Recipes, projects & products that don’t suck.

Welcome potluck guests! Have you had to change your shirt from all the drool yet? Today I am participating in the Virtual Vegan Potluck, which is basically a string of 100+ blogs all linked together with “forward” and “back” buttons/links to guide you through an online plant-based progressive dinner, if you will. You’ll be taken through eight courses, with several bloggers participating in each course. You are currently in the first course, Appetizers, which will be followed by Beverages, Bread, Salad, Sides, Soups, Main Dishes and Dessert. You’ll find links to the previous dish/blog and the next dish/blog at the bottom of this post. Most often on 86 Lemons, I test other people’s vegan recipes and report to my readers, letting them know if it’s…

Whew! Two big tasks (an Index page and business taxes) all in one day. So glad to have those two checked off my list. Thank you for the comments yesterday – it helps to know the efforts were worth it. About seven months ago, I wrote a post about a TERRIBLE Macaroni & Cheese with Broccoli recipe. It was an epic fail. So bad that it took me seven months before I attempted to test another vegan mac ‘n cheese recipe. I’m so sad that I waited that long. All that time, we could have been enjoying a different recipe, which according to VegNews is “the best mac ‘n cheese on the planet.” Notice they didn’t even say “best vegan mac ‘n cheese.” I haven’t tasted…

This has nothing to do with this recipe, but can we just talk about The Bible miniseries on the History Channel for a second? Have you seen it? I had been hearing a lot about it. Last night, after getting home from a trunk show, I decided to go straight to bed because I was out of gas. Then I remembered this series and found it on On Demand. Hubs and I started watching it and couldn’t turn it off! We got about an hour into Episode 1 before we finally decided to call it a night. This five-part miniseries (10 hours total) debuted on March 3, so two of the episodes have already aired, with the third airing this Sunday at 8/7C. Also, the…

Just before Christmas, one of my friends from college gave birth to her second baby girl (a real doll, I might add!). This friend is among a group of five of us who all lived in a tiny blue house not too far from campus. Fortunately, we all still live within an hour or less from each other, so we manage to get together for dinners and beach days now and then. We’ve been through the college years together, then weddings, now kids. Of the five of us, four of us each have two kids. I, of course, am the exception with no kids (by choice). Actually, getting together with them and hearing about their lack of sleep, their frustrations with parenting, their constant feelings…

I’ve been craving clam “chowdah” for weeks. The classic stuff is nowhere close to vegan, nor is it the least bit healthy (it usually involves bacon, butter and heavy cream). I prefer my arteries UN-clogged, thank you very much. Fortunately, if you google “vegan clam chowder” you’ll find out that the road has been paved. Many brave souls have experimented and created their best versions of plant-powered clam chowder. I narrowed down my choices and finally decided to test a recipe from Kathy Patalsky’s Healthy Happy Life blog. Admittedly, it was Kathy’s photos (which included yummy sourdough bread bowls) that reeled me in. And her use of king oyster mushrooms, which I had never tried before. This is a really easy recipe to make, especially…