BVCE (Best Vegan Christmas Ever) Dinner

We hosted Christmas dinner again this year and since there were only 6 of us we did it on a smaller scale.  I was the only vegan and my wonderful step-MIL, Maris, went out of her way to help out and make her dishes vegan too!  Bryn decided to made his wonderful Roasted Goose for the omnivores, since there was no need for a giant turkey.  Amazingly everything was vegan except for the goose!

The menu: Roasted Goose stuffed with oranges and lemons, Festive Chickpea Tart, Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes, Baked Apple Stuffing, Miso Gravy, Whipped Potatoes, Broccoli, Carrots, Cranberry Sauce. 
Dessert: Ginger Cookies, Fruit, Chocolate Pumpkin Pie with Macadamia Maple Butter Cream.

I made some appies on Christmas Eve...

Walnut, White Bean & Spinach Phyllo Rolls 

(from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan)

Photo By Bryn

Photo by Bryn

photo by Bryn

Then I made the Festive Chickpea Tart (from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan Blog)

photo by Bryn

Photo by Bryn

The end result, delicious!

photo by Bryn

OK, I had to add at least add one picture of the goose.  Bryn did such a great job, as usual.

photo by Bryn

The table is almost ready...

Nom nom, My Vegan Holiday Feast! 

photo by Bryn

photo by Bryn

Sparkled Ginger Cookies

photo by Bryn

(from Vegan with a Vengeance)












Chocolate Pumpkin Pie
(from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan)

photo by Bryn

 Chocolate Pumpkin Pie with Macadamia Maple Butter Cream (both from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan).  I really wish you could taste this!

photo by Bryn

I hope you all enjoyed your festive holiday meal as much as I did!  I know I'm looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow!

White Bean Hummus

I was never a big fan of hummus, this is until I made it myself.  Prior to my epiphany I never understood what the all the fuss was about.  I loved all the ingredients that went into hummus: garlic, lemon, chickpeas and olive oil...but for some reason it just never tasted any good.  If I remember correctly most of the hummus I tried was probably store bought but even the odd homemade batch did nothing for me.  It didn't make any sense to me so one day I decided to try making my own.  I found a few recipes and from these made some adjustments according to my person preferences and came up with my hummus recipe.  This is when I fell in love with hummus and understood the attraction, I had been missing out!  I found out I prefer my hummus less garlicky and more lemony and now that I know, I can make it this way.

Once I had discovered a passion for hummus there really was no need to mess with perfection but I couldn't resist and I ask you, why can't there be room in one's heart for another hummus?  I remember two summers ago when Bryn and I went out for dinner on our anniversary we had a number of different tapas as an appetizer and one of them was a white bean hummus, it was amazing!  In one of my new cookbooks Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, Dreena Burton has a whole section dedicated to hummus and one of them happens to be for white bean hummus.  It was fate.  And I now have a second hummus love.  Dare I expand my hummus love even further with the black bean hummus?  (you bet I will)

White Bean Hummus with Fresh Thyme & Basil

*photo by Bryn*

If you're interested in trying it yourself, you can find the recipe here on Dreena's blog.

First Batch of Vegan Cookies

Since omitting sugar from my diet back in September I haven't been baking at all.  With the holidays fast approaching I have decided I would make an exception and bake my way through the holidays with some yummy treats.  I have always baked Christmas treats and some years up to 10 different things.  This year I will be doing it smaller scale and everything will be vegan!  I'm excited.  Last Sunday was my first attempt at vegan baking and I decided to go with a favourite standby of Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I used Isa Moskowitz's recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance.

Bryn got a new camera for Christmas, which means my blog pictures just got a lot better because he's insisting on taking all the pics...YAY!

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies *photo by Bryn*

The cookies turned out great, the texture was perfectly chewy and I like them very much...there was just one flaw and it was completely my fault, the recipe called for 2.5 cups of all purpose flour and me being the healthifying nut that I am HAD to substitute 1 cup of the flour with spelt flour.  It wasn't a huge mistake, I had to add 2 tbsp of almond milk because the dough was too dry to hold together but the spelt flour took over and it wasn't all purpose spelt flour so it was a bit grainy.  Kaden wouldn't eat them even though they were loaded with tons of choco chips.   

Mental note for all future vegan baking endeavors:  

DO NOT HEALTHIFY INDULGENT BAKING TREATS!!!

Indulgent baking treats are meant to be just that, indulgent.  Just because they are vegan doesn't necessarily mean they are automatically healthy.  I want them to be sugary and "unhealthy" tasting.  That's why I'm making them to enjoy and indulge.  Alright, my commitment to delicious, not necessarily nutritious vegan baking has been made.  Enjoy the sweet feast for your eyes.

The Year of Cookbooks

I can barely contain my excitement!  I have the best "Mother Christmas" in my life and every year she pretty much gives me exactly what I have on my wishlist for Christmas.  Maris, my step mother in law, does everything in her power to spoil me and my family on Christmas, she is the best.  This year I asked for cookbooks and she had me order them online to make life easy.  I spent about 2 days perusing Chapters website, Amazon.com and various blogs to narrow down my selection, which I had to whittle down from about 20 books.  It was an overwhelming process and I hope I did ok, some I chose on intuition, some on rave reviews and others because I follow their blog.

Here's the list:

Eat, Drink & be Vegan by Dreena Burton.
I believe this is Dreena's 3rd vegan cookbook and she has a 4th one coming out soon.  She lives in the lower mainland and is very active in the online community, I have been following her blog for a while as well I am facebook "friends" with her.  She has a very approachable persona and I can't wait to try the cookbook, it's been at the top of my list ever since I came across it.

Get It Ripe by Jai Steele
Another Canadian Chick, if I remember correctly she resides in Toronto.  Her book also received great reviews.  She is a RHN and uses that to her advantage in the cookbook.  I have been to her website and blog but don't follow it.  I'm hoping to sign up for the RHN course in September so I was interested to see the cookbook of someone who is one and possibly how the training has influenced her lifestyle.

The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen
Tal Ronnen is a professionally trained chef who used his training to create delicious meatless dishes.  This cookbook is for rich and fatty cooking, not healthy!  I bought is specifically for this purpose, as a foodie I do enjoy a decadent meal once in a while and I'm prepared to put the work into it as long as the results deliver.

The Urban Vegan by Dynise Belcavage
This one I went out on a limb.  As the full title suggests, The Urban Vegan: 250 Simple, Sumptuous Recipes From Streetcar Favourites to Haute Cuisine, I feel like I can't go wrong as it's got 250 recipes.  I did check out her blog and some of the recipes looked good and she also has another cookbook deal in the works to come out next year.

Vegan Yum Yum by Lauren Ulm
This young lady is quite impressive, you gotta admit.  She's been on Martha Stewart, I've seen the clip but I have to say that I wasn't impressed with Martha's inattentive attitude toward Lolo (as she nicknames herself) regardless I thought Lolo did a great job in her 3 min spot to portray her "knitted marzipan".  Her cookbook received some conflicting reviews and it seems like she may or may not have a bad reputation in the vegan cookbook author's community.  Irregardless after reading the table of contents I was ready to order the book.  Fingers crossed!

100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek
This in another "went out on a limb" book.  I'm a sucker for great photographs of sugary treats, what can I say I'm a sugar addict through and through.  The book also got better reviews then The Joy of Vegan Baking so we'll see.

Kids Can Cook: Vegetarian Recipes
There aren't that many kids vegetarian cookbooks out there so it wasn't hard to decide which one.

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (not a cookbook)
This one is a National Bestseller and it just looks like an interesting read.  I like that it's called "part memoir, part investigative report".  Memoirs are one of my favourite genres to read!

And that's all she wrote!  Now you can see why I'm so excited, I don't think I've ever gotten so many books at one time, other then school books.  I am so grateful and my tummy will be grateful too.

Vegetarian Challenge Interview

 I interviewed Bryn about his experiences during his 7-Day Vegetarian Challenge.  I found some of his answers very interesting and some surprising.  What surprised me the most was when he posted about it on facebook the response from his "friends" was overwhelmingly unsupportive of his efforts, even our family took joy in undermining him.  Bryn is amazing, he is like a rock that can only be eroded by my love! :)

YF: Is this the first time you've tried a vegetarian diet for any length of time?  If not, when and for how long.
BW: Honestly I don't think I've ever gone more than a day without eating meat.  It was a staple of my lunch/dinners growing up and I've never really thought about going veggie before.

YF: Why did you agree to do the 7-day veg challenge?
BW: I thought it would be an interesting challenge, and I wanted to see if I felt different/better after not eating meat for a week.

YF: What were you hoping to get out of the challenge?
BW: I was hoping that I wouldn't miss meat one bit and I would be able to join my wife full time on a vegetarian diet.  Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way.

YF: Did you notice any changes in you body, mood, appetite or?  If any, can you please explain.
BW: I found I was hungrier than normal, and I ended up eating more food than I usually would.  I did feel good on the diet, not a huge change from my "normal", except for the gas.

YF: Now having gone 7 days without meat, what are your thoughts or reflections on the experience?
BW: I'm glad I did it.  It was an interesting change for me, I gained a new respect for people who choose not to eat meat products and I also saw that many people view vegetarians with a certain amount of cynicism, I didn't expect that.

YF: Has this experience changed your views on vegetarianism or how society heavily relies on meat and meat by-products in their everyday living?
BW: Like I said above, I was amazed by the number of people that took pot-shots at my challenge and made derogatory comments about the vegetarian lifestyle.  I think that society should change the way we treat our animals, not necessarily stop eating meat.

YF: After having completed the 7-Day Challenge is there anything you would've done differently?
BW: I would have tried to have more variety of vegetarian dishes, I really enjoyed all the different beans, but maybe some raw food meals or some different cultural dishes (Indian, Thai, etc) would have been a better variety.

YF: Would you consider a 30-Day Vegetarian Challenge?
BW: I would have to take some time to consider that, 30 days is a long time.

YF: Would you consider a 7-Day or 30-Day Vegan Challenge?
BF: Yes I would consider a vegan challenge, perhaps in the summer?

YF: Would you consider a 30-Day Pop-less Challenge?
BW: No, never. Shut your mouth.

YF: Would you ever consider permanently becoming Vegetarian?
BW: No.  I enjoy meat too much to give it up. I'm willing to become more moderate in my meat-consumption but I don't think I'm ready to give it up all together.

YF: What is your favorite vegetarian meal?
BW: The vegetarian Ceasar salad with tofu was good.  I also really liked the baked beans.

YF: If you could choose any super power what would it be? Why?
BW: I would want to be able to fly.  No traffic, no airline fees, total freedom.

YF: What's your favorite song (right now)?
BW: Good Evening by Outasight

YF: What does BCE mean? And please explain.
BW: BCE stands for "Best Christmas Ever".  It's just a mantra that I've been using to try and build excitement for the holidays.  This summer we kept calling it the "Best Summer Ever", and it WAS.  So I was hoping that the same logic would apply to Christmas.  I've also been working really hard on a gift for my wife over the last few months and I was so excited about giving it to her that I let the cat out of the bag a little early.  I really wish I had waited to surprise her, because her expectations are so high now that it is going to pale in comparison to what she is expecting.  It's nothing fancy or extravagant, but it is from my heart and I hope she appreciates it even if it doesn't meet her expectations.  As a family we've had some trials and tribulations over the last year, and I just wanted to make our holidays fun, stress-free and memorable.

I hope you enjoyed Bryn's answers and perhaps find inspiration to make changes in your own kitchen.  Above all, be kind.  Thank you very much to Bryn for taking the time for my interview and I can't wait till our next challenge!

Now that the challenge is over...

For some reason last week seemed to be a really busy week for us and I felt that I didn't get the chance to elaborate on Bryn's 7-Day Vegetarian Challenge.  So I thought I would do a retrospective.

I believe it's easy to switch from a meat eater to a vegetarian cold turkey then it is from meat eater to vegan.  There is a big difference between vegetarian and vegan diets.  Vegans don't eat any flesh meat as well they omit all dairy products and eggs, strict vegans will also refrain from wearing or using leather products.  Vegetarians for the most part abstain from eating flesh meat, however I've heard that some still consider eating chicken and fish a vegetarian diet, I happen to disagree.  In the vegetarian philosophy meat industry by-products are still acceptable to consume because the animals don't have to be slaughtered for their milk or eggs.  Since starting my journey back in September I have slowly made the transition to vegan and through my experiences I have made the conclusion it's better and easier to ease into the vegan diet rather than trying cold turkey.  As for Bryn's challenge, we opted for the vegetarian diet, he likes his lattes and his high protein breakfasts!  He omitted all flesh meat and we substituted with beans, tofu and soy products.

Here's what a typical day looked like before:
Breakfast: Latte, 2 eggs, 6 chicken sausages.
Lunch: Chef's Salad
Dinner: Tossed salad, stir fried veggies, chicken breast

Typical Vegetarian day:
Breakfast: Latte, 2 eggs, 2 slices Yves vegan bacon, 1/2 cup vegan baked beans.
Lunch: Tossed Salad, 1 cup vegan baked beans or chili, 1/2 cup hummus and veggie sticks
Dinner: Tossed Salad, stir fried veggies, more beans and marinated grilled tofu.

I think the changes were really subtle and it made it easier that I had already gone through my own transition and with my experiences I could make dishes that I knew he would enjoy eating.  As I said before I'm really proud of him and I've gained a new respect for him too!  I hope our experience will challenge you and your family to try your own Vegetarian Challenge!  You can make up your own, maybe you go for a week or maybe 30-Days!  Or try 1 day a week for 3 months!  There are no rules or limits!  I guess there's one rule, you must have fun with it, oh, and send me your favourite recipes ;)

Bryn's 7-Day Vegetarian Challenge

Today marks the end of Bryn's 7-Day Vegetarian Challenge.  I am very proud of him for sticking to it.  I didn't have any doubt that he would finish.  He's a stick-to-it kind of guy and if he puts his mind to it, it shall be done!  Bryn had a great attitude going into the challenge and I believe that had a lot to do with it, mentally he was ready.  I was more worried about him physically not being able to function without the meat protein but the vegetarian diet proved itself again.  He's always eaten a lot of veggies throughout the day but breakfast was a concern which is 100% meat protein.  All of the food I prepared for him was vegan which means not only do they not contain flesh meat but they also don't contain any meat by-products (eggs, dairy, cheese, etc) but he was following a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet which means he ate eggs and dairy products.  This was very important for his breakfast meal so he could continue having eggs and I got him some fake bacon.  He started the challenge last Monday, Nov 29th.  I got a head start on Saturday to get the dry beans ready to make them into meals on Sunday.  By Saturday night I had a four different beans cooked and ready to be made into yumminess.

Beans, beans and more beans!

All the dishes I made were requested specifically by Bryn and they were hummus, baked beans and chili.

Here's the hummus, easy to make and so delicious.  We eat it with raw veggies but you can add it to sammiches or use pita bread or crackers to dip into it.

Hummus and chickpeas.

The baked beans are a huge hit with Bryn!  He ate them with his breakfast, eggs, baked beans and fake bacon!  Sounds good doesn't it...well, I know fake bacon doesn't sound to appetizing but he liked it.


Here are some pictures of the Baked Beans, I took pics before during and after cooking because I think it looks really cool lol.

This is the before, altho there is some pre-cooking.

This is after about 1 hour of baking.

This is after 2 hours, you can see it's boiling!

This is the after picture, 3.5 hours later!  Nom-nom!

I got busy and didn't get the chance to take pics of the chili but I assure you it was delicious too, I used both the black beans and kidney beans shown in the beans pic for the chili.


I would like to thank Bryn for doing the 7-Day vegetarian challenge.  I never dreamed it would be such a positive experience and I hope this little game has had a long term effect on you.  I'm not saying that I think you have to become a non-meat eater full time but it's nice to know that you could if you chose to.  Eating consciously and making a conscious decision to eat less meat is all that I ask.