My mouth's all tingly

It was an absolutely beautiful day today. It was a tad chilly, but there was no sign that a week ago, everything was softly coated with snow. The air was what is called "bracing" or "crisp" and it was wonderful being outside. I needed to get a few things from the grocery store, and since the local market only sells them in bulk, I ended up walking to the Whole Foods and added some more herbs and spices to my drawer, some yams to add to my dinner for tonight, and a few odds and ends.

The first thing I made were Lemon Gem Cupcakes from Vegan With a Vengeance. They didn't turn out so pretty, but they sure tasted good. I think I need to get new baking soda; that would have helped make the cupcakes fluffier. I have some leftover lemon icing, and I think I'll try to find a shortbread recipe and frost the cookies with the lemon icing.

For dinner, I made Jerk Seitan from VwaV (but the seitan recipe was from La Dolce Vegan!), Balsamic Yams adapted from The Garden of Vegan and a salad adapted from an issue of VegNews. I often buy precut, prewashed lettuce because even though it's expensive, it makes it easy to make a salad. The nice thing about the little plastic containers is I can keep the salad right in them. When I tested the jerk sauce, it wasn't terribly spicy, but as I ate it, I noticed the spiciness. Whoa! It made me glad I heated up the last of my leftover brown rice. I'm going to have to find a nice rice recipe to cut the seitan. I feel weird having rice and yams, but somehow it works.

I am debating mentioning a really ugly story I read in this morning in The Washington Post about how the FDA is trying to stop the meat industry from treating its product with carbon monoxide. It's a little scary because it hides what could be rotten meat from unwitting consumers. It's even scarier than a "Dateline" episode I saw a few years ago about grocery stores redating meat to keep in on the shelf longer.

And people think vegans are weird.