Birthday Candy!!! Fairhaven Candy Crumblz July 1, 2008

Sunday was my birthday, and one of my gifts was a bag of Fairhaven Candy Crumblz, the chocolate peanut butter to be specific. Kala ordered them from Food Fight Grocery, they are amazing.  They taste like the innards of a Butterfinger on steroids. They are in smaller chunks of course, but it had a perfect blend of peanut butter  crunch and a hint of chocolate. Its a blend of crunch and melt that will make your eyes roll back! They could be a seriously addictive snack if they were easily available in the Twin Cities.

–Shane

Photos: Shane

Hemp Shake - of doom and sorrow June 21, 2008

 

I don’t even know how to start this post.  You know how you bring home something new from the store with all sorts of hopes and dreams of yummy delight and then you try it and it tastes like a potting soil smoothie?  Yeah, that about sums it up.  The terror in question is the Organic Chocolate Hemp Shake from Nutiva.  The instructions say you can just mix it with some soymilk, but when I did that it was still a chalky gritty mess so I went to the blender and added in a frozen banana, which it also suggests.  

 

 

The taste is bad, but the texture is even worse, it’s like gritty gel, bleh!  I can’t say it’s the worse thing I’ve ever tried, but it’s definately up there in the top 10 and I definately won’t be trying the other flavors.  I’m so glad I only bought a single serving packet!

-Kala

The not so Crispy Cat May 27, 2008

The other day Kala and I were in the uptown area of Minneapolis doing wedding stuff, and stopped at the Wedge Co-Op.  Kala had pointed out the Tree Huggin’ Treats Crispy Cat candy bar specifically the dark chocolate and peanut variety. Kala could not try it her self due to the product being made on shared equipment with dairy and the unpleasant reaction that would follow, so allergy sufferers beware.

On to the candy bar itself. The Crispy Cat is a smallish bar, the chocolate is not very dark in appearance looking more like a milk chocolate, and the taste leaves a bit to be desired no real richness or depth do it, its a bit like chocolate in some vegan energy bars, you can tell its chocolate, its just sort of mediocre at best. Inside the chocolate is the peanut rice filling. It had a good peanut taste but no real crunch to it (I was promised crispy!), it was very chewy. On the whole the bar reminded me a bit of the Whatchmacallit candy bars that were around in the 80’s in my child hood/pregan days.

I can’t give this product a glowing recommendation, but if you want a candy bar that is vegan it would be ok in a pinch.

–Shane

 photos: Kala

The Lazy Vegan: Frozen Burrito May 24, 2008

 

Today was kind of a long day so Shane and I decided to pick up something frozen from The Wedge for dinner.  He also got a peanut butter cup shake that I stole some sips off of, soooo goooood.  And I got an oatmeal pecan cookie.  Ok, back to the burrito.  This was the first time I’d tried this flavor, Red Hot Volcano from The Old City Cafe.  It promises to be “extra spicy!” and “red hot.”  Well, it’s Minnesota hot.  It’s good, it’s just not spicy. 

 

 

For a frozen burrito, it’s also not completely horrible for you, coming in at only 4 grams of fat and 8 grams of fiber.  All in all, I liked it and would have it again when I got that frozen burrito desire.   

 

-Kala   

The Lazy Vegan - Buffalo Wings April 16, 2008

 

Sometimes you just need something quick and easy for lunch (or dinner) that you can just throw in the microwave or oven and not have to fuss over.  Today was one of those days.  After working in the dirt patch in the front of the apartment that will become a little garden, I wanted me some wings!

 

 

The wings in question are Chicken-Free Buffalo Wings from Health is Wealth and they are gooood.  Not quite as spicy as they claim, but I like things pretty spicy.  Caliente if you will ;)  Plus they’re not terrible for you which is nice, lot’s of fiber (as if vegans need more fiber…)

 

 

I had mine with a mixture of ketchup and chili sauce on top for some added spice and flavor.  I totally recommend these and will definitely be buying them in the future. 

 -Kala

Simply Vegan, my first cookbook. April 9, 2008

I am a cookbook whore, no denying it, I like them even if I never make something from it I can steal ideas, or just look at pretty pictures. That said, I have decided to make my first post a review of the first vegan cookbook I ever purchased, its also the first cookbook of any kind that I purchased. Simply Vegan by Debra Wasserman. The book was first published in 1991, and I picked up my copy in 1995 shortly after going vegan.

Simple is a good word for the cookbook, has few illustrations and the back has a nutrition section with a glossary and many charts and tables. There is nothing flashy in this book. The recipes are not all that flashy either. Most are very simple and are very easy to prepare, a good thing since at the time I still had next to no idea of what I was doing.

Besides being simple easy recipes, have a bit of a hippie 70s vegetarian sort of vibe to them, looking back on them now they feel a bit dated. They are not for impressing people with your culinary skills, its all about quick and relatively easy.

The recipes are divided up by beverages, breakfasts, sides, soups sandwiches, mains etc with a special section for tofu and tempeh. The chickpea dishes were always my favorite since I had not yet gotten over my fear of cooking tofu, the recipes introduced me to many ingredients that were fairly alien to small town Minnesota such as Bok-Choy, black-eye peas, and well chickpeas, a staple of salad bars everywhere but Minnesota, at least back then. A lot of the recipes also lack a bit of balance, such as maybe adding a vegetable in with the seasoned bunch of beans. There is also a desert section, in the shadow of books like My Sweet Vegan and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, the less said about it the better.

Looking back on it I am not sure I would recommend this book now, even though 13 years ago I was quite enamored with it, although it is a good way to look back at how vegan cookery has changed and evolved.