We have mice…again!  It isn’t too bad yet, but I just found an area in the food pantry where the mice had chewed through a bag of food.  

This sucks.  We have been fighting this problem on and off for about a year.  We DO NOT want to harm the mice at all and have been taking preventative steps to keep them out of our kitchen.  We have two sound conditioners that are suppose to keep them out of a room of choice by emitting a horrible sound that disturbs and causes them to leave their nest.  We have humane traps up (though not active at the moment) everywhere with peanut butter inside to catch them and we release them at a park about a mile away from the house.  We keep almost all of our food in plastic containers to rid them of the smell that may draw them to the area, while making it harder (if not impossible) to chew through.  However, I’ve been a bit behind on that lately and just jammed them in the pantry.  Probably a big mistake. 

I thought we were doing everything we could.  Has anyone else had this problem?  What humane methods have you used? Am I missing something?  

I thought it was going to be a relaxing Sunday.  Now I’m going back to the kitchen to clean and disinfect absolutely everything.  We just got some new groceries for the pantry that I haven’t put away, so I will be organizing that into containers all day…

My first official food picture on my blog. Cherie saw it coming. First and foremost, I do not take photos anywhere as beautiful as Cherie does on her blog. Her vision when taking photos is amazing and not one I can live up to.

Second, if I continue to post picture at all in the future (and this should go without saying), everything is completely vegan. I like to bake. Sundays are usually my day to bake. I find it really relaxing and it’s part of my ‘me’ time. I like to alter recipes however I see fit at the time. Sometimes I do the recipe exactly as listed. Sometimes I change it as to use whatever we have around or I might cut the fat and sugar out as much as possible. Just depends on my mood!

As for the cake I made yesterday, I did not alter it the cake itself. It was a birthday cake and I pretty much wanted to see what it would be like exactly as it was listed. I did change the frosting, however. I made a coconut cream cheese frosting. The cake is Ginger-Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot Cake from Vegan With a Vengeance (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz). If you do not know Isa and Terry’s work, you should get to know it. It’s soooo yummy! The cake is no exception. Delicious, very moist, and filled with yummy goodness. It’s somewhat heavy, but certainly not nearly as heavy as you might think. I mean, come on, it’s a carrot cake. It’s not going to be all light and fluffy with all that stuff in it.

Overall, NYC was fun! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so no fun pictures. Oh well.

We got in Newark (where we were staying) in the early evening on Friday and planned to hear Richard Dawkins give a talk in NYC. However, traffic was nasty and we couldn’t get to the subway in enough time. We decided to blow that off and get food. Parking sucks in Newark, so we kind of took the car in circles until we could find a place with vegan food. We got Thai takeout and went back to the hotel. It was fun for us. We had takeout AND watched Sweeney Todd in a place where we didn’t have to do the dishes after OR cook the yummy food. Score.

The next morning, we slept in but I didn’t feel well when I finally moved. We stayed in bed a little longer then we should have, then headed out to the subway. We didn’t get into NYC until really late, so we missed out on meeting Jen. Ugh! That sucked. But we did see Ground Zero, which was really weird. We tried to see the Statue of Liberty, but we missed the last ferry but ONE MINUTE. So we walked up Broadway and just checked everything out.

Weirdest thing happened. I swear I walked straight by an old friend of mine from school, Justin Carter. I mean, I was in NYC and to happen to walk by someone I used to hang with in Iowa when I was a teenager…bizarre. I didn’t stop because I was a touch on the shocked side and now I have no way of contacting him to see if it was him. Last I heard from him he was living in Chicago, so it’s not a stretch that he might be in NYC or Brooklyn by now. Hmm. Hope he’s doing well. He was always a very sweet and talented person.

We decided to stop at Pure, a totally vegan and raw food restaurant. We ordered the five course dinner. At first we were really disappointed because we got dishes that had literally one or two bites to it. Although I realized it was a tasting menu, I thought there would be more. But over time, we found they were giving us more then five courses. We probably had more like eight courses, ending with a full dessert each. Yum! We liked it a lot, but probably not a place we would go to again. It was a tad on the expensive side for us. However, it was so interesting to see all of the amazing options for raw food.

After dinner, we went to see Doug Stanhope. If you didn’t hear, there was a horrible accident in the city that night. A crane fell and killed seven people and fifteen were injured. Because of the accident, the city was even more crazy then usual. It took us forever to get to the show and we walked in just as the show started. Unfortunately, two REALLY big jerks sat next to us. They talked all through Doug’s performance. Rob tried to get them to quiet down, but they were super rude and kept babbling. Apparently, they became argumentative at one point. We ended up leaving right after getting the check. I hate people that ruin your night and cause you to leave an awesome show.

So that was the weekend. Much more exciting then most of our weekends!