The almost vegan quinoa macaroni and cheese incident of January 24th.

Let me just cut through the suspense here at the beginning of this post and just say that this story doesn't end very well.  It all started with a link I saw on facebook...

As soon as I saw the recipe for quinoa mac and cheese, I was beyond excited to try it.  And by that I mean, I kept the tab open for 3 days staring longingly at it until I had the time to go to the grocery store.  I had to swap out the cheese ingredient for vegan cheese and ended up coming home with a huge hunk of bright orange "cheddar."  As I was shredding it, the only thing that came to mind was soupy playdough.  I was mega skeptical/disgusted and did a taste test.  It passed, but just barely.  Other than that though, the recipe was easy to follow and there surprisingly weren't any disasters.

Karen and Jake came over for dinner and I felt a little bad subjecting them to a) my cooking and b) gluten/dairy free questionable ingredients.  But all was well and good and nobody hated it (unless they were really good at hiding it...) and I thought it was a total success.

...Until we all started feeling like shit.  Well, Karen was fine cuz she's one of those weird creatures that can eat anything, even styrofoam, and still have the sort of functioning digestion system I could only dream of.  (I made that styrofoam part up, though).  And Jake was fine too... for a little while.  We'll get back to that.  Tucker and I, though. Man.  It felt like my insides were being obliterated by one of those magic bullet things, except without the delicious smoothie outcome.  My plan had been to go to the gym, but all I wanted to do was lay on the ground and not move for 500 years.

And then I woke up in the middle of the night around 4am and saw that Karen had called me around midnight. I remember sleepily thinking, "hmm, I hope she's okay, mmph mmmmg zzz." And it wasn't until later today that I found out Jake had had an allergic reaction and needed a ride to the hospital.  I'm still a little unclear as to what he ended up doing and I haven't heard from him today, but I'm pretty sure he's alive.  So that's good.

And there you have it.  My delicious quinoa mac n' cheese was a fail.  Maybe I'll try it again with a different kind of soy cheese? I dunno. It's gonna take a while to build up the courage and block out that traumatic experience.

Deadly.

My romantic night in with Arctic Zero

Ugh, I haven't blogged in like, six and a half decades.  AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FO' DAT.  I've been busy. And lazy. And dumpster diving sucks because my findings are always full of gluten n' crap.   So that's my little negative rant for the time being. Let's move on to the COOL STUFF.

While I was in Spain, one of the girls on the tour told me about this magical ice cream called Arctic Zero that's gluten and dairy free and is packed with protein.  The best part?  It's practically calorie-free.  150 calories for the ENTIRE pint. I was like, "yeah okay, Amber, get your head outta your butt." And she was all, "FUH REALZ-- check out Whole Foods, gurl."

So today, I had a free hour that I could've spent napping or doing homework (pftt), but instead I set out on a quest for Arctic Zero.  There were a few scary minutes in the car when the traffic moved .3 inches within 15 minutes and my CD player was stuck on a fucking Cranberries song and I thought maybe it was karmic punishment or something.

I finally got to Healthy Living, found the ice cream section and, wonder of wonders, Arctic Zero was on sale!  And there were so many awesome looking flavors; how could I choose just one? I bought cookies n' cream, mint chocolate chip, and peanut butter chocolate.  Ran into a girl I went to high school with at the cash register... she probably thinks I'm the lamest human in the world: buying 3 pints of ice cream by myself on a Friday night. I'm pathetic, I know, whatever, I've accepted it, moving on.

I held a one-person taste-test party when I got home and was a bit disappointed.  First of all, since it has a bunch of protein, it tasted like a frozen protein shake. Which makes sense, I guess. But then second of all, the worst part, there are no chunks of anything!  Hellooooo, mint chocolate chunk, why are you smooth and not chunky?  Hellooooo, cookies n' cream, where are the effing cookies, GEEZ!  It was like they literally made a protein shake and froze it into an ice cream container.  And third of all, the first ingredient listed on the pint is purified water. Like...what?

So overall, I give it a 7/10.  There are a ton of pros and it does taste decent, but I'm definitely a chunk spelunker.  Eating ice cream without digging for chunks is like... petting a sphynx cat. You can still do it, but seriously, what's the point, it's not even fuzzy.

I'll sum up this post with a Chinese proverb I found on wiki: Not only can water float a boat, it can sink it also.  Aka, water will sink your ice cream. And by sink, I mean ruin.  Water will ruin your ice cream.

Failed ravioli, banana whipped cream, and starving savages.

Yesterday was BEAUUUUTIFUL.  One of those perfect fall days where you try to cherish it but can't help thinking about whether you're actually cherishing it to the full extent it deserves.  You know?  It's like the day is guilt-tripping you if you're not outside picking pumpkins or going on hayrides.  Tucker and I were planning on having a mega touristy day at the Shelburne Museum and probably some foliage drives, etc etc.  Instead, we ended up hangin' out cooking and knitting all day.

Here's our day of food (all gluten free/vegan):

Breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes

Lunch: grilled cheese with pesto and apples, butternut squash soup

Dinner: failed pumpkin ravioli, so it became rice pasta with a pumpkin/walnut sauce

Dessert: surprise pie

The evening plan was to head to my friend's apartment for a classy dinner party.  The only problem?  Nothing being served was gluten free.  Hence, the gluten free pumpkin ravioli idea was born!  

The original plan for the pumpkin sauce was to use it as filling for the homemade ravioli.  The filling was mashed pumpkin, an onion, and walnuts.  Yumm.  Buuuuuut, we tried to make the ravioli pasta from scratch, but that shit is harder than it looks.  So we mixed it into some rice pasta and all was good with the world.  Sort of.  It didn't taste fantastic, so all was not really good with the world, but whatever.  It actually kinda looks barfy in the picture below.  We scarfed it at the party anyway.  Literally, scarfed it.  Right out of the serving bowl.  Before everyone else got their food.  In a dark corner of the room.  ...It's safe to say we were the savages of the classy dinner party.  Not sorry.

And then we were planning on bringing a dessert to the dinner party, so we whipped up a surprise pie-- one of Tucker's family's secret recipes.  (The recipe's not really a secret, but they call it surprise pie because the fun part is getting people to guess the ingredients after they take a bite).  The only problem?  Whipped cream is supposed to be the top layer of the pie and I'm dairy free.  So we did some google searching and found a whipped cream recipe using a mashed banana and an egg white.  It turned out WONDERFULLY.  Look at the picture, doesn't that look like whipped cream?  YEAH!

We ended up not bringing the pie to the party... because we wanted to eat it.  Sooooo... this morning, after Tucker, my roomate Hannah, and I worked on it, there's not a whole lot left.  It's that good.  It'll probably be gone by the end of the day.

Oh, and here's Tucker knitting his first scarf.  Adorable.

Trashy sushi

It's been kind of a slow start on the trash-pickin' scene so far this semester. It's harder to find stuff when you're not living in the dorms.  But every once in a while...

There I was, 12:45pm in the fishbowl at the Davis Center.  I had just scarfed a hummus-on-gluten-free-bread sandwich and was still feeling kinda hungry.  I got up to throw my trash away and go grab an apple or something, when all of a sudden, some girl scooted right in front of me to get to the trash can first.  I was momentarily pissed off, but then noticed the glory that is a half-full box of California sushi rolls heading straight for the abyss.  I casually dropped my trash and scooped up hers all in one fell swoop.  Luckily, it was almost full, so I didn't have to climb in.  It was a beautiful, beautiful thing with very convenient timing.

The sushi at school is notoriously pretty good.  And it's kind of a treat-- it's over 6 points per box and with a (very) limited amount of points, sushi is a luxury.  Finding a relatively untouched box was a MIRACLE.  Ya know that little chunk of pickled ginger they always toss in next to the wasabi?  Nobody ever seems to eat that... and it's my FAVORITE part.  Looks I'll I'll have to go trash diving just to find all that wasted ginger.

Microwavable cake. Mmm, college.

Heyyy, bloggy blog friends!  It's been about 16 years since I last wrote a blogpost, even though there have been PLENTY of blog-worthy experiences... For example, last week I went to get my teeth cleaned and my hygienist and I really hit it off.  She ended up sneaking me out with 5 toothbrushes, 6 boxes of floss, 4 boxes of toothpaste, a handful of stickers, and her email address.  SCORE.  Another blog-worthy find that I didn't end up posting about was a lime green garbage can Tucker and I found in a dumpster.  Trash can in a dumpster, how ironic.  ANYway.  Back to the real subject.

Today was my dear friend Mackenzie's birthday, so we decided to do some cake experimentation... A few days ago, I was spelunking around on the interwebz and found a bunch of single serving cake recipes.  I was like, "DAYUMMM, I'MMA MAKE DIS SUMDAY."  And that day was today.  Taylor, Karen, Myria, and I scrounged up an impressive amount of mugs, made a quick grocery trip, and then proceeded to spend 2 hours making microwave cake.  Mmm, the sweet taste of college.  Here's a shot of my dining room table in the throes of dessert-making.  It was a mess.  A delicious, peanutbuttery mess.

Here's the end result.  10 mugs are chocolate cake with homemade reeses frosting and the 2 mugs in the middle are peanut butter chocolate chip cake.  It doesn't look very appetizing in this picture... actually, it looks like dog poop in a cup, but I assure you they tasted better than they look.  In retrospect, we probably should've mixed the ingredients in a separate bowl so the sides of the mugs wouldn't look all drippy.  Whatever.  It's cake.

I made one that was gluten free fo' meeee  :)

Then for Mackenzie's birthday dinner we got a huge group together to go downtown to the Asiana Noodle Shop.  I'd never been and was nervous about finding gluten-free options, but HEY whaddaya know-- the place was full of crap I could eat.  Pictured below is avocado maki, something with seitan and mysterious goop, and salad.  

The menu was a little bit scary.  It was like 15 pages long and had a lot of words that are not in my vocabulary (I'd never even heard of a sushi boat.  I basically live under a rock).  So I decided to play it safe-ish and get the avocado tofu salad.  It also had seaweed salad in it!!!!! Do you guys remember all my posts about seeweed salad?!?!?! Well guess what!  Still obsessed!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are... humongo, obnoxious group.  It took us at least 20 minutes to divvy up the bill.  There is a reason I'm not a math major. 

Want to make your own single-serving cake-in-a-mug?  Go HERE.  My next conquest will be the carrot cake, I think.  

Banana stuff with stuff in it!!!!!!!!!

I can't remember whether or not I've already written a post about this, but WHATEVA DOIN' IT ANYWAY.  Today, as I was driving my friend Haleigh home, she wanted to stop at Scumberland Farms and pick up some Ben and Jerry's.  That got me hankerin' for ice cream, but since I'm still all dairy free and stuff, me and Ben and Jerry can't hang out.

And then I got home and went to stare into the freezer.   LO AND BEHOLD, there was a bag of frozen banana slices.  And ohhh, what you can do with banana slices!  Popped 'em in the food processor and obliterated them into infinity.  Jk, lol, I obliterated them into ice cream consistency.

And then, since plain ol' banana ice cream is meh, I tossed in some vanilla protein powder, cocoa powder, a bit of peanut butter, and some dry oats.  Banana stuff with stuff in it!!!!!!!  (Please appreciate how well my baby spoon matches the purple on my pajammies.  It's Thursday and my day off, so obviously pajammies will be worn all day).

Ya know what's great about obliterated banannies with stuff in 'em?  It's cheap and fast (literally, took less than a minute (not including clean-up time (oy))) and pretty healthy depending on what you chuck in there and dairy free and you can share with all your friends or not if you're in your pajammies and feeling antisocial like meeeee!  Mmmm, run-on sentence.

Sweet Apple Sammies

For the past couple years (and by a couple, I actually mean a few, and by a few I mean more like 7) I've had a subscription to Seventeen Magazine.  It used to be my favorite magazine.  I loved articles like, "get your crush to notice you" and "I was robbed in a parking lot and survived now listen to me preach about how life is precious." All that crap.  Needless to say, I was an avid Seventeen follower.  In the past year or two though, I chose to cancel my subscription due to all the bullshit and body image distortion, blah blah blah... also the fact that I am no longer anywhere near 17 years old.  But the magazine just keeps showing up on my doorstep anyway.

So today, because I have a stack of magazines taller than the world's second-smallest woman (that's Madge Bester, in case anyone was wondering.  She's 2'2" tall), I've been doing some collaging.  While viciously ripping through page after page searching for images that weren't skinny white girls or nail polish ads, I found a recipe or "sweet apple sammies."  And then I made one and it was delicious.

Wanna know how to make one?  Even though you can probably tell from the picture?  OKAY!

1) Take an apple, cut it down the middle, then chop off the stemmy ends.  Cut out the core, and voila, you've got yourself a coupla apple donuts.  You can just stop right there if you want.  They're so cute, it's hard not to eat them right away.

2) If you make it past step 1, smear some peanut buttery goodness on there.

3) Throw some chocolate chips into the peanut butter for the "sweet" aspect of the recipe title.

4) Smoosh the two apple donuts together and BAM you've got an adorable sandwich thing that is decently healthy.

After 7 years of receiving this magazine, I think this is the first time I've actually made one of the dumb "get fit now!" recipes they always throw in for shits and giggles.  Maybe I'll give Seventeen another chance... HA, JUST KIDDING.  So done.