Regular readers of Hell Food know that Shane & I just came back from twenty-one glorious days of vacation a few weeks ago. Well, I finally have the inevitable vacation pictures available for perusal over at Flickr. Just a tad bit late, yes, but in my defense my little sis managed to infect me with her germies right before I left, so I’ve spent most of the past two weeks in bed or, during my more lucid moments, doing mindless dreg work on the ‘puter. I’ll only post a small selection here, so if you’re one of those sickos who actually enjoys looking at other people’s vacation slideshows (gasp!), check out my Road Trippin’ ‘06 set on Flickr.

First up – THOSE VEGAN DONUTS from Ronald’s Donuts in Las Vegas:

Yes, yes, I know – one of the donuts does have a huge hunk missing. It’s in my belly. Well, technically, I guess they all ended up in my belly, but that half was ingested in the seconds before I snapped the pic. You see, I was so excited by the presence of VEGAN DONUTS that I wolfed half of ‘em down before I even thought to take a picture.

Luckily, we bought a second batch before our departure:

Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? It brings a tear. (Guess you’ve gotta be a veg*n to understand.)

Sadly, the donuts didn’t fare too well on the plane ride back. I still ate ‘em, though. Hey, it’s hard to completely annihilate such sweetness.

Interestingly, Grist ran a story on green/veggie food options in Sin City not long after we returned to Kansas. It wasn’t a huge kick in the arse – having spent an afternoon researching vegan eateries on Happy Cow before the trip, I was well-versed on all the guilt-free options available in Vegas – but it was fun to note which of the featured businesses we had hit up during our weeklong stay. We went grocery shopping at the new Whole Foods mentioned in the article, and ordered lunch from Rainbow’s End Natural Foods & Café. It isn’t nearly the dealio as is Ron’s Donuts (c’mon, what trumps VEGAN DONUTS!?), but it definitely rocks the strip. Certainly, Vegas is unexpectedly welcoming to veg*ns – just don’t go there during the summer months. Trust me.

And DO stop by Ronald’s, at least once. Screw the diet, it’s worth it.

While in Vegas, we also…

Back in Rochester, I:

* Saw my little bro graduate from hs (and bust his first-ever move at Liquid while our designated driver Shane nodded off on a couch in the corner of the club);

* Caught a Red Wings game followed by some post-show fireworks;

* Watched some gawd-awful “comedians” “perform” at Comix Cafe;

* Had a Chinese feast with the relatives a la the Royal Dynasty;

* Suffered through “Family Picture Day”;

* And was embarrassed at the Corn Hill Arts Festival by some strange man I don’t know.

Seriously. Never seen him in my life. And he certainly isn’t my father or anything.

Good times.

Of course, the doggies also had fun. My parents have two of their own, so for three weeks, there were five (!) hyper (and hyper-sexed, even though they’re all fixed…go figure) dogs running to and fro.

That made Shadow so happy, she was literally beaming!

I’ll leave y’all with a picture of my dogs’ pimped out ride – two wire cages, set side-by-side, cushioned by fluffy fluffy bankies, and cooled by crisp rear A/C.

Ralphie especially enjoyed his shiny new car cage. The wires were just perfect for pinning O-Ren up against while he tried oh-so-frantically to hump her.

Still no luck, though. As always, she wound up on top. That’s my girl.

(* Oh, and PS – don’t call me Mrs. Brady. Evah.)

In today’s world of tight schedules where hardly anyone has time to make dinner from scratch, frozen dinners have become the lifesaver for many families. When looking at a frozen dinner, one looks for a tasty meal and hopefully some nutrition. Lasagna is a very popular choice for frozen dinners, and Stouffer’s “Lasagna with Meat & Sauce” is a very popular lasagna choice. In this post, I will be examining this product and also offering a healthier and tastier alternative. I would like to note that I am getting my nutritional information from the very well done site www.nutritiondata.com.Now into the details. A serving size from this product weighs 595 grams. For all you non-metric people that is 1.31 pounds of lasagna. Seems like a large portion to me. In that serving, there are 767 calories, 268 which come from fat. That would make this food 35% fat, and just over the 30% threshold needed to be considered healthy. If you add garlic bread to this, forget about it. You’ll be way over 35%.

The serving also provides 38% of your daily allowance for cholesterol, a whopping 85% of your daily allowance for salt, and a surprisingly decent 64% of your daily allowance for calcium. However, considering there are better ways to get calcium, say a multi-vitamin, the high level of calcium does little to make this healthy. Since this lasagna would most likely be paired with garlic bread, the total meal is unlikely to be healthy at all. The amount of salt, cholesterol, and preservatives give this meal a failing grade for me. No way to make it healthy, and I’m sure the taste is somewhat muted by being frozen and preserved.

As I have said in previous posts, I am a dietary vegan, and this Xmas my fiancee and I enjoyed a vegan lasagna for our dinner. We used standard pasta sauce from the store, soy cheese from Soya Kaas, and subsituted meat with fresh carrots, yellow squash, zucchini, loads of garlic, and a bit of olive oil. Kelly made two pans of this great lasagna the day before. By making two pans all at once, she assured that for the rest of the week, she would have great tasting lasagna to eat, and while it did take a couple hours to make, the taste is worth it.

We took pictures to document the process of making the lasagna to show just how easy it is, and how much better it looks than a piece of frozen dinner lasagna.

The vegetable mix where you can see the carrots, yellow squash, zucchini and garlic.

The lasagna noodles waiting to be used.

The cooking of the veggies.

The first layer of veggies.

And now the cheese.

Here you can see the layers of the uncooked lasagna.

A cooked lasagna, and it looks awesome!

Another shot of the cooked lasagna.

Heaven is served!

Kelly’s gourmet food critic shot.

I hope you can see how appetizing a homemade lasagna is. The lasagna was great, and one doesn’t miss the meat or preservatives from a store bought frozen lasagna. As I said, while it took a few hours one day to make, Kelly made enough to last a week or more, and for the result, it was time well spent.