Tonight there was a lot of vegan food fixed in our apartment. We are taking a trip to Big Bear this weekend and we are making food ahead of time so I don’t freak out when I get hungry.

Among the things that were fixed tonight:

1. Mac ‘n’ Cheeze (pic, recipe)
2. Susan V’s BBQ Ribz (pic, recipe)
3. Baked Oatmeal (recipe)
4. Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-free Chocolate Cake and Cupcakes w/ Buttercream Frosting (pic above, frosting recipe)

If the quality of the food is any indication, this is going to be one sweet vacation and one sweet Vegan Mofo!

This is a bit late but I wanted to let everyone know about Colleen’s awesome choir performance last Friday. She was performing with both the Villa Musica Community Choir (open to all) and the Singers (audition only). There was a nice  reception afterward so I finally got to meet all the people Colleen has been talking so much about. It’s only been a week and she’s already missing her Wednesday night practices. Not long until the Fall session starts though.

I totally spaced on bringing my camera so the only pictures I have are from my camera phone. Jenne was down to watch the performance and snapped a lot of photos so hopefully we’ll have more up soon.

Yesterday was Colleen’s big performance during the UCSD All Staff Picnic. She was super nervous beforehand but she still rocked it.

Make sure you leave a note (here or on Facebook) and let her know how much you liked the performance.

I was wrong :-p

As we headed north towards Escondido, I made a remark “oh, we really need to go to the Wild Animal Park next weekend.” As it turns out, we wouldn’t have to wait that long. We got a yearly membership last February when Sarah, Colleen’s sister, came to visit and we went to the SD Zoo. The membership runs out at the end of March—and we’ve both decided not to renew—but we have been talking about going to the Wild Animal Park for a while so the time was ripe. I visited a few years ago and really enjoyed it because of the large open spaces with lots of different animals commingling. The SD Zoo is cool but I liked the openness of the Wild Animal Park much more.

Based on my description, I think Colleen was expecting something totally different but it still is pretty zoo-like. Still I think she enjoyed it, especially the train ride that was part of the Journey Into Africa tour (yes, I still consider it a train, even if it isn’t on a track!). It must have been mating season not long ago because half the animals there were knocked up or just had babies. We did learn an interesting fact about the park though: it was originally created as a place to breed rhinos, apparently a very picky bunch. It was very successful at doing just that and just expanded from there.

After nearly 4 hours at the park, we had enough though and decided to get some lunch from the Vegan Zone. We’ve been wanting to go since it opened early last year but we are pretty lazy and never really go down to Pacific Beach so it’s been on the backburner. There was no stopping us now, though, because we were hungry and in the mindset for trying something new. Colleen “kinda” knew where it was but she was slightly off so we almost got lost. I was in the midst of getting the location from GOOG-411 when we happened upon the restaurant. There was just one tiny problem: IT WAS CLOSED! It was during their normal operating hours during lunchtime on a Saturday and there was no indication of why they wouldn’t be open but sure enough, IT WAS CLOSED. I don’t want to say that they “lost some potential customers” but we definitely have soured on going there. C’est la vie.

By the time that we were rejected there, I was hungry, tired and cranky and just wanted to go home. Colleen tried finding another vegan place in PB but I just kept shooting her ideas down (note to self: look at review for Synergy Raw Cafe). We were nearly home when she took a detour and we made our way to Grillions instead. Long story short, we were both—well, I should say she was—pretty disappointed by the food there.

Sunday was the Super Bowl and I had some vague plans to make a lot of snacky type foods for the big game but they never really materialized. I did make some spinach dip and french bread before the game but the feast came after the Steelers eeked out a victory. I made a double batch of Susan V’s BBQ Ribs and tried my hand at some vegan potato skins. I burnt my ribs but the skins were pretty good so I guess it was a split.

Well, I’m a bit on the tired side now so I think I’m going to call it a night. I have a couple more posts to make this week to help keep good on my resolution to write one blog post per week this year. We’ll see how that goes

- Sat

This weekend we made a trip to Cabrillo National Monument down in Point Loma. Cabrillo is one of those places that we’ve been interested in visiting but never got the urge to actually take the leap. If it hadn’t been for RL, who gave us her week-long pass (a cool, $5 value), we might never had gotten around to going. Having been there, I regret having put it off for so long.

Cabrillo’s charm is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe it was the beautiful weather that was bestowed upon us that day. Maybe it was the beautiful ocean views that were a dime a dozen—seriously, how many other national parks/monuments sit right on the ocean?  Maybe it was the fact that we got there at the perfect time, avoiding the tourist rush that seemed to hit right as we left. Whatever the case, it was a sublime experience that day as we took in nearly all that the monument had to offer.

Other than the views, the only real attraction was the statue of Cabrillo (see pic above) and the old Point Loma lighthouse (below). Keeping with the theme of perfect, the seaside trail that is part of the park was nearly the perfect length, offering terrific views of San Diego bay. I took a fair amount of photos but most of them need to get the GIMP treatment because of some exposure problems. Lluckily GIMP makes it easy for us amateur photographers to cope with the lack of a ND filter. I’ll save you the boredom of hearing me gush about GIMP but if you want a free, open source program that is nearly as powerful as Adobe Photoshop, then make sure you check it out.

Point Loma Lighthouse

San Diego Bay and Downtown

Other than the trip to Cabrillo, not a whole lot has been going on. I spent a little too much time watching football weekend, overjoyed that the Eagles beat the Giants but bummed when the Steelers whipped the Chargers. We also picked up Colleen’s brand new Crocs from REI. Yes, you read that right: Colleen got some Crocs. Her old slippers were literally busting at the seams and these were on super clearance so I couldn’t help but get them for her. She used to make fun of Crocs all the time so now I get to make fun of her for wearing them. I am such a wonderful husband

I guess that’s about it for now. See ya next week.

- Sat

It’s been a little too long since we last wrote so don’t expect us to catch you up on everything that happened. In fact, I’m going to bury my head in the sand and pretend like it’s only been a week since we last blogged. It’s fun. You should try it.

With it being the new year, it is time for looking back at last year’s resolutions and making some new ones for 2009. Without further adieu, let’s get started with the recap:

1. Post to the blog more often (Both): This one was looking good for a while (vegan mofo, anyone?) then we seemed to completely lose track of our goal and didn’t post for the last 2 months of the year. I’m going to call this one a moderate fail.
2. Quit Watching Gilmore Girls (Colleen): Colleen totally kicked ass on this one. It was tough for the first couple weeks but after that she never looked back. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we got rid of extended cable so she couldn’t watch it now, even if she wanted to Still, I am going to label this under perfecto!
3. Quit Biting Fingernails (Sat): This was one I totally kicked ass at, although I’ve noticed myself gnawing on them a bit lately. Not biting them, just annoyed when they get too long. Luckily I got a mini grooming kit for the office so if I catch myself biting at them, I can just trim them off. Still, I would consider this a big win!
4. A Veggie Side With Everything Dinner (Both): We didn’t do a good job of tracking this one but I feel like we are much more conscience of it now that we are a member of the Be Wise Ranch CSA. I consider this one a split.
5. 25 Sit-Ups Per Day (Sat): This one was pretty easy, especially with my really fun exercise ball. I tick it off every day on Remember the Milk and I only missed 5-10 days all year. Successful resolution, FTW!

For those keeping track at home (or wherever you are on the road), that is 3 successes, 1 fail, and 1 split. Not bad, I guess.

Now, time to move on to this year’s resolutions. Sadly, it’s going to be a bit of an abbreviated list because Colleen has a bunch of “secret” resolutions. I’ve been trying to prod her to tell me, otherwise I can’t tell if she is meeting those goals or not In any case, here are the resolutions that I know of:

1. At least one blog post per week (Sat): Last year we had a bit of an ambiguous goal to write “more” posts. This year I am taking a stronger stance: I’m giving an actual number of posts to write. We’ll be able to check back in 2010 and see if there were at least 52 posts this year. Difficulty: low.
2. Clean up immediately after dinner (Both): This is one of those resolutions that Colleen came up with and somehow roped me into being a part of. We have a nasty habit of leaving a mess from dinner, which I end up having to clean up myself the next morning. It’s a good goal and so far we are doing well. Difficulty: low-moderate.
3. Wii Fit instead of TV after work (Colleen): Thanks to the miracle of Amazon’s SMS notifiers, we snagged a Wii Fit for ourself for Christmas. I wasn’t really expecting much out of it. It receives a lot of hype but, being a fairly active person, I thought it would be a bit boring. Wow, was I wrong. It’s strangely addicting and makes you actually look forward to working out. I’ve also had to reassess how fit I really am, especially in the balance department. Colleen’s goal is to do Wii Fit when she gets home instead of vegging out on the couch and watching TV. So far she is kicking ass. Difficulty: moderate.
4. At least 15 minutes of kitty playtime every night (Sat): I’ve noticed that we don’t spend as much time being active with Rubi and Roxy so I set it as a goal for myself to play with them for at least 15 minutes every night. So far it’s been a bit difficult as Rubi seems to have gotten tired of Da Bird. Roxy will play with just about anything at any time but getting Rubi active she is a chore. Difficulty: kinda tough.
5. Less than 30 minutes of surfing per night (Sat): I admit it: I’m an internet junky. It’s become quite accute now that I frequent Reddit and I often find myself looking at the most random of sh*t late into the night. It isn’t doing wonders for my life so I am going to try to cut back to 30 minutes of random surfing per night. It’s going to take tremendous will power and some other activities to distract me (read: books, research, etc.). I’ve had only mixed success so far. Difficulty: mind-blowing.

So, there you have it: our resolutions for 2009. Maybe Colleen will write a post and inform us of some her other goals. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.

- Sat

THE PHILLIES WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!

This is the first time that my favorite baseball team has won the world series. The Indians broke my heart when they lost the World Series in 1995 (not really close) and 1997 (they should have won!) but this makes up for it. They really had a great team this year and it showed. I can now die a happy man (assuming I die before the next World Series, that is ).

Now, on to our regularly scheduled vegan mofo post…

For Colleen’s birthday last year, I made her a peanut butter chocolate silk pie. She had been asking for one so I thought she would be excited to have it. Somehow our signals must have gotten crossed because she was pretty mad that I didn’t make something else for her. To add insult to injury, I didn’t think the pie was that good so I figured the recipe would be tossed aside and never see the light of day again. Fast forward a year or so and it was Colleen’s birthday again and, almost miraculously, she was asking me to make the pie again.

Being the loving husband that I am, I agreed, although I was not all the excited to do so since my recipe notes indicated that I only gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars. (Colleen’s review was missing from the notes.) However, I got a bit distracted by all sorts of other yummy vegan recipes and didn’t end up fixing the pie until this past weekend. The recipe is very simple, with most of the magic happening inside of a blender. Unfortunately the picture on the recipe’s site looks elegant but the instructions for making it look that way are poor. When I made it last year, it looked particularly dump as the peanut butter mixture that went on top looked like a baby spit up on it. I decided not to worry about it this time so I just poured the stuff on there in the form of a lattice and was done with it. The pics are below.

The result wasn’t elegant and the pie was, for the most part, just as I remembered it: good but not great. Colleen agreed, saying it was a 3.5 (or 4 if she was generous) star recipe. I think my head is going to explode if she requests it again next year. Hopefully I’ll have the fortitude to say no and fix a cheesecake instead

- Sat

Last Sunday (I know, over a week ago) I made lasagna roll ups for dinner.  We had made them before but I hardly remember them and Sat said he thinks that they were not that great.  Well with a new and improved vegan ricotta recipe we tried it again and had GREAT results.  If you are a Flickr stalker (like some of Sat’s female CSE friends, Ms. B, ahem), you have probably already seen the photos.  Our only problem in making them is that we didn’t have, well, half of the ingredients at the start – and were still missing some at the end – but it all turned out well.  To make is super easy – just lay out some cooked lasagna noodles and top with ricotta, faux-beef crumbles, parmesan, mozz, and some sauce and then roooooolll it up!  Unfortunately, we ran out of sauce to top out little rolls with in the pan, but it turned out just fine.  It turned out to be the perfect “wing it” recipe as we didn’t really follow any recipe except when we needed to know the oven temp and time.