One year ago, I began what was supposed to be a 28 day vegan cleanse. A day or two in, my husband jumped in with both feet. For this cleanse, Joshua and I cut out all meat, dairy, gluten, refined sugar, alcohol, and caffeine. In total, we stayed off of meat and dairy for two and a half months.
The impact of those 70 days has been much deeper and longer lasting that we could have ever imagined. As we added the meat and dairy back into our diets, it was in smaller portions and much less frequently. My love for fresh fruits and veggies is well-documented, but I came to love grains, nuts, and seeds like never before as well- and don’t even get me started on nutritional yeast!
Whether you are vegan or not, the choice to incorporate more plant-based meals is a healthy one and (as evidenced by this list) incredibly tasty. Preparing vegan meals also made me a better cook.
Here is a list of 44 fabulous vegan recipes- a few from this site, a few I’ve written for other sites, but mostly just some drool-worthy food you probably need in your life.
Breakfast
Banana Nut Waffles
Vegan Rice Pudding
Springtime Tofu Scramble (gorgeous—just add nutritional yeast to make it over the top amazing)
Fluffy Vegan Pancakes
Sweet Potato Hashbrowns
Veggies & Salads
Roasted Broccoli with Sriracha, Honey, and Soy Sauce
Lentil and Pomegranate Salad
Kale Salad with Toasted Coconut and Sesame Oil (YUM!)
Roasted Pumpkin … get the recipe
I may have mentioned before here and here that I love Valentine’s Day. It also happens to be my halfiversary- sort of. When I was a kid, I figured that if August 4th was my birthday, February 2nd must be my half birthday. Pretty fancy division skills, right?
Joshua and I met on August 28th, and were married on the same date 6 years later. We’ve always celebrated our halfiversary using my awesome kid-math- so… February 14th it is.
This year, a last minute change of plans, means we’re staying in, and I know exactly what we’re having for dessert. Champagne (pink champagne at that!) and roses turn this caramel sauce into pure romance. While I have been eating this off of a spoon, tonight, we’ll have ice cream parfaits layered with blood orange pound cake, champagne-soaked strawberries, and vanilla bean whipped cream topped with some rose petals nicked from my neighbor’s organic garden—with his permission of course!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
- INGREDIENTS
- ½ cup of rosé champagne
- 1 cup organic sugar
- heavy pinch of sea salt
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon rose water
- ½ teaspoon whole ground vanilla (like Love Street Living Foods) or a whole vanilla bean
- 4 tablespoons butter cut into small pieces
- INSTRUCTIONS
- In a heavy bottom sauce pan, reduce champagne over medium high heat until it’s volume is reduced by half.
- Add sugar and salt and bring to a boil while swirling the pan gently. Turn down heat to
… get the recipe
As Valentine’s Day nears, it seems that everything is tinged with sweetness. I love the movement towards DIY Valentines, and old-fashioned handmade candies make me squeal.
Who cares if Hallmark popularized the day, take it back! Celebrate this time by treating yourself , your friends, your family, and your sweetie (if you have one) with love and kindness and special treats.
Of course, I can’t go around eating cake balls, and truffles, and lollipops for the entirety of the Valentine’s Day season, but does that mean I should miss out on pretty pink things and polka dot paper straws? It most certainly does not.
This raw and vegan cashew milk is thick and creamy and so luxurious. It almost doesn’t seem fair that cashews are lower in fat that almost all other nuts, and the fat they do contain is mostly unsaturated fatty acid. To be specific, it’s the same fatty acid found in olive oil! Love that. To that, we’re adding freeze dried strawberries which are full of antioxidants, dietary fiber, and crazy deliciousness (scientific term).
All of the health stuff, cannot begin to describe how good this little shake tastes and feels. I got a text yesterday from Joshua “Strawberry cashew milk, seriously, the best thing ever. I want to have it every day”. I guess that says it all. A little Valentine to my sweetheart, pretty, and pink, and sweet, each morning. I can do that.
A quick shout-out to my friend Tracy at Shutterbean whose amazing … get the recipe
Participating in the Burwell General Store Vintage Recipe Swap is one of the highlights of my month. In addition to working with a fantastic community of bloggers, I also get to push my creativity. If you’re not familiar with our swap, I’ll explain. Each month, Christianna chooses a recipe from a vintage recipe book, and we, the bloggers, re-imagine it.
Simple. Right?
The re-imagining is my favorite part. I have gone from Potato Donuts to Donut Vodka- from Hot Slaw to Bacon and Escarole Custard and from Maple Cake to Savory Maple & Sausage Pies. This month’s vintage recipe is Wild Rice Dressing. It was meant to be stuffed into a turkey.
Three things about the recipe stood out:
- 1. stuffing
- 2. turkey
- 3. curry powder
As I began to brainstorm about this one- I thought turkey, stuffing, thanksgiving, pumpkins… The first thought was to do a turkey sausage and lentil curry in little pumpkins, perhaps with some hand-harvested wild rice. Fate intervened at my butcher shop, when some ground lamb called my name.
Right then and there, I thought of one of my favorite dishes, Kaddo Bourani. It is an Afghani specialty of sweet pumpkin, covered in meat sauce, then topped in yogurt sauce. So, that’s how these little guys came to be. I’ve used potimarron squash (also known as red kuri squash) because the skin is thin and edible. The flesh is dark orange red and tastes rather mapley and of chestnuts which is … get the recipe
My closest people would say that I rarely repeat a dish twice, and in a way it’s true. Once I’ve poked and prodded and looked at a recipe from the inside out, I’m ready to let it go.
But there is another type of dish, the dish that is not really a recipe, the one that comes naturally- without thought. These are the dishes Joshua and I eat throughout the week. Packed off to work in Mason jars, shared with friends who stop by unexpectedly. Never precious, never fancy, always satisfying… these are the meals that warrant lunchtime texts of “Mmmm… thanks for lunch. Soo good. Do we have leftovers?”
