Bloggin' Good Times

Okay, busy season is over. I'm back.

I just finished putting through an order for a Vitamix Blender! I am very excited. I have been waiting to get one for a long time. Most of my friends have them and are so happy with them. I watched some demos on-line and saw them make hot soup. When I told my mom that a blender could make hot soup she was skeptical and thought that they did it by warming it up first. Then of course I started to doubt. We happened upon a demo in our local Costco recently and one of the things they showed was making hot soup! Apparently the blender works with friction and if you leave the blender on for about 5 minutes, whatever is inside will get hot. The lady doing the demo also made a smoothie and a fruit ice cream.

My new blender should be here in about 2 weeks and then I am ready to start blending, processing, heating, mixing, grinding, and whatever else I can think of.

Yay!

The Old Farm Market outside Duncan, B.C., Canada

I know we've already had Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I don't want to miss sharing these things. I'm sorry I am late.

Back in October, hubby and I attended a conference in Victoria, B.C., Canada. In grade 9, I went to a boarding school in Duncan, B.C., which is about an hour north of Victoria. I had been hoping to get back and see my old stompin' grounds someday and we were so close, so before we headed home, hubby made sure we had time to go up and see my old school. We couldn't get a hold of someone to officially set up a visit, so we just showed up and hoped we could walk around a little. Well, goodness me, we happened to pull in on Sunday afternoon about 10 minutes before they started an open house event! We were the first ones there so we were honored to receive a full tour of the facilities from the current head girl. It was pretty awesome to not only re-visit my past, but also to be able to share a piece of such a memorable part of my life with my husband.



After we left, I was hoping to find a vegetarian style place to eat, but considering almost everything seemed to be closed on a Sunday out there, I think we were lucky to find anything to explore at all. We did end up finding this great market just outside Duncan right off the highway. It was just so quaint and full of country charm. I would love to be a "regular" at a place like this. I hope that those Duncan shoppers don't take The Old Farm Market for granted. We picked up some snacks for the ride back to Victoria to hold us off until we found a restaurant to eat at.






There was an absolutely huge pile of pumpkins outside. I found it funny that there was a sign saying, "No Climbing Pumpkin Pile. Thanks, Management".






I thought, "Who would climb on a pumpkin pile?!?" Well, I guess I must be totally naive, maybe because I am the mother of only girls, but 1 minute later we hopped into our rental car and what did I see as we were pulling out? Two boys climbing up the pumpkin pile!

Vegan Groceries Revisited

Something has been bugging me. I blogged yesterday about a website that listed some (mostly) processed foods that were vegan.

When you visit the homepage, you are greeted with a perky little write-up that begins with the following sentence. “Being vegan doesn't mean you have to eat wheatgrass and alfalfa sprouts.” My thought as I read this was, “Why wouldn’t you want to eat wheatgrass and alfalfa sprouts?” I am not saying I would want to eat these things all day every day, but they are two very healthy choices that would be a great addition to a healthy diet. I personally didn’t think a sandwich was quite complete without alfalfa sprouts long before I was vegan or had a relatively healthy diet.

Am I alone, or in the minority, of wanting foods that are as natural as possible, that are not made with chemicals, that are going to be the best for my body and let my body perform and function at its most optimal level? Yeppers, I am the first to admit that I sometimes many times want something that I absolutely know is not good for me. I will search the house on occasion to find that bag of chips or sugary something that someone else missed. I am, however, not going to put those kinds of things on my grocery lists or aspire to incorporate them into my diet on purpose. When I do indulge in those things I feel like I have let my body down and many times eating foods like that zaps some of my energy and happiness too.

Vegan Grocery Hunt

I found a pretty neat website ( I Can’t Believe It’s Vegan!” ) that lists foods that are vegan from an assortment of categories. It is nice, especially for beginning vegans, to have a place to look and find familiar foods that you know are going to not have animal products in them. It is also good for not-so-beginner vegans to just know a list of convenience foods that can be purchased when you are in a hurry (or for non-vegan husbands to pick up on their way home who do not know healthy food lingo). I post the link for those reasons. However, most of the foods are processed gunk, likely using or containing a really gross amount of chemicals, so please take the list with a grain of salt and make sure you don’t eat these foods too often.

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).