My 23rd B-day

(Can you say recipe overload? lol)

My 23rd Birthday was really nice. J and I went out and ate and did some shopping. I came back that night to my parents and J having a little b-day celebration for me. My mom had fixed my Grandma F's Black Berry Cobbler. (That was my cake request for the year. :) ) And of course presents.... ! lol. J & My parents ordered me the Breville Ikon 900 watt Juicer I had been wanting. So it is supposed to be delivered Wed. I can't wait! They also got my a bunch of books, horror flicks ( I like getting the originals from like the 1980s.), and a HEATH LEDGER movie, some moppines, purse, & shoes... I had a really nice B-day.

A Quicky- Produce Bags

I am sure all of you, as I was tired of using those stupid plastic produce bags. And if you don't shop at whole foods people just are not as nice to you bringing up apples to role all over the counter. I know there are many options including making your own. But I have found these knifty little bags. I never really thought about using them for produce when I ran into them in the car section at Walmart. But the other day I was at a dollar store and found them for 1 dollar. So I opened them and they were nice and light so not to add to the cost of produce. So I bought 3 sets to use as produce bags.

Pineapple Orange Smoothie

I am feeling a little better. My fever has finally disappeared. But my stomach is very sick and the Erythema Nodosum is still here. But I know it will be gone soon. I am on some medication right now. MethylPREDNISolone (its a steroid which helps the EN go away) and Azithromycin Tablets which is an antibiotic to help get rid of whatever infection was giving me the fever. I have had the steroid before but the anti-biotic I have never had and I think that is what is making my belly so sick. Anyways. Today I decided I was tired of not eating so I had a Boca burger for breakfast and a pineapple Orange smoothie for lunch. I am not sure what is going to be fore dinner but I have to eat every time I take a pill and I have a lot of pills throughout the day to take now. So not eating for a week and then I have to eat like every 2 or 3 hours now.. Maybe thats whats making me sick. Who knows. Have I ever mentioned I hate! really HATE!! taking medication and putting all that stuff in my system.... Yuck.. Any ways Here is the recipe for the Pineapple Orange smoothie.

Pineapple Orange Smoothie

1 Cup Pineapple
1/4 Cup frozen orange juice concentrate oor fresh orange
1/2 cup soy milk or soy yogurt
1/4 cup water
2 ice cubes

blend all. Makes 2 - 3/4 cup servings. Or 1- 1 1/2 cup serving. Very sweet and Yummy. Enjoy.

You know what????

This blows..... I'm still sick. My temp is still 102.6F. I feel offal. The Dr. took 2 chest X0rays today. I don't get the results till Monday. I'm never going to the Dr. on a Friday again. So now I get to worry all weekend about Pulmonary sarcoidosis..... I am scared to death. I don't know what to think. I just pray the x-rays come back good..

Update: I went to the Dr. (Monday Aug 18,08). To get my X-rays and to see what other experimenting they would like to do on me... i know not funny. My x-rays were normal. So that is good. But I had to have blood taken from my arm. I do not , slash that... I hate getting blood taken from a vein. It totally freaks me out. I have not had it done since I was probably 18 maybe younger. I always beg them to prick my finger. The other day it worked. But today I had no such luck. They stuck me and took a full tube. The nurse told me I could lay down if I thought I was going to pass out. I assured her I would not. And she stuck the needle in my arm. My arm went completely numb and I got really dizzy. I thought I was going to go down. But luckily I made it. Just by a a lil bit. It was really bad. I know I am almost 23 and I seriously have a 5 year olds issue. They should have AA meetings for this. lol

"Hello my name is Chasity B______ and I have Belonephobia (the fear of sharp object, especially needles) Well needles all the way here. Well kinda. I just don't like the blood/ medication kind.... Tattoos & pericings fine... I don't know.

But end of story for now. My appointment was at 1:30 today and I swear I can still feel the needle in my arm and it is 12:59am ! Blahhhhhhh.!!!!!!!! I just can't describe it..... More updates to come. O yeah the Dr. wants me to go to another specialist. But I have no insurance at all.... So although I wish I had the money to do it I really don't. But by the way the Bllood they took today was so they could check my thyroid ... who knows what next...

All in one

Well the last couple weeks it seems like a lot has been going on... but at the same time really not that much. I kinda look back and think well I have been busy... but with what.. So who knows. Anyways. Here is a little bit..

My Erythema Nodosum is back and worse then ever. Yesterday I was in so much pain all I did was lay on the sofa and cry. So it has been ruff. This set has been here for around 3 months. Not getting bad till about 5 days ago. So it was tolerable till I got about 15 new spots in one day and the next day I was just in total agony. These pictures do not show the really bad nodules. I have one right now that is the size of a 4"x4" and still growing. But I know you really can't see them that well from these pics. But moving on.

We have had a lot of rain this summer. And the garden is doing pretty good. I learn a lot of new stuff every year. This year I tried Square foot gardening. I took the measurement for spacing from another website I had ran into talking about square foot gardening. At first everything was good. But as the summer has gone on everything has out grown into each other and has made it very hard to get to everything and find the stuff that blends together. So this year although our tomatoes have done wonderful our squash mixtures has really only produced 4 or 5 zucchinis and 1 acorn squash. The cucumbers got crowded out be the tomatoes and squash and and I have only got a about 5 cucumbers although there are tons of baby cucs. The beans have done really good. We picked 2lbs a couple weeks ago and now they are ready again. Although now I have found out I can not pick beans I am allergic to the plant its self. Next year I think I will plant double or triple on the beans so I can have enough fopr summer plus for the winter. I planted a lot of lettuce and as always it does really good to the point of I can't eat it all and it gets tough. My carrots have produced allot of green but I have yet to see a carrot. And last but not least the what I believe are radishes have done good on the greens but I have not harvested them because I don't have a recipe yet. But all in all I have learned a lot, got some veggies and I think thats what it is all about when you are first starting out. I still have a ton to learn. And hopefully in the future I will have more space so I can plant all that I want.
I have not been cooking to much and when I do it is either the same old stuff and I forget to take a picture. The other night I did try something new and I remembered the camera. Not hard just a kinda through what you have together and you have dinner. So here it is...
Tempah ( Which I has never had before )
zucchini (from my garden)
yellow squash (Some guy sent home with a friend when he found out we were vegetarians, always great!)
Organic Carrots
Organic long grain brown rice
Trader Joes Soyaki

I put the tempah in the soyaki to soak a few minutes. I takes up alot of the soyaki and fast. Then I mixed a little soyaki in with the veggies. Put it all on Rice. Your done. I know should I have even taken the time to type that? lol.

I have also recently found a new used book sale location. It is less then 20 minutes away from me. So every Friday when it is open thats were I am. They have very low prices because all the books are donated or are old library books (It is located right beside the library). So they are all between 10-50 cents. So every week I spend around 6 dollars but last week I spent 9 dollars. But I came home with two boxes of books. J also got some cassette tapes & a movie which are all 50cents apiece. They have some really nice books to and some are brand new. So I guess what I am hinting at is if you have a local library that has an on going book sale check it out. You save money on books, there are no extra trees cut down because you are reusing them, and it helps the libraries. (The Other picture is of the old school that sits right beside the library. It is still in use but has never been remodeled. It was built around 1903.)

There has been more going on like we have been taking C and her friend out alot on the weekends. Bowling, to the movies, out to eat, & Shopping.



Yet another picture and recipe I forgot to post is the Thia Peanut Butter seseme noodles. So here is the picture. I don't know what happen to the recipe. I really liked them but J didn't. Ok all done for now. byebye

New Computer... Just a quicky

Well I posted about purchasing a new computer a while back. Probably like 2 months ago. Well 2 days ago J finally opened it and put everything were it needed to be so... Holla lo ya...!!!! lol I finally do not freeze every time a hit a button...!!!

My Parents have been Married 25 Years!!!!

This week was my parents 25 Wedding Anniversary...! I was hoping to be able to plan a big party but I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it and the person I wanted to help me was going out of town. So I decided to make them dinner and a cake and have a home celebration. I made 2 different recipes and made a two layer cake. I used 2 Recipes from The joy of Vegan baking. The Strawberry cake and the Vanilla Cake. They both turned out supper sweet and tasty. For dinner I made Spaghetti and Red sauce with Garlic bread. So everything turned out nice. I think the really liked it. Atleast I hope so. this was also my parents first wedding cake. I wish I would have known that in advanced and I would have made it a bigger cake and purchased a cake topper. But anyways here are some pictures. Happy 25th Anniversary Mom & Dad !!!!!

Camp- Bowling

This year "C" was in a parks and recreation camp thing. The went on a bowling trip and we went along of course. "C" and "Aut" behaved well but that other kids actually the older kids were offal. I could not believe how immature they acted. Throwing 2 and 3 balls down the ail at a time, knocking the bumpers down, hitting balls with other balls, hitting the reset button on other peoples games, & hitting the thing that comes down and collects the pins with the balls... They were outrages!!! I was so annoyed by the time we left and the lady who was supposed to watch them just let them do what ever they wanted. But after the the complaining.. I will say we got to bowl from about 11:30 till 2:30 that day for free. That was really nice. Although the kids got enough food that all the money was almost gone. But that was C's first time boiling and she had alot of fun..

(Picture: My vegan 4th of July Cake for this year!)
Well hello everyone. I am just now trying to catch up on the blog stuff. I have been pretty busy. If all the plans work out I will let you know later what I am working on. But I will catch everyone up on the stuff that has happened in July. Which isn't really to much exciting.

So the fourth went over ok. Some family friends came over. We had the parade but it rained actually it rained all day. And I don't just mean sprinkle it down poured. So we had to stay in most of the day. J and I left around 3:30 and came home to take a nap. We woke up that evening and took C to see the fire works. Not many people went because it was still down pouring. But it stopped right after the fireworks. Haha, Thanks Rain!!!! But we let off some fireworks too. So at least we didn't get wet.. But here are some pics from the day...
Pic 1: Vegan cupcakes that turned out a little pink. I couldn't find anything to get a red color.
Pic 2: C having fun waiting on the parade.
Pic 3: A float during the very wet parade.

Independence Day Prep..

Well today in the looming of the 4th of July holiday I baked almost all day. And its funny how you seem like it takes forever sometimes but yet nothing gets done. I baked from TJoVB: Chocolate Chip cookies, Peanut Butter Cookies, 2 Chocolate Cake, & the chocolate peanut butter icing. I also made Chocolate Cupcakes from VCctotW. Tomorrow I also have to make some breakfast muffins. So I wanted to try some new recipes and never got the chance to. The kitchen has been a mess for a while and now the drain is stopped up. So all day I was running back to the bathroom sink to wash the dishes in a lil tiny sink. Fun fun fun. I normally love baking and I'm not saying that I hated it today or that I even disliked it. It just seemed a lil cheerless today. I love trying new recipes and I haven't get to really do that in a while. Although I did try the German apple cake and the banana chocolate cupcakes from TJoVB I need something else new. So I guess it hasn't been that long. But.. It just seems like it. A yeah.. plus my kitchen is a disaster. I don't mean category 1 tiny bopper tornado hit I am talking massive F-5 damage... lol.. any ways I guess its time for a cleaning/ organizing extravaganza. lol.. anyways. I will post the pics some other time I think I am going to go come down for the night and read my nice book called "Ghost Moon". Have a Happy 4th of July everyone !!!!!!