You Will Find True Love on Flag Day

Ok, I have to admit that the title of this post has nothing to due with my actual post….I’m just an obsessive Simpsons fan and today is Flag Day in the US. Happy Flag Day everyone

I went to a rummage sale that supported a local animal shelter and found some great stuff. I only spent $5 and found a Minor Threat t-shirt, a blue camo t-shirt, an unopened package of Museum Gel,
Complete Book of Home Canning (Ann Serrane), Kathy Cooks (a vegetarian cookbook), and a vinyl lined tote bag that can folded up and zipped into a small square.  The tote bag has some company logo on it but I don’t mind. I’m going to use it when I go to book sales and the farm market.

In case you haven’t heard of Museum Gel, it’s a clear gooey gel that you can use to attach ceramics, glass, etc… to a shelf. It holds the item in place. I love this stuff and in the past, I have even bought it at….. do I dare say it …. full retail price!

Thrifty Finds (tote bag folded up):

Thrifty Finds (tote bag unfolded):

I found a great book at Half Price Books when they had their 20% off sale over Memorial Day weekend.  It’s called Thai Vegetarian Cooking (Vatcharin Bhumichitr).

From this cookbook, I made Sweet and Sour Vegetables. I added tofu to the recipe as well. It was delicious and I made it extra spicy using several Thai Chiles.  I also used fresh pineapple. Caputo’s had a sale on organic pineapples. They were under $2 each. What a deal! I used half of the pineapple in this dish and we ate the other half as a snack. For the veggies, I used onions, carrots, and cucumbers because that’s what I had on hand. I served it over basmati rice.

I’ll be doing a post on my community garden plot this weekend. Keep an eye out for it. I’ve been reading your blogs this week even if I haven’t had a chance to comment. I’ll be commenting this weekend.

Hope you have a wonderful day!!!

Peach Kuchen, Thrifty Book Finds

I recently bought Vegan Vittles - Second Helpings by Jo Stepaniak. Did I try a new recipe? Nope! I went directly for one of my favorites - Peach Kuchen. The crust reminds me of a flaky shortbread which is topped with peach halves, cinnamon-sugar, and a sweetened soy sour cream mixture (the yellow color comes from the added turmeric). I think I may have blogged about Peach Kuchen last year but it definitely is worth a second post.

And just because I felt like being particularly “cruel”, I called my mom to let her know I made Peach Kuchen. My parents are big fans of this and my mom noted the “cruelness” of my phone call. LOL

Whole Peach Kuchen:

Slice of Peach Kuchen with some Buckingham Palace Tea from Tealuxe. The vintage mug pictured is Federal Glass.

It looks like we will have a garden this year. We just found out last night that we were able to snag a community garden plot. Yay!!!! It only cost us $25 to rent a 20′ x 20′ plot for the season. I’ll be posting about my garden plans soon.

While at a library book sale, I happened to find an older edition of Vegetable Gardening in Illinois. It still has a lot of useful information, which I’m sure will help us with our garden plot.

I love Chet Baker’s music. Rob actually spotted this Chet Baker memoir while I was enthralled with the cookbooks. It’s an ex-library book but in perfect condition. It’s a very short book though, only 115 pages. Are any of my readers Chet Baker fans too?

I only paid $2 for both books. What a deal

The weather is improving here. We got about 3″ of snow earlier in the week but now it is bright and sunny. I hear it won’t stay that way though. I’m really looking forward to some nice weather now that we have our bikes here. I’m anxious to try out some of the bike trails.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Half Price Books, Blueberry Crumb Muffins, Crafty Super Slab

I finally tried selling to Half Price Books. I took in nine books and a bunch of magazines. They took everything and gave me $10 plus a 10% off my next purchase coupon. I was happy with the $10 because I didn’t have much into the books, I was finished with them, and I didn’t have any luck selling them online (due to market saturation). All of the magazines I traded in didn’t cost me much to begin with either…thanks to cheap subscriptions, I only had 25¢ or less into each issue. I’ll see how it goes next time I sell to them.

We used the $10 and 10% coupon to buy two books. Rob found an interesting car book called The Cobra in the Barn. It’s about people finding antique cars in unique places. While Rob was reading the book, he was stunned to see one of the stories was written by my dad’s friend. We knew it was my dad’s friend because the name matched, it was about Detroit, and the car pictured was the same car he used to store in my relative’s garage. What a small world!

I found a cookbook called Extending the Table by Joetta Handrich Schlabach which contains “recipes and stories of people from Argentina to Zambia in the spirit of More With Less.” You might remember More With Less was the Mennonite book I got for free after coupon earlier this year at an estate sale. I was thrilled to find a companion book. The book is from 1991 and I didn’t even know it existed. HPB must have had the book for a long time because it was marked down several times…starting at $10.98 and all the way down to $3.98. The back of the book has a $22 price sticker from a Ten Thousand Villages store!

I made some Blueberry Crumb Muffins but they’re still a work in progress. I veganized the recipe from the blueberry cookbook I bought at one of the library sales. I didn’t like the crumb topping but Rob did. They also need more blueberries and a few other tweaks. I’m going to try again this weekend. The muffins themselves had a great texture….they were sturdy and held together well without being tough or chewy. The recipe is a good starting point though. I’ll try to post the recipe once I get them perfected. I need to go to Trader Joes this weekend and get some more frozen blueberries. I’m a big fan of TJ’s frozen fruits and veggies.

And yet another shout-out for Udandi. She told me about the Provo Craft’s Super Slabs that can be found at Michaels. The super slabs contain a wonderful assortment of 12″ x 12″ crafty paper and cardstock, as well as die cuts and stickers. The paper has a lot of cool retro designs and colors. I bought the Super Slab #10 because it had some nifty dragonfly paper. The Super Slabs retail for $20 but I used a 40% off coupon so it was only $12 plus tax. Cool! I also didn’t find it at the first Michaels I went to but the second one had a bunch of them.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!!

Pizza Bagels Part 2, Kiwi Sorbet, Thrifty Finds

Wow, I’m really getting a lot of blog mileage with the pizza bagels this week. We had four bagels left to use up so I made them again. This time, I topped them with the Vegan Gourmet Monterey Jack Cheeze, soysage, onions, and fresh jalapeno slices. They were very tasty. Rob dropped his pizza bagel while eating it and got a huge pizza sauce stain on his clean shirt. Why am I telling you this? Because for once, it wasn’t me! Just wanted it noted for the record

Here’s a repeat of one our favorite desserts in the spring and summer - Rachel’s Kiwi Sorbet from her Coconut Lime Blog. Caputo’s had a great deal on kiwis…a container with just over 2 lbs. for only $1.99.

Here are some of the books I picked up this past weekend at two different library book sales. I love library book sales because the prices are usually great and the proceeds benefit the Friends of the Library. Both sales I went to had the same pricing structure….softcovers were 50¢ each and hardcovers were $1 unless otherwise marked. Those are my kind of prices! I only spent $13 for 20 books!!!

Rob spotted the Zabars book. Yay! I love going to Zabars when I visit NYC. I’ve never seen the Culinary Arts Chinese Recipes for the Food Processor book before. It’s from 1978. The book without writing on the front (i.e. missing the dust jacket) is a neat cookbook called San Francisco Firehouse Favorites from 1965.

Can you believe I didn’t own Diet for a Small Planet? Neither can I! LOL. I was really excited to find two different Sourdough Cookbooks. The booklet on the far left in the bottom row has a nifty title: The Impoverished Students’ Book of Cookery, Drinkery, & House Keepery (1967).

On the bottom row, the book on the far left is from The St. Louis Art Museum. I’ve been there before and it’s a really nice museum. The Metro Chicago Almanac is from 1991 so some of the information is outdated. However, it does have a wealth of Chicago history which I enjoy learning about.

The Furniture You Can Make book is from 1971. It has a lot of cool retro furniture projects. Unfortunately, our move coupled with the lack of space in the rental have put our household projects on hold until we can buy here. Hopefully our Michigan place will sell soon. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

I’ll post some more of my thrifty book finds from the library book sales in my next post.

Hope you have a lovely day

Eggplant Lentil Stew, Burritos, Cookies, Thrifty Finds

I made a tasty Eggplant Lentil Stew with Pomegranate Molasses from Simply Recipes. The pomegranate molasses I picked up at the Spice House was delicious. It’s sweet and very flavorful. I even ate a few spoonfuls of it. Talk about a sugar rush. Wooooo!!! The stew was very hearty and Rob took the leftovers for lunch. He said it reheated fine.

Here’s a non-exciting lazy meal but I still took a picture of it. Black bean and avocado burritos with rice. The green sauce is just Tabasco sauce. I mixed the beans with onions and Penzey’s Fajita Seasoning. I love that seasoning and it’s perfect for seasoning beans or veggies for burritos and fajitas.

Open Burrito:

Black Bean and Avocado Burritos with Rice (lots of rice, I was starving!):

I think I’m the last vegan blogger to try Dreena’s Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vive Le Vegan. The cookies were a cinch to prepare and the right amount of soft and chewy. YUM!

Now for some thrifty finds. I picked up two Martha Stewart Books for $3 total. The one on the left is Martha Stewart’s Christmas from 1989. It has recipes, crafts, and more. Of course there are projects from this book I’ll never make…like a gingerbread mansion. I don’t have the patience to make a gingerbread house let alone a mansion! Helllloooooo…earth to Martha Stewart???

The book on the right is called Good Things from Tag Sales and Flea Markets. It’s from 2002. It has some useful projects and good tips on how to clean items you find.

Three dollars for both books…it’s a good thing. Ahhhh, sorry, I couldn’t help myself and HAD to say it. Please accept my apologies

UPDATED: Forgot to add this picture earlier. Here’s the gingerbread mansion picture in the Christmas book:

Hope you have a wonderful day!!!