Pancakes, kale and soup.... oh my!

This entry is a bit of a round-up of what I've been eating this week... last Friday turned out to be a "snow day" me. Because I work in higher education, our campus sometimes closes when the weather gets too rough. Let me tell you, it's a great feeling to receive a phone call from your boss early in the morning, telling you to go back to bed because campus will be closed. :) In celebration, I treated myself to a pancake breakfast! I chose this recipe for low-fat whole wheat pancakes over at Vegweb.com. I took their suggestion of adding fresh blueberries into the mix, and I couldn't resist adding a few more after the maple syrup had been poured. Deeeeelish!

This week, I also tried this recipe for Bean and Kale Scramble over at fatfreevegan.com. It was my first time--ever--having kale.... and I liked it! Maybe it just tasted so yummy because I knew this dish was low-fat AND packed with nutrients. :) I should also mention that this recipe used white beans that I made in the crockpot, which makes cooking dry beans easy! After soaking them overnight, I put the beans in the slow cooker with an onion, quartered, and some minced garlic with water to cover. Mmmmmm. I'm cooking ALL my beans in the crockpot from now on. I made a two-pound bag of dry beans, and once cooked, froze most of them in one-cup servings in the freezer. Now they'll be ready to use in future recipes. :) Many thanks to my mom for giving me the book Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, which has the recipe for cooking dry beans in the crockpot.










Another new recipe I tried this week was Susan's Dirty Little Secret Soup from her blog, Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. LOVE IT! I've had a difficult time getting into frozen veggies. My personal fav is fresh. But, frozen veggies are perfect for this soup, which is super duper easy to make. Love it, love it. I've been bringing it to work for lunch all this week... yummy. Can't wait to make more.










I'm looking forward to this weekend as I'll be celebrating my birthday (albeit a tad early, but sometimes it's hard to get everyone together) with my immediate family. The deal is, the birthday person gets to pick their choice of dinner and then we usually play games or something. My preference is usually Mexican food, and last year, my mom prepared an awesome vegetarian Mexican feast. I just found out that this year, she'll be making a vegan Mexican feast for me. I cannot wait. My mom is the best! Oh, and I'm going to be making my own birthday dessert this year, from the lovely Joy of Vegan Baking book that my sis got me for Christmas. :)

Vegetarian chili, topped with veggie cheese

I had hoped to explore more adventurous recipes, but since starting this blog, I've been crunched for time. I have a vendor showcase coming up for my candles, which I'm really excited about because it's my first local showcase. But my focus has been about getting ready for that rather than which new recipe I'm going to try. I've been relying on a lot of my standard veggie favorites lately, including my veggie chili.

I've been making this chili recipe ever since I went veg. It's based on a recipe in one of my mom's cookbooks. (Can't remember the cookbook name at the moment; if I find out, I'll post it here.) I've modified the recipe in various ways over the years--the original recipe didn't use a 'meat' substitute, but I've been adding one in. Sometimes I'll add in a can of tomato soup. Basically, the recipe has evolved into a concoction of whatever I have on hand. Sometimes I put corn in it. Last night, I put some yellow and green peppers in it because I had some in the fridge that were going to go bad. Yet, my chili recipe does have some basic ingredients that make it into every batch, and I'll be posting my recipe over at veggieboards.com. The photo featured here shows the chili topped with veggie cheese.

What I especially love about chili is that I can cook it in the crockpot while I'm at work, and come home to a hot meal--ready to eat! AND, this particular recipe freezes extremely well so I always package up the leftovers, which then become lunches that I can grab from the freezer while heading out the door to work. :)