Introducing myself and almond Parmesan!

Hello everyone! So, here's my first post. Expect a lot of food, cats, book reviews, movie reviews, video game reviews... Just expect me to talk a lot.

First, here I am folks! The geeky gal behind the magic.

(Scary, right?)

A little bit about me... Well, I'm 24. I'm a Philly girl. I'm currently an English major, so obviously I'm a huge book lover. I have a quiet passion for science (Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of my current crushes; he's kind of precious). I'm afraid of birds and run in terror if one comes near me. (And by that, I mean if I see one a mile away I'm bolting for my house.) I'm always ready for a Netflix marathon and I'll push anyone out of the way for pizza. Because PIZZA. Oh, and I cook a lot. So you'll see lots of recipes. Like in this post. Soon. I promise.

Onto the next introduction!

Here's the inspiration for the logo, my wonderful little kitty Catsby!

Again, I guess you could tell I like books huh? I also like puns, so this was a win-win.

He likes waking me up before the sun comes up, spitefully pooping if I don't hug him every three seconds, and sleeping next to my face.

Now that introductions are out of the way, let's get cookin'! (I know that's why a majority of you are here, right? For the food? I don't blame you.)

AW YEAH.

So, I'm a vegan. I've been vegan for almost two years (woah!). I love playing around with food and recipes, and someday I'd like to come out with a cookbook for you guys. But for now I'll just lure you all in with some free recipes online, ha! I tend to run a lot of these recipes by my boyfriend (who eats and loves meat) in order to check if it would "pass" for the majority of people in the world, hehe.

Despite being vegan for that long and LOVING Parmesan before I went vegan, I only just started making my own at home. And I LOVE this stuff. It's kind of ridiculous. I pour this on EVERYTHING. I am a "bad" vegan in the sense that I tend to not actually like nutritional yeast*, but this is one of those times where I just can't stop eating it.

*Note: Nutritional yeast is often used as a cheese substitute in vegan cooking. It is often fortified with B-12 as well, so for all of you health nuts out there, hehe! It's also commonly referred to as "nooch" in the vegan community. I can't really speak for all of you, but I can usually find this in any grocery store. But please note that I live in a very vegan-friendly city, so perhaps it's easier for me. If you're interested in finding health stores near you that may carry it, go to happycow.net and enter in your zip code and refine the search to stores!

Let's get cookin'!

ingredients

• 1/2 cup roasted almonds (or really any kind of nuts, but these are my favourite)
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• salt to taste

Mmmm, look at dat mise en place. (Mise en place is a French term often used in cooking that refers to laying out your ingredients before you put everything together, basically. It means "putting in place".)

instructions:

1. Well, there aren't really many instructions to this. You can just throw everything into a blender and food processor until the almonds have been ground to a powder.

However, I tend to use a coffee grinder.

I only add a handful of almonds at a time, since coffee grinders tend to be kind of weak. 

This is the kind of texture you're looking for.

Sometimes the almonds just don't want to behave, though. So if you happen to have a mortar and pestle, that'll come in handy. But don't feel the need to go out and buy one. You could always just take a guilty little snack and eat the stubborn ones that won't grind.

And this is what it looks like when you're done! I added mine to a container just to make it look "pretty" but really just store it anywhere you want. I like putting mine in a sugar shaker and pouring it over EVERYTHING. It lasts a fair amount of time too. (Although I can't tell you how long, as I often devour it all fairly quickly.)

And ta da!

Super cute.

Well, I hope this was pretty nice for a first blog entry! Tomorrow's recipe will be for a lovely kale pesto, mmmmm! Keep aside some of this, as it'll be in that!

xo, Kate