Have you ever met up with another blogger or an online friend? Did you get excited and nervous or did you feel as is if you were meeting up with an old friend because you know a lot about them through their blog? I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up with quite a few food bloggers. Some live here in Richmond and others live much further away, but each time I’ve had a blast chatting it up with the person I’ve met. We tend to find we have a lot in common- go figure!
Yesterday was no different when I met up with the gorgeous Stephanie from CookinFanatic. Every weekend I end up going to her side of the city to do some shopping and we kept thinking that it’s odd we hadn’t run into one another yet. This weekend I proposed we meet up at the foodie haven, Whole Foods. Steph (is okay if I call you that?) was down (obvi).
We both got some goods from the bar for lunch and sat down to chat about life, our boys and current living situations, and our fav places to eat or drink around Richmond.
Stephanie was super sweet and it was fun getting to know her outside of the internet. Confirms my belief that meet ups are awesome. I have met some amazing people through blogging- some of which I am still waiting to meet in person!!! 
I know you’ve already seen lunch but Isaac made me a veggie omelet for breakfast yesterday morning and it was definitely blog worthy so here she is.
Spinach, green peppers, sprouts, and tomato wrapped in 1 egg and 1 egg white. He came up with the inside ingredients himself and as you can probably tell, the omelet turned out eggcellent.
In other news I tried (key word) to veganize the Frosted Pumpkin Puff recipe that I posted about a few days ago. The end result turned out okay as the puffs still taste great, but they’re definitely not puffy.
The regular puff that my friend’s mom made.
My pancake like version.
I’m not exactly sure what I did wrong. Maybe the flax and water combo (1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds and 3 tablespoons of water) that I used as an egg replacer wasn’t good for this sort of recipe. But that would be odd, because I’ve used it before in baking and it worked just dandy. Oh well, the vegan cream cheese frosting turned out to be awesome so I’ll post that and I do have the recipe for both the non-vegan pumpkin puffs and the vegan pancake cookies if anyone is interested I would be happy to post it. Just let me know.
Vegan Cream Cheese Icing
- 1/2 of a container Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
- 1/4 cup soy margarine (I used Earth Balance)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Combine the cream cheese and margarine and mix well. Slowly add the powdered sugar to the mixture and then add the vanilla and lemon juice.
**I’d probably double/triple the recipe if I were making icing to frost a cake.
Happy Monday. Stay warm if your area of the world is freezing, as it is here in VA today. It’s suppose to warm up the 70′s later in the week so we haven’t turned on our heat on yet. Let’s just say that my hands are ice cold right now as I type. I gotta go find my snuggie and then head to work.
- Brittany
Brittany Mullins, HHC
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Fantastic meet-up!!
As for the flax egg-replacer = definitely increase the flax amount with the 3 tablespoons of water.
So jealous of this blogger meet up! I can’t think of a better place to meet up than Whole Foods – it’s a blogger standard!
I think your pancake-style recreations look really good! Just call ‘em Frosted Pumpkin Pancakes – the end result is still delicious and alliterative
And you can convince more people that they are a delicious breakfast!
Have a great day, Brittany!
What a fun time! I’m looking forward to meeting up with a fellow blogger Saturday. I’m nervous, but very excited!
The omelet looks delish!
yay for meetups! had a great time chatting it up with you yesterday, i think i’m going to have to try some of the restaurants we talked about (hmm mmm Balliceaux!) Oh, I met this lady at the festival yesterday that was telling me about a new restaurant in Lakeside called The Fat Goat (weird, right?) but they specialize in farm to table cooking so use a lot of local ingredients… their menu looked pretty good and just thought I’d pass the info along! Stay warm this week, good news that temps are lookin’ better though (70s whoop whoop!)
Hooooray for meeting up with Stephanie!!!
I agree that your puffs look tasty! I am new to flax “eggs” but did you let them gel up in the fridge first?
Veggie omelet with sprouts sounds good. I will have to try that next time I make one.
Pumpkin comes in all shapes and sizes
Have a great Monday!
I hope to stage my own bloggie meetup with you someday. Cripes, that sounds hinky.
I’m totally up for that, even if it does sound odd. Come to VA!
In middle school, when everyone was very into myspace, I met a girl through a friend’s profile. We had so much in common, and she lived near me, so we met in person. She’s now one of my very good friends! It’s a bit awkward for the first 2 minutes, but you know so much about the person that it feels totally natural afterward.
Good luck testing out a vegan version of the puffs!
Hooray for blogger meet-ups!! It’s great to meet people with so many things in common. I think it is kind of like meeting up with an old friend
That omelette looks fantastic! I am so bad at making them, they usually just turn into scrambles…
I love Stephanie. So happy to see the two of you meet-up!
Lunch looks delicious! I use the flax/water as egg replacers in my baked goods and most of the time it turns out. I would maybe just try 1 1/2 tbsp flax meal with 3 tbsp water, sometimes that helps me. Or let it sit longer than 10 minutes.
Those cookies sound delicious, no matter their shape!
Blogger meet-ups really never disappoint! I often have more fun than I would with my own friends. Ssshhhh, don’t tell!
I have GOT to recreate those cookies! They look to die.
I’ll post the recipes soon!
Puffy or not – your little pumpkin treats look so tasty! I have a similar recipe that I’m going to be making this weekend – can’t WAIT!
I love that you tried to veganize and admitted that it didnt work. Whenever I try to do this and it fails I like to pretend like its as good as the original. Sometimes its not.
Glad your meet-up was great – it really is funny that we get to know each other from daily posts that when we meet there’s a huge wealth of knowledge about the other person.
Those sound delicious! I would love the recipe to both please and thank you!!!!
You’re in luck, I just posted both recipes! Click here to see them.