2010!

Okay, wow. I have not written in this particular blog for almost two years. This makes me really sad...
I can't believe I was trying so incredibly hard to be a vegan! I mean, of course, that idea is still fresh and hopeful in my mind but at the same time, unrealistic. And, I was fifteen! FIFTEEN. I am seventeen, now, and I almost want to throw up because I am so, just, freakin' out that me, crazy me, is growing up. I have a very sweet yet extremely long-distance boyfriend named John, who lives in PA. I met him (and shall never forget) on August 15th, 2008. If you ever read this silly, I miss you.
When I started writing in here, I had never gone to public school before, but now I do. The process has all gone by very quickly, with only a couple of months looming ahead in completion. The one thing that I didn't expect was all of the sitting down. Sit, sit, sit. Then, sit some more. No wonder all of the kids do so many sports! To tell you the truth, sports are only a small part in my book. Yeah, they can be exciting and endurance-inducing and friend-filled, but for the most part, they are expensive, time consuming, and the "friends" are all out brats.
Tomorrow is Mollie's birthday. I am making VEGAN cupcakes. Therefore, I have still maintained my vegan ways. :-)
Happy 16th Mollie, I love you so much. I sincerely hope that you will be my true sister forever, and I miss you even though you are only a room away. The hardest part for me to admit right now is that my pride and orneriness are keeping me from giving you the biggest hug ever. It's hard to explain, but I don't know exactly why I act this way. I'm pretty sure I have had this personality flaw; the one that keeps me from bearing love on my family, since I was little. I do love you, and everyone else, tremendously.

...I think I'm going to hug her now.

Rainy Days + Sweet Tooth = Cupcakes

Yup. I made jelly donut cupcakes from Veganomicon. For my third/fourth/fifth time making these, I must say that today's results were by far the tastiest, prettiest, and most successful in general.
Previously baking these, I have had flat cupcakes, dripping with jelly cupcakes, and the notorious non-jelly-sinking cupcakes.

Meh heh heh.

Notice the condensation of rain outside?



Don't ask about the random items askewed in the background...i.e. white shelf, hahaha.

Yeah, it's no lie...

...I am really full. I made Veganomicon's BBQ tofu for dinner, although I could never ever get my brothers to eat it. *Sigh*. It was good. I had it in a sandwich with sourdough bread, some mustard, and green onions. Um, yeah. It rocked. I had to keep adding additional peices of tofu, though...Heh.
Here it is!!

Up close...


The reason that this is my second post for one day is that I'd like to go into a little more depth of why I created a blog.

For one reason, I hate language arts...so maybe writing more will make me discover that I really do need to learn more, and that there is a reason to learn how to make appositive phrases, as daunting and dumb it may be.
Ugh.
Another reason is how I feel that actually interacting with the vegan world, as in having a blog, will help me to grow more as a vegan, which is honestly very important to me.

And even though I have a personal journal, I just love to preserve everything I can, especially how I feel right now as a teenager, so I can look back and laugh and point at the crazy things I've said.


I decided to commemorate my vegan-ness one more time with yet another treat, brownies! I used a modifed crumb topping recipe from My Sweet Vegan, and found the brownie recipe randomly.

Recipe:
2 cups AP flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa powder (or any type, actually)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water
1 cup vegetable/canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9x13 pan.

Mix together dry ingredients; add wet ingredients and blend throughly. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes.

Be warned, I didn't time mine...So I'm not exactly sure the correct timing, but I guess it really depends on the type of brownie you like. These are mega filling, so be careful! I kind of have a sugar induced headache...oops.

A perfect start to being vegan...

...With what other than Fronch Toast, from VwaV! (Vegan with a Vengeance) Unfortunately, I had no cornstarch, AND none of the chickpea flour that is supposed to really light up these babies. I substituted normal all-purpose flour, and arrowroot powder, hoping that these alterations wouldn't matter. In my opinion, they didn't! The Fronch Toast was crunchy, yet moist, with pure maple syrup atop.

Here's my story:
I have been trying to be fully vegan for a few months now, with only one day out of those being 100% successful. My heart is totally into it, but apparently my mouth isn't. I just couldn't stop myself from my old habits of drinking milk from the carton, taking scoops of yogurt, or (goodness forbid) munching on fried chicken. For awhile I was just like, I'll be a vegan when I get so-and-so vitamins; I'll be a vegan when the time is right; but heck, I want to be a vegan NOW! And so I will be, starting this morning with my delectable breakfast.

I'm just going to get this post up and running now, so here are a few photos of some DELICIOUS vegan cupcakes, recipes courtesy of VCTOTW!

Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and dabs of light chocolate frosting

Red velvet cupcakes with pink tinted frosting (Sadly, not naturally dyed...)

German chocolate cupcakes, freakin' YUM!