Fun New Foods and Faves

Hi everyone! First up for this week is a salad with root veggie chips...

Then a veggie burrito and chips from Moe's...

A fun ice cream to try...

A snacky lunch plate (the cheddar sticks and pizza bites were new to me)...

And ziti Alfredo with Wegmans' "Don't be Chicken" and kale...

Here's a dancing Daisy to make your day better...

Peace. :)

Easy Meals and Soft Serve!

Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well! I had a lot of easy meals this week, so I’ll share some of them here! First up is the Loma Linda Pad Thai, which was good, but really spicy! 

Then I tried Gardein’s chick’n & rice soup; I really enjoyed it!

Another salad with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from my garden… 

And finally, the Loma Linda Italian Bolognese, which was still rather spicy, but a bit less so than the Chipotle Bowl or Pad Thai, lol! 

And today’s fun treat was speculoos and chocolate marshmallow soft serve ice cream from Vegan Treats! It was so good, but was melting really fast, so I had to hurry and eat it before it overflowed the cup! 

On the drive home, we passed by parts of the old Bethlehem Steel plant; these are the quick pics I was able to get… 

Here’s a recent garden harvest… 

A little friend… 

And Rogue in her “I don’t have time for pictures” pose… 

Peace. :)

Lots of Random Goodness

Hi everyone! In writing news, I’ve been doing some major reworkings on one of my stories – making edits, changing the perspective around, filling in details that I’d neglected to include, and cutting a lot of minutiae. I submitted the new (now shorter) version of the excerpt I’d gotten feedback on, so I’m looking forward to the writers group next week. Today’s blog post will be a bit random because there’s lots of nice things I have to share since my last post, so let’s get started with the deer I saw on a walk… 

One of my favorite recent Phoenixville pictures, taken from the high bridge…

And a quick apple sketch… 

We visited a friend in Allentown last Saturday, so of course we hopped on over to Bethlehem for some goodies from Vegan Treats! I got the soft-serve swirl of pumpkin spice and cheesecake, and it was lovely! 

My praying mantis friend is still hanging around the garden… 

And I’m starting to harvest some pole beans, which is exciting!

On Sunday, Zach and I met up with my family at the Polish-American Festival at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown. I hadn’t been there in a long time, so it was nice to go back again… 

We had lunch before the festival and there wasn’t much in the way of vegan food while we were there, so on the way home, we grabbed dinner at Wegmans… 

The raspberry white chocolate cheesecake I got from Vegan Treats was so good!

I made some spaghetti with spinach, tomatoes, and Gardein beefless ground…

I bought some fall goodies – cookies and Halloween candy – at Giant… 

Though my most exciting find was the Morningstar Farms popcorn chik’n! I knew to keep an eye out thanks to Sarah, and I was thrilled when I finally saw it! 

And some goodies from Kimberton… 

Of course I made myself some tater tots and popcorn chik’n with ketchup! The popcorn chik’n is really good and super fun! 

The little bunny is still hanging out in our yard; he kept me company while I worked on my garden on Tuesday… 

For a nice treat on Wednesday, I blended together the So Delicious vanilla ice cream and some Justin’s peanut butter cups to veganize what used to be my favorite thing to get at Dairy Queen – the Reese’s peanut butter cup blizzard! I liked my vegan version of it! 

I’ve finally pickled the last of my cucumbers… 

And here’s another cool picture taken in Phoenixville… 

To close today’s post, here’s sweet Rogue… 

Peace. :)

Elementary, My Dear Vegan: Ice Cream

Hi everyone! Today’s “Elementary, My Dear Vegan” is from S2E14 (“Dead Clade Walking”). Holmes fell asleep on the couch, so Watson throws a coat onto his face to wake him up in the morning, announcing that “after breakfast, we’re gonna go get ice cream.” Holmes sits up, confused, and responds, “It’s the dead of winter. Why would we want to go for ice cream?” While Holmes has his breakfast, Watson explains that she thinks someone who owns ice cream trucks is using them to move smuggled goods.

Leela was due for her check-up today, so after breakfast, I brought her to the vet’s. She was very good and brave, though she did do quite a bit of grumbling, especially since she also needed to get bloodwork done and have her nails trimmed. Once I got us home and got her settled in, I scooped myself out some ice cream… 

Mint chocolate chip for the win!

Here’s a silly snuggly Daisy… 

Peace. :)

Buttons Update, then Pretzels & Ice Cream

Hi everyone; I'm a bit out of it right now because this afternoon we learned that Buttons probably has cancer. She's staying overnight at the emergency vet; they are going to try to get a sample tomorrow in the hopes of getting a definitive diagnosis. 

I'd brought Buttons in to the emergency vet earlier today because she hasn't been eating much, has been a bit coughy, and Zach noticed she was a bit wobbly when she stood up last night. The vet did bloodwork and the plan was to have her stay overnight and then see internal medicine in the morning. When the vet called with the bloodwork results, she suggested doing an ultrasound (at that point thinking it could possibly be pancreatitis based on the bloodwork). Well, then the vet called back with the ultrasound results, and I just went numb when I heard "multiple masses in the chest... probably cancer." I started crying but kept it together until the end of the call; after hanging up I just kept screaming "Fuck!" and punching a padded chair and crying some more. 

It'll probably be several days until we get the results. Right now I'm just focusing on: "I'm picking her up tomorrow, I'm picking her up tomorrow..."

Anyways, all of that is to say that today's Vegan MoFo prompt is perfect timing: "Junk food forever!" Here's some So Delicious salted caramel cluster ice cream that I had a few days ago with pretzels and will obviously be having again tonight...

Here's my Inktober sketch...

And here's a pic of Buttons hanging out with Leela in the sunshine...

As always, peace...

Strawberry, Banana, and Blueberry Ice Cream

Hi everyone! I had some frozen banana & blueberries I wanted to use up, so today I blended them with frozen strawberries for a nice, cool treat! The resulting color was so pretty! 

Here’s Daisy being a little creeper… 

In other news, Buttons has been quite the brave kitty! At her last checkup, the vet told us to keep an eye on one of her canines that looked a bit questionable but didn’t seem to be bothering her. Recently, however, we’d noticed she’d been eating slower and was being extra sensitive about her mouth, so we scheduled another appointment, at which they recommended a dental exam/cleaning, adding that she probably had two teeth that needed to be pulled, maybe more (they couldn’t quite tell because she was fussing so much). So she had her dental appointment yesterday and ended up having three teeth pulled (her upper left canine and two lower premolars). Once I got her home, she recovered fairly quickly from the stress and was so happy to have her dinner! Her appetite has been great, her energy levels are good, and she seems much happier now that those gross teeth are gone! We’re still keeping an eye on her, though, and will be bringing her back in a week for a follow-up. I’m just so glad to have her home; yesterday was so stressful waiting to hear back from the vet! 

Let’s see, what else… I did a bit of gardening/weeding earlier this morning, and I’ll hopefully do more later. Other than that, I plan to keep reading A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It’s really good so far! 

Oh, and I wanted to share this cool website (Native-Land.ca) that a Facebook friend shared. From the site: “Learn more about where you live. Native-Land.ca is a resource to help North Americans learn more about their local history.” (The Phoenixville library has a book called The Lenape, so that will probably be the next book I check out!)

Peace. :)