The biggest project I took on over the Christmas break was to make a dress without a pattern. I found some adorable balloon animal fabric on sale, so I then set to work! The top ended up looking a bit like a pillow case, but whatever. I was quite proud of doing it, sans pattern. (note: ignore the messy room behind me in the picture)
I have gone on a real knitting binge lately, and hats are one of my favorite things to make. I wanted to try a new type of stitch, so I followed this pattern and learned how to knit the basket stitch.
I also made a Harry Potter based hat, similar to the ones Hermione knitted for the house elves. I followed this pattern. It was a really fast to make, I started knitting while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie and finished it in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
My Valentine this year is my slow cooker!… Okay, not really, it’s my boyfriend. But if I didn’t have Peter, I’d be writing a card for my slow cooker. For Christmas my mom got me the The Vegan Slow Cooker cookbook and she also gave me her slow cooker, which she didn’t use any more. I brought those two things to my dorm after the winter break ended, but didn’t actually use them until just last week. And wow, I never knew a delicious meal could be so easy. I just throw in a lot of ingredients, turn on the slow cooker, and return after class to a hot yummy meal waiting on me.
The first recipe I tried from Vegan Slow Cooker was the Philadelphia-Style Cheesy Portobello Sandwich. The mushrooms, along with some thinly sliced onions and bell pepper, cooked down in some seasonings into a chewy steak-like sandwich filler with its own gravy. Soooo good. I was out of cheez, so I just put it on a bun along with some Vegenaise, lettuce, and tomatoes.
The next recipe I tried was the Smoky Mac and Cheese. But I am picky about how I like my mac and cheez, so I left out the chili powder and liquid smoke, so it was basically just plain mac and cheez. That didn’t mean it was just regular though, that was possibly the best mac and cheez I’ve ever eaten. Whole wheat macaroni cooked down with plain soymilk, cheddar and mozzarella Daiya, and some special seasonings. You can tell it’s amazing because Peter and I ate this whole recipe (all 6 servings) in just two days.
The only recipe I’ve used in the slow cooker that wasn’t from the cookbook was when I made a doubled up recipe of Mom’s Chili. I also mixed it up a bit and replaced the recipe’s kidney beans with black beans, and added corn. It wasn’t too pretty after it finished cooking, but it sure tasted good.
Double the slow cooker power with chili mac! Using leftover mac and cheez and Mom’s Chili. Peter and I enjoyed this as our Valentine’s Day dinner together. Not very romantic, but very tasty.
And now on to some older food pictures:
Here is a lovely cinnamon bun I had for breakfast a few weekends ago. One of my sister’s friends is vegan also, and he brought over vegan doughnuts that evening. I managed to snag one and enjoy it for breakfast the next day.
I promise I’m not obsessed with chili, but Sigma Tau Delta (the English Honors Society that’s on campus) was having a chili fundraiser last week! Of course, they had the gross omnivore chili, but they also had some wonderful vegan chili. It had two types of beans, and some tasty tvp in there too.I love this stuff and I wish they did the fundraiser more often than once per semester.
And lastly, some semi-healthy convenience food. I was starving after getting out of sewing class, and quickly cooked up some Gardein Orange Chick’n, but left off the orange sauce and covered it with barbecue sauce instead. I piled some on top of pre-cooked Spanish rice, and voila! A not-too-bad-for-you and fast dinner.
And in honor of this being my Valentine’s Day post, I’ve decided to share my nerdy gift I gave to Peter. Here is a picture of the Pokemon themed card and a love Pokeball magnet made out of perler beads. In return, he gave me an adorable poem he’d written himself. I hope everyone had a good Valentine’s Day!
Okay, first I must say that I absolutely hate quitting things. It is not in my nature to just give up, so this was kind of an annoying post for me to write. I am sad to say I am quitting the Daily Craft Journal project. The majority of the crafts were done during the last few weeks of winter break and then the first weeks of school, and everything was going smooth… Until homework came knocking. It’s just been hard to balance classes, homework, having a social life, and doing this project. Sure, I could continue doing mediocre crafts each day, or I could devote my time to less crafts and make the ones I do create great instead of just okay. So expect less frequent craft posts, but better quality crafts. Here are the last few projects I did from the journal:
Day 16 – the prompt was “Make a unique print by cutting up a potato or sponge and use it to stamp on a material of your choice.” I chose to use some old sponges that were just sitting around. I was inspired by some ninja cookie cutters I had stumbled upon earlier, so I cut the sponges into ninja-like shapes. I didn’t know what to stamp them onto though, so I dug through my clothes until I found a pair of old sweat pants. Using black fabric paint helped make the ninja look stealthy and blended into the navy fabric background.
Day 17- the prompt was “Make something inspired by or that goes over an eye.” I have seen many interesting knitted eye-patches, but when I was doing this prompt all I had on hand was some lime green yarn. So I knitted up a patch, attached an old GIR shoe lace, and made an Invader Zim eye patch! I must note: Despite looking like it, I was not intoxicated in this photo. It was just early in the morning.
Day 18 – the prompt was “Work with the things you find in your car.” Thankfully, I actually had some craft-related items in my car. I had three different colored sheets of foam paper and some duct tape. I cut thin strips of the foam from each sheet, braided them together, then taped the ends together with the tape, and voila! A bracelet. I was quite pleased with this and actually wear it around.
Day 19 – the prompt was “Create something that floats on water.” I don’t have very many buoyant things in my dorm room, so I had to settle with a mediocre craft today. I took a clothes pin, painted it blue, added some googly eyes, named it Willie the Whale, then threw it in a bowl of water. It floated for a bit, but eventually the wood got water-logged and it sank.
Day 20 – the prompt was “Use clay in a way you never have before.” I have never used clay as a wall decoration. So I took some Play-Doh, which was as close to clay as I could find that day, and spelled out my name with it. It stuck to my wardrobe’s door quite well and lasted for about two days.
Day 7 – the prompt was “Make a stencil and use it in your work.” So I found a llama drawing online, took out my exacto knife, and started cutting away! I then used a grey marker to stencil it onto paper.
Day 8 – the prompt was “Transform an old book into something new.” I had just finished organizing my collection of books and taking out the boring ones I’d already read, so I had a plethora of books to choose from. I picked The Revenge of the Shadow King though, because the creepy cover is awesome. I (once again) took my exacto knife and carved out the majority of the inner pages. I then painted the edge of the hollowed out book with glue, to make it a more solid surface.
Now I have a secret compartment to hide money, jewelry, and small animals!
I couldn’t bear to throw away the book pages, so I used water colors to paint them, and then found a paper flower/pom pom tutorial.
I really have no idea what I’m going to use these pompoms for, but they are too adorable to throw away! I may attach them to ribbon and string them across my dorm room as decoration.
Day 9 – the prompt was “Make something with your breakfast before you eat it.” Too bad this prompt landed on the first day that spring semester classes started back, because in my rush I couldn’t make anything super cool. So I made toast, and topped it with some Speculoos spread and made a happy face with vegan marshmallows.
Day 10 – the prompt was “Use only water as your inspiration today.” Coincidentally, it rained that day. So I used a cup to collect some rain water, and used it in water colors to paint out different shades of blue.
Day 11- the prompt was “Work on the other hand. Pick a medium you’re comfortable with and work with your non-dominant hand.” I’m not fantastic at drawing, but I am decent enough. Though if anything ever happened to my right hand, I would be out of luck when it came to any art or writing. Check out these two very different robots:
Day 12 – the prompt was “Make something camouflage.” When I hear camouflage I think of what most others do too: rednecks, the army, hunting. But I also think of octopuses. Since my sister loves tv shows about weird underwater sea-creatures, I have seen quite a few octopuses changing color. If you really want to appreciate their camouflage abilities, watch the video below.
And so, inspired by mother nature’s handy work and after seeing an adorable felt octopus on the blog Futuregirl, I made this precious octopus! He’s just looks so happy to be visiting on my desk and not in the deep sea.
Day 13 – the prompt was “Use tea leaves, tea bags, or liquid tea to create something today.” So I grabbed two tea bags from the cafeteria, some paper, and paper glue. And tada! It looks a bit like dirt, but it’s tea, I promise.
Day 14 – the prompt was “Make something microscopic.” Since I am not talented in the field of making things that are invisible to my naked eye, I did the opposite and made a tiny thing bigger! I knitted up Jimmy the Germ. He loves giving you a cold, the flu, or the stomach bug. But he’s just so sweet looking that you might not mind.
Day 15 – the prompt was “Use a dollar bill as your medium or inspiration.” I have seen some really cute money origami, so I searched it online and found a tutorial for making a dollar bill ring! And I like myself, so I put a ring on it.
Not part of the craft journal, but here is the delicious lunch I made today for myself and Peter. Toasted refried bean enchiladas that were smothered in creamy enchilada sauce, and paired with Spanish rice that had spiced veggie crumbles and fresh tomatoes mixed in. I can’t wait to eat the leftovers, yum.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, our house is filled with a wonderful scent. It’s from the chicken and sage dressing my mom always makes us. Her mother made it for her, she made it for me and my sister, and now I’m veganizing it.
I wasn’t too sure how the recipe would turn out, because I was struggling to figure out how to replace two cans of Campbell’s cream of celery soup and one small can of condensed milk. After some trial and error, I finally came up with this recipe. It tastes exactly the same as my mom’s, and it makes the house smell just as nice as before.
Sorry for the crappy picture, it was taken with no natural light available.
“Chicken” and Sage Dressing
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked and chopped faux chicken (I used 4 pieces of Gardein Chick’n scallopini )
8 cups of cooked cornbread (this is roughly 3 pans of cornbread)
1 small yellow onion
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup flour
2 cups vegetable broth
1 & 1/4 cups plain soymilk
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3 tbsps rubbed sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
If you have not already, bake the cornbread, then cook and chop the faux chicken. Set both aside for now.
Finely chop the onion. Melt the margarine in a large saucepan and add in the onions. Saute until the onions become translucent, stir in the flour until it forms a thick paste, then slowly whisk in the soymilk and vegetable broth.
Once the sauce has thickened, remove from the heat and stir in the nutritional yeast, rubbed sage, salt, and pepper.
In a large bowl, crumble the cooked cornbread, then pour in the sage sauce. Stir until everything is well combined and there are no dry pockets of cornbread left. Then add in the chopped chicken and mix thoroughly. Pour into 9 x 12 glass baking dish and bake for 40-55 minutes. The way to tell if it’s done is when the bottom is a golden brown, and the top looks well baked.
Recently I bought the book 365: A Daily Creativity Journal by Noah Scalin. It’s a journal that provides a creative craft prompt for every day of the year. It has prompts involving everything you can imagine: Yarn, writing haikus, using leaves and twigs, and pretty much anything else to inspire you for an everyday creativity spurt.
I started on January 1st, of course, and the 1st prompt is “Start small today and make something that fits in the palm of your hand and use only the materials in your immediate environment.” Since I had just finished making a necklace based around my Dungeons & Dragons character (more on that in a moment), I had some thin metal wire sitting out and the sharpie I had used to sketch out the design. What I came up with was a tiny little stickman made from wire.
Before smashing it:
After attacking it with a hammer, muahaha!
I mentioned before about the necklace I made based around my favorite Dungeons & Dragons character. (Get ready for the nerdiness to come out) The character I play most often, and love the most, is a Drow necromancer named Astrael Umbrall. For Christmas, my mom got me an awesome D&D book entirely about the Drow race. In it, I read about how each Drow house has a symbol and each Drow wears their symbol somewhere on their clothes, whether in jewelry or just embroidered on their cloak. I found the symbol for Astrael’s house and made a necklace out of it! Here it is below:
Day 2- the prompt was “Use your favorite animal as your inspiration today.” Pigs are my favorite animals, so I sewed a small zombie pig head that was filled with scent beads and attached a ribbon. I have it hanging on my car’s rear view mirror as a cute air-freshener.
Day 3 – the prompt was “Make something with paper but do not use scissors or glue or draw on it.” So of course I thought about folding paper, origami! I searched for simple origami patterns and found this website with a mushroom making tutorial. I searched through my pile of dusty scrapbooking paper and picked some that looked psychedelic. So then I folded a psychedelic mushroom.
Day 4 – the prompt was “Take a 5-minute walk and make something from the things you find where you’ve ended up.” Since there is nowhere interesting near my house within quick walking distance, I bent the rules a bit and decided to grab a bag and collect cool things from a 5-minute walk through the woods behind my home. I found a perfectly intact mason jar within the first minute of entering the woods. After that, I collected pretty looking rocks, leaves, berries, and plants. Then arranged all those interesting things in the mason jar and snapped a photo!
Bonus picture: Sissy the pitbull helping me on my scavenging expedition.
Day 5 – the prompt was “What do you collect? Use part of that collection as your material today.” I collect a lot of things: little piggy knick knacks, decorative plates, and comic books. I couldn’t bear to alter the first two, so I started looking through my comics. When I got old enough to be interested, my mom gave me her old horror comics she had read as a kid and kept. I love most of them, but some are just plain boring. So I picked the rattiest one from the boring pile to cut apart. I followed the directions on this website for a decorative comic book starburst. I didn’t have any glitter, so I just skipped that step.
Day 6 – the prompt was “Walk into your kitchen, and use the first fruit you see. Whether fresh, canned, pureed, or even jammed.” the first fruit I saw this morning was canned pineapple chunks. So I soaked them in food dye and made a lovely fruit rainbow!
As I told in my last post, I left my camera cord back in my dorm room in Montevallo. We have finally made it back to campus today, and I immediately began downloading the photos. Unfortunately I did not make a lot of food over the break that was “picture worthy”, but a few did manage to meet my criteria. Plus I came up with a new recipe I will be posting later. Much crafting was done, and the majority will be in a different post, but I’ll include one here.
Before leaving for school, I had $70 worth of “flex points” left to spend. So I bought (for me and all my friends) several orders of fries, a couple of sodas, and 13 Naked juices, which are pictured below.
Inspired by seeing a delicious looking post on the Post Punk Kitchen, I made tater tot nachos. Soooo good. It was tater tots, topped with a nacho cheez sauce made with Daiya, and Yves crumbles with salsa. I could eat this every day.
Speaking of the Post Punk Kitchen, for the second year I’ve done a Christmas PPK package swap, and as usual it was fantastic. My swap partner, kilgore trout, sent me this amazing package:
From left to right: a bird card (with an awesome elephant drawing inside), homemade chocolate peppermint brownies in an adorable tin, Lush soap, Dandies vanilla marshmallows (!), Mexican cinnamon hot chocolate, a super warm and fluffy knitted cowl, an Enjoy Life rice and dark chocolate bar, and Biscoff spread.
I am so excited to try all the things in the package. I already tried the brownies and they were super yummy, and the marshmallows too, which was amazing because I haven’t had marshmallows in four years!
This year I vowed to do entirely homemade Christmas gifts, so I spent the majority of December crafting. I didn’t get pictures of all the gifts, but I did include pictures of two special ones. Other than the two below, I made: a pair of fuzzy slippers, Slytherin scarf, Tri-Force pillow, frilly apron, a grapefruit ornament, hedgehog pin cushion, a coffee mug with a mustache painted onto the bottom (to make the wearer look mustachioed when drinking), and a Skyrim ornament.
One of my favorite presents to make was for Peter’s brother, Sam. I cross stitched the Full Metal Alchemist symbol onto stiff plastic and attached a felt back and ribbon to make it into an ornament:
My best present though was Peter’s computer bag with the Skyrim cover symbol painted on it:
I also got around to some knitting and made a slouchy hat for myself from this pattern over at White Girl Knits.
I had a great Christmas and happy New Year, and I hope everyone else did too!
I hope you all are having as wonderful of a holiday season as I am. I have lots of great pictures of food to share, some restaurant and product reviews, and even a new recipe! But sadly I left my camera cord in my dorm room, and won’t be able to get it back until January 6th. So expect a lot from Lima Bean Lover as soon as that date rolls around!
Once this week ends, it’s onward to home and freedom! This semester has not been hard at all though, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed the rest of my college experience is such a breeze (yeah, right). The cafeteria’s food is still pretty bad, but the other day they had two wonderful vegan things: peppery hummus and minestrone veggie soup. Below is the soup and the hummus piled on top of some lettuce, green olives, and tomatoes.
Even though the cafeteria is trying (slowly, but surely) to step up their game, I still feed myself two of my daily three meals. Which means I sometimes reach for the traditional college student staple, ramen noodles. Though I’m not willing to eat the super bad for you kind that is sold for 15 cents a package. I’m willing to pay the extra 35 cents and save my health. I eat Koyo garlic pepper ramen which is baked, made with organic ingredients, and has 190 calories and 1 gram of fat. That is fantastic in comparison to the 380 calories and 14 grams of fat found in Maruchan Top Ramen packages.
So I made the garlic pepper ramen below and topped with some Wild Wood baked teriakyi tofu for extra protein. This only took 5 minutes. So a meal that’s not too bad for you, filling, fast, and cheap. Sounds like me and Koyo ramen are going to be friends for the next four years to come.
I’m excited to be going back home for three weeks though. No more wearing flip-flops in the shower, waking up early, or having to carry all my cooking stuff down two floors to make a meal. Now I can make yummy junk, like this pizza pictured below that I made last weekend. It has roasted garlic marinara sauce, Daiya cheez, Yves “beef” crumbles, mushrooms, and kalamata olives. Not very pretty, but very yummy.
Along with the pizza, I also baked some mini blueberry and cream cheez pies last weekend. I thought these up on a whim, and they only took about 30 minutes total to make and bake them. The reason they were so simple is because I used a few *gasp* pre-made ingredients. I know, I know, the whole speech about how making things by hand makes it healthier and better overall, but sometimes I just don’t feel like going through the trouble.
So the crust is from pre-made crescent rolls dough, folded neatly into a muffin tin. The filling is vegan cream cheez that has been blended with lemon juice, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar, then all that was topped of with blueberry pie filling. I folded the tops over the filling, baked them for 10 minutes, and voila! Delicious and adorable mini pies.
Speaking of adorable desserts, I made these sweet and simple reindeer cookies. I was inspired by a photo on Pinterest (my new addiction), and decided to make a batch to bring to the FCS Student Group Christmas party. They are just Nutter Butter cookies that has been coated in dark chocolate, then topped with pretzel antlers and frosting facial features.
And sadly, this last Wednesday was my final Food Prep class. The theme for the cooking lab was appetizers, so I brought a recipe for vegan crab cakes. At first, all the omnivores were skeptical because the recipe called for lots of “weird” ingredients like tempeh and Vegenaise, but once they tried a bite everyone was head over heels for this recipe. It was a bit time-consuming to make, though so very worth it. I’m saving the recipe and definitely going to make it again soon. This was a great dish to end this class with.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday (if you dared to venture out). Now is the time to begin prepping for Christmas, and since I’ve decided every one of my gifts will be homemade, I need to get to work asap. But there is no need to skip Thanksgiving, like many major store chains seem to be fine with doing. It should get just as much air-time as Christmas.
Before I blab about our holiday surrounding thankfulness, food, family, pilgrims, and football, I need to give you a daily-dose of cuteness. Look at the adorable little pot-scrubber Peter gave me for my birthday:
I love this little piggie, and it makes the annoying chore of washing dishes much more pleasant.
On to Thanksgiving though! My mother enjoys sending me cards at school and they’re sweet reminders to not stress too much about classes and enjoy life as much as possible. Here’s the most recent card she sent:
It says “Go stuff yourself!” inside. What a cute and vegan-friendly card.
For our Thanksgiving meal we had Tofurky roast, mashed potatoes topped with “poultry gravy”, green bean casserole, and buttery Bisquick biscuits.
This was the first bundt cake I’ve ever made and I was quite pleased with how it came out. I looooved the cake’s cream “cheese” filling and how it coordinated with the spices in the cake. It was a tad dry, but I think I may have just baked it for too long.
Peter’s family also had Thanksgiving celebrations later in the week. I brought another Tofurky roast with some mushroom gravy (which I didn’t bother to photograph) and a lemon-berry cheez cake.
The majority of the crafts were done during the last few weeks of winter break and then the first weeks of school, and everything was going smooth… Until homework came knocking. It’s just been hard to balance classes, homework, having a social life, and doing this project. Sure, I could continue doing mediocre crafts each day, or I could devote my time to less crafts and make the ones I do create great instead of just okay. So expect less frequent craft posts, but better quality crafts. Here are the last few projects I did from the journal:
