May 7th

It’s been one full week since I’ve started and I’m happy to say that I feel great and I haven’t felt like I’m missing anything once. All the food I’ve been eating has been so delicious that even when I’m around other people who aren’t eating vegan, I don’t feel like picking off their plates. Well, maybe just when it comes to chocolate. But there are all sorts of chocolately vegan desserts and vegan chocolate chips, so I’m not so much feeling deprived as missing the convenience of just grabbing it. But it also makes you stop and think about whether you really even want to eat it at all. So that’s good, I guess?
Today we were celebrating my cousin Meggie’s birthday and my uncle Tim’s birthday. Meggie chose kebabs on the barbeque for dinner. We made skewers of zucchini and cherry tomatoes and two different types of onions and four colours of bell peppers and mushrooms and even sweet potato that we parboiled first. Doesn’t the picture of all those skewers look delicious? Looking at it makes me want to eat it all over again! The rest of my family also ate meat skewers but they were kept separate from the veggies on purpose to make it easier for me, and to accommodate different cooking times. No one wants raw meat on their vegetables. Unfortunately, they got a little charred but it wasn’t anyone’s fault – it was the first time using a new barbeque and also everyone was helping dismantling a deck … all hands on deck, literally. I also made a vegan deli-style macaroni salad and a home-made black bean burger topped with all sorts of yummy vegetables. My grams even made me a small foil packet of her famous potatoes and carrots on the barbeque, veganized. She just used Earth Balance Butter in mine!

Deli-Style Macaroni Salad:
3 cups cooked pasta (I used organic vegetable based pasta – very yum)
1/2 cup diced assorted vegetables (I used red and green bell pepper and celery)
¼ cup Vegenaise
1/8 cup white vinegar
1/4 tbsp. sugar
Salt and pepper

After cooking the pasta, keep it in the fridge to get cold. Combine the vegenaise, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. Pour over the bowl of pasta, add the vegetables and stir. Refrigerate until ready. Very easy and very authentic.

And for dessert, a masterpiece! Lemon Coconut cupcakes! They were such a huge hit. The decorations on them aren’t vegan so I kept a couple un-decorated for myself but I had fun making the others all pretty for Meggie. She loved them! If you haven’t tried a vegan recipe yet, but are thinking about it, this is definitely one to try! So scrumpcious.

Lemon-Coconut Cupcakes:
1 2/3 cups sugar (I used evaporated cane juice)
2/3 cup oil
1 3/4 cup coconut milk
¼ cup non-dairy milk (I used vanilla soy and decreased the sugar a bit since the milk is sweetened)
¼ fresh lemon juice
The zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp vanilla (Feel free to add more if you’re not using flavoured soymilk)
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 ½ cups shredded coconut (I used unsweetened)

Preheat the oven to 350. Combine the sugar, oil, milks, lemon juice, zest and vanilla in a bowl. Stir. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in another bowl. Add the dry to the wet ingredients in batches. Mix well between each addition. Fold in the coconut. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool before decorating, but they are delicious out of the oven sans icing too.

Happy birthday Meggie and Tim!