Wednesday, February 23, 2011

my attempt at vegan baking


So I've officially been off dairy, caffeine and chocolate for over 3 weeks now (with the exception of a special occasion day where I splurged on my mom's homemade spinach and ricotta ravioli and her friend Leonor's angel food cake with lemon curd filling...my mouth is watering as I write this.)  I have to say being vegan is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be!  Still, I find myself craving eggs and cheese but to distract myself I buy vegan cookbooks and attempt to make vegan baked goods.  First, I made oatmeal raisin cookies.  They were pretty good.  And yesterday I made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting.  I modified a recipe I found on chefchloe.com.  Chloe is this super cute vegan gal who won Cupcake Wars on Food Network with her all-vegan cupcakes!  She has a ton of super delicious looking recipes on her blog.  I want to make her avocado pesto recipe next.  It looks scrumptious!

I am so happy to report that Penelope's colic has come to an end.  Hallelujah!  I'm not sure if it's my diet or if she just outgrew it once she turned 3 months old.  She is however a complete cling on!  She won't even let my mom hold her.  Seriously...and Olivia was obsessed with my mom as a baby so I'm not used to this!  I am hoping it's just a phase and that by making new people hold her on a regular basis she will start to become more comfortable with different people.  I really do hope so because my arms and back are going to literally fall off of my body pretty soon.  But I'd still take a clingy baby over a colicky baby any day hands down.

Yesterday, I took some pictures of Penelope for SUPER LATE baby announcements.  Olivia wanted in on the action...see below.