Bacon cookies?

What happens when you take vegan sugar cookie dough, dye half of it red, and arrange the two colours in long strips?



Oh yeah.

I need a nap :)

Oh man, life has been crazy lately. School work is getting really insane, we got our report cards a few days ago, basketball tryouts start tomorrow, I'm a silly teenaged girl with a crush, and my little friend Aquila died! :(

Aquila was a leopard gecko that I bought when I was 10. He did live to be 6 1/2, but I'm still feeling kinda down about him dying :( Yesterday, I put him in an old Converse shoebox and sent him down the North Saskatchewan River. It was a really nice lizard funeral and watching him drift away was just so peaceful.. (besides, the ground is cold and digging a hole is hard)


Anyways, I was tagged by the lovely Paulina to do this nice little "Seven Facts about myself" meme. Here we go!

MORE THAN YOU PROBABLY EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ME

#1. I love, love, love, LOVE music. I'm really into "indie" music, mostly folk rock, crazy experimental stuff, psychadelic folk punk, and lo-fi folk pop. Heh. My favorite artists are Neutral Milk Hotel, The Velvet Underground, Jacob Borshard, A Drum and an Open Window, Xiu Xiu, and the Microphones.

Lately, I've been obsessed with this song by Margot and the Nuclear So and So's:



#2. On the subject of music... I play guitar! Both electric and acoustic. I've actually recorded a bunch of songs and a few of them are up on the internet...but I'll keep that secret & seperate from this blog, for the time being. hehe.

#3. I don't watch much TV usually, but we got an elliptical trainer a few weeks ago. Now, I get to watch random shows when I'm working out. And BY FAR, my very favorite show is The Office. It's so funny!

Dwight Schrute is my hero :)

#4. I've got a brother and two sisters, all younger than me. We're a big, happy family.

#5. I used to be a really quiet person, but ever since I started high school I'm different. Now, I have an amazing group of friends that love me for who I am, so I say things without thinking a lot of the time. That's not necessarily a good thing, but it just shows how comfortable and happy I am with these people, more than I have with any other friends I've had.

#6. Ever since I went to San Francisco for those 3 days in August, I've been DYING to go back. :) It's now my very favorite place in the whole world. I guess I haven't travelled all that much (I've been to SF, some of Hawaii, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, most of Alberta & BC) but I know that I've fallen in love with San Francisco.

#7. I made a note on Facebook that was a list of movies I want to see, and now my friends are lending me movies all over the place. How sweet! I watched Donnie Darko last night; whoaaaa that was such a cool movie. Weird, definitely, but that's what I like.


So.. I tag anyone who has seen Donnie Darko and who wants to do these Seven Things!

November 10th, already?

Oh man... Well, here's what's been going on as of late:

Oct 30th: Environmental Club Bake Sale! About 50-60% of the goodies were vegan and it all went super well. We managed to raise 225$! That's a record!

Oct 31st: Halloween! I dressed up as Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol's superstars of the 60s.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the full costume, but I did have some free time with iPhoto before my friends came over:

But yeah, Halloween was super fun :) I had 15 friends over and we just had a good time. It was unusually warm, too, so we went to a park and played tag! haha

I didn't go trick-or-treating.... But I think I'm going to try doing that on Christmas this year. Hehe.. Just imagine the looks on people's face! Oh boy.


And, well, school has been insanely busy. I had 9 things due today!
Anyways, see you all again soon :)

Vegan MoFo: The FOOD REVOLUTION*

OK, so previously I might have talked a bit about this, but here's the whole deal. Be prepared for some hardcore rambling.

This summer, I lent Diet for a New America to a friend, and it really had an impact on him (he's now vegetarian and near-vegan). Long story short... with another friend, we've put together a presentation on plant-based diet. And today, we presented for the very first time, to some CALM (Career and Life Management) classes at their school.

It went pretty well! I'm not a huge fan of public speaking, but I did the section on Nutrition and I knew my stuff so I didn't have any huge 'mind-goes-blank' moments. The other parts of the presentation were Animal Rights, Environmental Ethics, and Human Rights. :) My two buddies both did a great job too, needless to say.

Cookies make people like you. It's a fact.

As far as I knew, we totally aced it. Our audience seemed quite interested and the feedback sheets gave us plenty of positive reviews. We brought chocolate chip cookies, too, which were definitely a hit!

In case any of you were wondering... here are just a few of the things that we included in the presentation:

• A discussion with the class on what they already knew about vegetarianism/veganism/flexitarianism (it worked out quite nicely, since I'm a vegan and my two friends are vegetarian and flexitarian)
  
• Dan Piraro's veganism video
• The first few minutes of Meet Your Meat
• This great PETA video on 30 reasons to be a vegetarian
  
• Graphs from Diet for a New America on disease rates, animal protein, and such
• A handout with the vegan food pyramid, how you can get everything you need from plant foods, and some practical tips
• COOKIES :D
• A question and answer period
  

:) We're going to be presenting again in November, and maybe even at the local church after mass one day (I don't go to that one, but supposedly the priest there is vegetarian!)

AND, my friend "got an email back from Bruce Friedrich (PETA's vice president of International Grassroots Campaigns -- the guy who wrote veg nutshell) congratulating us on our presentation and asking us to send him the videorecording" (since we recorded the whole thing). Whoaaa! This is so exciting! :D

Anyways, sorry for the wordy and incoherent and rambly post, but I'm just super happy right now. :) I can't believe this is happening!

*We sort of named the presentation after John Robbins book, of the same title. It's a snappy name, plus I did a quick 'commercial' for the book anyways.

Vegan Mofo: Stuff.

Oh dear, I've missed a few more days of blogging, but it's just because life is being quite insanely busy at the moment :S

Anyways, here's a recent bento:


It's a sunset! I love the colours :)

In other news, the Environmental Club at school is really doing well so far. Thanks to my co-president's extrovertedness and my cookies, we've managed to keep up a membership of 30+. Wow! Last year, we had like 10 at this time...

On Tuesday, we did some awesome environmental activism in the form of Project Porchlight. Basically, a bunch of us just went door-to-door, handing out Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs and telling people how to be more energy efficient.

It was really fun and we had a great turnout. We're actually planning on doing it again next Tuesday!
(Haha, that was just someone's doormat, I thought it was funny)

As I mentioned before, I bring yummy vegan baking to every meeting, with great results, seeing as the room is crowded every time.

Here's some of what I brought recently:

Sugar cookies!

Super-fudgy brownies!


The good old standby of Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies!

We're having a BAKE SALE on Thursday, too... a VEGAN BAKE SALE! How exciting! We made posters last meeting and they're up all over the school now. Some of the ones my friends made are quite hilarious... "BE LIKE A VEGAN*... BUY FOOD *you may also buy food without being a vegan" and "VEGAN BAKING: A NATURAL HIGH" Hehehe :)

Vegan Mofo: Cross-Country Provincials!

Sorry for not posting Thursday or Friday! I've been real busy- I went to see Feist, I had a few big exams, plus this past weekend was provincials for cross country! Yay! (I talked a bit about this after the City Finals)

The races were held in Canmore, which is an absolutely beautiful town in the Canadian Rockies. I hadn't been there since last summer, so this was really quite exciting :)

The 75 runners from my zone (that's all the age groups) left together Friday at noon, on two buses. It's a 4-hour drive, more or less, which isn't too bad. I watched some movies on my iPod: the end of Factory Girl, Little Miss Sunshine, the end of Chelsea Girls, and a bit of Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind... in case you were wondering.

Getting dinner Friday evening was a little chaotic. I was with 8 other friends and we set off to find Subway at 7, then after much walking we find out at 8:30 that it was closed. We went to Boston Pizza, but I didn't really want anything there, so after ordering pasta takeout we went to Safeway... Long story short, I had a mango, a banana, and two kiwis for dinner. It was delicious :)

Oh, and Saturday's pre-race breakfast? It was some steel-cut oatmeal that I'd soaked overnight in soymilk and cinnamon! SO GOOOOD. Just like last time!

Unfortunately, it rained ALL Friday night, so it was cold, foggy, and WET in the morning. I usually kinda like that sort of weather, but not for running on DIRT trails. There were big puddles everywhere. The start of my race wasn't so great... "Grizelda" actually pushed me and I had to sprint right through a huge muddy puddle!

Otherwise, the race was great :) As an Intermediate Girl, I had to run 4km as two laps of 2km each. The course was very hilly (this was at the Canmore Nordic Center and we were using some of the trails used in the Calgary 1988 Olympics for cross-country skiing), but I was fine with that. I like hills, hehe.

In fact... I actually passed my nemesis, Grizelda, on a hill! It was right near the end of the first lap, and boy did it feel great. I don't like how competitive I can be, but Grizelda was always just so mean to me... plus she had a "cheer team" come to provincials to cheer her on.

Anyways, I ended up coming out 33rd out of 120, which I am VERY HAPPY with! I came 10th at the City meet, so I was aiming for top 80 or something. So 33rd makes me quite happy :)

Needless to say, I was VERY muddy!

My school did pretty well overall, too, considering we only had 5 athletes running. My buddies got 5th, 6th, 13th, and 51st. Go them!

All in all, provincials were really a great experience. I think I really want to join a track club, though. Most of the people there actually ran competitively most of the time, while I'm just a plain old neighbourhood jogger. I need to get serious!

Vegan Mofo: The epitome of autumn flavours?

This is probably my #1 new favorite recipe, like seriously. It's absolutely delicious, and I've officially decided that toasted + oven cooked quinoa is THE BEST. :)

Sorry that the picture isn't fabulous, I'm not so great at making casseroles look good.

Carrot-Squash Quinoa

1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 onion diced finely
1 clove garlic
1 cup diced squash
1 cup diced carrot
1 tbsp orange zest
1/2 cup apple juice
1 1/2 cup veg broth
1 tsp sage/ rosemary cilantro parsley
Cinnamon and cumin to taste (optional- but it is fabulous!)

In a skillet, lightly toast the quinoa. This isimportant as it gives it an nutty flavour :)
Combine EVERYTHING in a baking dish
Bake in the covered dish for 50 min at 375F- then uncover and bake for 10 more minutes. Enjoy!