Rats, a pug, and a housewarming party.

Ratties

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween last night! We never get any trick or treaters, and that always makes me sad.

I did paint some pumpkins anyway (I paint instead of carve so they don't rot so fast) and made the rats costumes. They were capes with their initial on the back so they could be super rats. They told me I was really stupid to think that they'd actually wear them. They turned into wiggle worms and wouldn't let me put them on. I did my best to get a picture of Nicodemus. Constantine ran under his blanket and pouted.

Florida

Rob and I went to Florida last week. We covered a lot of ground as we went to Dade City, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Key West. We had a great time, but I didn't get to see any alligators. Rob said that was just as well because I probably would have tried to pet one if I had.

New cookbook

I went to a garage sale yesterday, which I am not sure I had ever done before. I decided to look through a box of books and managed to find, for one dollar, this cookbook:

It's a macrobiotic cookbook, so it's all vegan except for a few fish recipes. It looks very simple and nothing takes too many ingredients, perfect for me. I hope to try something out of it soon.

Bran muffins

I made bran muffins last night, but unfortunately didn't get any pictures. I was impressed by how well they came out. Unlike most of the stuff I try to make, they actually tasted like what they were supposed to be. Rob was proud of me.

1 1/2 cups unprocessed wheat bran
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons margarine
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg worth of egg replacer
1 cup milk substitute (I used almond milk)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix 1/2 cup of the bran with the boiling water water and let it sit until it has absorbed. Blend sugar and margarine in a separate bowl. In yet another bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Combine the moistened bran and the "egg", then add the rest of the bran, "milk", the sugar-margarine mixture, and the flour-soda-salt mixture. Stir until well blended.

Spoon into 12 lightly greased muffin cups. Bake for 15 minutes.

All done

I finally finished community college and I will be starting at a regular old university in the fall. That makes me happy. In order to celebrate finishing school for the semester, Rob and I went to one of our favorite places, Real Food Daily. It was great as usual. They always have really delicious desserts, like chocolate hazelnut cake.

Here are some of the places we like to go here in LA:

Real Food Daily
Flore
Veggie Grill
Pure Luck
Scoops
The Vegan Spot

Also the Hollywood Farmer's Market is a lot of fun, they have vegan soul food there, not to mentions all sorts of fruits and vegetables. That happens at Ivar and Selma Avenues on Sundays from 8am-1pm.