July 31

 
Tonight's harvest!  Most of them were turned into a tomato salad with a little drizzle of olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, a few chili flakes, a little salt,  a little shake of garlic powder and a little shake of onion powder.

(Probably 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1/4-1/2 cup of balsamic... I don't know, I didn't measure.)

Article

I think it may be one of my favorite articles to date.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/07/25/vegan-diet-health-america-column/30514159/

Cooking by Kira

We've had a busy summer (with our trip abroad that I still need to discuss) and the girls are just starting to cook dinners.  I had big plans that they would cook 2-3 times a week this summer, all summer.  We'll be lucky to have time for the girls to cook 2-3 dinner in the remaining time this summer.  School starts in 3 weeks (YIKES!).

Here's what Kira made for dinner her first night: Vegan Fettucine Alfredo from the Chloe's Kitchen cookbook.

And then she made dessert (on a different day), from the same cookbook.

 
Except, Kira can't follow recipes and changed things up a little bit. (Hrmmm, I wonder where she got that.)  She turned them into mint cupcakes with white frosting.

Zucchini

 

Houston, we have zucchini.

This is our 4th about this size.  We made some lovely zucchini bread with the others, gave two smaller ones to a friend, and there are more coming.  I'll need to post the zucchini bread recipe that we've been using, but in the mean time, check out the Zucchini Muffin Recipe from a couple years back. It was yummy then and now.

I roasted some zucchini in the oven; I put on a light brushing of olive oil, baked at 350 for about 20 minutes and then turned it to broil for about 10.  They came out very nicely.  I put some of my marina sauce and some field roast sausage with the zucchini and OMG it is good.  I'll try to get a picture!  

I do love our zucchini!

From my peachy friend and for her, too

My bestest colleague (and boss) has a blog and on her blog she has a cake recipe that is soooooo good.

It was just her birthday and she had a party, so I made the cake so we could continue to celebrate her birthday.

I'll have to get pictures of the cake--I forgot to take any and we ate most of it.

I will make it again!  It is my NEW favorite cake.  Way, way back, we used to eat chocolate cake from a bakery (p.o.), and it was my favorite chocolate cake.  This recipe, is as good as that cake ever was, and it's not nearly as bad for you!

When I was making the cake, I made homemade almond milk. (I don't like buying almond milk, 'cause it always has carrageenan in it.) Not worth blogging about making almond milk (1/4 cup almonds per one cup of water and BLEND in your high powered blender), really, except that I strained it with my pour over drip coffee maker and it's reusable stainless steel filter (like this filter).

SOOOOO much easier than using a milk nut bag.  I had to keep scooping out the ground almond goop of the filter, and the goop was more moist than if it had been strained with a milk nut bag ('cause I could have squeezed it); however, I hate cleaning the bags.  The clean up on this coffee filter baby was to bang it on the container where I scooped the goop into and then rinse it and stick in the dishwasher!  Ah, so nice!

I do have a lot of very moist almond goop in my refrigerator, so I'll be baking stuff to use it up!  (It will freeze and last if I can't use it up in the next day or so.)  (I'll freeze it in about 1/4 cup size amounts so I can more easily use it in recipes.) Today, I stuck in about a quarter cup of it in some lovely zucchini bread.  (Post about the zucchinis in our garden coming soon.)

July garden

 

Our tomatoes are going crazy!  Today I picked 3 medium sized ones and lots of little roma tomatoes. Soon we're going to have them coming out of our ears!  I can't wait!

 

Kale and Lettuce!

 

A little tomato jewel I'm going to let ripen for one more day!

We're back from our trip to England and France and I need to write about vegans abroad, but not today.