Test - numero tres

In case you haven't figured it out, I'm having some technical difficulties!

Product Review: Terra Nostra Ricemilk Choco Bar

Yum!

I tried some Ricemilk Choco with a Dark Truffle Center by Terra Nostra.

Terra Nostra makes organic fair trade chocolate bars and truffles. This one is 56% Cacao and clearly says on the front "All Vegan Ingredients." (I LOVE when products actually advertise that they are vegan!)

I tried the truffle center and the plain, both are very good - I think they have a cleaner and more chocolately taste than even Tofutti Chocolates. I didn't try to melt them or anything, but as a snack - yum!

You can buy them online at their website.

Vegan on TV - Lil' Bush

I always get very excited when Veganism is referenced on TV.

In last week's episode of Lil' Bush, Nuked/Camp George Bush Sr. ate 'clamless clam chowder,' which angered him. Lil' Bush then nuked the restaurant, aptly named "Vegan Clamshack."

Yogurt?

I love Silk Yogurt. I eat the Strawberry or Raspberry flavor every day for lunch. Wegmans has it for $0.69 a cup, which is much more reasonable than Giant's $1.19 per cup. However, I buy Plain by the quart any time they have it in stock. I'll add Splenda, Maple Syrup, or other flavors (mint-lime, strawberry jam, vanilla, chocolate, blueberry, lemon, etc.)

This got me thinking that since it is much more economical to buy it by the quart, it is probably even more economical to make it myself.

I did some reseach online and found this Salton Yogurt Maker on Amazon.


It seems easy enough - you would add soymilk and some plain yogurt, warm in a pot, pour into the maker, turn it on, and 10 hours later you would have some home made soy yogurt.

Here are my concerns:

Will it be smooth and creamy like Silk? Will it be thick? Will it separate, especially if I bring it to lunch? Will it have the same nutritional value as store-bought Silk?

Has anyone had experience making their own soy yogurt?

I'm on the fence.

Another test...

We'll see if it works!

An interesting blog

Post Secret is a collection of postcards, handmade and mailed to the editor, Frank. Frank picks interesting cards and posts them each week. He also compiles them into books.

I have about 80 blogs on my RSS feed, but I wanted to share this one in case you hadn't heard of it since it's not related to Veganism and it seems to be a cult phenomenom...I first saw it linked from Mikaela's site and now I look forward to reading it each week.

There are some very sad posts, some disturbing posts, and some really, really funny posts. This week's post had one card in particular that turned my stomach (about a cat), but in general I don't feel that they are overly disturbing.

He has a blog!!

Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild has a blogspot blog!!
You can check it here: www.beargrylls.blogspot.com/

Life just keeps getting better.

Be Very Careful

Gian likes to try to make the cashiers at Wegmans laugh when we check out. This time he donned a pair of oversized plastic food handler gloves and with a completely straight face gingerly placed all of our items on the conveyor belt. I couldn't hold it together and began to laugh, since his cover was blown, I took a picture. The cashier found it amusing as well.

Siblings...

Pier Jumps the Shark

Okay, not really, Pier has obviously not reached her peak, but we can think she's silly anyway.

The Jungle

There was a restaurant in Melbourne Florida, a few blocks from the hotel called the Jungle. It was also a health food store. While it wasn't 100% vegetarian, it was organic and had a delicious Vegan Sunday Brunch.


Even though he's not pictured, Homicide (a strict omnivore) came with us and partook in the vegan delicousness.

Tofu Scrambler with hash browns, avacado, and toast:

Without spinach:

"Eggs" Benedict. This was amazing. There was a mini-whole wheat muffin topped with sauteed spinach and tofu scrambler and then smothered in nutritional yeast gravy. It was then topped with fresh salsa and avacados. It was one of the best breakfast meals I have ever had.

F-L-O-R-I-D-A-!

Gian, Pier, and I went to Florida for a few days a week or so ago. We had an awesome hotel that Gian's friend Wheels hooked up for all of us. Here are Gian and Wheels chillin.

Pier is afraid to fly:

Here are Gian's boys: Homicide and ChubbyHands:

Gian and me:


The view from our hotel's balcony:

It isn't an allusion, the ocean was feet from the hotel, it was awesome.

We met up with some of Gian's friends who set up a Halo 2 LAN in the conference room. There were about 20 TVs and X-Boxes:

It was great, Gian and his friends played video games while Pier and I read books by the pool or on the beach. The ocean water was around 85 and the weather was amazing. We also hit up a great organic restaurant, I'll post about that separately.

Test

This is only a test of my new website -- apparently, according to blogspot help it may take a few days to publish...

I'll post my new site when it updates!

Man vs. Wild

My newest obsession:



Man vs. Wild is a show on the Discovery Channel.

It's crazy ridiculous.

The host, Bear Grylls is an adventurist, survivalist, and complete nutcase. He and his cameraman parachute into remote locations with only some flint and a knife and then use only their knowledge of the surroundings to find their way back to civilization.

Some places they went this year:

Sahara in Africa (drank water from elephant dung)
Everglades in Florida (came across gators and poisonous snakes while wading through the glades)
Iceland (jumped into a crevasse to prove the rope would hold him and then jumped into a frozen lake to show how to escape and survive)
Moab Desert (jumped into quicksand up to his shoulders to show viewers how to escape)
Costa Rican Rainforest (makes a workable raft and floats down a river)
South Pacific deserted island (builds a raft, transports enough food for a 5 day journey, avoids tigersharks and escapes to civilization)

A warning: it's not a vegan show, he does at times eat animals to survive the trek. However, he himself lists only vegan items in his personal top 10 food list.

The show is on Friday nights at 9pm EST - it is entirely captivating.

Oh, George....

I was eating an apricot last night when George came along and very stealthily swiped the pit. I looked over at him and commanded that he 'drop it' but he just looked at me and quickly gulped it down. It was a rather large pit, so I panicked.

After a quick google search, I determined that apricot pits are actually very dangerous! They contain a small amount of cyanide that while only marginally harmful to humans in small doses can be fatal for dogs. I then frantically searched for "How to make your dog throw up" and found an article on About.com.

(I should mention that this was around 11:00PM - so obviously my vet was closed.)

I followed the directions and gave George 2 teaspoons of Hydrogen Peroxide to induce vomiting. At this point I called Gian down to assist. It took two of us to get it down his throat, I imagine it couldn't be very pleasant. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. Then we got impatient and gave him another dose.

That did the trick, after looking at us plaintifly silently saying, "Why are you doing this to me??!! I trusted you!" George threw up. And kept throwing up. The poor thing. But a half-hour later he was fine and the pit was safely in the garbage where it belonged (I may have given him some extra treats in the meantime to soothe his belly).

Anyway, moral of the story is, George is dumb enough to eat a pit, a toxic pit at that. Oh, and Hydrogen Peroxide makes dogs throw up without any other major side effects.