Peanut butter cups
We saw this in a vegan cook book and happened to have the ingredients (after half trying to make a bunch of things we didn't have the ingredients for). I had a few graham crackers left over in the car from the kids I babysit and so we started. The crushed up graham crackers gave it the texture of traditional PB cups. We used semi sweet chocolate - maybe we'll try adding a little bit of soy milk to it. Great for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, or midnight snack.
Buffalo Tofu
We loved the Buffalo tofu so much from Tortilla Sams that we decided to make our own, only we didn't realize how easy it would be. Step one: Buy tofu (firm), hot sauce (Stop and Shop brand works fine), and some Smart Balance. Cut tofu into strips and sautee in a thin coating of oil - cook on both sides. Use equal amounts hot sauce and butter - and cook in a separate pan. When the tofu is almost done gently add the Buffalo sauce to the tofu pan and cook a minute or two longer. All done. You can sprinkle garlic on the tofu too if you wish. Tasty; very easy to eat a pound of tofu; there is a lot of oil/ butter.
Vegan All Natural Lip Balm
I ordered the ingredients for this in bulk from soapcrafters.com - they seem to have affordable prices in good quantities for anything soap-creation-ish-like. I ended up using unrefined coconut oil (which I found in Chris' cabinet), candadilla wax (which has a high melting point, unlike coconut oil), Vitamin E (which is great for the skin/lips!), Almond Oil, a drop of agave and a few drops of some sweet essential oil. Used a Pyrex measuring cup to mix the stuff in; put the cup on top of an open tea kettle for use as a double boiler. Stirred often. It mixed fine. When it came time to pour the stuff, wish I had a pipette instead of a funnel. Would have worked so much better. Oh well. Set easily. Easy peasy. Works fine. Currently costs 57 cents a tube of lip balm making it this way. A majority of the cost comes from the tubes, which I can buy in bulk if I continue (it'd drop the price like woah). I guess making my own chap stick is the way to go. Especially since I use so much. Now looking for testers.
Laundry detergent
This was too easy to make. The hardest part was grating the bar of Dr. Bronner's soap. This has three ingredients - washing soda (1/2 cup), Borax (1/2 cup), and half a bar of Dr. Bronner's (grated). Use one tbs per load. It's super cheap. The washing soda and Borax come in huge containers for little money and the Dr. Bronners I got from Whole foods for $2.50 a bar. Let's see how this stuff works though. They say you can get huge containers of BioKlean laundry detergent for pretty cheap - and that you only need very little of it each use and so it's super cost effective. Haven't checked it out yet.
Tempeh Tacos
Chris started making these while I was cleaning up from my endeavors. He sliced up the tempeh and sauteed it with a little bit of oil and added some Mexicanfoodishspices. We ate them with hard corn tortilla shells and topped the tempeh tacos with Newman's Own chunky salsa (medium) and a pinch of nutritional yeast. Tasty; easy; filling.
