Thursday, July 29, 2010

Web Re-design!


I've been away for awhile! I do have a reason though! I have been busting a move, working on redesigning my website (um, this has been an embarrassingly long-time-coming!) Hoorah, I'm finally done! I'm sooo not a web designer and have the utmost respect for people that do have the patience and capacity to wrap their heads around it. Seriously! Anyways, I did learn some new things, so that was good, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Some things I want to tweak, but jeez I just wanted to be done already! Hope you like it! I have some more new things to show you this week also!


Thursday, July 15, 2010

Daring Cooks-July Challenge-Make your own Nut butters




The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.


Woo, I was excited about this past month's challenge, since I have actually NEVER made my own nut butter before! And it's so simple and DELICIOUS! I chose to make cashew butter, since that is usually the only nut I have on stock, and whirled them around in the vitamix with a touch of olive oil and a dash of sea salt. Holy yum! We were supposed to make one of the recipes given, but I just picked one to be inspired by (and none of the choices given were vegan anyways). Since I have a gazillion veggies in my fridge, I chose to make a raw, asian-inspired salad. The original called for noodles, and I decided to make raw zucchini noodles instead. Now, I have done this before, but made the mistake of not letting the zucchini sweat out some of the water it contains, and I was left with a watery salad. This time, I was prepared! I sliced them into skinny strips and set them in the colander with a bit of sea salt sprinkled on them for about an hour. It was amazing how much the texture had changed after an hour. I rinsed the salt off and dried the "noodles" with a towel and they were good to go! Cut up any veggies you have laying around and mix in the dressing. This dressing was really simple, but bold in its nut butter awesomeness.

Cashew dressing
2 TBS Raw Cashew butter
1 TBS Apple Cider Vinegar
1 TBS Shoyu
1 TBS Olive Oil
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Mix together briskly with a fork and you're good to go!

I got ambitious and made a second dish, basically taking the salad and putting them into spring rolls and searing them. I love spring rolls!


Friday, July 9, 2010

New 'lil smart friend!



Hey there! Happy Friday!

I have a new print in the shop today, a cute 'lil smarty-pants! I have been trying to think of more boy-friendly prints. It's harder than you think! I've worked for 5 years designing for girls and I have all sisters! More robots?? Anyways, I think he's super-cute. :)

Happy weekend ahead!
xoxo
Michelle

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy 4th!


Happy 4th of july USA-ers! I'm having a lazy stay-in kind of 4th of july. I guess I celebrated last night anyways, at a friend's BBQ (TOTALLY jealous of her backyard.) Also, the stars are aligned I guess, because I got so many blueberries and cherries in my CSA yesterday that I HAD to make some red, white, and blue food. :)

I made an army of mini cupcakes to bring to the BBQ last night, vanilla with raspberry jam, a dab of icing, and a blueberry to top. Yummers! This morning, you KNOW I was busting out the blueberry pancakes right??

Happy long-weekend friends!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Summer of green things



So, the overload of veggies has begun with my local CSA. I'm up to my ears in lettuce! Not that I'm complaining; I just think back to six months ago when I was SO SICK of potatoes from my winter CSA. Haha, when it rains, it pours. But this does mean that I have had salad every single day, lunch AND dinner for the past week. I'm good at mixing things up though. I will usually do some sort of baked/sauteed/marinated/fried/etc. tofu or tempeh, with different seasonings, as the main protein in the salad. Fresh fruit is amazing, especially when it mixes with a vinaigrette dressing (this week, it's cherries, last week was strawberries.) Nut and seeds and whatever other veggies my CSA gives out also join in. I usually will rotate dressings (I usually make my own), with a ranch, oil/vinegar, salsa-ranch (!), or some sort of peanuty-asian-style (Nik isn't as fond of this, so not that often *sadface*). The above salad has a marinated tempeh (Shoyu, liquid smoke, a little peanut oil, pepper, and enough water to cover in pan-cooked until all liquid is gone and slightly crisp) on it and a simple ranch dressing (veganaise, a little soy milk to get the right consistancy, pepper, and a few shakes of basil, oregano, parsley, garlic and onion powder.) Yum!

Also, I only discovered this last summer, but I TOTALLY love fried green tomatoes. A little nooch, a little flour, a little cayenne and salt, YUM!!!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

"We are all Connected" process and fundraiser

Hello! I wanted to share some in-progress photos of a painting I just finished. This painting is also part of a group fundraiser this month at Poppytalk Handmade. 1/2 of all proceeds from this print will be donated to Oxfam America specifically for their gulf oil spill cleanup fundraiser. Print is up in my shop!

This was an interesting painting to work on, as I forced myself to finally look at images of the animals that were effected from the oil spill. It is really hard to look these photos and not burst into tears and feel nothing but contempt for mankind, as I'm sure a lot of you have had similar reactions. This usually leads to dead-end thinking and frustration on my part, because the most I can really offer to help out in any way is to donate. I sent a donation to the National Wildlife Federation too.