Mother's Day! (a week late)

I have been so behind on posts recently.  Over the last week or so I have been playing catch up, in fact, today is my Mother's Day post.  Sadly, my mother lives over 1000 miles away so I am only able to speak with her by phone.  However, Ashley is a mother, and so is her mother!  I had a privilege of spending my late morning with them.

I hosted the 2nd annual Mother's Day brunch at my house on Mother's Day for Ashley, her mother, and her daughter.  Three generations at my dinner table (actually, it is an extremely cheap folding card table)!  I made pancakes of all sorts of variety.  Some of the cakes were currant, some were chocolate chip, some raspberry, a couple were blueberry, a few strawberry and even and "everything" pancake that Kaleigh claimed!  Foolishly, I did not take pictures of the pancakes.

I also made some home fries, a smoothie with our fresh picked strawberries, and a fruit salad.  The day prior, I made my first attempt at making a granola from scratch to go with the fruit salad.  It turned out incredibly well and I am going to make some variations on it and post recipes soon.  I then took the fruit and arranged it neatly over the granola and served the breakfast with Vermont imported maple syrup.

Day like this really make me miss my mum.  I really hope that someday soon I will make her a Mother's Day brunch.  I hope my mum had a great day.  Happy Mother's Day!

Chattanooga Vacation: Day 2; Caverns, Adventure, Food and Mischief!

Day two started out a little rocky as Kaleigh was cranky.  She is not a morning person and she was super excited to start the adventures we had planed.  She was not interested in the preparations needed to get to the adventures.  Once we finally got her there, to Raccoon Mountain, she was perfect!

Kaleigh had never been inside a cavern before so Ashley and I took her on a walking tour to warm her up.  I took my camera and was able to some nice shots of the caverns.  Kaleigh was often in awe of the beauty.  I can image I was also the first time I saw the inside of a cavern.

After the walking tour the three of us met up with out guide and took an hour long spelunking adventure!  We had pads, helmets, headlamps, the whole thing.  It was hard work for all three of us but Kaleigh was having a blast.  There was only one point where she got a little scared.  It was an area called "little canyon" where we crawled through a winding tunnel that was about 2 feet wide.  Cutting through the middle of the tunnel was a 4-5 foot drop into a "canyon".

She got to climb boulders, belly crawl through caves, slide down mudslides, scale ropes, all by just the light of her headlamp!  She was really brave and by the end she was extremely proud of herself.  Once out of the cave, we took some pictures with us all muddy and with our gear on.

After finishing up at Raccoon Mountain we did some gem mining and the headed back to Sluggo's for an early dinner as we were all famished by then.  Kaleigh enlightened another plate of nacho's while Ashley had the burrito.  I set out to eat an entire plate of pecan dusted seitan on top of mashed potatoes with a mushroom gravy.  Another great meal.

There can be no trip without some mischief so on our way out of Tennessee, we got some fireworks!  Once back in home, we set some of them off.  Kaleigh thought it was pretty cool since she has not had many chances to see fireworks that up close and personal.

The fireworks were a great grand finale to our overnight trip.  I hope we can take Kaleigh caving again, I think it has really made her feel special.

Chattanooga Vacation: Day 1; Sluggo's, Discovery and Hiking

Since Ashley completed her state exam and Kaleigh is about to graduate kindergarden, I wanted to treat them to a special out of town overnight.  We decided to go to Chattanooga since there were some extreamly fun and unique things for us to do.

We got up early and headed out, it is only about a 2 hour drive.  We had lunch at Sluggo's.  We had kept hearing great things about this little vegan restaurant but has not been able to go.  We made sure we got lunch there and it was excellent.  Ashley had a philly cheezesteak, I had a BBQ seitan sandwich, and Kaleigh had nachos.  We started off with some buffalo cheeky wings.  All the food was amazing.  Kaleigh destroyed almost the entire plate of nachos by herself!

After lunch the three of us went to the Children's Discovery Museum.  It had a lot of fun things for Kaliegh and she was going 100 miles per hour while we were there.  It was great!  One of the first rooms we went to was a doctor's office which seemed appropriate since Ashley just graduated as a radiology technician.  The two of them played with the x-rays before we went through the rest of the building.

After the Museum, we checked into our hotel, unpacked our things and headed for a local hike near lookout mountain.  Once we got a little ways into the woods, the trail was flooded out so we turned back.  At some point on the hike, without knowing it, I got a tick on my leg.  It was several hours before I noticed it.

After our hike, we headed to Ghegis Grill for a mongolian stir fry dinner.  We all had a lot of fun making out bowl of veggies.  It was a wonderful day but it came to a close early because we all needed our sleep for the following days adventure!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Enchilada

Soy fish with rice

Burrito with homemade re-fried beans

Parks, Plants, and Hardcore!

Since Ashley has been out of school and the busy summer has begun at the jobby job, my schedule has been thrown for a loop.  Fortunately, it has largely worked out to allow me to spend more time doing enjoyable things. 

Ashley, Kaleigh and I had a Saturday morning together and we took the opportunity to plants some food.  We did not plant a lot and we used pots vs the ground but it is better than nothing.  We got some jalapeno peppers in, purple bell peppers, basil, cilantro, and tarragon.  Kaleigh loves to garden, I think most kids love any excuse to get dirty.

The following day I had off, which was extremely rare.  After Ashley got out of work, we grabbed Kaleigh and went to get some vegan donuts.  There was a special flavor, jalapeno!  They were great!  I am so fortunate to have a place that offers amazing vegan donuts here in Atlanta!  Revolution Doughnuts is an Atlanta treasure!

After donuts, we took a trip to the park.  There was a incredible amount of trash and it was not well taken care of.  We did get to some fire ants walking on water as well as some small turtles and a copperhead with babies!

That night, I headed out alone to see a couple of bands from France, Gasmask Terror and Youth Avoiders.  They were playing with one of my favorite new local bands, Mercenary.  Mercenary is so sick.  Fast abrasiveness hardcore, in your face.  Gasmask and Youth Avoiders were also extremely good.  Overall, it was a great show.

Mercenary

Gasmask Terror

Youth Avoiders

Raven Cliff Falls

Ashley finished all her tests and finals at school.  We have been taking any opportunity to celebrate her victory since.  She worked really hard and it will not be long before she is working at her new job so any chance she has to enjoy herself, she is taking!  Fortunately for me, I have been able to join in much of the fun.

The day directly after her last final, she and I went on a hike to Raven Cliff Falls.  It is just outside of Helen Georgia, a great day trip.  It was also my first hike with my new camera so I was snapping shots the entire time.  It was a little rainy on and off but that did not stop us!

We stopped at a grocery store to get some fruit for the hike and discovered some of the sketchiest (but vegan) potato chips! We tried them both, neither were very good but we could not resist!

700 posts?!?! oh! and Pesto!

Somehow, I managed to reach over 700 posts without realizing it.  That may be an impressive milestone.  I am not really sure.  It sure seems like quite a few.  I remember the day I wrote my first blog post I thought to myself  "I doubt I will ever bother to do that again".  I guess I was wrong.  I may have come a long way or simply written far to many words that no one will ever bother to read.  I may never really know but if there are folks in the blog world dying for more vegan food porn, here is another post!

spaghetti squash and pesto for work!

Pesto has been on the mind recently.  I wish pine nuts were not so costly Pesto is amazing and so easy to take to work.  After making another spaghetti squash with pesto meal for me to have to work, Ashley and I used the remainder on a pizza!  We topped the pizza with some vegan cheese, peppers and tomatoes.  It was quite a tasty pie!

Reaping the Rewards

With a couple buckets of strawberries on hand, some ended up in the freezer for later use (pancakes, smoothies, etc) while other got used immediately.  Some simply ended up sliced with a dash of sugar and eaten.  Others met a more creative end.

In the tradition of a mix of my Nana and Priscilla (my semi-faux grandmother) I made another attempt at a strawberry rhubarb pie.  It was delicious but still unsuccessful.  The crust was inspired by my Nana but altered slightly to fit my abilities which are far more limited than hers were.  The insides were straight from the dessert table of Priscilla.  However, this is where the serious fail presented itself.  It was soup.  I think that next time I will attempt to use powdered sugar instead to try to keep it from becoming liquid.  I hope that will work.

In lieu of the failure of the the pie, I went with an old standard.  Strawberry muffins.  I have been making muffins since I was a teenager and have actually become decent enough at it that I could pass more the muffin man.  The muffins were great and unlike the pie, they stayed together.

Strawberry Season!

Last Thursday, I picked both Ashley and Kaleigh up after they each got out of school.  We headed a little east of Atlanta to a local pick your own strawberry patch!  For me, strawberry picking has a long tradition and I would love to be able to share that with a child as special as Kaleigh.

As a kid, my mum and I used to go to a place in Maine called Pop's.  We would get up at the crack of dawn and drive even further into the country to pick berries.  As a kid, I can recall eating more berries then I picked.  I can even remember my mum getting in trouble for having a young kid with her and eating all the berries before we paid for them.  She stuck up for me and we returned year after year like nothing ever happened.

Now, as the grown up, I am still eating berries as I pick them and even convincing Kaleigh that she should try them to make sure they are good.  She is occasionally sceptically but all I have to do is tell her we are causing mischief and she will quickly jump on board.  She likes a bit of mischief.

The three of us picked 2 huge buckets of berries and then had some pitas on the picnic table.  We also had some watermelon that we brought with us.  Kaleigh had the brilliant idea of eating the watermelon and a strawberry together, in one big bite!  I was all over that but sadly, her mouth was not quite big enough so she just had to watch me gobble them up!

Toward the end of the evening, Kaleigh took a bad fall off the top of the picnic table (she was standing on the table) and scrapped herself up pretty good.  To calm her down a bit we did what any kids would want to do, we trespassed into an old abandoned farm house and looked around.  She was a little concerned after I told her to watch out for nails in the floor and snakes but she was still brave.

Strawberries, Watermelon & berry sandwiches, Trespassing, what more could we want in an afternoon in late April?