Thanks for enrolling in Summer 101.

Hi, my name is RRV, and I will be your instructor for this course.

Let's get started right away now, shall we?

Lesson 1: Eat some yummy vegan cupcakes.

This Mint Chocolate Cookie cupcake was made for me by Jess, who just so happens to be an incredible baker! Thank you sooo much, Jess! She really went all out on these cuppies and made them with me in mind. Awww! Here you see a chocolate cupcake base filled with crushed Joe-Joes (Trader Joe's sandwich cookies - so good!), some buttercream with more crushed Joe-Joes, a Joe-Joe on top of the buttercream that was dipped in a mint dark chocolate bar, and mint dark chocolate shavings on top. Incredible!

Lesson 2: Find some local eats and go eat 'em.

I found these locally-made energy bars at one of my (seven) local Whole Foods stores. (Seriously, seven Whole Foods within 30 minutes of my family's dwelling-place? Yes!!) Pretty good (and large, which I appreciated).

Lesson 3: Eat a wonderful lunch for some lovely mid-day energy.

This lunch consists of Whole Foods Whole Wheat Rustic Bread, Cedar's Artichoke & Kalamata Olive Hummus, fresh avocado slices, (sad-looking) sliced tomato, fresh ground pepper, and some peeled carrots. Yum! I think I am going to turn into a hummus this summer. I have eaten it almost every day so far. And then, two days in a row I ate a hummus and pitas and veggies for lunch and for dinner.

Lesson 4: Find your creative outlet.

If it happens to be pouring pictures on top of your soy cappuccino, then so be it.

(Cappuccino #1)

(Cappuccino #2 - view one)

(Cappuccino #2 - view two)

Here's my summer espresso setup in our family's temporary tiny kitchen (we're in the process of moving into a house, out of the apartment).

Counter Culture Coffee's Espresso Aficionado is amazing! Dare I say I like it better than Intelligentsia's Black Cat Classic Espresso?

On the far left bottom is my Intelligentsia cappuccino cup, and on the top of the espresso machine (right) is my World Barista Championship 2009 cappuccino cup. I love Italian-made cups! <3

Cappuccino #3:

I am getting better at the latte art thing... I have a long way to go, however, to match up with the pros!

Lesson 5: Indulge in your first ice cream of the summer. (To keep cool, of course.)

Purely Decadent Mocha Almond Fudge vegan ice cream - made with coconut milk. I haven't tried a pint of Temptation vegan ice cream, though I have had a Temptation-based shake, so I will venture to say this is my favorite ice cream ever. (Chocolate Oatscreme pints are a love of mine too, but I haven't had one in two years!)

Feast your eyes on this:

I hope your summer is relaxing so far!

Hey, cool cats and chickadees. It has been a while! School is winding down; I have two finals tomorrow and then I am d-o-n-e. Have I started studying yet? You sure betcha I haven't! So a blog post seemed like a great idea, given my current frame of mind. But don't worry - the two finals tomorrow are really easy and I have read every single p-a-g-e assigned from my medical ethics book, so I know I am in pretty good shape to begin with. Anyway.

Life lately in the non-blog world has been really odd. I just finished reading a great book called The Healing Path by Dan Allender. I highly recommend it to everyone. It is totally not related to food and the first part is kind of corny but is so worth getting through to get to the second part of the book, which is a-mazing! (Sorry, I am having way too much fun with dashes today. I am going to try to stop now.) But Dr. Allender mentioned in the book that we just don't pray passionately and persistently enough. Why would God want to listen to rote, humdrum, stale prayers?

Anyway, this book is already having an effect on the way I think about praying, communicating with other people and relationships, and carrying burdens we feel called to help turn around in our world - the things that break our heart. I was touched when I read about callings or burdens, because I do feel like I was called to do something about the compassion I felt for animals when I first learned about factory farms and the shady dealings of the food industry. I felt like I couldn't not do something about how I felt. Some people react this way to veganism and others don't, but my heart definitely felt called. And I veganized myself. ;) In other news, I started praying (the persistent Allender way) about a few other things that were on my heart, and God answered one specifically in a way I never expected... God is faithful, but when we really ask for some things, He will give them to us above and beyond what we imagined. I shall not say any more about this particular subject matter except, oops, God, I didn't realize you were really going to go that far. Anyway.

I like food. Especially buckwheat pancakes, with Earth Balance and pure, pure maple syrup. A local bakery with vegan options recently added a cafe menu... And oh my gosh, I need to break into their kitchen one of these days and steal their buckwheat pancake recipe! These pancakes blow my stinking mind. They are the most incredible pancakes I have ever eaten. They are heavy and hearty and immensely filling but fluffy at the same time. Bits of God were fried into these pancakes, as far as I'm concerned.

Same bakery, different item. They make some of the best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I have tried. They are addicting and thick and I know the goodness is partly due to the fact that they are maple-syrup containing, and employees at the bakery actually have said that these cookies are the best ones they sell, even though they are vegan. And out of ten? twelve? I don't know? varieties of cookies, only 2 are vegan. Thank goodness the vegan ones are the unforgettable ones! I am going to miss these and the buckwheat pancakes when I go home this summer.

I have a few more pictures before I go cry in a corner now.

I went to a dessert bar with some other nutrition majors this week (dessert? nutrition major? makes a lot of sense, right?) and got their non-dairy banana split. Yes, this was actually on the menu and not my own concoction from other menu items.

Caramelized banana, blueberry sorbet, raspberry sorbet, strawberry sorbet, tasty toasted nuts, dark chocolate drizzle, and strawberry coulis. Once I got past the coulis tasting like artificial fruit/overly sweet/grenadine, this was a pretty darn good dessert (for a normal, not-100%-vegetarian type o' joint). I would love to make banana splits for myself at home! This dessert bar uses local chocolate, so tons of their chocolate options are the non-dairy dark chocolate. Yes!

Frozen food find!

Yes, they are tasty to the extreme. They are also expensive to the extreme. Jess and I had a girls' night in and made frozen vegan food together. Yay. The black pepper sauce is reminiscent of the orange chicken sauce from Panda Express, which I used to love, but it obviously has a peppery twist and the twinge of orange is pretty subtle. I don't even know if orange is actually in the ingredients.

Jess let me keep the leftovers, so I had 'em with raw kale salad and cinnamon-lime millet with apricots and almonds (using the quinoa recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan). The first time around Jess and I ate the pepper steaks with some roasted butternut squash, the flavor of which goes great with the ED&BV millet and the pepper steaks.

Keep your fingers crossed that I can muster up the strength to get through finals, but mostly the strength to get packing. I have to pack up all my clothes and dishes in my apartment...not looking forward to it! I also have good byes to say before I drive a few states away to go home for the summer, so that is hard and not fun either. Uhh. I actually am not ready to go home, believe it or not. I could definitely take or leave (uh...leave!) the schoolwork, but otherwise it would be fun to stick around. Okay, the ladies' room is calling me, so I better say bye and press "publish" now. Sending love your way! <3