Approaching the Finish Line

We made it, well almost - we still have just under two hours to go! I had no doubt that we would make it, I just wasn't sure if we would make it to the finish line with smiles on our faces or if we'd be lining up to purchase a grease-filled pizza as soon as we were done!

The verdict is that a vegan lifestyle is a terrific thing. I feel great. I'm loving the food we've been preparing and eating and I'm really savouring every bite! My husband and I have both lost approximately ten pounds each in the last 30 days - that is significant and is perhaps a bit too much too quickly, especially because I'm still breast feeding! I can tell everyone now, however, that I feel like I have filled my face these past 30 days with food, food and more food. I think we will stay mostly vegan with some vegetarian tendencies. I think a flexitarian diet for the children is probably best. As for a non-food vegan lifestyle, while I will continue to wear the leather shoes and handbag that I currently have, I plan to purchase synthetic products down the line. May I just say, I have only one purse made of leather, and only a few pairs of shoes containing leather as well!

To my surprise, I have failed to discuss in this blog the effects that a non-vegan lifestyle have on our planet, which was one of the main contributing factors to starting this "vegan thing" to begin with. While I won't get into the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for my post today, I hope to do so in the future.

Now for the topic of food today . . .

We started the day off with another healthy muffin made two nights ago. They were still really moist and were delicious warmed up with some vegan margarine.

For lunch I had more of the pink rice salad from my sister-in-law's house the other day. It was even better today than it was two days ago.

After the children went to their swimming lessons we each had a Taste of Nature bar. I had the Brazilian Nut Fiesta bar, which was both satisfying and delicious!

Dinner was veggie ground round tacos with a spinach salad and some pink rice again. I felt that while this meal was not extraordinary, it did feel like a typical weekday meal and therefore something that would be realistic for us to cook during the week. The reality is that I just can't be spending hours a day cooking food while raising three children.

I have some amazing news. Our Thanksgiving dinner is set for this Saturday and there will be approximately fourteen of us at our house, all eating a mostly vegan meal!

On the Eve of the Final Day

Last night I decided to convert a Company's Coming Carrot Spice Muffin recipe into a vegan friendly snack. The muffins were quite healthy so we had them for breakfast this morning. I've gotta say, I'm very impressed with the egg replacer I've been using - from my experiences I've found it works very well in baking.

Lunch was tomato-basil soup I pulled out of the freezer from four weeks ago. This time I made some croutons using some stale bread cubes I had in the pantry - they were perfect with the soup and were undoubtedly the reason I went back for a second helping.

Dinner was inspired by the harvest from my sister-in-law's place yesterday. I decided to cut up some of the beets, carrots, onions and potatoes and bake them in the oven, along with some canola oil, garlic and Dymond Lake Seasoning. By the way, if you're looking for some great non-vegan cookbooks (though I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make many of the recipes vegan friendly), check out the link I've attached to Dymond Lake Seasoning. The cookbooks are amazing and I happen to have all four of their main ones, which were given to my husband and I by one of the authors, Marie Woolsey, as a wedding gift.

The root veggies were served with leftover jasmine rice with stir fried celery and onions and some sprouted beans with grape tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil with rosemary and balsamic vinegar. The dinner was delicious!

Well, it's been 30 days since I started my blog and tomorrow is the final day of our 30 day vegan challenge. One thing I know for sure is that I feel like I have so much more to say about this lifestyle and have made the decision to carry on with this blog in some capacity after the challenge has ended. My final verdict on this "vegan thing" will be revealed in tomorrow's post, so please stay tuned!

Eating Locally

I love a carrot picked straight from the garden. The smell of it as you crack the top off takes me right back to my childhood and harvesting carrots and other produce with my mother. Growing up, I remember helping my mother plant seeds of varying fruits and veggies and then weeks later being sent to the garden to collect items to put into a salad or sometimes even a loaf. My mother made the best chocolate zucchini loaf. In my mind I can remember being a young child and the anticipation and excitement to taste a slice of the fresh loaf as I waited for it to cool slightly. I would slather it with salty butter and wait a minute for the butter to melt in. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Today I was a very lucky lady. I was invited over to my sister-in-law's house for lunch and to help her harvest some of her garden. Lunch was delicious. She made a rice salad with shredded beets, beans, corn, pecans, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper - sorry if I'm missing any ingredients. To accompany the salad she made an amazing pumpkin soup, which was perfect for an overcast autumn day. She also made some pumpkin buns which were not vegan and which I didn't have, but I know they must have been good because my daughter kept asking for more. She sent us home with some buns and rice salad for the next few days. I'm hoping there will be some buns left by the time I finish this challenge, should I decide to momentarily step off the vegan wagon and have one.

My sister-in-law and her family live on the outskirts of the city and have a massive garden, at least by city standards. We (mostly she) pulled up some potatoes, onions, beets and the most gorgeous carrots ever! She sent me home with lots of everything and for that I have nothing but gratitude. We've already tried some carrots and they are super!

We didn't end up with much of a garden this year for our family. The day I was going to plant my garden was the day that I had our youngest son, who came one week early, much to our surprise. So all we had this year for a garden were some tomatoes, which were really grown in pots. I love fresh tomatoes straight from the garden - they're so sweet and delicious and completely mouth watering. I still have a few little ones left and want to savour them because I know once they're gone, we won't have any as tasty for nearly a year!

Growing your own food, no matter how small the garden, is so fulfilling. I'm grateful to my sister-in-law for including me in her gardening experience today - it's made me even more excited to plant one of our own next year. I will use our garden as an opportunity to teach our children more about eating locally and hope to create some everlasting memories like my mother created with me.

Just so I can include a picture, let me talk about dinner this evening. We had leftovers - no surprise there! Warm wraps, just like yesterday, along with yam fries, the wonderful rice salad from lunch and a spinach salad I threw together!

It was a very colourful and satisfying meal!

Purging

This weekend was a great success. We spent a great deal of time getting rid of things around the house we are no longer using. We haven't done much of a purge since moving into our house this past December and let me tell you, it felt great!

We also managed to use up much of the food in our fridge that was been waiting to be eaten. While I still have to use up the eggplant, zucchini, cauliflower and some beets, we are well on our way to clearing out our fridge!

Today's breakfast was a hit with one and all. My husband decided to make breakfast wraps while he let me sleep in - a special thank you to my husband! The wraps included peanut butter, banana slices, apple slices and raisins. He also added a slight bit of maple syrup to sweeten it up, which I don't really think it needed, but it was good all the same.

Lunch included something we've never tried before - tempeh. We decided on the Coconut Curry flavour because we LOVE curry.

It just so happened that we also had some leftover stir fried veggies from Thursday's dinner that needed to be used up. We pan fried the tempeh and reheated the veggies and decided to put both together on, you guessed it, another wrap - we're trying to use them up before they expire on October 6th. This was a very satisfying warm wrap, filled with nothing but flavour and wonderful textures.

We were so busy re-organizing and purging items in our basement that we decided on a quick and convenient meal - a Tofurky Italian Sausage and Fire-Roasted Veggie Pizza with a spinach salad. I don't like packaged meals, especially on the weekend when I usually have more time to cook, but we decided that if we were going to make any headway on the basement we couldn't spend too long in the kitchen.

The pizza was surprisingly good, but I feel I could have made a better one had I had the time to put a dough together and fire-roast my own toppings. Before we started the vegan challenge we would frequently make pizza, often when I had some leftover items in the fridge that needed to be used up. We love pizza in our house and my daughter was excited to finally have one of her favourite meals again. If you can't find the time to put together your own pizza then I would recommend this one.

The meal also included a super friendly and nutritious salad put together by my husband. The salad included spinach, orange, shelled hemp seeds, radishes and grape tomatoes. The dressing was an olive oil, sun-dried tomato and balsamic vinaigrette. It was very refreshing!

 
I can't believe we have only three days left of our challenge. These past 27 days have gone by in a flash. We have some major dietary decisions to make for our family in the coming days. Now back to the basement!

Two Move in Another Direction . . .

Yesterday was another busy day but, then again, isn't every day a busy day with three children?

My husband, daughter and I started off with a toasted Silver Hills Herb and Garlic bagel with tomatoes and guacamole. Our son's school had a welcome back pancake breakfast so we decided to tell him he could have whatever he wanted to eat there. He chose one pancake, two sausages and some juice - he is officially done the "vegan thing" which my husband and I are both fine with.

We had some of our son's friends over during the lunch hour and so we kept it simple with some sandwiches. Clearly I must love sandwiches as we have them nearly every day it seems!

Our daughter ended her vegan challenge yesterday as well with a Kids Chocolate Milk at Starbucks. Again, this is fine as I honestly didn't expect either of them to stay on the vegan diet forever. Our daughter hasn't had any meat yet, but I will be a bit shocked if it's not in her near future.

Dinner was simple - rice with TruRoots Sprouted Bean Trio and pan fried onions, garlic, celery, peas, corn and spices (turmeric, curry powder, garlic powder, pepper and a bit of sea salt) - yummy and so refreshing!

I didn't bother to post last night as our youngest one was having a hard time getting to bed. I decided to take some time for myself and relax for a bit before heading to bed myself.

This morning's breakfast was toast with peanut and almond butters with fruit jam - simple, simple, simple! My toast was from a Pumpkin Seed Loaf while the children had toast from the Chia Flax Loaf, both from COBS Bread.

At lunch time we started with something new for us - Mochi.

We followed the recipe in Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. For those of you that have never tried Mochi before, it's almost as hard as a rock coming out of its packaging and then it becomes very gooey when it's cooked. We didn't have the brown rice syrup the recipe called for so we used maple syrup instead. It was all quite delicious and I would certainly recommend this recipe as a snack. The maple syrup made it quite rich and would have given me a stomach ache had I eaten any more.

To accompany our lunch we shared a bun and some Veggie Chili by Yves Veggie Cuisine that we had purchased from Costco earlier in the week. I was surprised by how good it was. Lunch was a hit with everyone in the family!

Dinner was received with less enthusiasm, even by us adults. We had some veggie burgers I pulled out of the freezer that I made last week along with sweet potato fries I cut up and put in the oven. I guess we weren't really in the mood for burgers today. The children both had some milk at dinner and gulped it down quickly, making sounds of relief as they did so! We cleansed our palettes with some delicious Pineapple Coconut Frozen Dessert by Coconut Bliss - it was a pina colada dream.  

Relief

I didn't get a chance to post last night as I wasn't feeling very well and thought it would be best for my body to go to bed. The children and I have been fighting a cold most of the week so we've all been a little bit miserable.

Today was an interesting one. I didn't have any breakfast this morning as I had an abdominal ultrasound I had scheduled and was required to fast for at least six hours. For those that are curious, because I know I would be, at my physical yesterday my doctor said that my spleen felt enlarged but she wanted to double check with an ultrasound. I'm relieved to say that my spleen is just fine - thank you God! I was starving by this point (it was already 11:15 am) so as soon as I left the ultrasound clinic I headed downstairs to the pharmacy and purchased a Key Lime Pie flavoured Larabar. That Larabar was FANTASTIC! I don't know whether it was the hunger or the relief that I didn't have splenomegaly (an enlarged spleen - I just had to use the correct term because it sounds so mysterious), perhaps both, but it completely satisfied me!

Let me tell you now that I have the most amazing friends in the world and I am grateful! Two of them looked after my two youngest today while I was at the appointment. When I returned they had made lunch for us - a delicious fresh veggie stir fry over a bed of rice. Thank you for everything you two - your love and support means more to me than you'll ever know!

I was so inspired by lunch and had some veggies and tofu to use up in the fridge, so I decided to make a stir fry for dinner as well. The stir fry I made was a little different in flavour as I used some alternate veggies and spices to flavour it (my secret ingredient for this stir fry was curry powder), but I loved it all the same. I tried out some brown jasmine rice I had bought the other day and thought it was surprisingly good. 

I love extra firm tofu pan-fried with a bit of salt and pepper on it. I think the key to having it as part of a stir fry meal is to keep it separate from the stir fry when you are cooking it. I always pan fry the tofu first and set it aside, then I cook the veggies. I add the tofu to the meal as a garnish, otherwise I find it loses it's crispiness! 

A Wonderful and Supportive Husband

I was asked by a friend last week why vegans can't eat regular margarine. The answer, as I've discovered by reading the labels of various margarine containers, is that regular margarine contains whey (the liquid that remains after milk has been curdled and strained). There may well be other ingredients that are not vegan friendly but as soon as I saw whey on the ingredients list, I put the margarine down. While I'm on the topic of vegan margarine I have to stress that I am continuing to love the Becel Vegan margarine and would definitely recommend it.

My husband is so helpful in the mornings. Thanks to him all of us were fed before we walked out the door today. I had another toasted tomato sandwich, but this time it included guacamole. I usually make my own guacamole but when we were at Costco the other day my husband picked some up. The brand we tried this time was called Wholly Guacamole. It's amazing and I especially appreciate that every box contains four separate compartments. I'm not normally into extra packaging but this is one instance where it makes sense because guacamole is far less attractive to eat when it has turned dark green/grey from sitting in an over-sized container for too long. 

Lunch was another wrap that my daughter and I shared. It had the last of our tandoori hummus that I made using Victorian Epicure seasoning, spinach, yellow peppers, orange peppers and tomatoes from the garden.

We also decided to try some Amy's Organic Lentil soup. I have to say that right now I'm feeling like a hypocrite as just a few days ago I mentioned in a post that I don't typically like using canned items. While this is still the truth, it must be declared that our soup was pretty darn good!

Tonight we had leftover enchiladas and green rice for dinner. The green rice this evening was hot from the jalapeno peppers. I didn't use any more peppers than I normally do but these ones were super-spicy!

I'd like to close today's post by thanking my husband. He has been so incredibly supportive through this journey and very committed to the challenge. While he is always 110% committed to something once he takes it on, I have been both impressed and touched by his enthusiasm during this entire process. Thank you, my love.