Smoothie & Adzuki Beans

Wow, lots to update on! First the food and then everything else.

I had some left over kale from Leslie's sloppy lentil recipe. A few of you had been posting smoothies with some leafy veggies added, so I gave it a go. This has some frozen mixed berries, kale, Rainier cherries, soy milk powder, and a few kale leafs! Verdict---not bad! I definitely detected something more healthy than normal in it, but the kale didn't deter me. The picture has one of my pint glasses from The Great Lost Bear in Portland, Me. GLB is veg friendly, though not exclusively veg. One of my friends bought me two pint glasses from GLB as a house warming present a few years ago. She knows, I love to stop there when I am in Maine.

Unfortunately, I still had kale left and it is not one of my favorite veggies. I looked around and found this recipe for Kale and Adzuki Beans. One fortunate side effect of needing adzuki beans is that I finally had an excuse to drive out to the Asian grocery store which I will write about shortly. Anyway the kale and adzuki beans are cooked with garlic, tamari, coriander, and cumin. Though I knew I liked adzukis, I wasn't sure about making this recipe. In the end, I gave it a thumbs up. This photo got submitted to allrecipes for the recipe as it was lacking a photo, so maybe it will be there next time we look it up!

My trip to the Asian grocery... I was pretty excited about this as I might be able to find yuba which is something I love. When I am in NY they sell this macrobiotic yuba meal that I am addicted to. Additionally, I was pretty psyched to just wander through the aisles and check out all the funky foods. I made it there without getting lost and meandered through the store for awhile. I found many neat things including adzuki beans, super cheap rice paper for making veggie rolls, and funky sesame crunch bars.

I couldn't find the yuba and finally stopped to ask someone. No matter what I said, the employee immediately responded with, "No, understand." I don't know if there was someone else who could understand me because she never offered to look and I could only see one other person busy at the register. Finally, I just walked slowly through each aisle. Eventually, I did find the yuba. I'm not sure if I am being unreasonable hoping that someone speaks English at the Asian grocery, but I was a little frustrated.

In the freezer section, I was very excited to see sweet red bean buns. I used to love these at DimSum as a vegetarian. Unfortunately, they all had milk in them. I'll have to make them on my own some day. They had super cheap tofu at the asian grocery, so I may go there to stock up next time.

This afternoon, I headed out to the Toyota dealer to talk about a Prius. The question was really if I could trade in my Mini Cooper (Yes, when I started making real money...I went and purchased the car I loved.) for a Prius and end up with an equal or lower car payment. Conveniently for me, someone traded in a Prius with 27,000 miles on it the other day. Guess what? That means Gary (you read that right...Gary Cooper) will be traded in on Wed for a shiny almost new Prius. I'll miss Gary, but I need to put my money where my mouth is...so to speak.

My very last thing to post about today. I'm sending Leslie's some of the cookies I will be making later today. She is going through cookie withdrawal due to the Arizona heat. Perhaps, the lack of homemade cookies contributed to her vertigo. A few days ago, I stumbled onto a vegan cookie swap at livejournal. The group doesn't look too active, but I thought I would throw the idea out there. How do you guys feel about creating a vegan cookie swap among our little blogging community? It might need to wait a few months for the weather to cool down. Let me know what you think about that.