Food portions is a very important topic when it comes to calories and wellness. Our food portions have reduced significantly since becoming Vegans. We have really noticed the change of portions to the whole food plant based lifestyle that came naturally and without force. The better we eat the less we eat it was just a natural turnaround. Our plates have become smaller and we use bowls more. We just love the smaller portions the less washing up and the amazing energy we get from our good food.
My daughter works in a retail store and look what her manager gave her for Christmas. She was thrilled with the consideration of the items as she is at 16 a Vegan and very disciplined. What an amazing thought gift to a teenager from her boss. I had to share. She felt her manager listens and learns about her. The gift was thought out and respectful. Anyone can give anything however this was a well thought out gift that really empowered my daughter to know that she is valued at her work. She is the youngest on the team so this was awesome and she contributed to our cupboards right away. Really nice eh!
Thanks David for sending me this great idea for a Vegan Tree to make any table an interesting one. How cool is that eh!
Made with love at Cafe for Contemporary Arts, North Vancouver. Photo by Suzanne
Yesterday my daughter took me for a beautiful coffee date. This is the designs made with creamy almond milk poured beautifully into organic fair trade coffee. This was an awesome coffee date and one of the better coffees that I have had in a long time – filled with love. Cafe of Contemporary Arts in North Vancouver. They offer good vegan food and an interesting interior complete with paper for drawing upon should you feel the urge plus wi-fi and awesome location.
Photos by Suzanne
Recipe, Design and Photo by Suzanne
This is an amazing delicious dessert perfect for cold winter nights after dinner. In this recipe I put everything into a beautiful earthen bowl and warmed in the oven. To the bowl I put chunks of vegan chocolate cake and broken pieces of vegan muffins in the bowl. I added chopped figs, slivered almonds, crushed walnuts, coconut flakes, chia seeds, dark chocolate pieces, goji berry, a dab of coconut oil. I mixed together Almond Coconut Milk with a dash of Vanilla Almond Milk and I mixed in some Cacao then poured it over the cake seeds mixture and popped into a warm / hot oven to heat up and slightly bake. Careful when removing from the oven as the bowls will be hot to touch. Top with freshly chopped fig and serve hot to warm. Oh man this was goooooooooooood. The chocolate pieces melted into the cakes and milk – so decadent. Delicious. Some variations / alternatives could be: you could use Coconut Milk from tin or Coconut Cream; perhaps a cap of liquor (not for the kids though) that you enjoy dripped on top. Knock it out of the park with anything you want to add and wow your family and friends with an incredible heart warming dessert or treat.
Recipe, Design and Photo by Suzanne
Its getting cold around here and soups come back onto the menu for warm comfy food to warm the body from the inside. This soup was born of a previous Potato Leek Soup. I made the broth from a base of the Potato Leek Soup and dropped into the saucepan chunks of onions, a variety of dried beans, legumes, quinoa, celery coarsely chopped, baby tomato’s chopped added some water stirred and tempted into a slow easy bubbling broth with all the yummy fillings. Stir in a Tbsp. Miso and give the broth a shot of red wine to flavor. Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble. Leave it alone apart from a few loving stirs with a wooden spoon.
When ready – serve piping hot in a beautiful bowl top with Nutritional Yeast and lots of freshly chopping quality garlic. I added some freshly chopped shallots to this one too Serve in a warm bowl is a very nice added feature – there is nothing worse than serving soup in a cold bowl – that’s a pet peeve of mine. I always pop the bowls on the stove as the soup is building it start warming of them.
We all said ” it’s so D-Licious”. So D-Licious is my name for this soup. No two soups taste alike this is important and why I like to make soups from scratch or bend recipes.
Have fun play with your recipe and make your soup with attention and love in mind – I believe the soup is a reflection of the maker. A little goes a long way.
Serve with some corn chips or really good bread toasted.
Make a big pot and perhaps freeze some for a later time like when you arrive home from a tropical holiday have some that you can quickly pull out from the fridge – ah we’re home!
I saw this article on Linked In today from Michael Edwards CEO Organic Lifestyle Magazine “For those of you who are raw foodies or are trying to incorporate more raw foods into your lives, Thanksgiving can be a tough holiday to endure. ”
Posted on November 20th, 2012, by ameliawood in Blog, Recipes.
Raw Pumpkin Pie Recipe
In my ten years of eating raw, I can tell you from firsthand experience that desserts are the most difficult raw dishes to prepare. Through a miserable number of trials and errors over the years, I’ve got many raw desserts like cheesecake, brownies, cherry sorbet, and coconut macaroons down to an artful science. Pumpkin pie, on the other hand, was always a challenge for me. In the times I attempted to prepare this gourd pie, it always came out tasting bland, dry, and unappealing. It wasn’t until my close friend, who is also a raw foodie, recommended I try her recipe that I finally made some headway with my homemade raw pumpkin pie.
One of the common misconceptions about raw desserts is that they don’t taste good. On the contrary, cooking raw is delicious. All you have to do is use high-quality ingredients, stick to the accurate measurements, and taste as you go. If something doesn’t taste quite right, trust your gut and tweak it. If you think your dessert needs an additional ingredient, go ahead and add it! Like an artist’s painting, raw food desserts are supposed to be unique to each artisan.
For those of you who are raw foodies or are trying to incorporate more raw foods into your lives, Thanksgiving can be a tough holiday to endure. Everything from the savory turkey, warm yeast rolls, and sweet pecan pie can derail all your efforts to eat raw. With this delicious raw pumpkin pie recipe, however, you’ll be all set for your Thanksgiving dessert. Not only is it filling, it’s insanely delish! Try this pumpkin pie out during the holiday or any ol’ time you have a craving for this classic dessert.
Raw Pie Crust
2 ½ cups pecan flour
¾ cup coconut oil, cold
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Okay let’s start with the crust! Start by placing the flour, salt, and sugar in an electric mixer bowl and mix on high for 30 seconds. Next, add the coconut oil and mix until the crust forms a solid, cohesive mixture. Don’t worry if you see a few crumbles though. If necessary, add a little more oil or water to solidify the crust.
Dust a clean surface with a pinch of flour and place the crust on the dusted surface. Using your hands, knead the crust into two flat ball shapes, (keep in mind: this pie makes enough for two crusts) wrap in plastic wrap, and place them freezer until you’ll ready to use them. When you’re putting your pie together, pull out one of the crusts, and using a rolling pin, flatten it out into the shape of a large circle (aka pie crust). Have flour on hand to prevent the crust from sticking to the surface. Gently lift the crust and place it in the pie pan. Press the crust until it adheres to the pan.
Pumpkin Pie Filling
3 cups shredded pumpkin
1 cup cashews, soaked for four hours, drained, and then mashed
¼ cup almond milk
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
2 tablespoons molasses
3 teaspoons vanilla bean extract
1 teaspoon coconut oil
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
pinch cloves
Combine all the ingredients in an electric mixing bowl. Mix for 3 minutes on high speed. Spread into one of the prepared pie crusts. Refrigerate for at least three hours. Eat and enjoy!
Eating raw is not easy during the holidays, but the health benefits of doing so are definitely worthwhile.
We flew to Hawaii on Alaska Airlines and we noted last time that they offer a Vegan/Vegetarian Pack which is pretty good and includes these yummy olives, hummus pack, corn chips, dark chocolate piece in a 100% recycled cardboard box pack. For a short flight this works well and costs $6 paid by CC (no cash). NOTE: Alaska Airlines does separate waste in flight for recycling and I found out they gathered enough last year for 3 more jets or plenty of upgrades which they appear to be always doing – so that’s kinda cool and a two thumbs up for their initiatives in this area.
Ruffage Natural Foods in Waikiki area offers good options for Vegans/Vegetarians – here is the Acai Banana Bowl we had for breakfast with Acai, Blueberries, Banana and Granola – we took out the honey but that is usually on this item. Cost $6.99 for small (picture shows the small) and $8.99 for large and could share.
Pictured above is the Super Antioxidant Smoothy which was Banana, Papaya, Acai, Goji, Pomegranate, Noni and Mangosteen. It’s pretty good. We also had the Organic Peanut Butter with Banana Smoothy which is excellent for a good protein starter of the day. Cost $5.99 and could share.
Tofu Scrambler with Toast from Ruffage which had Earth Balance Butter. Note the toast is nothing special no grains just a plain brown bread but it did the trick and we don’t eat much bread so that was different and wished they offered better bread but hey travel as Vegan is often an interesting challenge. Cost $8.99 and could share.
Ruffage sells the Kombucha Drinks with a good selection – I tried this one for the first time the Grape and Chia Kombucha – its AWESOME!
Ruffage Natural Foods offers what the Vegan / Vegetarian traveler wants. You can expect the food to be pretty good for the most part however the customer service experience is lacking from the owner and her staff. Don’t expect a big smile and warm welcome with conversation. To be honest we have been there enough to know that we only only certain items and have low expectations from a customer service experience. They offer a health food store style with vitamins and bags of nuts, chips, assortment of drinks, chocolates, etc. This not exclusive Vegan so know that animal products are on the menu which could pose a challenge to some.
I recommend the Smoothies, The Tofu Scramble, The Veggie Burrito and that’s about it.
All in all Hawaii can be difficult if you want more than fruit and basic salads for Vegan travelers so you do have to make some efforts to look around and ask questions (the shops offering smoothies or acai bowls are made with yogurts so DO ASK QUESTIONS) or go to the supermarket which we do and get some items that suit you. Restaurants are big on seafood and meats. Perhaps changes are slowly coming so look for it, ask for it and give feedback for it.
We didn’t starve nor did we spend alot of cash on food. We were wanting to eat well on a budget and we did with some effort and work it was all good and of course mainly we were there for beach sun fun and the food was secondary but still important.
Always have fun and make the experience a good one.
All photos by Suzanne expect for the image below which is a postcard I found.
Vegan Nacho’s – Recipe, Design and Photo by Suzanne
Ok, everyone loves Nacho’s. Vegan Nacho’s are so easy to make everyone loves them. Here is my very easy and ever so yummy Vegan Nachos.
Turn oven on to bake or broil at 400 degrees. Take some really good quality tortilla chips pop them into a pan or bowl that is oven safe.
Cover tortilla chips with vegan cheese of choice, in my case we use Daiya Cheese and its delicious melts beautifully and a serious winner on the vegan cheese front.
Melting the cheese means watching the oven as this will burn easily so STAND BY THE OVEN AND CHECK OR PUT TIMER ON FOR SMALL 5 MINUTE INTERVALS but please DON’T WALK AWAY FROM THIS.
Daiya Cheese can be frozen so if we see it on sale we buy it freeze it for such moments as friends popping in or hungry kids after school. This is a great item to have on hand in your vegan kitchen.
Once melted to my hearts content I will usually add some sprinkles of nutritional yeast and some fresh salsa plus avocado to make fresh yummy treat that wins hearts makes friends perfect treat for kids great for parties.
You can add finely chopped green onions or beans of course. Make the experience fun and the outcome delicious with this easy to Vegan Nacho idea.
You can make big plates of this filled with beans, avocado, tortilla and cheese or small individual ones – flexible recipe is a good recipe.
Takes 5 minutes to prepare, 10 to melt, 5 to eat, 1 to say “hmmmmmmmmm”, 6 to say “is there more” 🙂 and off you go again 🙂
Always – have fun and make it a great day.
Everybody say “Vegan Nachos” 🙂
So You Want To Be A Vegan 