Vegan chocolate pudding

This past week was my first exploration into whole  food cooking. I started off with what almost one could could call "extreme" to this refined sugar, grain eating, animal eating and milk loving girl.  But take a look at what I made!

The idea is to cook with only real foods.  No processed foods.  Which is more true to form with what I grew up eating on the farm. But this full time working girl, and grad student (albiet taking a break from classes this summer. . .hence the energy and desire to eat better and to experiment with cooking) has been not so good this past year and a half in making healthy eating choices.

But enough of that.  There's time for wallowing in that in another post.  Instead I am anxious to share with you what is in this delectible looking concoction.  Because really, pudding can't be pudding with out eggs and milk right?  Ok, everybody, you do know that's how you make homemade pudding right?  Which is a thousand times better than that box stuff.

Mmm. . . homemade pudding.  With milk.  This version can not replace "real" pudding. But this version is defintely something I would make again. Cuz once you  get past that first initial surprise of banana.. .it is really quite tasty!

And now I will get around to actually listing the ingredients: 1 banana, 1 avacado (! yes I know really I wouldn't never have guessed it either!), cocoa powder, honey, vanilla, and some coconut milk. Blend, chill and enjoy.

I found this on another foodie website about real foods and I couldn't resist trying it because I couldn't believe I actually had all the ingredients in my kitchen all at once.  Avacados don't have much of a counter life once I bring one home from the store and coconut milk certainly would not have been a staple in my cupboards a year ago.

Random

The above pic is of the single flower that showed up in my garden. I have no idea what it is  . . .iris, fancy gladiola? But the coloring sure is captivating!

Soon it will be time to go to weekly kareoke tonight to hang with friends.  I don't sing publically, but it can be great fun.  So I'm gonna go eat a piece of my birthday cake before I leave.

Today's food log:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with cinnimon and coconut milk, scrambled eggs, coffee with honey
Lunch/supper: Small dish of taco noodles and cheese, dish of yogurt, small mini loaf of banana bread
Evening snack: chocolate cake!

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home"

Found that quote in a art/journal-ing book.  Think it might have been Creative Awakening: Envisioning the life of your dreams through art?  But not entirely sure.

I spent 2 hours at Barnes and Nobel tonight after work looking at art and sewing books.  One was about embroidering with red thread, 2 others were about how to organize your art/sewing room and a couple others were about journaling/exploring art. Yet another one was about sewing items for your home (which had lovely pictures but was mostly ideas I'd seen before only repackaged).  I did end up breaking down and bought one of those exploring art books.  It seemed chock full of stories from artists who were giving life experience tips on how to make time to create.  Thus the title: Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art.  I can think of at least 4 people I could pass this on to read it, and one of those is my art major sister who has a birthday coming up in November.  (Good thing she wouldn't read this, huh?)

So I'm gonna go start reading it now before I hit the hay.  But first I'm going to record my meals today.  I've never had a food journal before, but I thought now would be a good way to help kick start and encourage me in keeping to a mostly "real food diet" if I can visually see all the good things I ate and all the bad.  I don't foresee myself totally cutting out sugar or white flour (I got my Nourishing Traditions book today through Interlibrary loan), as one could see from this list, but a body has to start somewhere!

Because I feel the need to add some cheery color to this post!

Breakfast:  Half a glass of peach keifer, 2 scrambled eggs in coconut oil
Lunch/Supper: Small glass container of "taco noodles and cheese (ground beef, tomato sauce, cheese and noodles), lettuce salad with Dorthy Lynch and one carrot (discovered they'd frozen in the fridge and thawed. . .gross) and a small chunk of sponge cake with yogurt and blueberries. Water.
Evening break: Snicker bar
After work: Medium Starbucks Carmel frappe from B&N

Two toned Seagull Shower Curtain

If you follow the green environment push at all, I am sure you have heard about the various chemicals that may off-gas from plastic. Fabric is one alternative to plastic, and in an effort to eliminate one major source of plastic in my apartment -- the sheet of it that hangs across the width of my bathroom -- I designed my own fabric shower curtain.

For the cost of some time, thread and clearance fabrics I made a stylish two toned shower curtain to replace my semi clear world map plastic shower curtain.  As awesome as the design was on my plastic shower curtain (and admittedly I loved the graphics) I decided that it was time to "remodel".  Being "green" in this case really wasn't the biggest push. Nor was the fact that part of holes in the plastic were gradually tearing through (which I solved by taking a hole punch to it to create new slots for the plastic rings to hang through).  It wasn't even the possibility of creating a sophisticated home decor to go along with the beige floor tiles, fancy vanity lighting and the sea shell wall paper border that came along with the rental.  No, basically it was the thrill of designing and creating a new sewing project after seeing a similar idea in somewhere, probably at least a year ago, on some crafter's blog!

Designing, buying fabric, cutting out and sewing was a 2 day project.

Here is what I found:

• Not quite a yard of striped tan linen from the clearance aisle for the main part of the curtain. $1.39
• A yard of sheer tan organza type for the see thru panel (to allow light in, nothing worse than trying to shower without being able to see!) 
• Blue seagull novelty fabric 2 yards.  Decided to get 2 yards of it so could also decorate matching towels.  $3.15
• Even thread was on sale, so I got me some matching neutral beige thread, $1.39

The construction  is fairly simple and one can probably figure out how to put it together just by looking at the photo.  The only "extra" step that may not be obvious is that the sheer panel is actually 2 layers, as I folded it in half.  I also seemed to do a lot of hemming and folding seams over so they wouldn't ravel.

I chose the linen because I was looking to go for as close to a natural fabric as I could that would also be light and air-y so that it would dry quickly in a humid bathroom.   It also was a stroke of luck to find something in the clearance aisle that perfectly matched my color scheme!  The tans in the print are in the colors of the birds.