A Vegan Feast

Last night, my husband and oldest daughter made dinner together. My sweet daughter did ask me if she should make her dish with vegan cheese so I could eat it (a cauliflower/broccoli bake- can you imagine? maybe it would work with Daiya Cheese (???), but certainly not the regular non-melty kind!). In the end, there was actually nothing in the meal that I could eat, but I didn't have to cook. I decided to take a run to Planet Organic, our local health/organic store for some selections from the deli. I was not really having the best day, so I decided to splurge and pick anything and everything that looked good. I ended up spending $32, but I have enough for probably 3 meals and I had a lot of fun doing it. I could have had just as much variety for a lot less money if I had just paid a little bit of attention to prices. I also should have taken a picture of my plate last night as it was insanely full of everything (and I ate it all). Hopefully, the picture of all my (slightly depleted) containers will do just as well.





Here is a list of what exactly I got for those who are interested (clockwise starting with top left):
Roasted Veggie Salad, Southwestern Basmati Rice, Tofu Sesame Snacks, Emerald Sesame Kale, Sweet Potato Salad, and finally Vegan Chocolate Cake.

I feel so lucky to even have some place I can go to get foods like these. Imagine how much work it would be to give myself the same experience at home? I am hoping when I finally get out to one of my local Vegetarian/Vegan group potlucks, it might be a somewhat similar experience (minus the work and the cost).

Time to Vote!

I just voted in the 2010 VeggieAwards. What?! You want to vote too? Of course you do. You can do that here.

I know you don't need any incentives, but the people at VegNews are actually giving away prizes to voters too -Grand prize of a global getaway and first prize is a year supply of Daiya cheese. I am so anxious to try some o' that cheese.

This Month's Mishaps

I did very well this month. There are only two mishaps to report.

1.) Who would have thought so much candy has animal products in it?!? I ate Wine Gums on three different occasions over a two week period before I remembered to check the label and found out they had gelatin in them. Oops.

2.) This one was of my own choosing. The kids were making smores out at the lake. On one occasion I decided to take one milk chocolate covered graham cracker and eat it.

All in all, I would call this a very successful month.

Vega Smoothie Photo Contest

I don't know if there is anyone out there reading this blog, but if you are I would love some help with a photo contest I entered. It is one of those where the photos with the most votes win. I have my eye on the blender prize, which means I need to come in somewhere between 2nd and 11th. Voting goes until August 15th, 2010 and each email address can vote once every 24 hours.

If you would like to help me out by casting a vote for my photo, you can go to the Where Will Your Smoothie Take You contest page and this link will take you straight to my photo. Thanks and smilies to all.

My Local Veg Resources

It was my anniversary the other day. My lovely husband, who by the way is not a vegetarian, nor does he even agree with the idea of it, gifted me with a gift certificate to a local vegetarian restaurant. He researched it and came up with the idea himself. I'm not sure that I even knew about this particular restaurant. The restaurant is called Padmanadi and it is in Edmonton, Alberta.

I am very excited to try it out and while checking out the restaurant's website, I got even more excited when I found a link to a local vegatarian/vegan group that I also had not come across before. It looked like there was quite a bit going on, like monthly vegatarian pot-lucks, so I emailed and asked about volunteering. They emailed back quite quickly and sounded very excited to have me join in, so I will let you know how that goes.

Home-made Individual Pizzas

These can be a little messy to eat, but they are one of my favorite yum-factor meals. This is also one of those things you can make at the end of the week when you have lots of odds and ends veggies. The pizza in the picture below was made without vegan cheese (and tasted just fine), but I think I enjoy it just a touch more with the vegan cheese on the top. The pizza below has a crazy assortment of veggies. Let's see if i can remember them all. There are pineapple, mushrooms, green onion, garlic, jalapeno peppers, red bell peppers, mushrooms, black olives,an assortment of beans, parsley, and kale. There might be a couple more.

To make the pizza, you just cut up an assortment of veggies, grab a pita and spread some tomato sauce on it. Layer up your pizza with whatever you want. With this pizza, I drizzled a little more tomato sauce on the top because I didn't have the vegan cheese, but normally I would sprinkle some vegan cheese on the top. This is a very casual meal for me, so I don't really bother to remember a set temperature on the oven or cooking time, but this time I put it in at about 285 degrees and left it in for about 20 minutes.

Fresh Fruit Salsa

Here is a picture of my fresh fruit salsa. It is one of my favorite things to make because it is easy to remember what goes in it and quantities are not really that important. You take one mango, about 1/4 of a pineapple, juice of half a lime, about a quarter of a red onion and either some parsley or cilantro (probably about a quarter cup), and you have got yourself a salsa.