weekend flops

I recycled some leftovers and made the sweet potato and black beans chili from the other day into wraps. The kids and I were at the store and noticed some orange cauliflower which sent them into begging mode " oh please Mom can we buy it? can we please" whats a mom to do say no? Eli concluded that it taste just the same as "real" cauliflower. Little did he know it boast to have 25% more beta carotene the white.
From Dreena's Vive le Vegan Tomato-lentil pasta sauce. This was okay, Emma ate it, Eli needed a lot of coaxing. I LOVED the addition of toasted pine nuts and well, for me the capers didn't really add anything to it. Even little Emma who every once in a while will ask for a bite of capers straight up out of the bottle left a pile on her plate.

So the next two bean dishes came out of a new cook book I won off of e-bay for the whopping price of $2.98 w/ shipping!! Well, I kinda feel bad because the seller in the end didn't send it media mail and the cost of shipping for him ended up being $5.70. Whoops. The book is Vegan cooking for everyone by Leah Leneman. It has some pretty intriguing recipes but, it was published in London and a lot of the recipes call for a yeast extract. I had to google it and learned that the name brands are Vegemite or Marmite, which I have heard of but never seen in stores around here. Anyway these where pretty simple recipes that I thought the kids would like but, I was wrong. The first was a kidney bean "cheese burger". The book has a few pictures in it and the Kidney "cheese burger" was one of them. Their picture looked mouthwatering good. My "burger" how ever turned out looking nothing like it. The second was a Mexican bean loaf w/ a tomato gravy. This recipe also had nothing in it that I thought the kids would be opposed to but, it just wasn't a hit either. I must say though, I had it the next day in a tortilla and thought that it could make good enchiladas.
Sunday morning we had vegan w/ a vengeance's "fronch" toast. That was a big hit! and so much simpler then my french toast concoction! (which blogger is acting up and I can't seem to link to it right now)

On Saturday the kids were invited to a costume birthday party. No we are not big Dolphin fans. I bought them off of e-bay and this was the only combo of fit and matching team outfits that I could find for the kids. Eli use to have shoulder pads but they have been misplaced. I can only think that was a good thing and nobody was tackled as a result. And of course, when we are invited to birthday parties we have to go prepared so I made some blueberry-banana- oat muffins.