Vegan MoFo: (vegan) Bacon'n'egg burgers (Laziness #3)

Sometimes I wonder if I tracked the quality of my days on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being a really crummy day (yesterday was a 3 or a 4) and 10 being a really great day, what the average would be. I guess this is a nerdy thing to think about, but I really love quantifying things like that and playing with statistics. Anyway, today was so good, so freakin' close to perfect, that I think it must've bumped up my average for the past week quite a bit.

This morning, the Emperor and I walked to our favorite local grocery store (Staff of Life... my favorite by merit of having the best bulk bins, which I am crazy for), which is about 2 miles away from our house. We started out both walking, and I figured he would make me pick him up two blocks later and I'd carry him on my back in the Ergo... this is how it always goes. But no, he actually walked the entire way today. Well, he meandered the entire way. It did take us an entire hour to get there. Once there, we split a gigantic vegan chocolate chip cookie and a soy latte. (Okay, I didn't share my latte.) Here he is with the cookie:



I felt kinda like a super bad parent letting him have a cookie in the morning when I knew we were going to a party in the afternoon and he'd have more treats there. But, eh. Every now and again we go on these little coffee dates together, and they make me so ridiculously happy. He's not going to develop diabetes from having cookies twice in one day occasionally. Anyway, I mitigated the damage to him by forcing him to give me about half of the cookie, ha ha.

After our coffee date, we went grocery shopping, then I did carry him on my back on the way home. (He fell asleep. Envy!) Later we went to another toddler friend's birthday party, which was a ton of fun. His parents are so sweet and thoughtful... in the midst of all their party planning, they made sure to find some great vegan options (including sweet treats at cake time!!) even though we were the only vegans at the party. I'm really touched by that.

And they ALSO had a huge dressup box out for the party, as the little friend's birthday is on Halloween. The Emperor was not in to most of the costumes, hats, and wigs. But he WAS really into... get this... a big, sweeping imperial robe. Which I swear, he picked out himself. Here it is:



He was very careful not to step on the hem of it and walked in a very slow, stately fashion wearing it. This pretty much made my life.

We stayed at the party and played basically until he was falling over from tiredness. Then we came home and I put together a pretty quick dinner. I wanted to make another burger out of Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet and have been considering the Bacon and Eggs Burgers since someone else posted about them in the PPK Challenge thread. I tweaked the recipe a little bit on her suggestions-- added some nutritional yeast, a bit of black salt, and somewhat more vegan baco bits, and some water to make it all stick together after those additions.



Doesn't really look like much, but they were quite good. We had them with a copious side of snap peas... I was going to make some sort of potato something for maximum diner-i-ness, but I'm glad I didn't. We would not have had room. As is, we only made it through about 2.5 burgers between the three of us.

The Emperor ate a TON of snap peas, before, during, and after the cooking process. He probably ate about a third cup raw, a third cup partially cooked, and a third cup cooked. Maybe more, I don't know. He also ate close to an entire half of a burger. This is the third or fourth time now that he's had snap peas and been really enamored of them... I'm delighted and hope it sticks. Today he told me he likes them because "I like to go CRUNCH CRUNCH! I want to CRUNCH CRUNCH snap peas!" And here he is crunch crunching: