Cookies Will Help...

I need a haircut something fierce.  Between varying stressers that have been wearing on me the last few months and constant flat-iron induced damage (I'm assuming at this point that there's not some terrible underlying health condition I'm unaware of), my once thick, healthy, cascading mane is becoming a stringy, thin, frazzled mess.  It ain't pretty! We're not getting our normal days off this week (again!), but hopefully I can get myself a hair appointment sometime around the beginning of March.  In the meantime, I guess I just have to look like a jackass.  Oh well...

So, thanks to aforementioned stress, Friday was rather unpleasant.  Cooking virtually anything will usually help to calm me down, and I was in desperate need of a treat, so I decided to give vegan cookies a try.  I've made a couple vegan cakes and different sweets (with varying amounts of success), but this was my first cookie experiment.  I was hardcore craving oatmeal cookies so I went to vegweb.com to scour their thousands of recipes.  I found one which sounded promising (plus I had all of the ingredients), and got to some cooking therapy!!

I was really pleased with how they turned out.  They looked like a regular oatmeal cookie, smelled like a regular oatmeal cookie, and lastly tasted like a regular oatmeal cookie.  Success!

 

That particular recipe is definitely a keeper, and in case you're interested, here it is!

Yummy Vegan Oatmeal Cookies
(Makes about 2 dozen)

1 tbsp. ground flax seed
3 tbsp. water
1/2 c. vegan margarine, softened (I used Earth Balance)
1/2 c. packed light brown sugar
2 tbsp. white sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 c. Old-Fashioned Oats

First of all, mix together the ground flax seed with the 3 tbsp. water in a small bowl.  Set aside.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, cream together margarine with sugars (I just used a wooden spoon).  Once it's smooth, cream in the vanilla and flax mixture.  Combine all of the dry ingredients (except for the oatmeal) and sift into the margarine mixture.  Mix until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated and then stir in the oats.  Spoon dough by scant tablespoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheets.  Bake for 10-12 minutes (check them at around 10 minutes and see if they need any longer).  They should be golden around the edges.  Remove from cookie sheets and let cool on racks.  Enjoy!

I had mine with a glass of almond milk. Sooooo good! The trick is to not eat all of them (I am still counting calories after all).  Luckily, Blake and his mom like them too, so I'll get some help getting rid of them!  If you get 2 dozen out of it like I did, they come out to about 75 calories and 3.5 grams of fat each.  Not too terrible if you don't let yourself gorge on them. 

Unfortunately, I am, and always have been, an emotional eater (hence the cookies).  Eating crap that I know I shouldn't makes me feel better when I'm feeling crappy.  But then I feel guilty about eating said crap, so then you eat more to feel better, blah, blah, you know how it works, vicious cycles and whatnot. That being said we had vegan pizza for dinner last night.  Yes, again.  I love it and so does Blake (well, he likes it, anyway). I made it with this tempeh Italian "sausage" recipe I got from my sister-in-law.  It's actually quite a convincing substitute. 

Homemade whole wheat pizza dough topped with a little organic sauce, the "sausage", some onions, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers, mmmmm mmmm!  I can eat pizza (which I need right now, dammit!) and not feel guilty. Win-win.

  

(I would just like to say, this was the best one yet!!)

 

Oak Alley Plantation (and more)!

Sorry for the delay in posting Part 2, it’s been a particularly busy week since we got back into town.  Sooooo, Saturday morning we checked out of the hotel and stopped for breakfast at a Denny’s just outside of New Orleans (my breakfast came with turkey bacon; how many animals is that now? 3, 4?).  Then we were headed for Vacherie, Louisiana and it’s plethora of plantations!  It only took an hour and a half or so to get there.  When we arrived, we were given a tour of our cottage, and now you’ll get one!

Here’s the entry/dining room:

The den:

Bedroom #1:

Bedroom #2 (ours):

The sun porch:

And my favorite room, the kitchen!:

That kitchen was so cute!  I couldn’t wait to get to cookin’ in it! 

First though, we took a walk around the property...

...and ended up in the gift shop where I bought a replica of an antique fly catcher, and finally got to try a mint julep!  It was essentially just a big plastic cup with a lid and a straw, filled with whiskey and a sprig of mint.  I hear tell that there was also some sort of simple syrup in there, but you couldn’t really tell.  I figured I had better get cooking before the julep got the better of me, so we headed back to our cottage.  We had stopped at a grocery store called Rouse’s on our way out of New Orleans and picked up the makin’s for a spaghetti supper.  Once I got the sauce on, it was merely a matter of letting it simmer away for a couple of hours. 

Blake had already fallen into a nap by the time I got the sauce going, so I joined him.  We finally ate around 8pm, and after our food settled we decided to go for a moonlit walk around the property.  It was really neat to kind of feel like we had run of the place.  There were some people renting one of the other cottages, but we never saw them.

 

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful, just a lot of relaxin’ goin’ on.  Sunday morning we got up and started packing, but not before I had my cup of coffee on the sun porch!  After our complimentary breakfast in the plantation’s restaurant (complete with grits, y’all!), we finally got a look at the inside of the “big house” when we went on the tour.  No photographs are allowed inside the house, but we were able to snap some shots from the 2^nd floor balcony. 

The tour was short and sweet and our little tour guide (in period costume) definitely had her lines memorized.  After having our picture taken on "Ron and Glenda's Tree"...

(Here's Ron and Glenda at their tree):

...we finally said our goodbyes to Oak Alley and headed down the road to Evergreen Plantation (but not before buying a whole lot of other crap in the gift shop though!).

Evergreen Plantation is just a stone’s throw away, and while more modest a property than Oak Alley, it’s almost neater to me in a lot of ways.  It has its own alley of oaks, and though the trees aren’t as old as those at Oak Alley, the alley itself is many, many times as long.  It seemed to go on forever.  Plus the trees are covered in moss, which makes them (to me) exceptionally picturesque.  It’s sort of what you expect of an old oak tree in the Deep South. 

Our tour guide, Josephine, was very personable (Blake had the hots for her), and much less rehearsed than the guide at Oak Alley.  She just kind of sat around and talked about the history, which was nice. 

There are still 22 original slave cabins on the property, one of which we were allowed to go into.

There was a small citrus orchard on the property which I had been eyeballing during the tour, and I was thrilled at the end when Josephine told us we were free to pick as much of the fruit as we liked!  I loaded up with tangerines, oranges, grapefruit and kumquats!!

Then it was time to get back on the road and finally head home.  Our last stop for food was at a Wendy’s somewhere around Lafayette or Lake Charles, I can’t remember which.  Realizing I hadn’t eaten a chicken in any form on this trip, I promptly ordered a fried chicken sandwich for my final non-vegan meal.  You’ll be happy to know I immediately returned to my vegan ways the next day, and have not faltered since.  What a fun trip!! 



Back Home!

Well, we actually got home last night, but this is the first chance I’m getting to write about it.  I’m going to try to sum up the trip without too much rambling.  So, Blake’s dad came and picked us up just after 9 o’clock Friday morning.  After explaining the rules to a scavenger hunt game that we would be playing while on the road, we were off!  My first break in veganism in over 2 weeks came just outside of Lake Charles when we stopped at a Hardee’s for lunch.  I had the Little Cheeseburger.  I will say that after a couple weeks with no meat whatsoever, it was pretty good.  I kind of had mixed emotions though, because I felt excruciatingly guilty at the same time. We got into New Orleans at around 3 o’clock and were met with bumper to bumper gridlock.  We finally got to the hotel (Prytania Park) sometime after 4pm.   

The room was upstairs through a little courtyard.  Inside the room there was a loft with two full-size beds where Blake and I stayed.  Downstairs was a king-size bed, couch, 2 comfy chairs, TV, mini fridge, microwave, etc.  There was also a full bathroom upstairs and downstairs.

After stretching out in the room for awhile, we decided to head out to dinner at a place a friend of Blake’s dad had told him about, Dick & Jenny’s.  It was in a very unassuming little house on Tchoupitoulas Street. 

We got there around 6:30 and the place was already full, so we had to wait in a little lounge area for about an hour.  It was okay though, because we ordered some fried shrimp (2^nd animal of the day) which were excellent.

The wait was definitely worth it!  I got the pork tenderloin (3^rd animal) stuffed with goat cheese and pine nuts, topped with a roasted red pepper reduction.  It came with thyme and goat cheese grits, and sautéed spinach.  It was so good.  I mean, like, ridiculously good.  I gotta tell ya, I didn’t feel all that guilty while eatin’ that poor little pig.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to change clothes and let our food settle for a bit before we headed out to the Maple Leaf Club to see the Radiators play.  We got to the club at about 10pm, so we had just over an hour wait before they took the stage.  We didn’t bring our camera because it just would have been too big a pain in the ass to take pics.  The place was in a really small old shotgun house that was divided down the middle.  One half was the bar area, and the other half was the stage area.  Glenda did take this pic of me and her with her camera phone though.

And here's a pic of the whole gang! (From L to R: Blake, Me, Ron and Glenda)

The show was really good (in spite of a small tussle Blake got into with some jerk-off who eventually got thrown out).  My claustrophobia started to get the better of me a couple of times, but all in all I did pretty well.  The show ended sometime after 2am, and we headed back to the hotel (after a quick stop at McDonald’s).  Saturday morning it was time to check out and head to Vacherie, Louisiana for our much anticipated stay at Oak Alley Plantation!

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Well, despite a monkey wrench getting thrown into my plans for the day (unforeseen goings-on at work) I had a great birthday!  I had hurriedly tried to bake a vegan birthday cake for myself last night, and it was a tremendous failure which ended in tears and a garbage can full of cake.  Fortunately I'm surrounded by wonderful people that helped to make the day special in spite of cake-tragedy. First and most important is this patient SOB...

He consistently puts up with my crazy like a champ, and I love him for it. When I went into the house for my lunchbreak today, I was greeted with a very festive surprise courtesy of Blake's mom, complete with vegan cupcakes!!

And it continued into the bedroom...

After work we headed out to my mom's house where my brother, sister-in-law and nephews joined us for a vegan birthday feast!  Homemade vegan lasagna and focaccia followed by the vegan cupcakes and vegan coconut milk ice cream.  Everything was super tasty!

Plus I got a bunch of neat gifts from my parents...

And this awesome card my oldest nephew Gabe made for me!

I'm very thankful for everybody that made today a very special day indeed!  Now Blake and I have got to go get packin' for our trip to N'awlins tomorrow! Goodnight!