October Eats

It's that time where the month is coming to an end and I am clearing off my camera. Here are some tasty autumnal eats we've enjoyed over the past few weeks.

Mole Skillet Pie with Greens from Veganomicon. Soooo satisfying, and that mole sauce might not be authentic (their words not mine), but it's the bomb and so easy to make!

Saucy BBQ Chickpeas and Green Beans from Plant-Powered Families, paired with some kinda quinoa-amaranth-millet pilaf from Costco. The pilaf had an earthy (polite way of saying dirt) flavor. The BBQ beans are awesome.

Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions from Veganomicon. Oh, my sweet baby mujadara. I am the only one in my family who likes this dish, and I don't care. Sometimes I make it just for me and eat it for days. The love is real.

Apple Pie Smoothies from Plant-Powered Families. A perfect homework-time snack, and it really does taste like apple pie!

Chipotle Sweet Potato Soup from Healthy Happy Vegan. I love the smooth texture of the blended sweet potatoes! I hated how spicy it was, even though I cut down on the amount of chipotle powder that the recipe called for. I love spicy food but I don't like it when heat overwhelms the other flavors. So I will cut it down a lot more next time.

Raw Chard Salad with Maple Mustard Dressing from Healthy Happy Vegan. Made up for the too-spicy soup. I could have eaten the entire recipe myself but I shared with Tony so he could partake in the goodness.

Cheesy Cauliflower and Potato Bake from The Abundance Diet, along with cornmeal-crusted roasted okra from our garden. Sooooo gooood. Ultimate comfort food, cheesy and creamy and wonderful.

Tap shoes and a blanket, why not?

Sherwood Forest Faire

The Sherwood Forest Faire is held each spring in the woods outside of Austin. This was our first year attending. Jackson is slightly obsessed with knights and sword fighting, so he was thrilled to don his knight costume for the day. His excitement is contagious, and Olivia also wanted to dress up. So off we went with our brave knight and fair princess.

The poor tomato guy. He probably thought he would get a break from having tomatoes smashed in his face when he saw these two tiny people approaching.

No such luck, tomato man! Jackson served up some tomato justice right in his face. 

Next we took our seats in the stands just in time for a jousting match. 

The riders took turns trying to knock cabbages off a pole with their lances. Then, they took turns trying to knock each other off their horses!

Glued to the action.

The food was typical fair food -- deep fried everything! Deep fried olives are pretty tasty, I have to admit.

After lunch, we watched a falconry show.

The falcons were well-trained, swooping over the crowd as they flew from one post to the next.

At the end of the day's quest, Sir Jackson found a ferocious dragon to slay. Or, to sit on and pet gently, as it turned out.

When we got home, Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions (from Veganomicon) was the perfect bland, yet amazingly good, meal for tummies needing something more than fried food.

Two Little Firefighters

This morning,while the kids were still finishing their cereal, I started caramelizing some onions. I let them go for a full hour until they were brown and practically falling apart.

I used them to make a savory bread from Vegetarian Times. It's chock-full of caramelized onions, walnuts, and spinach.  It was so good! I pureed the remaining onions to use as a spread.

Tony got off work a little early and we went to Pease Park. He showed Jackson and Olivia how to slide down the pole. "I'm a firefighter!" was a phrase we heard many, many times. 

This evening I made smoothies with frozen bananas and blueberries, spinach, flax milk, vanilla, chocolate hemp protein powder, and stevia. This is the best smoothie combo I've come up with yet. I served it to the kids in bowls and they thought it was chocolate ice cream.

I wrote before about trying the Whole Foods 365 flax milk and finding it too watery, but I'm glad I  decided to try a different brand before writing off flax milk altogether. This Good Karma flax milk has a much better consistency -- nice and creamy.

Have a lovely day! We are keeping our fingers crossed for storms this afternoon. It's already mid-June and it hasn't gotten unbearably hot yet. More rain will keep things nice and cool!