ademiles.com

This is a homemade recipe I’ve made many times now and absolutely love!

What you need -

Equipment:

+ Oven
+ Pizza Pan
+ Blender

Ingredients:

+ 1 pre-made vegan pizza crust (or use your favorite homemade dough)
+ 1 cup or so of mixed nuts
+ 1/4 pound of sundried tomatoes
+ 1 small roma tomato
+ 1/4 cup of Vegetable Oil
+ 1 habanero pepper (optional: for a little more “kick”)
+ 2 cloves garlic
+ 1 small onion
+ 1 banana pepper
+ 8 ounces of green olives
+ 2 cups of arugula (a type of lettuce)
+ salt, pepper, and italian seasoning to taste (optional, but I definitely recommend at least the italian seasoning.)

Directions-

1)Preheat the oven to 375 and put the crust on the pizza pan.
2) Blend the nuts until they become a powder.
3) While waiting for the oven to preheat, combine the sundried tomatoes, roma tomato, habanero, garlic, onion, vegetable oil, banana pepper, salt, pepper, and italian seasoning in the blender and blend until it’s a think, smooth paste.
4) Spread the paste generously and evenly over the crust.
5) Put the green olives and arugula on top of the paste. Season the top with a little italian seasoning and place in the oven when heated.
6) Cook in the oven for 17 – 20 minutes.
7) Take out of oven and let cool off before eating.

*For crispier crust place pizza directly on rack in the oven. (Watch for the crust to burn if you’re going to do this. Or, if you wanna play it safe, after about 12 minutes take the pizza off the pan and place it directly on the rack for a little bit crispier crust.

About 10 minutes prep & 17 – 20 minutes cook time.

If you try this recipe please let me know in the comments how you liked it.

This is a homemade dip that I created myself. It has a lot of heat and a really good flavor to it. This recipe makes quite a bit so be sure if you have leftovers that you put them in a Ziploc container or Ball jar if you’ve got one.

What you need -

Equipment:

Sauce Pan
Stove Top
Blender

Ingredients:

1 Pound Roma Tomatoes (about 4 small tomatoes)
1/4 Pound Sweet Banana Peppers (about 1 large pepper)
1 – 7oz Can of Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce
2 Naga Peppers**
3 Habanero Peppers**
1 Tbs Salt
2 Tbs Distilled White Vinegar
1 Tbs Garlic & Pepper Seasoning (or 1 tsp of black pepper and 2 cloves garlic)
1 Small Onion
1 – 15oz Can of Black Beans
1 – 15oz Can of Whole Kernel Corn
2 Tbs Ground Cumin Seed
1/4 Large Red Pepper

Directions-

1) Chop up the tomatoes, habanero peppers, onion, banana pepper, naga peppers* and red pepper into medium size chunks and throw them in the pan. 2) Put the salt, garlic & pepper seasoning, ground cumin, the whole can of chipotle in adobo, the vinegar, half of the black beans and half of the corn into the pan.
3) Heat it all up. Keep it on high heat until it starts to boil or pop and then take it to a medium-low heat. Heat it for about 10 minutes total.
4) After 10 minutes turn off the stove and let the peppers sit until cool.
*IMPORTANT: You want to do your best to take out the Naga peppers before you blend them up with the rest of your dip. These peppers are extremely hot and it’s recommended you only cook with them, not actually eat them. If you leave them in it will add a lot more heat to your dip.
5) Put in the blender and mix until thick and the big chunks are gone.
6) Pour mixture back into sauce pan and heat it on low (so it doesn’t boil/pop) for about another 10 minutes. Mix it occasionally.
7) After 10 minutes, turn off stove and let cool. Mix in the last half of the black beans and the last half of the corn.
8) Serve with your choice or chips or get creative!

**If you don’t like really hot dips you can exclude the naga peppers and 1 or 2 of the habanero peppers. If you want a mild dip just take out the naga & habanero peppers altogether.

If you try this dip please let me know in the comments how you liked it.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve slowly crept up on loving beer more and more. It starts back farther than that though. When I lived in Savannah, Georgia I had a roommate (Greg) that wouldn’t let me get the usual beer everyone got and I had always gotten. (Bud Light.) We did occasionally get PBR but it was usually something worth while. At this time when I did want a drink I was still drinking Bacardi and orange juice. It’s like a screw driver but with rum. So I’d still get that but I was really interested in beer and especially the beer that Greg got.

There is a brewing company called SweetWater and it’s based out of Atlanta so we’d get that most of the time. I really liked their 420 and drank that quite a bit. One night in 2009, I ran to the gas station (I literally ran because it was right across the street from our house and we had friends over.) to grab a 6 pack of 420 for myself. They didn’t have 420 but they did have SweetWater’s IPA. I wasn’t sure what that was at the time but it was from SweetWater so I figured I’d give it a try.

It chilled and then I drank it. It tasted amazing and I actually liked it a lot better than the 420 I had loved for a few months at this point. I could usually drink 6 420′s and feel pretty good. I drank the whole 6 pack of IPA in a couple hours and got pretty damn drunk. This night is what started my love for IPAs and beer and my transition from my usual rum and OJ to beer.

More recently (about 2 weeks ago actually), I started volunteering my time at a new up-and-coming brewery here in Bloomington, Indiana called Cutter’s. Great beer and great guys. It’s been such a pleasure learning and working with them. As of now you can find them in a few Big Red Liquors stores around Bloomington but they are planning to expand in the next few months. It’s a great opportunity to build my foundation and provide my skills (however small they are now) and work with them. If you’re in the Bloomington area and like beer, I sugest stopping by a Big Red and picking up a 22oz bomber of some Half Court or Lost River. You wont be disappointed.

Where the beer flows like,
Wine

It’s not simple. I understand that. I know it’s not simple because I was in the seat directly (almost) opposite of the seat I’m in now. I never went as far as hunted dear or elephant for fun or food, but I did eat meat every day of my life. I ate it without thinking twice of it because it was what everyone did, I thought. It was just what people do to survive, I thought.

Up a few years ago I never thought about not eating meat. I only originally thought of it to lose weight. After high school, when I weighed 160 pounds until my graduation, I started gaining weight pretty fast. I wasn’t as active and I ate the same. I didn’t notice the effect it had on me until almost 4 years later. My weight in May of 2004 was 160 pounds. My weight in May of 2008 was 250 pounds. It wasn’t a gradual gain. My weight fluctuated a lot and at one point I was so stressed and depressed I lost 50 pounds in less than 2 months. Here is a blog sorta explaining my road to living a vegan lifestyle.

June 28th I exclaimed and convinced myself there was no more room for excuses as to why I wasn’t vegan. So I stopped eating anything from animals. I’ve had problems with dairy for a while and the slow steps from meat to vegan definitely helped. It wasn’t enough. I thought I really wanted it but it wasn’t true. I continued to eat things that we’rent vegan. I had a bite of cheese, a bite of rice cooked in butter and a bite of egg in the rice. I didn’t want to make it a huge deal to eat all that stuff because it was at a restaurant and I don’t like attention. I’m not one to be picky and make a big deal of things usually so I let it slide. I enjoyed the moments spent with great company. I enjoyed the meal a lot and it was a great time.

When I thought back on the moments I realized I had lied to myself. I realized that it wasn’t fair to me to think I want to do something, have a lot of very strong feelings against eating animal products and yet because I was too shy, I did it anyway. How is that fair to my commitment to myself I had made.

I also realized that knowing all of the health benefits from not eating animal products and continuing to eat anything derived from an animal is stupid of me. If I know something is going to hurt me and yet I do it anyway, how is that smart at all?

70% of preventable desease in the world is because of poor diet choices. I’m not talking about “organics” and I’m not talking about “health food”. I’m saying that when you drink your skim milk because you think it’s healthier for you and you’ll be fine you’re naive. You’re listening to all the commercials and cereal box labels instead of actually reading for yourself from sources that aren’t the business selling you the product that’s lying to you. I could go on and on about the misconceptions of drinking milk. Maybe I’ll save that for another blog.

Anyway, even when I knew this stuff, I still ate at that restaurant; and lied to myself. I can’t see myself ever eating another animal product again. I know you think “but just eating cage free is a huge step.” Well, think again. Like I said before, don’t take my word for it, do your own research. I’ve spent the last 6 months spending most of my days researching and reading and watching documentaries about our food, or past and our future. As well as how to brew beer and make amazing dips.

Regardless of what you believe or think, I ask you, take a look at what I’ve written and if you feel inclined to research further than please do. If not, I don’t know why you even read this article in the first place.

Veggies and Fruits for,
Life

It would take me far too long to accurately explain in detail why I decided to become vegan. In short though, it’s because of my health, the health of other animals, and this planet. I guess I could explain in more detail or else this would be a very, very short blog.

A Bit of a Background-
I few years ago I met a girl. (I know, it always starts with a girl, doesn’t it?) She was a pescetarian (a diet that includes seafood but no other animals) and I thought that to be interesting but I didn’t fully understand it at all. I had tried the vegetarian diet a couple of times before to help me lose weight but I ate a lot of the wrong, fatty foods and actually gained 8 pounds in the two weeks I was on the diet. Last October, after doing hours and hours of research I decided on the pescetarian diet.

After 4 months and many more hours of reading and watching documentaries I decided I’d cut seafood also. (What makes them any less special than land animals?) In that, the girl I met a few years ago, now my girlfriend, Kim, became vegetarian also. She said, because we lived together it didn’t make since for her to go out and buy fish and things if I wasn’t going to eat it also.

Another 4 months of reading and watching and pondering went by and more and more I asked myself, “Why not vegan?”. June 23rd, 2011 I couldn’t come up with an excuse so I made the decision.

Currently-
I’ve had digestive complications and heart / chest problems for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until recently I decided to actually go threw with the surgery to get my digestive track checked out and it’s a bit scary to know that diet has a big role in that. Also, I was overweight and in depending on who you talk to obese. My heart beat has been irregular and painful at times and though diet has a huge role on the heart, my doctors hardly (some never) asked about my diet. They blamed it on anxiety and shoved antidepressants and antipsychotics in my hands and sent me on my way.

The turning point in my diet was when I looked into animals eyes and saw that they were alive. I had never really been an “animal person” but when you can see feeling in another animal, human or not, it’s an amazing feeling. And, then to eat an animal of the same species or not, no longer made sense to me. And, not being able to drink milk or eat cheese without feeling like vomiting made the decision of cutting out all animal products easier.

But why vegan? Why did I cut out eggs and even cereals and other foods with just a bit of milk or cheese or honey in them? Growing food is a business. Growing animals for food is a business. The more money they make, the better the business is going to be, regardless of the conditions for the animals that are “just going to die anyway” are. Even honey bees (yes, insects are animals) have it rough and aren’t treated fairly in most cases. Infact, bees are quickly disappearing and if they do, we’ll be in a world of trouble seeing as how bees are a huge part of the food chain. So, why don’t we quit robbing the bees of their food they work hard to make?

Animals don’t deserve to die any more than humans. So why kill animals for food and not humans? Why kill cows and not cats? What’s the difference? There is none. Murder is murder and I’m not supporting it anymore and in all honesty I’m sad to say I ever did.

So there you go. I’m awful at explaining things but hopefully that helps you understand why I’m vegan. If not, feel free to ask questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

Fruits and nuts and beans and grains and,
Veggies

When I’m in the kitchen cooking or when I’m researching how to properly pour or drink a certain beer in a certain glass, Kim laughs at me. She laughs encouragingly and a couple of days ago after I combined some store bought, pre-made ingredients to make a super hot but very delicious black bean dip she told me I should start making my own dip(s). I almost instantly took this to heart. I understand there’s way more to it than just mixing store bought, pre-made ingredients in a bowl to make my own dip. But I want to do it. I’ve been semi-obsessed with salsas and dips for a very long time and I almost always add things to the dips I buy to spice them up or change the flavor a bit in one way or another. So, I’m gonna try for real, from scratch. I also want to write out my ideas about other sites or dips/salsas I encounter. I’m definitely way more interested in the vegan dishes but if I come across one with cheese or some sort of meat that has a huge following I may see how it can be substituted for a veggie meat or veggie cheese or something entirely different. We’ll see how it goes!

As far as the drink portion of this food & drink blog, It’s about beer. Specifically IPA and Double IPAs. I dip into different beers every now and then, but it’s usually just these. I’m going to review beer or just talk about my endeavors with it. I eventually want to get a brew kit and make my own, but we’ll get there one day. For now, I’m just going to be writing out my findings on what I like and don’t like about the beers I come across.

As you may or may not know the main purpose for my website is for my own personal reference. I am usually so scatterbrained I can’t remember what I like and don’t like if I’ve only been there once. I write out my ideas at the moment, and more often than not, I come back later and try to decipher my thoughts at the time I wrote the entry.