Happy Early Anniversary!

Mike and I went out last night to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary. It isn't for another 11 days, but I will be in Virginia and he will be in Texas on the actual day. Matt and Lauren were nice enough to do an overnight babysitting stint. We started out with a trip to the movies. We saw "Gentleman Broncos". It was ok. The movie had so much potential, but it just fell short.

After the movie we went and checked into our super fancy hotel the At&T Conference Center on UT's campus (check out flickr for funny pictures). We got a great deal on Priceline. More than half off the normal cost of a room. Score!

After some hotel fun we went to dinner at the Melting Pot. As I have mentioned before, my friend Jess works there and lets me bring vegan foods to fondue.
Here I am enjoying the cheese course- vegan montarey jack with spinach and artichoke.
Mike is having fun with the Kale garnish in our main course. I love the MOJO broth!
Here is Mike enjoying our dessert course of vegan chocolate, oreos, and fruit.

Yay for Us Mikey! We stuck it to all the people who thought we were crazy for getting engaged after dating for six months! And we stuck it to all the people who thought we were having a shotgun wedding! I love us. To quote Jim's dad, "Four more years! Four more years!"

Henry's Firt Haircut

Henry got his first haircut yesterday on November 7, 2009. I was really hard on all of us. We hated to cut his hair, because his curls are just so beautiful. It was getting out of control though. As you can see from the picture above, Henry was terrified and hated it. He cried the whole time. BUT afterwards he was really happy about it. He keeps touching his head and saying "haircut" in a lovey sort of voice. I think he will do really good next time. The lollipop helped. :)

A taste of the Newhouse-Bailey Halloween

I love Halloween. It is a part of fall, my favorite season, so I relish in the pumpkins and spooks and costumes. Above you see Mike moonlighting as an early nineties Andre Agassi. Mike wants it to be clear that he has been working on his costume for weeks and that he was in no way inspired by the meth use admission.
Here is a nice action shot of a 28 week pregnant mario jumping to punch out a block. Coins!
Henry HATES his UP costume. But here is a brief glimpse of him as Carl floating in his house.
Sad muffin eating candy corn.

Vegan MOFO 31- Cold lentil salad with yogurt sauce

I made this the other day for lunch. It was pretty good! I boiled a cup of Spanish brown lentils in vegetable broth. While that was going I chopped up a red pepper and some onion and mixed it with lemon zest and olive oil. I threw in half a can of garbanzos. Once the lentils were cooked I rinsed them under cold water and then tossed them in the bowl with everything else.

I attempted to make a vegan tzatziki style sauce but it didn't turn out quite right. It was good, but not great. I took 1 cup plain soy yogurt, the juice of one lemon, and about 6 cloves of garlic and blended it in the blender. It was just too sweet. It would be nice if the plain soy yogurt wasn't sweetened.

All in all it was a lovely lunch that gave me and mike each a hearty portion. This could easily be a side dish for 4 or 5.

Vegan MOFO 30- Chopped Leftovers!

How could you not have a ton of leftovers when you have a cooking party? I think I still have 8 red peppers in my fridge. We bought so many "pantry" items that I have been able to cook up a bit of a storm the past few days. Here is what we ate the night after the Chopped party.

I just baked some tofu that we had bought for the pantry. It is marinated kind of asian-y. We had a lot of swiss chard left over from round 1, so I did swiss chard and red peppers in a little sesame oil. The rice is the good stuff. We had some of nick's amazing red pepper-coconut milk sauce left over and half an avocado. I combined it with a pack of boil in bag rice (eww) and it was so yummy! That sauce could make anything taste good.

Vegan MOFO- 29 Alfredo re-worked

Remember that alfredo I made a few weeks ago? The one that was so delicious? Well, I made it again tonight, but I re-worked it a bit. I have a really hard time following recipes, but I normally do the first time I made something. Here are the changes I made this time:

To the puree I added:
1 cup fresh basil leaves
5 cloves of garlic (instead of the garlic powder)
1/8 medium onion (in lieu of onion powder)

It was so good! The pasta this time had some seared soy curls, grates zucchini, and grape tomatoes.

Vegan MOFO- Chopped Challenge Pictures as promised!

We really had the best time. Anyone who loves to cook should have a chopped party.
For the appetizer round nick stuffed chard with avacado, cilantro, and smoky tempeh strips and topped them with a spicy waffle. I was surprised at how yummy it was. No knock on nick, but I was a little afraid of cold avocado wrapped in swiss chard, but it was delicious!
I made a southern style chard roll (kind of like a collard roll) with a melange of peppers, onions, and celery. I also incorporated the stalks of the chard here, as it mimics celery. It was seasoned with garlic and parsley and also filled with fried up smokey tempeh bits. The waffle fries are coated in garlic and parsley and broiled to a crisp.

Andria is amazing and sent me her pictures from the party! More pictures can be found in the post below and on my flickr page!