moving! road trip snacks, and boxes, lots of boxes

I'm finally taking care of that moving-across-the-country business, by driving across the country with a truck full of my stuff. Which means: snacks! I made pumpkin molasses bars, banana barley bars (from 500 Vegan Recipes) and magical coconut bars (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar). I changed the coconut bars the teeniest bit by using slivered almonds where the recipe called for chopped walnuts. They're definitely magical! Full of graham-crackery goodness and coconut milk and flakes. The banana barley bars are fantastic as a portable breakfast -- the barley is barley cereal (I used Grape Nuts) and it ends up being like a sweet, chocolatey bowl of cereal in bar form.

I also recently bought a new lens, mostly on the recommendation of Vegan YumYum's amazing food photography for bloggers. All of these pictures are from me playing around with my new lens.

All the bars!

Magical coconut bars: yum.

Boxes piled in my studio. There were about 80 boxes total, of wildly varying sizes: everything from rolls of paper, to shoeboxes, to a huge, professionally-packed box containing my printer/scanner (which can scan up to 11"x17" pages).

My lunch the other day, an arugula salad with walnuts, sunflower seeds, chives, and sorrel.

lentil sorrel soup

Soup! Great even when it's over 110 F outside (which it is). This simple recipe is a treat if sorrel is available. I picked every leaf off my sorrel plant that inchworms hadn't reached first! Sorrel is a wonderful, lemony herb. I used to get it from my farmshare, and I've been growing it this summer. 

This is another adaptation from Deborah Madison's The Savory Way. 

LENTIL SORREL SOUP

1/2 cup lentils 

1/2 cup small red onion, finely diced 

1 bay leaf 

salt 

1 1/2 quarts water

3 handfuls sorrel leaves, shredded 

1 to 2 tablespoons soy milk or soy creamer

1/4 cup lemon juice, or to taste 

freshly ground pepper

Rinse the lentils and combine them in a soup pot with the onions, bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and water. Bring to a boil; then simmer, partially covered, for 20-30 minutes or until the lentils are completely soft. Puree half the cooked lentils in a blender until smooth; then return them to the pot. Add the sorrel and cook for another 10 minutes; the sorrel will turn olive green. Stir in the soy milk/creamer, taste for salt and lemon juice, and serve with freshly ground pepper.