Daiya's Pumpkin Cheesecake, Around The World, & Letter Writing

I was FINALLY able to go grocery shopping this weekend!  YAY!  I was oh-so-happy to be able to shop at Wegman's and I can't wait to share my findings with you!  I'll start with this Limited Seasonal Daiya Pumpkin Spice Cheezecake!  

Yup!  I found it!  It was a delightful surprise to see it!  I know some of my buddies in larger cities and area might think I'm crazy but when I find things in my small(er) area I get excited!

I do, however, have a confession to make.  I ate half of this for dinner last night! Oops!  So...YEAH...I'm a fan!  It had 'just enough' pumpkin flavor and spice flavor, too!  It still tasted like a cheesecake but as you might know, it's VEGAN!  I would recommend this for those who enjoy pumpkin!

Another thing I would like to mention today is towards the bottom of my sidebar you will see I added a World Visitors graphic.  I have been searching for one of these for a while.  The others I didn't really care for but I'm totally digging this one so far.  I've always LOVED learning about different countries and cultures.  I think I mentioned it before, but when I was a teenager I used to have over 120 penpals from over 30 countries!  Which brings me to my next topic...

World Foods!  It's been a while since I have attempted to feature World Food Recipes that are vegan and I want to jump into that again!  I think these additions will inspire me to try new recipes and blog about them again.

And when it comes to letter writing, a while back Opal and I started writing to each other and I'm going to jump back into that again soon.  I have also been thinking about writing weekly letters to my niece Trinity, too!  I know she's only 5 months old but MAYBE my sister will read them to her and keep them for her.  I want her to know I think about her daily and show her how much I LOVE her.  I have been thinking of things that she and I can do when she gets old enough to understand.  I have a lot of ideas and I will surely share them with you once we are able to do them.

Smoothies, Vegan Cheesecake, Furkids, Vegan Cheese Sauce, and More MyKind

Happy Monday!  This is pretty much a Weekend Round-up of sorts but I guess I am starting backwards.  This morning I was successful with trying to stick with my Monday thru Friday Morning Smoothies!  Here's what I did for this morning:

1 1/2 Bananas
2 Dates
1 C of Coconut/Almond/Hemp Milk
1 T Sun Warrior ORMUS Peppermint

It's pretty yummy!  I think I found the trick to doing smoothies with bananas for someone who doesn't like bananas like myself.  ADD DATES!  I wonder what tomorrow will bring for my morning smoothie?  I'm thinking Wheatgrass!

Last week I blogged about FINALLY finding Daiya's Cheezecake in my region.  I had some over the weekend.  Here's a photo of it.  I was looking for a vegan pie filling which I was able to find but I was really happy about the dyes and other not-so-great ingredients in them not to mention the PRICE.  So I found that buying a think of strawberries was actually cheaper than buying the canned stuff which is RARE where I live so I grabbed some and made my own.  All I did was throw some strawberries into my Ninja Blender (yes I still use this as a food processor mostly) and a bit of Organic Raw Cane Sugar.
*ADD 1 t of Garden of Life's Organic Plant Protein VANILLA.  It's optional but awesome!

I'm kind of spoiling a little bit of my upcoming MidWeek Munchies but telling you some of these recipes but OH WELL.  I'll post about some of the ingredients TWICE this week!  Here's yet another Vegan Cheese Sauce I made this past weekend and I topped it with Spanish Paprika that I bought in bulk at my local herb store!

This sauce as the following: 1/2 C Cashews, 1/4 to 1/2 C Pine Nuts, Juice of 1 Lemon, 2 t Apple Cider Vinegar, 1 C Coconut Milk, 1 Squirt of Yellow Mustard, 1 T Garbanzo Bean Flour, 1/2 t Paprika (and more to top), 1/2 t Turmeric, 3 to 4 T Nutritional Yeast.

The sauce was tasty but I think I used a bit more Spanish Paprika then I would suggest to others that are just trying it for the first time.  I also noticed that 'regular' paprika has very little taste whereas this Spanish Paprika is POPPING with flavor!  If you can find it - BUY IT!  The difference is amazing!

The furkids enjoyed the weekend cuddling up to us.  We were around more than we had been but we still took a trip to Buffalo on Saturday.  More on that later in the week.

Here's a pic of Riley lazin' out in between me and the sofa.  What a SLUG!

Friday night while I was writing I had Charlie sitting next to me on the stairs.  Yes...this is our feral cat Charlie.  He's pushing 15 years old and doesn't seem to be slowing down much.  He likes tormenting the dogs that is for sure!

Oh!  Yeah!  We also saw our first snow fall of the season.  As you might now I'm NOT a fan.

This morning it was 28 degrees.  Brrrr!

And in Friday's mail I received a box from Garden of Life!  YAY!  They sent me a bunch of their new products and I have to say I'm pretty stoked!  You may know I am not usually one for pill-taking but many of these are liquids.  I'm especially excited about the Vitamin C sprays!  I've tried them already and the flavors are pretty impressive.  I'm taking these NOW to fight off the germs of my co-workers!  I've also started taking Colloidal Silver.  More on that in a future post, too!  I'm also excited to announce that Garden of Life is allowing me to do weekly giveaways on the weekends starting THIS COMING WEEKEND so stay tuned for that!

MidWeek Munchies ~ FINALLY Found Daiya Cheesecake!

It's the middle of the week - that means it's time for a NEW MidWeek Munchies Link Up!  Keep reading to participate!  If you noticed MidWeek Munchies on some of your fellow veggie heads blogs last week and wonder how to jump in and have some fun with us NOW is the time!  All you have to do is blog about your Vegan Hauls, Vegan Finds, Vegan Farmers Market Trips, Vegan Online Purchases...you name it, you blog about it, you link up!  It's that easy!  My week this week isn't overly exciting as a whole BUT I am super excited about one of the finds I located after MONTHS of searching!

YUP!  Daiya New York Cheesecake!  I FINALLY found it!  But I haven't tried it yet!  I always LOVED cheese cake if just didn't like me!  So when I hear about vegan cheese cakes I MUST look into them!

For produce this week it's been slim pickin's.  I did grab: sweet onion, lettuce (both bagged and head lettuce), canned pineapple, and San Marzano Tomatoes FRESH!

I still have some produce left over from last week but not much.

As far as convenience items are concerned I did stock up a bit on McDougall's Soups!  It's been a LONG time since I have done that.

I have tried all of the ones I can find locally before but I try and grab them when they are on sale.  While they were NOT on sale this time I wanted to get some lunch items for the next few weeks and they seemed to fit the bill.  Even if they were around $1.79 each that's a heck of a lot better than the 8 to 10 bucks of buying something around town.


Hubby wanted tacos on Sunday so that's something that we can eat together but have out own versions of if you know what I mean.  Therefore...I also purchased Tofutti Sour Cream (I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I bought this so it was a treat), Daiya Cheddar Shreds, Corn Shells, Lemon Juice (I was completely out!  And the fresh lemons didn't look great!  Oh No!), Taco Sauce, and White Rice.  Now it's YOUR TURN!  What's on your Vegan MidWeek Munchies List?

An InLinkz Link-up