Saturday, November 13, 2010

fat food

My friend's band, the Mother Z's, played the other night at the Elbo Room here in Chicago. This uber cute brother sister duo requested cupcakes and I pumped out these beauties - a double chocolate cupcake decorated with an almond "z" cookie. I used the chocolate cupcake recipe from vegan cupcakes take over the world, and I made up the chocolate buttercream by creaming 1/4 c. earth balance with 1/4 c. shortening, adding about a 1/3-1/2 c. cocoa, a bunch of powdered sugar, 1-2 tsp. vanilla extract, and water (ran out of soymilk). I got the cookie recipe from "the decorated cookie" blog. The flavor in these are really great, but it is a bit hard to manipulate the dough. I warmed up the frosting in the microwave so I could just dunk the cookies in the icing, but this just ended with burned finger tips and sloppy decoration - I was short on time, OK?
Y'all better hop on this gravy train. Tonight I made Suzanne and Michelle an extra special dinner, which included an epic menu of country fried seitan steaks, mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread stuffing, pumpkin pie, and broccoli (i only cooked this out of some sick obligation to have something green on my plate). I used "Tomorrow Friendly Food" blog as a base for the country fried steaks and it turned out extra crispy and greasy - gotta love it! The mashed potatoes turned out wonderful - but it's pretty hard to screw those up, right? - and the stuffing turned out pretty good, but I think I'm going to stick to my traditional whole wheat bread. I made a non-sweet corn bread and cubed it along with some wheat bread. This was mixed with sauteed 1 c. onion & 1 c. celery, 3 c. no chicken broth, and a shit ton of poultry seasoning, 2 tsp. onion powder, and 2 tsp. tried parsley.

I haven't been able to stop drinking so much water ever since I finished my meal - I'm not surprised since I pretty much consumed a block of salt fit for a full grown horse.






Monday, November 1, 2010

Kickin' Route 66 Style

Fuck Chicago. We're kickin' it route 66 style. Gwen and I have been wanting to take a day trip to get a little country air in our lungs and some corn in our face. Jesus H. Christ was it hard trying to find somewhere fun to go in the midwest for a day. Though we were faced with these challenges, Gwen and I grew up in the Midwest, so we are used to inventing our own fun...thus, a road trip along route 66 was born. We mapped out our trip from Chicago to Funks Grove, IL where we would stop at a series of quirky locations. These sites were so underwhelming...which made it overwhelmingly fun!

boo-bye, chicago!

polk-a-dot drive in - braidwood, il.

this is what vegans eat at diners...sweet lord i hope these were vegan.

the world needs more fiberglass statues.

where i should be - in between elvis and james dean.

wah wah waaaaaaaahh.

piss hole.

Barney Fife ain't got shit on me.

silo shadows




probably the most underwhelming site - a filled-in pedestrian tunnel.

DUN DUN DUN DEAD MAN'S CURVE.

Memory Lane in Lexington, which had a series of vintage billboards along a mile stretch of original route 66.

Chapel of the Temple Trees in Funks Grove, IL


pumpkin cat.

pumpkin cat.