Reusable Bags -- Today Only!

I just opened today's Groupon deal and it was such a good one that I thought I'd share it.  For only $10, you can purchase $25 in merchandise from Xoopii.  Xoopii (no, I have no idea how to pronounce that. In my head, it's zu-pee) sells reusable bags made from recycled materials.  I personally love these:

* Full size, structured tote bag*

* Collapsable bag. How do they get all
that cute in that tiny little pouch? *

They also sell some other cute things, like these wristwarmers and adorable stickers.

Shipping is a flat $4.95, which you can pay for with your Groupon.  Since you can get two Groupon deals for yourself, I recommend you get one of everything!  But make sure you hurry, the Groupon offer runs out at midnight (EST).

A Caturday Christmas

What do kitties do with Christmas trees?  Here are two answers: first in cartoon ...

and then the real thing!

Happy Christmas to you all!

Here comes Santa Claus

• Here Comes Santa Claus by Bob Dylan

More Bob Dylan music on iLike

I've got an early Christmas present for everyone.  Yes, I am awfully generous.  Just remember this when my birthday rolls around ;)

What I have for you is a coupon for a shopping spree at Ecolissa, a recently launched online boutique which sells eco-friendly and vegan clothing and accessories (Don't you just love those gifts that require you to spend money to use them? I know you do).

If you're short on time, I've even done some browsing to get you started.  Here are a few of my favorite things from the shop:

* I love this skirt without even trying it on! *

* Everyone needs a sassy dress,
although this one sadly looks too long for me *

* And top it all off with a classy clutch *

I am seriously considering making that flouncy skirt mine! And if Santa brings me some cash for Christmas, then I just might do it.  It'll be a lot easier with this awesome coupon: Use the code vegan20 for 20% off your entire order.  And if Santa happens to bring you an extra wad of cash, I'll take anything in a small. 

Putting a little spring in my step

Obviously it is always best to eat seasonally, but sometimes when it's freezing outside I just want to remember warmer days.  When the mood struck me last week, I happened to have half a bunch of asparagus sitting in my fridge.  What says spring faster than asparagus risotto?  Honestly ... probably lots of things, but I was in the mood for risotto.  I used this recipe, with a few adjustments for what I had on hand.  I didn't have a leek, so I used some finely minced white onion in its place.  Maybe not the best substitution, but it worked for me.  This gave me an amazing respite from the winter doldrums; if you need a dinnertime vacation, then hop on board.

In her Caturday Debut ...

Today's Caturday post comes a little late because of an early Christmas celebration.  However, I don't want to skip today's kitty spectacular.  Because today I have our first ever reader entry!  This adorable feline is Bob (because of her naturally short tail), who lives with the lovely ladies over at The Good Luck Duck.  Bob's favorite activity is being touched.  She's a little plump, and does love to eat, but she'd pass up paté if you looked like you might pick her up instead.

* Ladies sometimes sit like this *

I absolutely love long haired, fluffy cats.  If I thought Lilly would put up with another cat around (she absolutely wouldn't), I would get a long haired cat.  Preferably one who sits like this for easier access to tummy rubs :)

Thank you so much to Annie and Roxi for sharing your sweet girl with us!  If you have any cat pictures/videos/stories/jokes you want to share here on Caturday, please email them to theradioactivegan (at) gmail (dot) com.

Could it be ... seitan?

For movie night this week, I made seitan pot pie.  I think pot pie is the best cold weather food there is.  I started with this recipe and went from there.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to make my own pie crust.  And, what's more, a single giant seitan pot pie just would not do.  No, I made individual pot pies because (we can all admit it) the crust is absolutely the best part of any sort of pie.  Individual pies maximize crust to everyone, and I think we can all agree that's a win.  I used a modified version of the basic pastry dough recipe in The Joy of Cooking (pg 665).  I replaced a cup of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour to give a heartier crust for the savory pies.  I used spectrum shortening and earth balance margarine for the lard and butter, respectively.  I also doubled the recipe over all to give me plenty of dough (I'd hate to run out mid-pot pie construction!).  

* My very excellent pastry roller *

I also made some changes to the pot pie filling recipe.  To begin with, I replaced the tofu with seitan, because seitan just seems more pot pie-y to me.  I used the boiled seitan recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance because it's texture seems well suited to a savory pie filling.  I pretty much threw in all the vegetables (fresh and frozen) that I could find in my fridge: onion, celery, peas, carrots, corn, potatoes, mushrooms, and probably other things I'm forgetting now.  Other than ingredient changes (and totally eye-balled amounts since I was making a larger volume of pot pie), I followed the directions given to cook the filling.  Eight individual-sized pot pies were filled with veggies and covered with some gravy/sauce.

* Pot pies all filled up and ready for top crust *

* Extreme pot pie close up! *

And, of course, a top crust was put on each one to hold in all that pot pie goodness.  I baked these in a 400* oven for 20 minutes with foil covering each.  I then removed the foil and baked for another 20 - 25 minutes to get a nice brown on top.  It was a long, long process, but it was a lot of fun.  And a great thing about these pot pies if you aren't feeding a small army, you can freeze the pies and keep them for future enjoyment.  Then you just heat them up like any Marie Calendar's classic pot pie. 

* Prebaked. They looked a lot the same post-baked, but I didn't get a photo *

And what film series is an absolute must see during the Christmas season?  There are so many -- Home Alone being an obvious choice.  Only slightly less obvious is this: Die Hard!  This movie night was brought to you by the suffix -er, meaning we watched Die Hard 2: Die Harder.  Best movie sequel title ever.  Some people seem to think that Die Hard 2 is superior to Die Hard.  Me, I like the original.  The second one is basically a spoof of the first, with a lot of the same stunts and bigger explosions.  John McClane even says "Oh man, I can't fucking believe this. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"  I do not know, Mr. McClane. I do not know.  We'll let the impartial jury of Rotten Tomatoes settle this.  And survey says ... Die Hard - 94%, Die Harder - 64%.  A clear victory for the original film!  Regardless, they are both fine films and holiday classics. 

You say Aubergine, I say Eggplant.

My Indian friends call it Brinjal ... but that's neither here nor there.

More often than not, it seems that I take my most interesting recipe adventures when I realize that something I bought on sale at the market ages ago is about to go bad.  When I open the fridge and see such-and-such-that-was-on-sale-last-week is starting to get soft or bruised or discolored, I go to the interwebs for some vegetable salvation.

Just this situation occurred about a week ago when I realized that the eggplant I bought for just a dollar the week before was dangerously close to suicide by fridge.  Luckily the blogosphere had just the solution for my problem: Basil Eggplant Balls!  With a name like that, how could I go wrong?

I basically followed these directions for roasting eggplant in my oven.  Then I dumped everything in my blender and whirred it till it was a nice, elastic ball of eggplant dough.  In retrospect, this might not have been my best idea.  I think I lost all the benefit of the breadcrumbs by blending them in.  If I make this recipe again, I'll experiment with the breadcrumbs for better texture.

I also chose to deep fry the balls instead of pan frying them because I have a very difficult time pan frying things without getting the fire department involved.  As you probably all know, eggplant soaks up oil like nobody's business.  If you decide to deep fry as well, make sure your oil is as hot as possible so that your balls will cook quickly and soak up less oil.  Next time, I will try to bake these bad boys for a much more reasonable healthful factor.

Deep fried balls, ready for eating (after a brief cool-down anyway).

And finally, dinner!  Whole wheat pasta topped with tomato sauce and eggplant balls with a side of warm, toasty garlic bread.  Never let anyone say that vegan food is healthful food.  But it is delicious, damn delicious.

Should you find yourself with an extra eggplant reaching maturity in your fridge, I highly recommend this recipe.  If you do try this recipe out and you use a different cooking technique than deep-frying, please let me know how it goes!

This is my second entry into the current Blog Bites event at One Hot Stove.  Check One Hot Stove for the wrap up at the end of December.

It's not the size of the cat that matters

We might need to rename this week's post Faturday, because this is one sizable kitty.  If you follow anything fake news related online, you probably know about Giuly, the tubby tabby making the rounds for being the funniest feline on the interwebs.

* You have to wonder if there a piece of string being dangled just off camera *

Giuly's person is a young teacher in Italy who posts photos of Giuly doing all kinds of cute things on her flickr stream.  I strongly suggest you all hop on over there and check out some other pictures of Giuly being adorable.

I hope Giuly's person doesn't mind me snatching a few of her great photos to show off her cat.  If you have any pictures of your cat that you want featured here on caturday, please send them on to me at theradioactivegan (at) gmail (dot) com.  

You need to WIP it. WIP it good.

Look at that! It's not even Vegan MoFo anymore, and I'm still putting up a post.  Don't count on this to last too long.  I just wanted to remind everyone (as if you didn't already know) that Christmas is just a few short weeks away!  And so begins the mad Christmas crafting dash!  For my second ever WIP Wednesday, I'd like to share the few x-mas gifts I've been working on.  Just for a quick recap -- here is my first WIP Wednesday.  You might notice that was posted in April.  And honestly ... I haven't done too many crafty things since then.  I haven't even finished that blanket!  It quickly became far too warm to work on a blanket (or anything involving lots of yarn), so I abandoned it.  Hopefully when I finish my list of Christmas gifts to make I'll be ready to pick it up again.  Until that happens ... here are the presents I've been working on.

First up, for my bestie who is a Biology major at Vanderbilt, I've made a chromosome hat according to this pattern at Carissa Knits.  I first saw the hat on Making Food and Other Stuff and knew it would be perfect for Billy.  I even had some really great yarn sitting in my stash just waiting for a project.  It took me an entire Friday to knit this, which was probably five hours of knitting or something like that, interspersed throughout the day.  Now it is neatly wrapped and waiting under my tiny tree. 

Every year I make toys for my nieces for Christmas, and luckily they are still young enough for that to work, because it's so much fun!  I've started on the first of five patterns for this year's gift.  I'm very hopeful that I'll get it done in time for Christmas, but even if I don't they live basically across the street from me, so I think I can get it to them a little late ... 

* Who can guess who this guy is going to turn into?
Hint: He'll be doing a dancey-dance when I'm through! *

In addition to finishing my troupe of toys for G&S, I'm hoping to knit some dishrags for my Dot (she already has a ton, but she seems to like them ...), make some canned mustard and a few other things, and then just give in and buy presents for everyone else.  My mom has expressed a lot of interest in a homemade apron, but I've never done that sort of thing ... so we'll see how ambitious I get.  Are you making any gifts this year?  If someone were making a gift for you, what would you want it to be?