Seven Things and Why I love My Brother

Sorry I have been MIA for a while. My teachers have been piling on the work at school and I just have not had a break. I have final exams this week and next week, but I am finally on summer vacation on the 20th!
Midwest Vegan tagged to say seven random things about myself:

1. I have no cousins. I love my family so much and I do not really mind not having cousins, but people always think it is strange that they have 20 or more cousins and I have none. My aunt has a dog so he is kind of my cousin.

2. I have never been on a plane. My dream is to fly to California someday.

3. I like going to the dentist. I love the feeling of getting my teeth cleaned. I have never had any major work done or had braches. It’s weird, but I really love my teeth.

4. I like black coffee.

5. My favorite shows are Gilmore Girls, Entourage, Little People; Big World- to name a few.

6. My favorite sport is skimboarding. When people think of skimboarding they think of 7 year olds sliding around on the sand. I take it to the next level and do it as an extreme sport. To learn more about it you can go to skimonline.com.

7. My favorite bands/musicians are: AFI, Hellogoodbye, Jack Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Acceptance, Dashboard Confessional, Eric Clapton, Led Zepplin, Sublime, Cream, Blinl-182, Ok Go, 30 Seconds to Mars, Dispatch, My Chemical Romance, OAR, Paul Anka, Panic! at The Disco, Taking Back Sunday, Yellow card, The Postal Service, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Phantom Planet, The Starting Line, The Used. Chevelle, Greenday (old stuff), Queen, Coheen and Cambria, Story of the year, Motion city soundtrack, Say Anything, Reliant K...to name a few.

My brother is home from college and I came home one day after school to find that he had cooked blueberry muffin bread. We had no cow’s milk (only soy) and the only butter we have is Earth Balance so they were vegan! The next day he decided to make vegan banana bread, even though we had cow’s milk. I was so happy that he cared enough to make vegan food so I could eat it too. Both the breads turned out fantastic!

My brother is amazing!

Strawberries are in season! I also put grape fruit in the bowl with them.

G-Town

I am back! I got back late Sunday night and have a had an extremely homework saturated week so blogging was put on the back burner for a while. As I said before, I went to visit my brother at college. he goes to George Mason in Fairfax, Virginia. He is actually transferring after this semester because he does not like it. Mason is a commuter school so the campus is dead most of the time. We went down for family weekend. Instead of doing the activities the collage had planned, we went into Georgetown and shopped all day Saturday. Georgetown is like a mini New York City that is a lot cleaner (I have nothing on NYC, but G-town is almost spotless). The town had tons of upscale stores (Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters, American Eagle, J. Crew, and even Armani and other designers), it also had some great little shops. I have come to the conclusion that I love Georgetown. We ended up eating of this very antivegan restaurant for lunch. The only vegan thing was salad, which I got. I lived on peanut butter, soy yogurt (the hotel had a fridge), fruit, the banana bites I made, and the fruit and nut bars I made, the whole weekend. We ate dinner at Panera Bread and I got the black bean soup (yum!). Before we dropped my brother back off at Mason, we went I for lunch. We were driving around and we came to a vegetarian restaurant called The Sunflower. My brother and my dad actually agreed to go in, and my mom (being almost totally vegan, when convenient) was all for it. It was a cute little Chinese/Japanese/Americaish/other style place. I ordered the Organic Braised Tofu (the picture was with my camera phone). It was tofu, broccoli, and other asian veggies in a ginger sauce. It was very good. We also ordered a piece of vegan pumpkin pie (the entire menu was vegan upon closer review). Anyway, that was my weekend.

Away For The Weekend

I am dieing to make cupcakes! Sadly, I am going to have to keep you in suspense until next week. I am going to visit my brother in college this weekend and I do not want to have left over cupcakes sitting in the fridge while I am gone. I am sure my family could have eaten some before we left, but I do not want any cupcakes wasted. My brother loves my banana bites (as you can see by this post). I baked a bunch today to bring to him. I could have brought him cupcakes, but they are just too hard to transport and I do not have a container that they could fit in without getting squashed.


Banna Bites
(Original post)
I found letting the batter sit for 5 mintue before you scoop it out helps them hold their form. I do this while I am preheating the oven.

Last Post For Two Days

That's right, we are leaving tomorrow to take my brother to college and I won't be back until late Friday night. It's so sad watching him pack all his stuff and having his friends come over to say goodbye. It's pritty tense in my house right now, and when I am stressed I bake. My brother really loves the banana bites (you can find them in past posts) so I baked some more and set aside some for him. Then I hid the rest in the fridge. It's hard to focus on food when my brother leaving but I can not forget to bring things for me to eat on this trip. We are going to have dinner at Panera Bread.

Food For The Trip
- Banana bites
- Bread and peanut butter
- Granola
- Cereal
- Soymilk (the hotel has a fridge)
- Apples

Spicy bean and corn dip

I do not ever post any side dish/party foods, so I decided it was time. Enjoy.

1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1 T. minced chipotle chiles (or 1/2 or jalepenos)

1 t. ground cumin

1 t. chili powder

4 t. fresh lime

1/4 t. salt

1/2 cup avocado

1 can black beans

1 can no salt whole corn (8 1/2 oz.)- or simmer 1 cob.

1 cupt diced tomatoes

Mix ingredients together in a bowl and serve with tortilla chips. I used blue corn chips. You can also add it to a tortilla with some rice. Very tasty.