Vegan Carob Muffins

Today is the last day of January, and I am so glad. It's got to be one of my least favorite months of the year, at least on the east coast. But, I have tried to make the best of it, and today I did a pretty good job of that. After brunch at a hipster coffee shop and then art class, I came home and tried to figure out what to do with the carob pods my mom ordered recently. I had never had one before, but they're really interesting. 

This is a carob pod, also known as St. Johns Bread, for anyone who has never seen one before. They're very dark brown, and pretty hard. The cool thing is that they are edible, except for the extremely hard seeds on the inside. They taste really good, sort of like chocolate, mixed with honey and bread.

Carob is used as a substitute for chocolate a lot, and is considered a healthy alternative to chocolate. It doesn't have any of the caffeine that coffee contains, and is naturally sweet, so doesn't have to be paired with as much other sweetener as chocolate does. 

Anyway, enough facts, lets get to the actual recipe. 

Vegan Carob Muffins 

 To break up the pods, which are pretty tough, my mom and I stuck a knife into the pods and then banged them on the counter. There isn't really a correct way to break them (that I know of) so I'd just say that if you are using them, try a few methods and see what you think works best. 

Here is what it looks like all blended up! Make sure you didn't miss any chunks before mixing the powder into the mixture. 

If you follow the recipe above, your muffins will turn out something like this! They aren't the prettiest, but they taste really good, and have a light and fluffy inside. I baked them for a little bit over 25 minutes, and they were a bit hard on the outside. I'd recommend less time than that.

Try them out and tell me what you think! Hopefully the recipe is good. Also, if you don't have any carob, this is a super simple and good recipe for just basic muffins, or a basic recipe to start with! Enjoy:)

January Art Compilation

In order to make it through January, (aka the worst month month ever, especially on the East Coast) there has been a lot of drawing, painting, reading, music listening, and tea drinking. My mom has set up a specific time called our "Art Hour," where we just chill out and draw. I look forward to it everyday, and am loving the outcomes from it. Although there has been hardly any blogging lately! Finally I have returned to blogger to show what I have been doing instead recently. 

  

Street Wear (above)

My most played artists, illustrated. 

(Perfume Genius, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, Patti Smith and Chet Faker.) 

Patti Smith Doodle (up close) 

 

Aside from drawing people, I've really taken an interest in drawing plants. 

Especially fungi. I love drawing fungi. I did this drawing earlier tonight. 

I titled this "Sushi Girl," and am excited about how it turned out. The sushi was the most fun part to paint. 

(close up)

This one is still a WIP, but I am extreeemely excited about it. It's a portrait of Perfume Genius, my favorite singer at the moment. For anyone who is familiar with him, they'd know that this drawing wouldn't really be complete until his lips are colored bright red. 

So that's it for now. I feel like I always say this, but I will try to post my art/other creations more often. 

In December, Drinkin Horchata

 *sings "Horchata" by Vampire Weekend* 

So, first of all, I'd just like to point out that I didn't even know what Horchata was until very recently. Well, I knew it was a Mexican drink with cinnamon in it, but that's about it. However, I do know lots about the song Horchata. So, in honor of Vampire Weekend, I spontaneously decided to figure out how to make horchata last night, and I'm so glad I did. It's one of the yummiest drinks I've had in a while, and it is so simple to make. Stick around and I'll teach ya how. 

One cool thing is that it hardly has many ingredients at all, just non-dairy milk, sugar, cinnamon, rice, and water. All things I had in my house already. 

You can use cinnamon sticks or just ground cinnamon, which is what I used. 

Ingredients: 

• 6 cups water
• 1 cup uncooked rice (jasmine tastes the best) 
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon/3 cinnamon sticks
• 2 cups non-dairy milk

Directions: 

•   Put 2 cups of water and all of the rice into a blender, and blend until all the rice is broken up. 

• Next, put the water and rice into a larger container (like a jar or pitcher) and add the cinnamon, and other 4 cups of water. 

It should look something like this.

• This is the most difficult part. Put the mixture into the fridge and let it sit for at least for hours. That's exactly how long I let mine sit, but overnight is fine as well. 

• Now it's time to finish the horchata up! Take a fine mesh sieve, cheese cloth, or very fine filter of some sort, and drain as much liquid out of the mixture as possible, leaving the rice and water separated. Basically, what you have made so far is rice milk. 

• Pour the milk and sugar in with the rice milk, and mix it up for a while, until the sugar is dissolved. 

• Now it's ready to serve! It's most commonly poured over ice to serve.

P.S. if you want to here the Vampire Weekend song click here. :)

Keep it Unreal. (new tofurky collection!!!)

This week didn't exactly have the greatest start, understandably. It's the first week back from winter break, it's freezing and it's snowy. Today, however, it got much better! There was a two hour delay this morning, so I didn't have to go to school until ten. Then, when I got home, the greatest thing ever was waiting for me.

On my front step was a package from my favorite food company ever, which you probably guessed from the title. Yep, you got it: TOFURKY!

They knew I was a huge fan, and sent me some really, really cool stuff! It made my day. Wait, no, my week actually. It was extremely exciting.

Here is the contents of that package in photo form:

 

I think their motto is hilarious. 

Apparently it'd made from organic material. Green is the color I would've picked for the shirt, so that was another plus. 

 This is just everything laid out. There was a pamphlet about tofurky too.  

I loved Tofurky before, but now I love them even more. (Woah that rhymed! I should be a poet!!) I eat their products pretty much on a daily basis, and have been for so long, and I love them. So, not only does their food taste amazing, but they are great in the customer service department as well. 

For anyone who isn't a Tofurky connoisseur or has never even tried it, I would really recommend it! They're a great company, and also their t-shirts are super comfy ✌ʕʘ‿ʘʔ✌. 

Tea house vibes, bath bombs, and mugshots.

Sunday, Jan. 4th.
Sadly, today is my last day of winter break, and I return to school tomorrow. I am not too sad, though, because I got everything I wanted to done, and I had a blast these past two weeks. Yesterday and the day before were especially great. Here's what I did:

Friday: our friends who live two hours away drove down to visit. After a lunch of spring rolls, noodles and Asian salad, we headed to our favorite tea house, Dobra. 

The menu is the size of a novel, filled with flowering teas, lychee tea, black and green, snacks, and of course, bubble tea. 

This is a Polaroid of me and my friend Sierra. It was taken by her brother Morgan.  

We all got bubble tea. It was fantastic.

I'm pretty sure they were both oblivious to the fact that I took this. 

I could spend hours just hanging out in Dobra. It's so cozy and chill. 

Next, we went to a secondhand clothing store, but left soon since we were all full of bubble tea and needed to use the bathroom in a coffee shop next door. That's where this snapchat was taken. Morgan is wearing two pins that I made.

Our final stop was to Lush, and it was really fun, as well as kind of weird. The Lush we went to is inside of a Macy's, and there was hardly any person in the entire store. It felt apocalyptic, but no one was paying attention to us, so we could do whatever we wanted in the store. 

The Lush guys gave us a demo. 

I bought the pink bath bomb. The next picture is from when I actually used it. 

It was great, except for all of the confetti that was stuck in my hair afterwards.