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Fake Butter Friday #3

I swear I have a blog post floating around in my drafts that ISN’T a Fitness Friday but… this has been a busy week with a Lost Day (Wednesday), house guest (Tuesday), and Unexpected Vegan Discoveries.

Now, no lie, I like meat.  However, I’ve mentioned before my interest in vegan recipes, and when I was browsing the internets I came across a few recommendations for Earth Balance “butter” so I thought I would try that out when I happened upon it at Trader Joe’s yesterday. Since I needed new butter anyway, having almost finished a container of my very favorite spread, Country Crock. Usually a margarine spread like CC lasts me pretty long since I don’t use it for much except on waffles and sometimes on bread or when I make brussel sprouts. I don’t eat that much bread, though. But I was at Trader Joe’s getting cheapish groceries – I love their fair trade Pajaro coffee and organic evaporated cane sugar – and saw this butter stuff I’d just read about.

I got the fake-butter, which is made of soy byproducts, I guess, took it home, tried it out on some artisan bread I also picked up at TJ’s and came to the conclusion that fake non-dairy butter spread is just okay. It’s no Country Crock, people. But it’s decent, and for a non-dairy soy product I will actually use, I will give it a B grade. Not bad.

EXCEPT: and here’s the big surprise that shocked me! VEGAN FAKE BUTTER IS TWICE AS FATTY AS REGULAR FAKE BUTTER.

More than, in fact.  I don’t really look at the ingredients or fat content on stuff (I probably should do this more) and I was always under the impression that Country Crock was not super great for you, but I like the way it tastes 100% better than I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter or Smart Balance. Country Crock has 5 grams of fat per serving (tablespoon) – and I would rather eat my favorite in moderation than waste my time on stuff I don’t like.

Earth Balance, woo woo vegan product has 11 grams of fat per serving.

WTF, vegan product!!!

I was alarmed. So I will be more careful about future vegan products, that is fo’ sho’.

At any rate, the vegetable oil content is quite high, so I think it will be good for baking. You can use I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in baking because of the vegetable oil content (talking about food chemistry here) but you can’t use Country Crock because the veg oil content is too low (too delicious I guess).

A quick Google brought up the fat content of regular butter, which is identical to Earth Balance at 11 grams per T serving.  So if you actually eat real dairy butter (I don’t) you could theoretically substitute Earth Balance for that and not see a difference in the amount of fat percentages in your life.

So, I guess my point here is that you DO need to pay attention to what you are doing when it comes to vegan products/cooking or you will be the fattest vegan in town.

And yes, I do realize that I just wrote an entire entry on FAKE BUTTER.

buttertoast

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These Teeth of Mine

squid-teeth

So I went to my dentist for the final appointment in my epic teeth adventure that has lasted oh these last five months. He drilled, filled, and re-x-rayed. Sadly, Rhonda, my hygienist was out with a headache and I got to experience the joy of the intern. Yay.

I asked him about one of the fillings he did in March that had a small stain or something in it. I thought it was a piece of something that had stuck in the ceramic (I chose porcelain fillings over silver – they are reported to last longer, plus – bonus! – your teeth still look like teeth since the porcelain is white), but he determined that it was a stain of some sort. As a result, he is going to redo that filling on his dime next month when I go in for my six month check-up. Just what I was looking forward to: more drilling!

Also, we looked at the x-rays and there may be something up with one of my old fillings from years ago, so we must monitor that one. I told him I’ve about had it in terms of fillings, so that one won’t happen for at least another six months.

God, 2009 shall be known as the year that Teeth Ate My Bank Account. I’m at about $1900 spent since December. Yesterday, my woe was apparently made known because he knocked off the price of the X-rays. I was expecting another $550 bill.

Just FYI: if you don’t have insurance, dental appointments can cost more than remodelling your two bathrooms (and I should know :P).

On the other hand, I am on a first name basis with everyone in the dentist’s office!

This weekend is a three-day weekend, and I am going to rock it by sleeping a lot. I put in my vacation for July, and it was approved, so that’s nice. I’m going to go see Sarah in LA and probably paint my hall, den, and vanity area.

It is a thrilling life I lead.

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THE LOOM OF DESTINY

I am really not sure when it happened that this blog turned into a craft blog, but I guess that’s the way it’s rolling.

My goal for the next few months: MOVE. Like, physically move – unload my storage unit with all my Texas stuff and find a place to live. I may already have done that. Does anyone have $40K? Hello?

Once I move, presumably into a two bedroomed place, one bedroom will be the Studio. I have been far too remiss in the part of my life that I miss the most: drawing. I want to get a proper drafting table and lighting and soon will delve back into illustration , specifically comics (yeah I know) and some narrative work. Click the pic to the left to embiggen my last significant piece that was actually sort of finished. It’s old, from May or June, I think, and I totally drew it at work while on the phone. I have drawn a few zombie-related comics (naturally there are no zombies in them) but they are not done.

I really miss all the time I used to spend on the drawings – and I know that technically I could make time, but I have to say, this whole “working for a living” really cuts into my me-time. However, in the end, I have still been fairly artistic and crafty with all the knitting and teaching myself to weave and all that. I got my sock mojo back. I dumped my hojillion skeins of sock yarn on the bed the other night and sorted it into AWESOME and REALLY AWESOME piles – I have a really great collection at this point. And I really want to make something out of the Dream in Color Smooshy.

This weekend I am going to Ikea with my mom. I saw in Craft Magazine a project I would like to make. It involves these apothacery (oh god how do you spell that???) drawer things that glued together and screwed to a different table base makes a great jewelry stand. I don’t normally buy Craft because it is stupid expensive, but the latest issue was all about weaving, and I have been bitten pretty hard by the weaving bug. In fact, I finished my first project and warped the loom for the next one:

Woven Scarf

I used various socks yarns to complete my first project, primarily some Knitpicks Essential Kettle Dyed in Bordeaux (?). The Essential is quite soft and makes a nice end project. I didn’t like the Bordeaux color at all (wasn’t variegated enough, but I bought it when it first came out so their dyeing process is probably improved at this juncture) and was actually going to return it, but then thought it would be a good yarn to try my hand at weaving with – because I wouldn’t care about cutting it up.

Weaving

The new project is being woven out of Noro Silk Garden Sock, which while GORGEOUS was kind of a dumb choice – the yarn is very sticky on itself, and makes moving the heddle rather annoying. However, the end product will be worth it. My tension is much better on this piece, and the colors are super awesome! Too bad I am ALLERGIC TO MOHAIR. Also, you’d think I’d be a little more freaked about cutting up a $20 skein of yarn, but OH NO, I cut that sucker with an  evil gleam in my eye!

Anyway.

I also got a haircut. I like it a lot.

New Hair + Scarf

I think that might be the debut of my “new” glasses on this blog, too. I’ve had them for a couple months now. I was getting a lot of headaches and realized that it had been about three years since I’d been to the eye doctor.  Time to get new glasses.  I’m slowly going blind, of course, and I suspect bifocals will be in my future, but for now, my vision has settled in the 20/40 and 20/50 range. Also the doctor did a pressure test on my eyeballs where he numbed them and put a glowing blue contact on each one (glaucoma test?) which SUCKED because I totally have an eyeball issue, like, don’t touch them! Or get near them! Or talk about them getting squished or poked in any way!

Oh god, now I have to lie down; I’ve disgusted myself.

P.S. Be sure to check out WANTED, the movie about the LOOM OF DESTINY and fraternity of assassins who use it:

I thought it was pretty awesome (and better than Batman, BUT EVERYTHING IS BETTER THAN THE DARK KNIGHT). Okay, the movie is not really about weaving, it is about explosions.