Daily Eats: Iced Latte

Iced vanilla latte.

Double shot of espresso, almond milk, a handful of ice cubes and vanilla protein powder (adds flavour, some sweetness and it works as a thickener to make a creamy drink :)).

A Small Challange

I'm challenging myself to post at least a photo per day for an entire month (March 20 - April 20). I've really been slacking with this blog and it's weird, because I actually do have a lot of things and recipes I want to blog about and I did quite well during vegan MoFo in November... But for whatever reason I can't seem to get anything done and I don't want this to be just another failed project in the never ending universe of the interwebz~.. Boo. So I'm putting a tiny bit of pressure on myself with this challenge and hopefully I'll get my groove back. This isn't exactly like Vegan MoFo since my only goal is to post a picture a day of something I cooked, baked or ate that day. Should be doable right? Y'all can come kick my cyber-butt if I miss a day! (keep the different time zones in mind though, I'm not taking a beating just because the day's over in your neck of the woods ;))

Anyways, if any of you bloggers out there would like to join me in this challenge leave me a comment so I can stalk you see what you're up to!

Oh and btw! By the request of a horde of people single lady (yo Allysia!) I will be posting the recipe for savoury oatmeal soon. I meant to post it last week (there we go again..) but it's just that lately I haven't been in the mood to eat savoury oatmeal myself so there wasn't an opportunity. :)

Fudgy brownie with real cocoa nibs.

These were a disaster, extra fudgy brownies ruined by evil cocoa nibs. I thought the nibs would add a nice crunch to the brownies, but they tasted rubbery (perhaps dues to the heat from the baking process?).

Backlog of Food Porn

Blog maintenance went over well, I got everything on my list done: The Recipe and Reviews pages are now updated, tags are sorted out and I added a search function that you can find on the right side. I also made some change to the Subscribe/Follow page. You can subscribe by e-Mail and get each new entry delivered straight to your inbox or stick to the good ol' RSS-feed. I really hope the e-Mail feature works, this is not a feature I use to subscribe to other blogs so I'm not sure how reliable it is and how the formatting of my entries may change, but I thought it was a good idea for those who don't use feed readers. You can find a link to my flickr page too and I would love some flickr buddies, so please get in touch y'all~~.

I didn't get much feedback regarding blog improvement, but you're all welcome to leave a comment or send me a mail anytime if there's anything you would like to see improved or if something is wrong with the layout or blog (dead links/photos for example) and I'll do my best to fix it. :)

Anyhooow.. It's been a while since I've posted some food porn, so I figured today would be as good a day as any to change that. I honestly didn't take many photos during my blogging absence, but spring is around the corner and the sky isn't that god awful shade of grey anymore and so I've gotten back in the habit of taking photos of what I cook and eat again. Everything is just more fun in spring, right? :)

Oatmeal with plums, hemp seeds and dark sugar beet syrup.

Côte d'Or Pistache Noir 70%

This...sounds way better than it actually is, I'm sad to say. :( The pistachio pieces are sooo tiny, you can hardly taste them and when you do they taste like marzipan... I mean, I like marzipan, but that's not quite what I wanted when I bought this. It's not all bad, the dark chocolate tastes nice and that elephant is quite cute as well, but I won't be buying this particular flavour again.

Savoury oatmeal with soy sauce, sesame oil, scrambled tofu, beans, seitan and dried seaweed.

A lazy woman's answer to rice porridge, or bubur like they call it in Indonesia. I absolutely LOVED bubur when I was a child and I still do, but it takes a rather long time to make the classic rice version while it'll only take a couple of minutes if you're using quick cooking oats instead. The recipe is pretty simple, so if anyone's interested I could probably have it up sometime this week. :)

PB filled chocolate pillow.

Last week I finally made the peanut butter chocolate pillows from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I had a tub of oversalted homemade PB that needed to be used up... A neat excuse to bake cookies, amIright?! Of course I am, hehe. You really need to try these if you have VCIYCJ, because they're uh-maaaazing. 

N.A! Nature Addicts fruit snack.

Fruit leather seems to have found it's way to Germany. 'bout time, I say. If only those little packets would be a bit a whole lot larger, ahem...

Speculoos oatmeal with hemp seeds.

Oatmeal with walnuts, snickerdoodle style. My current favourite.

Vegan egg (!!), sunny side up.

Soon there won't be anything left for us vegans to veganize, I mean... vegan eggs?! Amazing! They're by no means perfect yet, but they're pretty darn good. The idea came from a thread on the PPK (here).

Soy yoghurt with fresh strawberries.

Green smothie.

Made from hemp+chia seeds, bananas, spinach, soymilk, almond butter. The almond butter made it taste like cookie dough, I'm not even kidding. :)

[The last three photos were taken with my phone, sorry about the quality.]

Daily Eats: Saturday

Cupcake for breakfast.

[I'll be doing some long over-due blog maintenance today: sorting out the tags + updating the Recipes and Review pages. If you have any ideas for improvement, now would be the time to mention it. :)]

Review: Hurraw! & Crazy Rumors

So today's entry is going to be a little different from my other entries. After my cleanser review, back in Novemeber, I tried to stick to blogging about food for Vegan Mofo since blogging about other things seemed so out place and blogging about food is really fun, so it wasn't a hard rule to stick to. But November is long gone now and when I created this blog I wanted to blog about all sorts of things, not just food. So don't be surprised if you see non-food related blog-posts in the future. :)

Anyway... I'm starting off with some lip balm reviews. Everybody likes lip balms, right? I was googling for some swatches last week and somehow ended up reading a review on Hurraw! lip balms on another blog. Incidentally the blogger mentioned that she bought her balms from Super Smoocher's website and that they were having 20% off all vegan products. Needless to say I had a closer look. Turns out Super Smoocher is an English online shop dedicated to all things lip care related. They carry two all vegan brands: Crazy Rumors and Hurraw! I decided to give them a try and ordered six balms for myself and another two for a friend.

The sale is going on for another couple of days, so make sure to check it out if you're in need of some lip balms. I qualified for free shipping, but shipping prices are very reasonable and EU citizens don't have to worry about import taxes since their warehouse is situated in the UK. Delivery was quick, six days (weekend included) to be precise, though times probably vary depending on the destination. Overall I was very happy with my purchase there and would recommend them. You can check out their shop here: SuperSmoocher

Both brands are sold for the same price (at the moment) and you get 15oz per tube, that is 4.2g for the Crazy Rumors ones and 4.3g for the Hurraw! ones. I found them both to be hydrating and relatively long lasting and they both go on clear, there's no white tint to them or anything. The Crazy Rumors one seems a little harder in texture compared to the Hurraw! balms, but there isn't much of a difference really. Both companies' products are all natural and vegan! :)

For more information about the actual lip balms, check out these websites:

Hurraw! and Crazy Rumors

Super Smoocher's cute packaging! Love is in the air... errr.. on the lips.

I don't know if this is because Valentine's Day is nearing, but the packaging (including the hearts) was a nice surprise. Cute!

Hurraw's Coffee Bean & Chai Spice Lip Balms

Coffee Bean I was hesitant about ordering this one, as I am not someone who likes overly sweet smells, but I was not disappointed. This actually smells like coffee beans, none of that super sweet artificial smell, hooray hurraw! The coffee balm is one of the stronger smelling balms in this batch. I personally haven't gotten a headache from this (yet?), but just so you know. Some people are very sensitive to strong smells and it's certainly something to consider when you put something on your lips, so close to your nose.

Chai Spice Yum! Mhmm, this is a nice one. The balm is infused with cinnamon and cardamon - just right for all of you chai junkies (I know you're out there!).

Hurraw's Grapefruit & Lemon Lip Balms

Grapefruit This smells just like Mamba Fruit Chews, but not obnoxiously so. Although I do have to restrain myself with this, every time I lift the cap I feel like taking a bite! :) I was a little disappointed to find out that this is not one of Hurraw's tinted lip balms, for some reason I assumed it would be, but it's not. It's no big deal since I love the smell so much, but I'd love to see more tinted balms in Hurraw's product line. Maybe in the future?

Lemon I find that a lot of citrus scents used in cosmetics and skin care products have the tendency to smell artificial, similar to those awful anti-mosquito candles. You know, the ones they sell in garden-supply stores? Shudder. Luckily this isn't the case with this one. The smell is natural and subtle, very fresh! Definitely one of my favourites in this batch and something I would buy again.

Crazy Rumors' Apple Spice & Hurraw's tinted Cinnamon Lip Balms

Apple Spice Crazy Rumors have an insanely HUGE variety of lip balms! I had a hard time choosing, it was a little overwhelming to be honest. But eventuelly I did settle on two balms: Apple Spice from the Brew Collection and Peppermint from the Sugar Cane Collection. The Peppermint one is a belated Christmas gift for someone, so I couldn't open it, unfortunately.. Sad face. But the Apple Spice one is aaaall mine! The smell is great: a little something sweet, a little something sour with a little bit of spice. I don't know about the rest of their balms, but this one doesn't smell too sweet either so I really lucked out it seems. :)

Cinnamon (tinted) Drumroll please, let me introduce you to the only tinted lip balm from my package. I may not wear lipstick all that often, but I do have an unhealthy obsession with tinted lip products: balms, butters, glosses - the whole lot. The cinnamon balm is one of the two tinted lip balms in Hurraw's line of products, the other one being Black Cherry, which is a sheer deep/dark red shade from what I've read. The cinnamon balm smells, well, like cinnamon. Big surprise there! ;) The shade is a sheer coral-red, see the photos for a closer look!

Bare lips.

I made sure to wipe my lips with a wet tissue, so you guys can see what my bare lips look like for reference.

Wearing the Tinted Cinnamon Lip Balm on my lips.

I think the balm looks rather natural on my lips, no? Just a bit of colour (and care), nothing too exciting, a nice everyday "go-to" balm.

Close Up.

Smooooth! Compare this to the bare lips photo, looks like my lips went to the spa all on their own. Hehe.

Swatch for the tinted cinnamon balm.

I figured a swatch on white background would give you a better idea of what the color looks like. The photo is pretty much true to the colour. 


So yeah, that's it. Have any of you experience with either of these lip balm brands? Let me know what you think and ask away if you have any question! :)

Excitement!

Look what reached my doorstep just now:

My copy of Viva Vegan! by Terry Hope Romeo that I won from one of MisoForBreakfast's give-aways during Vegan Mofo! Eeek, I am so excited! I only had a quick look so far, but I can't wait to read it when I get home tonight and I am already veeeery excited about the flan recipes.. :)


I'm running very late right now, so I'm keeping this blog-post short and sweet, but I'll be back to regular blogging soon to keep true to (one of) my new year's resolution(s). (I am usually good at keeping them, I celebrated my three year vegan-anniversary a few days ago on January 1st! :))

Breakfast today: Chia pudding with apple-strudel style topping.

I know I wasn't very active in December, so this is belated, but I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and safe  and joyful new year's celebrations! Happy 2011!

Friday Eats

I'm back from my blogging-vacation. It felt a little weird not to blog for the first couple of days after Vegan Mofo, but it was good to have the time to do other things (like watching Korean dramas... very important!). :)

And sheesh! Christmas is approaching so fast, isn't it? I can't believe it's only 2 weeks away. I have no idea what foods I want to make for Christmas dinner and our tree is still in a box somewhere, waiting to be unpacked. Decorations? Nada. Gifts? Non! I expect panic will set in soon. How are you all managing so far?

Breakfast

Raw Holiday Chia Pudding (recipe from Kristen's Raw) with banana's.

SOO GOOD! I doubled the amount of cinnamon and milk, let it soak over night (in the fridge) and had one half for breakfast yesterday and the other half today. Chia seeds are really hard to find here in Germany so I had to order from iHerb. I don't know if it's because they were moving to a new location or maybe the mail service is too busy during the holiday season, but my last three packages have taken an extra week in delivery and my last two got stuck at customs. They got released fairly quickly and with no problems, but just a heads up to any international iHerb customers out there.

Snack #1

Two tall glasses of kale packed green juice.

Lunch & Dinner

For lunch I made 떡볶이 (deokkbokki), a Korean dish consisting of a spicy hot pepper sauce and rice cakes. I usually prefer it fresh, but I had some of the leftovers for dinner and it wasn't bad at all! :)

You can find a recipe for it over at Maangchi's or Aeri's website. Kelp broth works well as a replacement for the anchovy broth and fishcakes can be omitted or be replaced by sliced tofu puffs or textured soy protein (soycurls) soaked/rehydrated in kelp broth. I like to add some ramen, mushrooms, tofu and/or textured soy protein. Yum!

Snack #2

A Persimmon. Still not sick of these little fellows! :)

Snack #3

Whole wheat bread with margarine and apricot jam.
Cup of Ostfriesentee/East Frisian tea (one of my favourite tea blends) with almond milk.

Have a lovely weekend! x