Last night I was able to draw some energy from my reserves in order to make some cookies. Pink Haired Cyn suggested I put my white choco chips to use in some white chip macadamia cookies and I thought that was an exceedingly good idea, so I went for it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a good straight-up vegan recipe that met the bill so I went with a recipe for White Chocolate/Coconut/Macadamia cookies on Recipezaar. The only non-vegan items were butter (I subbed in margarine) and egg (I used flaxseed/water) so I figured it should be pretty straight-forward. The recipe called for a whole (12 oz) bag of white choco chips but I only had about 2/3 of a 10.5oz bag so I had to half the recipe. I must say that as I was making these cookies I was very skeptical that they would turn out at all. Luckily, my skepticism was vanquished after I tasted these yummy morsels. I put a couple pictures up on my Flickr page but I’ve included one here for those of you who don’t like clicking links (seriously, who are you!??!). I was a bit disappointed by the look (they were a bit on the pale side) but the taste was right so, who’s to complain?

Of course, it wouldn’t be a baking experience with Sat unless I somehow managed to botch the instructions. Luckily, my error was limited to substituting granulated sugar for the intended brown sugar. Oh, and I guess the fact that I initially forgot to chop of the macadamias could be construed as another mishap, but I was able to fish them out before I mixed them in. The moral of the story? I still can’t follow a recipe!

Before I wrap up this post, I’ll leave with a few random bits of news.

• My trip to the car dealership today was a complete joke. When I got there, the guy asked me to turn the car on (I was all ready to hand over the keys), he jumped in the passenger seat, noticed the “Passenger Airbag Off” light wasn’t on and said, “Your car is fine.” After some initial disbelief (this was a full-sized guy and it was supposed to only be a problem with petite individuals) he convinced me that everything was working properly, just not the light. For Colleen’s sake, I hope he’s right.
• Rubi and Roxy have been up to it again. This weekend and into Monday they were in a “lets pee everywhere except the litterbox” frenzy. Colleen was convinced that it was just a behavior thing so she managed to get a second litterbox from a friend at work. The problem: on Monday I noticed that some of the pee had blood in it. Not good. I couldn’t tell who really had the problem so we were on the lookout for anymore bad behavior but, surprisingly, there has been none. I just hope all is well with our kittehs.

Well, that’s about it for this little blog entry. Stay tuned for more wonderful news from BaconAndTofu Land.

- Sat

P.S.
If you haven’t done so already, check out my FriendFeed: it’s pretty stinky sweet (and make sure you sign up too!)

If you happened to have the pleasure of growing up in the midwest (warning: not recommended any longer), you probably associate buckeyes with the Ohio State sports mascot (Brutus the Buckeye is his name, actually). If you happened to have the extreme pleasure of growing up in Ohio (warning: moving to Ohio is not recommended for anyone who is any bit sane), you might know the buckeye as the state tree. If you ever (see above) of having a kick ass grandma such as my own Grandma Deppen, you might know the buckeye as the official chocolatey peanut butter snack of champions.

Basically, a buckeye is just a peanut butter rolled up into a ball and dipped in chocolate so as to look like, well, a buckeye. You could imagine my pleasure when Colleen randomly stumbled upon a recipe for buckeyes at Apartment Therapy. Seeing as how they are super easy to make, I couldn’t help trying my hand at them. The fruit of my labor looked like this:

Granted, they look a bit different from my grandma’s buckeyes–she dunked the whole thing in chocolate so they didn’t really look like buckeyes–but they were still very tasty. The recipe needed more peanut butter (or maybe less powdered sugar) but the taste was still good. I am going to have to chalk this up as a win for me.

Now on to exhibit two: pasta with roasted butternut squash and sage. Colleen found the recipe over at AllRecipes.com and we decided to try veganizing it. It wasn’t too difficult, seeing that we just needed to substitute soy sausage for the turkey sausage and use MimicCreme instead of the heavy cream. The recipe seemed perfectly suited for our 12″ everyday pan so I did a few stretches and started preparing the meal (don’t want to pull a hammy while you are in the middle of cooking, duh!). An hour later and we had the following:

Looks pretty yummy, right? Unfortunately it didn’t taste quite as yummy as it looked. It didn’t taste terrible but it was just kind of bland, as if it was missing some key ingredient (and don’t you omnivores say “meat” to yourself). On the plus side, as there were plenty of leftovers I decided to have some for lunch today. I’m not sure what it is about some pasta dishes (this recipe included) but they taste even better warmed up a day later. What seemed like a loss for me actually turned into a draw. Yay!

Ok, ok. So now that we have talked about buckeyes and butternut squash you must be dying to know about the last b in our alliteration: bladders. Unfortunately this doesn’t have anything to do with food. I’m worried that Rubi either has a problem with spraying or a urinary tract infection (UTI). While the UTI is pretty self-explanatory, you may not know much about spraying if you aren’t a pet person. It’s actually just a term for when the animals “mark their territory.” Yes, Rubi is a female and, yes, female cats (even those who have been spayed) do have this nasty habit sometimes (approximately 5% of them, according to some random websites I was reading).

The problem started a couple weeks ago when Rubi decided to spray on an old pillow that was sitting on the ground. It was a pillow from Colleen’s parents house that might have had other cat smell on it so i just chalked it up to a one time thing. Then, last week when I was out on the patio stretching, I noticed the smell of cat urine. Since I was outside I quickly narrowed it down to one that that used to be inside: my exercise mat. Yup, she had done it again. Sunday, as I was watching the Chargers fall short against the Patriots, I was multitasking and cleaning up our bedroom. I took the clothes basket out of the closet for a moment so I could vacuum and in those few minutes Rubi decided to have at the clothes basket. I told myself that it must have been the smell of the outdoors from Colleen’s and my geocaching adventure this weekend (stay tuned for details about caching in a later post). It was looking more and more like she was spraying. Then came today. I was getting ready to head off to campus when I went into the bedroom and was greeted with an awful sight: Rubi has urinated on the bed. I couldn’t imagine what smell she would have picked up on there (it was right in the middle too) so I decided to call the vet to make an appointment. I ended up staying home today so I could clean the sheets before the smell set in. Oh, the joys of pet companionship.

Well, I suppose that is about it for this little post. As I alluded to briefly, Colleen will hopefully be around soon with a post about this weekend’s awesome geocaching adventures. Until then, farewell.

- Sat

P.S.

If you just can’t wait for details on our geocaching, you can check out the photos on my Flickr page.