Miscellaneous Monday Thoughts & Updates

Its hard to believe the weekend is already over! We snuck up to the Adirondacks Friday night and enjoyed a beautiful weekend. The weather on Saturday was so perfect that we were able to get the yard all cleaned up. For those of you not familiar with pine trees, cleaning the yard entails raking up several inches of pine needles, so that the grass has a fighting chance to grow.

The best discovery of the weekend was the currant bushes I planted in the fall are budding! Click here and here for the back story on the currants. Its such a thrill/relief when something you plant starts to grow.

We were even able to put a top dressing of compost from the worm bin on each plant. I am really pleased with the way the worm bin has worked out. Its so much faster than regular composting.

I made a batch of vegan French Toast yesterday that's an amalgam of the recipes from the Compassionate Cook and The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook. According to my kids, it was the best batch ever. Here's the recipe.

Katie's Vegan French Toast
Mix the following together in a shallow bowl:
3 heaping Tbs flaxseed meal
1 Tbs nutritional yeast
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups soymilk (I used plain but in retrospect I should have used vanilla and skipped the vanilla extract.)

Dip bread into mixture and coat both sides. Place on a hot, oiled griddle and let cook until it easily releases. Flip and do the same for the other side. I didn't time this precislely but it took about 5 minutes on each side. The result was a golden brown French toast with no added sugar that was tasty enough to not require syrup. That amount of batter was enough to make 8 slices.

Today its back to room moving with a top priority of cleaning out the boys' old room. Yuck! Dinner is destined to be made in the pressure cooker.