A Feast with Non-Vegans

It has been an incredibly busy weekend! I started Saturday morning at my Mom's house because the children and I had a sleep over there on Friday night - my husband was out of town on business and my Mom was going to look after the children while I attended a meeting on Saturday morning in preparation for my youngest son's Baptism. The children had fruit and cereal with almond milk while I had toast with peanut butter.

For lunch yesterday I had Green Rice and some left over Sweet Corn Salsa and jalapeno tortilla chips. The children were not interested in eating Green Rice for a third day in a row, so my Mom made them some pasta with a veggie tomato sauce. We ate at lightening speed so we could get to the airport as fast as we could to pick up my husband. We spent the remainder of the afternoon shopping for groceries to prepare a lunch menu for after our son's Baptism today.

Planning a menu can be challenging when cooking for a larger group and trying to take into account people's taste preferences - especially children. We were fortunate to have an easy-going crowd to plan for! I knew that I had wanted to make soup and sandwiches, an amazing vegan chocolate cake that a friend had introduced me to and veggies and hummus. We shopped at Superstore and chose items we were most likely to use.

I need to pause here and tell everyone about some of the amazing deals we got in the "health food aisle" at Superstore. For whatever reason, whether it's discontinued products or the store trying to stimulate purchasing, I often find items at 50% off in this section. (Hint: look for the bright pink triangular sticker indicating a product is reduced for quick sale). We picked up some silken tofu, Organic Vegetable Bouillon Cubes by GoBio (I love these and used them long before we started our vegan challenge) and even some vegan "Butter Chicken".

For dinner last night I was inspired by the "Butter Chicken" and decided to add tofu, broccoli, zucchini and tomatoes to the sauce. I made the sauce creamier by adding the Tofutti Sour Cream . . . YES - I've finally found a use for the sour cream! I served the "Butter Chicken" with basmati rice and some beautiful spinach naan by Indian Life. It was a delicious meal and took very little time to prepare!

Last night we finally decided on a menu for today's lunch and slaved away in the kitchen until almost 2 am to prepare all the food.

I could go on and on and on about our process and how everything tasted and how much the non-vegans did or didn't enjoy the meal, but I'm going to keep it simple and to the point so people will actually want to read this posting and so I can go to bed!

We served veggies with two types of hummus - a spinach hummus and a tandoori hummus; sandwiches with Vegenaise, chipotle hummus, avocado, tomatoes and spinach; Roasted Butternut Squash soup with ancho chiles, orange zest and pumpkin seeds from Rebar; and my personal favourite of the day (though the soup comes awfully close) "The BEST chocolate cake ever . . . that happens to be VEGAN. I kid you not!" Please check out the recipe at http://www.instructables.com/id/The-BEST-chococlate-cake-ever...that-happens-to-be/ I can promise you that you won't regret it! Keep in mind that to truly make it vegan you will have to use a natural sweetener, an unsweetened vanilla and a vegan friendly margarine! To add to the feast, my Mother brought a fruit tray and the godparents of our newly-baptized son brought home-made salsa (it was so yummy and vegan friendly) with tortilla chips.

I think the food went well today and hope that all the non-vegans enjoyed the variety of foods and more importantly, the flavour! I'm sad to say that in the mayhem of the lunch hour and trying to get everyone fed, including a baby, I forgot to photograph any of the food from today!