Vegan Mofo Day 19: falling behind...

The last few days have been rough. I had been feeling much better for a while, and then relapsed quite badly on Sunday/Monday (probably due to lowered vigilance re: food, particularly at restaurants). My naturopath had advised me to cut out onions, grapefruit, and oranges, and not to try reintroducing anything until I was totally stable; she also prescribed phosphorus as part of a homeopathic treatment. I was falling all these recommendations carefully and feeling better, and then in a fit of stupidity ate some "mystery hummus" at a restaurant, and the next day some veggie Pad Thai, again with sauce ingredients undisclosed.

The only thing worse than feeling gross is knowing you brought it on yourself. I saw my naturopath again today and she advised avoiding restaurant eating wherever possible, not eating anything if I don't know its precise ingredients, and... finding strategies to manage my anxiety.

Talk about terrible timing! This weekend I am presenting at AND co-organizing a huge workshop for 20 major scholars in my field flying in from all around Canada. I have hostessing duties, organizational duties, and my own paper to worry about, not to mention needing to remain alert and intelligent for two 12-hour-long days of intensive paper-workshopping with some scary-smart people. The whole event is catered because the days are so long. I've done my best to make sure everyone's dietary restrictions are accommodated, including my own, but I will not have detailed ingredient lists and I know that I should be bringing rice and veggies from home rather than risking it, but I know equally that I absolutely do not have the time. Wishing for a rice cooker right now...

Vegan Mofo Day 17: blender madness!!!

My new food processor has opened a whole new world of smoothies for me. I have always been a smoothie fan. A BIG smoothie fan. But now I realize that I've been doing it wrong. Because these smoothies are something else entirely. So smooth, so creamy, light and fluffy and just so incredible that I would happily eat them for every meal, forever. (That may not be true, but it's close.)

My current favourite (pictured below, two mornings in a row, and YES I eat them in bed) is mango, banana, and spinach. The first day I froze the banana; the second day I froze the banana and the mango and it took things into a whole new world of ice-cream-for-breakfast goodness. I've been eating these before my workout and finding them the perfect light breakfast. Tomorrow I'm not working out until the evening so I'm going to try thickening it up with some Vega and maybe some ground flax seeds.

(kind of looks like a bowl of guacamole; kind of tastes like heaven)

I've also been finding exciting uses for the beautiful raw walnut butter that me and my best friend the food processor made together. I adapted Chocolate-Covered Katie's single-serving pumpkin muffin by adding in a tbsp of oats, swapping out the pumpkin for roasted butternut squash, and probably quintupling the spices. I baked 'er up in a ramekin and topped it with raw walnut butter and Eden Organics' crazy-tasy Organic Apple Cherry Butter. The result was kind of insanely delicious.

(seriously)

Vegan Mofo Day 15: a juicy day in the big city

Just look at that ruby red juice! Okay, I may have enhanced the colour a bit, but only so that the image would match the taste.

Last night I caught up with some friends from my undergrad in Toronto, where we spent the night lounging in a schmancy hotel room and drinking all the wine, followed by a day of shopping and good veggie eats on Queen West. Unfortunately I have once again failed miserably to document my beautiful food, which is a shame, because the gluten free vegan banana nut pancakes at Fresh were enormous and divine, but had nothing on the tapas, appetizers, and cocktails we shared at Fressen (marinated olives, jicama mango salad, baba ganoush, and an asparagus bundle--"Steamed bundled asparagus on a bed of warm herbed quinoa with a light cream sauce and miso hemp butter" omg yum).

So instead this gorgeous Immune Boost juice (carrot, beet, apple, ginger, vitamin C, and echinacea) will have to serve as a metonym for the entire weekend.

Vegan Mofo Day 13: my new toy

I finally did it. I finally bought myself the food processor of my dreams.

I am so in love. I found it at Costco for an outrageously reasonable price. It's a Cuisinart 12-cup Food Processor, with a 10 year warranty and the kind of engine that dreams are made of.

So far I have made:

• breakfast soft serve (pictured below): frozen banana, frozen mixed berries, and Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer
• raw walnut butter: straight up walnuts blended into rich buttery goodness
• nooch sauce: nutritional yeast, raw almonds and pumpkin seeds, tahini, dijon mustard, and lemon juice
• chocolate berry soft serve: a cup of berries pureed with cocoa powder

Everything is coming out perfectly smooth and creamy and incredible. I am beside myself with delight. Seriously. I CANNOT STOP BLENDING THINGS. It's like the first weeks of my Bamix all over again. I think I might have a kitchen accessory fetish. Unfortunately this means that my brand new mandolin is getting very little attention. Next week I'm going to have to make some mandolin-friendly recipes to help it feel more welcome in my kitchen. It matches the Bamix, after all. 

(breakfast soft serve)

(my happy little food processing family)

Vegan Mofo Day 12: leftovermania!

Holy frustrating. I wrote a version of this post last night in bed, but when I hit "Publish" something went wrong (don't ask me, I'm not a computer) and the whole thing got deleted. So this version is a day late and a dollar short.

Monday was a day of tying of loose ends at the parents' place. We started making plans for Christmas, I managed to see my brother for a brief lunch visit, I spent an hour retrieving my things from where they had inevitably been scattered over the entire house... and of course we did our best to use up the weekend's leftovers. The 'rents are leaving on Friday for a three week tour in Ireland (LUCKY) and the last thing they want is a fridge full of weird vegan leftovers.

And so we have: Pumpkin Smoothies

There are a ton of recipes for these floating around the internets right now, and I can't claim that mine is the most delicious, but I will claim that it was EXTREMELY delicious. Of course I don't have a real recipe because I cook by putting things in a vessel (blender, pot, etc.) and tasting until I like it, but I can approximate. It was simple, rich, and filling (and felt like drinking a milkshake for breakfast).

Ingredients (serves 3):
3 cups pumpkin puree (home cooked, so waterier than canned)
2 super-ripe bananas
3 tbsp almond butter
3-4 tbsp flax meal
pumpkin pie spices to taste
almond milk added to reach desired consistency

For dinner we had a big mess o' leftover goodness.

Clockwise from the top: kale, asparagus, and red peppers, sauteed in a little olive oil with fresh garden mini-leeks and sesame seeds; "Thanksgiving risotto"; leftover spaghetti squash with slow roasted tomato sauce.

The Thanksgiving risotto -- as a friend has dubbed it -- was a culinary revelation. So fast! So delicious! So exactly what I want to eat every day forever! I had a leftover tub of long-grain white rice cooked in veggie broth, half a sweet potato, and some roasted zucchini that was basically squash puree (and could be easily replaced with pumpkin, though the zucchini was nice and light). Basically I threw it all in a pot (in roughly equivalent proportions) and cooked on medium, adding lots of water as I went to get everything really creamy. I flavoured it with rosemary, cinnamon, ginger, and a splash of maple syrup, then added in a fistful each of dried cranberries and walnuts. If we hadn't already had kale on the side I would have added in some diced kale leaves or something else green (you may be able to detect a few green flecks in the photo -- there was a little kale in the rice to being with).

Did I mention that this was so so good? In fact, the whole meal was a taste medley of semi-epic proportions. I heart leftovers.

Vegan Mofo Day 10: now we're cooking with gas!

This is a saying my Dad particularly likes. According to the Urban Dictionary it means:

"Efficiently performing a task after a long period of inefficient performance or possibly failed attempts at the entire task or certain steps in the process."

 So, I am officially now cooking with gas, which is to say, cooking up a storm and taking plenty of pictures.

I always cook more when I'm visiting family. They provide the groceries and I provided the meals; it's sort of been an unofficial family policy since I went vegan. Waffles are a particular family favourite, and we've had many variations, but we just keep coming back to pumpkin (not least because of the giant pumpkin my stepmom baked and has packaged away in the freezer in a dozen plastic tubs of goodness).

These babies are based on the near-legendary PPK recipe, with the important difference that I was working with Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pancake Mix, and thus started with three cups of the mix in place of all the dry ingredients. I was a little nervous about the results, but they were incredible: crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, perfectly spicy and pumpkiny and delicious.

(Waiting to be saved from the waffle iron.)

(Keeping warm in the oven.)

(The last scoop of batter ready to go.)

(Spread with leftover pumpkin pudding and drizzled with maple syrup.)

Dinner was the results of our roadside grocery shopping. I roasted a lovely spaghetti squash, and then roughly reinterpreted Vegan Dad's Spaghetti Squash with Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce.

I skipped the vermouth and leeks because we were keeping things simple, and added a big fistful of end-of-season basil from the garden. Dad added meatballs to his; I accompanied it with two grilled portobellos. The result was a totally gourmet-tasting feast of seasonal produce. The roasting of the tomatoes and garlic really brought out their sweetness. I added some roast-giant-zucchini at the end, which thickened the sauce up beautifully. Of course we had more pumpkin for dessert. Squash and squash with a side of squash? Don't mind if I do!

Vegan Mofo Day 9: thanksgiving in photos

I'm spending the weekend visiting my parents in scenic Kemptville, and enjoying plenty of down-time and the uncanny combination of changing leaves and unseasonably warm weather. Dare I say best Thanksgiving weather ever? We had our big family dinner at my stepmother's family's cabin, which was nice because a) we didn't have to host, b) I managed to avoid spending a lot of time around a turkey carcass, and c) I could bring all my own food and because they're used to my dietary peculiarities they don't ever bother commenting anymore! In fact nobody even voices curiosity about what I'm eating, they just let me go my merry vegan way while descending into their own food comas. Because yesterday was beautiful and I actually had my iPhone in alert, today's post is going to be a mini photo journal.

(breakfast: "Scottish" [aka steelcut] oats with banana and pumpkin seed butter)

(walking to the "island" with Elvis [the poodle])

(local flora given a helping hand -- or stick -- by my father)

(Elvis enjoying the lookout)

On the way to the cabin we stopped at a little roadside vegetable stand and bought some produce for Sunday night dinner. Nobody was tending the stand: a sign asked up to use the "honour system." Love it! Almost as much as I love a giant $0.50 zucchini...

(Elvis enjoying the foliage)

(a little Thanksgiving campfire action)

(dogs and a lake? Thanksgiving win!)

And now here's my personal Thanksgiving feast (I came nowhere near finishing this plate, but it sure looked special all heaped up like that). I made wild rice with kale and portobello mushroom gravy (just portobellos sauteed with garlic and a little olive oil until they get juicy, then simmered in veggie broth and thickened up with corn starch and plenty of nooch), and half a baked sweet potato topped with diced pear, walnuts, and cranberries lightly dressed with maple syrup and cinnamon.

Dessert (not pictured) was fresh pumpkin puree (SO MUCH better than canned, it's barely the same food) blended up with soaked dates and cashews, a little maple syrup, and pumpkin pie spaces, then topped with raw cashew cream. It was basically pumpkin pudding or uncooked pie filling, and it was absolutely divine.

(Look at those shamefully muddy paws!)