Variety is the spice of life.

To continue on my Andy-less breakfast binge I made muffins, an item that Andy does not like for breakfast. Since I had some carrots that needed using, I made Spicy Carrot Raisin Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. Instead of just raisins I used dried mixed fruit.

These muffins were tasty, but there was more carrot than batter—I think because my carrots were slightly larger than the ‘medium’ carrots the recipe called for. I hate that in recipes… I would much rather have measurements that I can choose not to follow than something so broad as ‘one small pumpkin’. Those are arbitrary. Anyways, the spices in the muffins were really good, but my silicon muffin cups mean I’ll never get big crunchy muffin tops.

For dinner that night I had a spicy southwest meal. I cooked up a batch of black eyed peas and turned them into ‘Spicy black eyed peas and rice’ from The Vegan Gourmet. This recipe was such a let down. It was just brown rice, black eyed peas, caramelised onions, and black pepper. It did, however, make a good base for some sautéed veggies smothered with ‘Mexican Chilli Gravy’ from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah.

Just spicy enough to make my nose run without leaving me too sweaty, this chilli is another winner from one of my favourite cookbooks. The Vegan Gourmet, however, has been a bit of a let down—though the appetiser section is really, really good.

Now, onto non-food things. The wonderful Alice (in Veganland) has passed along a blogger excellence award. Thanks, Alice! It's good to be appreciated! Now I get to pass along the award. There are so many excellent blogs out there, but I'm going to give the award to two deserving women...

• The Little One of The Potato Vine blog. Her political posts say exactly what I'm thinking but more, or they give me information I wanted to know. Her training posts are inspiring. And her vignettes about teaching confirm my future plans. No matter how busy I am, I check her blog regularly. Keep it up, The Little One!
• Amy from Iron Chef Vegan. In addition to posting photos of delicious looking food, both savoury and sweet, and in addition to being a lovely person who shared her favourite Chinese place with me, Amy's recent anti- anti-feminist rant was awesome!

And here's an infuriating article... Peta is negotiating with Australian wool farmers. If they phase out mulesing and breed bald-assed sheep in future, Peta will stop convincing people that wool is bad. Peta! Stop being so lame! Negotiating with the cruelty industry is not what we want! People need to stop using animals for our wants and desires (they're definitely not needs anymore!) and let animals exist for their own selves. Fuck.

But on a happier front, a really good new song has been released in Australia. It uses parts of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, and a few other big-deal speeches in recent Australian history. It's a remake of a 1992 song by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, which is also very moving. Both versions give me goosebumps! Watch them, even if you're not Australian. They are good.