Please excuse my messy desk! Today I busted out a different tea and I’m struggling to wake up. A black dragon pearl. That’s a completely new thing for me, I love dragon pearl teas but I never thought they would be out of the realm of green teas. Kind of silly since you can roll any leaves into a pearl, but you know, I don’t think of such things when I’m waking up without my first cup of tea (and I should probably consider not writing blog posts before I drink my tea, so sorry about this).
I was expecting this to be just like the green variety and nope, it’s not even close. It is very good though. I found it tasted very malty and rich where I find most of the green pearl teas to have some sweetness. People say there is a chocolate flavour component, and I’m sure there is but I got a lot of malt black tea in my sips which is totally fine. I can see this in a regular rotation with other pearl teas.
Posted in Food, Tea.
Tagged with black tea, teavivre.
By Shannon
– July 28, 2014
Oh, Sunday. I should have been up early, perky, ready to go to yoga and get my zen on. Instead I was up almost every hour last night, tossing and turning and when I decided to skip yoga and sleep in the cat freaked out at 8:50am. I would have missed that if I had gone to yoga. So, while trying to be a good secondary cat parent (I’m never the first choice, mostly the last choice) I tried to calm down the cat, make some tea and figure out what the heck to eat.
I had chocolate cake. But this post isn’t about cake, it’s about what I had for second breakfast when I woke up: Lemon Blueberry Waffles.
Since I didn’t start my day off exceptionally well (damn you cake), I felt like some healthy waffles were in order. These waffles are gluten-free with the option to make them regular if needed. I happened to have all the GF ingredients so I kept it to the recipe for the flours. The only thing I did different was to omit the apple cider vinegar and I just curdled my soy milk with the lemon. These were fantastic. Crispy and great, even the husband really enjoyed them. I loved the lemon and the blueberries, and there was no weird gummy texture at all. This recipe is spot on and I plan on keeping it in the rotation.
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with blueberries, gluten-free, lemon, waffles.
By Shannon
– July 27, 2014
I’m kind of missing my muesli and oatmeal in the morning. Decided to try to whip up some Oatmeal Raisin Scones and they totally hit the spot. I used margarine and soy milk and it worked out great. I had some demerara sugar for the top and it was perfect. However, I have these jumbo raisins from Trader Joe’s and I much prefer smaller raisins for baking. I felt like there was just too much raisin in the bites. Not a huge deal but something I noticed.
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with oatmeal, raisins, scones.
By Shannon
– July 25, 2014
So I wanted cake on Monday or Tuesday, I can’t remember. I do remember that the deli across the road had slices of cake, not vegan of course, and I was very tempted. Instead I got that burrito in a bowl thinking all would be well. I ate so many veggies that day that I didn’t want any cake anyway, nevermind bake one.
Throw back to last night. Yep, cake. But let’s be honest, it is kind of warm in my house and I didn’t want to make cake. Peas & Crayons has a Carrot Cake Muffin recipe that looked great. Mine turned out a bit more dense because I just ignored the egg. No big deal. I used margarine and more coconut milk instead of the yogurt. I thought I had currants in the cupboard but I went digging and I think I ate them all. They are so cute! So I had to use jumbo raisins, the visual is just off but they are darn tasty so who cares. While they were not cake they sure hit that carrot cake spot this morning. Yum!
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with carrots, muffins.
By Shannon
– July 24, 2014
Welcome to another boring installation of What I Eat Wednesday. Nothing new, nothing exciting, and nothing sugary.
I didn’t start off trying to be boring. Still haven’t bought anything interesting for breakfast so a bagel was tasty. Lunch was a tofu, mushroom and broccoli burrito in a bowl. There’s beans and rice under there. It was interesting. Had a lemon vinaigrette.
I had actually planned a stir fry for dinner so when I ate lunch it seemed like a wrong decision. We had giant salads instead with green goddess dressing. And since I haven’t been baking there wasn’t much to choose from for dessert. Oh well. At least I ate veggies! I need to bake though, I’m going crazy!
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with Wiaw.
By Shannon
– July 23, 2014
Holy mango smell! Wow, as soon as I opened up the package I knew exactly what I was getting. I kind of wish I had kept this one at home because I have a feeling it would have made a brilliant iced tea but I’m drinking it warm at work. It’s fine warm, don’t get me wrong, but I have a feeling it would just be better cold, especially in the summer.
Posted in Food, Tea.
Tagged with black tea, lupicia.
By Shannon
– July 22, 2014
I didn’t mean to go AWOL this weekend but I was super busy. I had a ton of plans and barely baked! I got one baked good in though, these S’mores Crumb Bars from a past #SundaySupper.
While the recipe wasn’t vegan it wasn’t hard to make it veggie friendly. I had Dandies marshmallows, dark chocolate, and margarine. These were super sweet (the marshmallows make it extra sugary) and I highly suggest you cut them a bit smaller than usual. Unless you are me, but hey, just fair warning. They are tasty though.
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with bars, chocolate, marshmallows.
By Shannon
– July 21, 2014
I can’t say no to a brownie, especially if it has “fudgy” in the title. I found these brownies over at Hungry Vegan reposted from the Vegan Chocolate book. I might need this darn book.
These are made of science. Seriously. I didn’t do any substitutions (minus no chocolate extract or nuts) and they came out perfect. So many different types of sugar though: whole cane, granulated, maple syrup, they all lead to a brilliant fudgy brownie that I love with a crackly top. So very good, I loved them.
Posted in Baking, Food.
Tagged with bars, brownies, chocolate.
By Shannon
– July 17, 2014
Posted in Food, Food Log.
Tagged with Wiaw.
By Shannon
– July 16, 2014
This is a good tea choice from the Numi Indulgent Tea line. Since it’s an herbal, I didn’t have really many conflicting tastes with the Chocolate Mint. The different tea blends plus chocolate are still a bit weird to me but this is straight up tasty. It was great as an after dinner sipper in one of my vampire bunny mugs last night. I’m not sure the chocolate would be good iced, but hey, it’s great hot with a brownie 
Posted in Food, Tea.
Tagged with herbal tea, numi organic tea.
By Shannon
– July 15, 2014
