vegan pizza day

I’m not sure if you were aware, but this past Saturday was vegan pizza day. Shawn celebrated with pizza for every meal, including a breakfast pizza.

For dinner, we attended the Vegan Drinks get together at Masa of Echo Park. They make an amazing deep dish pizza and use probably my favorite vegan cheese, Teese, from Chicago Soy Dairy.

The pizza takes about 40 minutes to make since it is piled so thick with toppings, so we started out with some garlic bread.

There she is in all her glory. Lots of tomato goodness and stuffed in the center with some tasty, melty mozzarella Teese. We added some spinach and mushrooms for good measure.

And then we rode off into the night.

Bridal tea party

This weekend my mom and her dear friends threw me a bridal tea. They brought together everyone’s china and tea sets and borrowed from friends as well, to make a spectacular spread. It was really inspiring for me to see all these traditional serving sets put to use. I loved it.

So I’ll keep the words to a minimum, and just share some of the lovely photos.

One of the most special parts was being able to use Shawn’s mom’s china.

We had a selection of scones and rugelach from C’est la V Bakeshop. So yummy.

My mom picked out some great invitations from Royal Steamline.

Tons of delicious finger sandwiches were made, including watercress, cucumber and seitan curry. My sister-in-law, Michelle, even helped (and here’s photo proof).

I also made some lemon cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling.

My grandmother dyed a pink streak in her hair in my honor.

There were even personalized water bottles, with some cute owls.

Some super addictive banana bread also from C’est la V.

There are those sandwiches. I ate countless numbers of them. The watercress had a fantastic radish poppy seed spread in them.

And you can’t forget the tea. We had lots of tea. I was really excited to use the creamer.

It was really special, every detail was thought out from the food to the napkins. Major credit goes to Carolyn and my mom for pulling it off seamlessly.

DIY wedding cake

Onto a rather controversial topic…wedding cake.

From the start, I’ve said that I’m going to make it myself. At some point I made a concession that we’d order a small wedding cake from someone and then I’d make a few additional cakes. Let’s be honest though, I really just want to do it myself. Generally speaking, don’t people hate wedding cakes anyway? If we’re gonna serve cake, it better be a good cake, and I make a damn good cake.

My plan is to make a handful of cakes rather than one giant one. Then we’ll have a bunch of different flavors and I don’t have to worry about tiers. Here is  some of the inspiration I’ve found.

I totally fell for these art deco cakes courtesy of Martha Stewart (of course!).  Simple but varied designs with limited color palate. I love that all the cakes are different sizes.

Seriously, who doesn’t like a choice in cake? Check out this pound cake table from Once Wed. Gorgeous!

I was also thinking something like these rustic cakes. The idea of not having to pipe anything seems pretty appealing. I’m also into the fact that they’re kind of tall. Kind of into the idea of tall cakes.

I’m really excited about the whole project. I am looking forward to spending a day baking without having to worry about all the other wedding stuff (although I’m sure I will anyway).

Now we just need to decide what flavors…and how many…

More wedding planning

I have a confession to make. I have wedding brain. I have tried to fight it, to continue with my everyday life, but I’ve given up the fight. My frequencies are now tuned into all wedding all the time. Having written this, I realize it’s not entirely true, but wedding thoughts do take up a very large percentage. Somehow, realizing and accepting this really helped me not get so stressed about everything (that’s not to say I’m not at all stressed). Mostly, reading this pushed me towards reaching some sort of pre-wedding zen.

To aid my scattered thoughts, I made a to do list and posted it on the wall in our apartment. Major help. Now when I think of something I just write it on the list and it doesn’t have to stay in my brain. Then I just check in with the list, which is posted prominently on the wall and I don’t feel like I’m constantly forgetting something.

The other thing that is relieving stress is that I feel like I’m actually accomplishing goals. I finished & sent out invitations, which was a huge huge deal (they took me FOREVER to make). We have an officiant. I have my dress. We finally booked our caterer. There is still a lot left to be done and figured out, but things seem to be coming together. There is progress. Looking back to my end of year to do list, I knocked off a few major items and made serious dents in others.  There are still things that I have no idea how we’re going to pull off but I’m hopeful (I should remind myself of this when I’m laying in bed, unable to sleep, worrying about how to display escort cards).

Anyway, as we get closer I hope I’ll be able to share a few more details, but obviously a lot of it will have to wait until after the wedding. There’s a sneak peak at our invitations in progress at the top, just to entice you a little. There are so many things I’ve been dying to share for months, like our guest gifts, which has been driving me a little bit bonkers as well.

We’re in the final countdown.

Vegan Brownies

It all started when Tara inquired with a few vegan ladies about the best way to make vegan brownies. We planned to get together and try out some possibilities. I had all my ingredients packed up and recipes to try.

Then disaster struck. Well, not really disaster. More like a wedding with a vengeance. Ok, not that either. Really just normal wedding stuff. Normal “we haven’t gotten everything sorted and our wedding is in a month from today” craziness. Which turned into me spending the day planning and strategizing (which is pretty much what I do everyday now). Which meant, no brownies for me. Sad face.

Then, the same night of my brownie flakiness (not the delicious flakiness either) I received an email from my mom’s friend in desperate need of vegan brownie help. She had tried to make some herself and despite her best efforts, they had come out oily and burnt. You know you must help someone when they exclaim in an email,

“I’m a bloody vegan brownie killer!!!”

So, since I’m no brownie pro myself, I figured I’d better test the recipe I had before I sent it along. And with no time to be experimental, I turned to The Joy of Vegan Baking. The brownie recipe in this cookbook appealed to me as it included both applesauce and flax, which seems to me the perfect combo for a moist, but not oily brownie.

I have to admit, these brownies were pretty darn good. They definitely leaned towards the gooey fudge side of brownies, which I rather like. I undercooked them a bit, on purpose to make sure they would be soft, and without eggs to worry about it’s not really a big deal. They didn’t quite amount to the perfect brownie though. My biggest complaint being that they weren’t chocolatey enough. I also wished they were a bit more flakey on top while retaining their fudginess.

I think I will be back to the drawing boards with this brownie experiment.

Oh and another thing, in case you hadn’t been poking around here recently…I’m getting married in a month (exactly from today)! So yeah, there might just be a bit more wedding talk than usual. Just thought you guys deserved fair warning!