder to find all of the trucks that's for sure. The trucks competing that I knew of are; Rocky's a gourmet grilled cheese truck, Korilla a Korean barbeque truck, The Lime a light california cuisine truck, Seabirds a all vegan truck, Cafe Con Leche i'm not sure what they serve, and Devilicious which serves crazy unhealthy food, I'd call it. 

So I'm sure you can pick what one I went to.....Seabirds! I wanted to go to the Lime truck, but didn't have enough time, wasn't hungry, and my dad didn't want to chase another truck for me. 

Picture stolen from YelpUtah's twitter.

Seabirds is from Orange County, California. They're organic, and can have gluten free and raw options.
Here's a quote from the owner herself.

“This truck came to life with a dream and a desire: A dream for vegan street food, and a desire to provide healthy, local food that’s convenient and fairly priced. Orange County is a great place to live, but it was lacking quality choices for those wishing to consume a healthier, plant-based diet. I started Seabirds because I wanted to make a difference not only in the lives of the people of Orange County, but in the world we love and live in.” ~Stephanie Morgan, Owner

When I got to the truck they were at Pet Smart and there was definitely a few slew of people around it. Kelly from Cake walk even showed up! One of the owners of the truck was out playing a uke(somewhat), she was very sweet. I wish I wasn't so shy I would've talked to her  more.

            On there menu they had a pesto flat bread that has balsamic mushrooms, chipotle sour cream, and a few other veggies. I opted out of that one since I don't like mushrooms. There was cinnamon sugar toast that my dad got since it was the only thing he could have, it was at $5 bucks. "Most expensive piece of toast I've ever bought" my dad said. I exclaimed to him that it was worth it though.

Lastly they had a Brown Fried Rice with veggies and tofu, I remember mine has bell pepper, cilantro,a lime wedge, onions and mushrooms(I had to pick around these). There was suppose to be snap peas, but I didn't have get any. I don't know if they didn't have any or just forgot. This was $10. Either way it was still delicious! I even have a few leftovers for lunch today, not much because I inhaled this and two pieces of toast. I think my metabolism is getting higher. 

The food was tasty and I sure hope Seabirds makes it far into the competition. I wish I had a chance to have tried The Lime truck, but I'm just happy I got to support Seabirds. 

I highly suggest to follow Seabirds on twitter.

Here's their website for more information.

Really VegNews?

    I'm sure you've all heard about it by now about VegNews not posting vegan photos. The article is on quarry girl here:http://www.quarrygirl.com/2011/04/13/rant-veg-news-is-putting-the-meat-into-vegan-issues/.

Here's my view on it. First of all a lot of us buy the magazine supporting a complete vegan magazine. Knowing that they are going the cheap way out and not using a vegan photographer or even photos of vegan food is complete bull. Second of all I like to look at photos with recipes to see how they are suppose to turn out. If it's suppose to be a veggie burger I don't think it'll come near as close to looking like actual meat. Thirdly, maybe I wouldn't be so mad about it if they weren't acting the way they are. It's absolutely child-like to ignore what your doing when people have called you out. Overall I think i'm going to un-subscribe. I'll wait a few days though maybe they'll man-up and apologize or say anything about what's been happening. I can't believe no one has caught their act sooner. 

On a lighter note Walmart is going to sell flax milk. Read more over at vegansaurus! I never knew that there was such thing as flax milk. I was actually just wondering the other day if you could even make flax milk. Well apparently you can.

Also look forward to a Sweet Potato Cupcake or Muffin with Pb frosting recipe coming soon. Here's a sneak photo. 

Have you ever had flax milk? Did you like it?

What's your opinion on the whole VegNews issue?


Update: VegNews has an written an apology. Read it here:http://vegnews.com/web/uploads/asset/3169/file/FromVegNews.pdf
I guess it's a little more understandable how magazines do have to have stock photos. I just hope that this whole controversy will make them looking into getting more vegan food photographs. I still don't think I'll get rid of my subscription just yet.