I haven’t written in a while.  It was a toss up between studying for exams and writing here, and, well, something had to fall by the wayside.  Then I moved house, with all the packing and unpacking that entails.  Let’s just say it’s been a busy month.

However, I’m all settled in now and I love my new house.  Why do I love it?  Let me count the ways…

First off, there’s a beautiful convection oven that is an absolute dream for baking cookies, muffins, breads…  After my horrible apartment sized oven and stove, it’s quite the revelation to bake on two shelves at the same time!  As you can see, I’ve been making use of it:

Carrot-Oatmeal muffins with chocolate chips, raisins, craisins, and pumpkin seeds (recipe from one of the Anne Lindsay Lighthearted Cookbooks).  They have a pleasantly firm texture, without being dense- the kind of muffin you can throw into a lunchbag and still enjoy later without it being reduced to soggy crumbs.

 Chocolate chip cookies (recipe from the back of the chip package- which I threw away and then went digging through mucky garbage for because they were really good cookies!)

Secondly, I love my house because I finally have a garden.  A lovely vegetable garden, with peas, beets, two different types of lettuce, potatoes, herbs (including mint, basil, thyme, rosemary, and chives), and rhubarb.  I have a couple stories to tell about that rhubarb (of which I will fondly refer to as Audrey III, the vegetative star of the cult classic “Little Shop of Horrors”.)  Anyways, it’s a beautiful feeling to go out just before dinner and pick some salad greens right out of the garden.  Five minutes out of the ground, the lettuce is tender and almost buttery on the tongue- a far cry from the wilted store bought heads that are so popular!

Black Bean Burgers from How it All Vegan (made with Romano beans and extra chopped up veggies- because you really can never have too many veggies!)  The bed of greens that it’s sitting on is composed of baby beet leaves (the beets needed thinning, and the leaves are edible) and fresh picked lettuce.  The sprouts on top come from my very own kitchen counter- who needs the overpriced supermarket ones?

Thirdly…the house has strawberry plants!  ‘Nuff said.

Although their doughnut-ness is dubious due to their deficiency of a doughnut hole, these dapper dough-nuts are dashingly delicious.  Phew!  All alliteration aside, these yummy baked doughnuts from the Vegan Yum Yum are absolutely amazing!  The outsides are crunchy, just like “real” doughnuts, and the insides are soft and fluffy. 

 Feeling rather simple in the dessert department, I skipped the Yum Yum’s suggestions of frosting these babies with frosting, or a chocolate glaze.  Instead, I just sifted a monster amount of powdered sugar over the tops of my doughnuts as soon as they came out of the oven.

 But why are the most delicious things the hardest to photograph?!? I’ve been running into this a lot lately- the “Fettucine Alfredo” from the Post Punk Vegan Kitchen cookbook, the bulgur, white bean, and fig pilaf I made for lunch, the scrambled tofu I made for breakfast…. They all made me roll my eyes in glee at their yumminess, but all the photographs came out looking like s***  Even these cutie pies took half an hour to come out looking moderately edible instead of like little piles of dung.  Maybe in the future I should just eat more, photograph less :)

I cannot remember the last time I baked so much in 24 hours! Or maybe it just feels like a lot. Looking back on it, it wasn’t really that much, but it was sure fun! 

Last night I made Bran Muffins from “How It All Vegan”. I added chocolate chips on top, and some ginger in the batter, just because I felt like it:) These lusciously moist goodies taste far too good to be healthy- yet they are full of bran, fruit, flax seeds, and craisins. And talk about huge! They’re about the size of a middling apple, which for a ~200 calorie muffin, is fantastic!