Black Eyed Peas & Potluck Parties

Waking up late sometimes means that I end up combining breakfast & lunch, creating not your typical brunch, but instead coffee and a sandwich.

Open wide! Tofurky, arugula, vegenaise, mustard, 1/4 avocado, and soy cheese in between two pieces of ezekiel bread.

After eating breakfast/lunch I picked my sisters and their friends up from school because it was one of their girlfriends birthday and they wanted me to drive them to the b-day party. Just picture me driving my mom's white Range Rover with about ten little girls hanging out of the sunroof, Black Eyed Peas blaring, and all of the windows decorated in pink painted w/ "happy birthday Sarah" hearts and piece signs. It was a sight to see. I brought them to the party at the Marriott pool and got to sunbathe while watching the kiddies- not to shabby at all. When I was done there I drove over to Raveena's house to lounge on her couch all day and watch Cami and Dru film videos of their feet dressed in comforter slippers dancing to Salt & Pepa (if this scenario doesn't make any sense I don't blame you I didn't really understand it either). Rav provided me w/ the necessary snackage.

Hummus & Crackers

Rav is Indian and I have heard that her mom makes amazing Indian food, but in the past 8 years that I have known her I have yet to try her Indian cuisine. This is crazy especially since Indian food is my all time favorite, and almost all Indian food is vegan. Finally on Friday I got to try it!

Black eyed peas w/ whole wheat rotti.

This was soooo good, I had to come back for seconds. She even rolled out the dough for the rotti and made them right there in front of me. You can bet that I will be visiting Raveena's house more often from now on.

Saturday morning I went and took my sisters to breakfast at Cafe Vienna.

I had a couple pieces of whole wheat toast with my all time favorite raspberry jam...

and a bottomless cup of coffee w/ soy milk.

A couple of hours later I was visited my gma in the hospital and I munched on an Odwalla super protein bar. This really was not my favorite, pretty bland actually.

After leaving the hospital I went and ran errands to get ready for my little potluck that night. We frequented both Walmart and Costco ( I tried lots of taste testers), and stopped by Pick up Sticks where my mom and split the buddha's feast w/ brown rice. I'm not really a fan of semi fast food Chinese restaurants, I don't like Chinese food really nor fast food, but this was surprisingly tasty.

When I got home I rushed to get the outside patio ready before everyone came over.

I provided the beverages- an assortment of Mexican beers from Costco & lemon drops.

Easy Lemon drop recipe-

mix 1 part Absolute Citron Vodka with 2 parts lemonade (I use Simply Lemonade) , and garnish w/ lemon slices.

I love these glasses (above) and matching pitchers (below) that I bought from Walmart, they were super cheap too.

Considering that I had to explain to one of my girlfriends what a potluck is, I was impressed by what everyone ending up bringing. There ended up being tons of great food. The aforementioned girlfriend brought Stacy's Pita Chips and 2 types of hummus which is always a winner in my book. I supplied lots of non-vegan food including turkey wraps, margherita pizza, dark chocolate covered acai berries, bbq popchips, and spicy artichoke dip.

My friends all kept my dietary needs in mind and everyone brought vegan food; too sweet of them. Dru made a white bean salad which was delicious, but I sadly forgot to get a pic- sorry Dru! Thank the lord Raveena treated me to more Indian food and brought Samosas filled w/ curried potatoes & 2 types of dipping sauces- a sweet one and a spicy cilantro,

Looks like I wasn't the only one w/ pizza in mind- Tara brought a margherita pizza too, but hers was a vegan one from Z pizza. Sooo yummy I have not had pizza in ages. The soy cheese may have looked a little funny but it tasted like regular mozarella. I dipped mine in the spicy cilantro sauce that Rav brought.

I bought some funny $5 nerd glasses from Walmart that day and decided to sport them. Dru likewise donned the clear pair since she was my date for the night. I'm not going to lie I wore them all today too and have been embracing my inner nerd.

We all got to meet Tara's new BF too who is a great guy, and received all of our approval : )

Rav's beau was there too and they adopted Issy as their child for the night. She was being a bit rambunctious & attempted successfully in decorating him in My Little Pony stickers.

It was a great potluck, and we all stayed up until the wee hours drinking lemon drops & chatting. Good food & friends, what more could one wish for?

Tortilla Overdose

Today was a super weird eating day for me consisting of copious amounts of tortilla &more processed food than I am comfortable with.

The day started out normal with a few cups of coffee w/ soy creamer as I was getting ready.

I should have known that it was going to be a day of odd eating habits when I craved a sandwich for breakfast.

Tofurky, arugula, soy cheese, mustard, & vegenaise on Ezekiel bread.

Although the last thing I felt like was more Mexican food, considering I think I have eaten Mexican food almost everyday this past week, I didn't really have a choice. After visiting my gma at the hospital, my gpa & mom wanted to eat lunch at Coyote Grill and I had to comply. The three of us munched on chips, guac, and salsa.

Since I wasn't all that hungry I just ordered a side of black beans and corn tortillas which I thought would be a small lunch. 5 corn tortillas and big bowl of black beans later I was completely stuffed.

Afterwards I hung out w/ my sistas Emma and Summer and we visited the community garden in our neighborhood. People and families rent out small little plots of land here where they can plant flowers and vegetables. It's a communal garden so people from the community volunteer and they have workshops where kids can learn about planting. They also have parties where everyone makes food and shares their produce : )

Aw look at the cute little strawberry

I wish my family had a garden plot, but currently all of them are taken. I'm keeping my eye out for now, and a little birdie told me that they are planning on making the garden larger so there is hope.

For dinner I made my sisters soy cheese quesadillas and french fries. I was planning on making myself something else but i couldn't resist stealing a few pieces of quesadilla from them.

Of course then I had to go and make my own beefed up quesadilla. This time w/ avo too, and a brocslaw salad on the side all doused in Tapatio.

Mmm gooey deliciousness.

I felt really sick after this meal and had an awful stomachache. In total honestly today I had about 6 tortillas and tons of soy cheese, and almost no veggies. Sometimes these things happen and I am definitely feeling the consequences right now of eating like a 6 year old all day : /

Vegemite Cures All

As usual I started my day out w/ a cup of coffee, didn't include a pic though because they kept coming out so ugly (we're having dishwasher issues that leave water marks on everything soo annoying). I had some more banana bread for breakfast. Delicious as usual.

Open wide! (take note of the tacky purple chipping nail polish)

Afterwards I made myself lunch to sustain me through a busy day of studying and class. Included was a sandwich w/ Tofutti soy cheese slices, sprouts, 1/2 small avocado, & vegenaise on Ezekiel bread. Also I packed snacks including les petit carrots w/ hummus to dip them in & the last of my pineapple slices.

By the end of class I was exhausted and needed a caffeine buzz before I started studying. I stopped by Starbucks and picked up a venti soy ice coffee w/ sugar free hazelnut for me & the same for my friend, Cami, but w/ sugar free vanilla. They spelled my name right too!

Cami got spoiled twice today- coffee & then dinner. Having a blog now has been inspiring me to cook more & she has been my guinea pig, I don't think she minds too much. I used this black bean and quinoa recipe that I found, but I substituted the black beans w/ 3/4 can of garbonzo beans and a cup of frozen peas, my recipe also didn't include cilantro porque no lo tengo.

This was super easy to make and really flavorful.

The recipe made quite a large portion. I practiced a bit of self control and only let myself have 2 cups. Measuring out my food helps me from stuffing my face (sometimes).

(Notice that my previous chipping nail polish has slowly deteriorated throughout the day.Chipped nailpolish is a big pet peeve for me. I hate not having my nails painted).

I added lots of this to my meal.....

I could put sriracha on almost anything. I love all things spicy, and sriracha is quite powerful when it comes to spiciness.

After dinner though my stomach was killing me! Not sure exactly what it was. Coincidentally, I consumed a lot of things that I had purchased in Australia, first beginning with antiacid medicine. Then I drank a cup of ginger Yogi tea in this cute cup from Sydney w/ the opera house on it.

While I was waiting to see if the tea would help my cause, Ratatat helped me write a paper on Perestroika for Humanities. He is so studious.

The tea was not working so I had to turn to the ultimate Australian classic- Vegemite, I had a big spoonful on it's own. I have grown to really enjoy Vegemite and I even crave it sometimes, let me warn you though it is an acquired taste so If you want to try it just have a tini bit on toast. It is great for stomaches though and it made my stomach feel 100% better.

Monkeying Around

My late nap yesterday totally threw me off, so at 1 am I was wide awake and decided to put some browning bananas I had to use and made banana bread. Sounds sensible right? Not really the banana bread did not finish until 2:30 a.m. I found this recipe on postpunkkitchen. I altered it a bit mostly because I didn't want to go to the store and get more ingredients and because I wanted it to have less calories and be a bit healthier. Here are my ingredients:

1 cup Splenda brown sugar

1/2 cup Earth Balance, at room temp
4 very ripe bananas, mashed well
2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

I followed the same directions as they recommended to in the recipe and baked it for about 1 hr and 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I held off until I woke up this morning to try some. This is how it looked in the end-

This morning for breakfast I had some heated up with Smart Balance on top along with some coffee. It was really delicious, very moist and not too sweet.

I wasn't too hungry at lunch time and decided to have 1/2 of a sandwich consisting of a piece of toasted ezekiel bread, lots of sprouts, hummus, and Tofurky.

Almost every time my mom comes to visit me up at school we eat lunch in Santa Monica at Real Food Daily which has amazing vegan food. My mom was nice enough to buy me Real Food Daily cookbook which tells you how to cook every item on the menu. It includes appetizers, sauces, entrees, deserts- basically every yummy vegan meal you can think of.

I decided to make the caesar salad with blackened tempeh which I have had many times at the restaurant. I am actually not a fan of non vegan caesar salad, but this vegan recipe was delicious. I won't include the recipe because I think it would be better if you bought the book.

These are the pieces of blackened tempeh that were coated in spices, olive oil and whole wheat flour. They had quite a kick to them & were packed with flavor.

Below are the croutons which were super crunchy and very rosemaryish (not a word real word I know, but the best one I could think of).

Here is the finished product. The best part was the dressing which was simple to make and very salty and creamy.

Close up.

There was enough to feed all three of my roommates, who even though they are not vegan said that my version was better than regular caesar salad! I felt quite accomplished : )

I had sorority stuff to do tonight but grabbed a soy chai tea misto w/ 2 splendas before hand to keep me awake through Chapter.

All this talk of food has made me hungry! May have to go grab a slice of banana bread....