Behind the scenes in the past 6 months…

Behind the scenes in the past 6 months…

I have recently got some comments and thought that I was looooooong overdue for a posting, since it has been 6 months since my last posting.  I started his blog at the end of 2010 hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by our little princess is now a full blown toddler what a blast she is nonstop bundle of joy literally!!  My lack of posting had nothing to do w lack of creations in the kitchen I have continually been creating new eats I have been typing up my recipes but they just haven't made it from ‘my documents’ to here... as well as I like to repeat a recipe before posting it and sometimes I get in a spiral of constant new creations without repeating the same ones… so here is to tweaking, refining and posting.

When I started this blog I was brand new to the blog scene and newly back to work after maternity leave (what a time to take on a new venture), I didn’t know what my plan was all I knew was that I developed this absolute passion for vegan cooking and the utmost appreciation of wholesome foods that I want to serve to my family… the more I cook and create the more I want to cook and create... Over the past 6 months there have been countless new creations in the kitchen my husband quite often comes home to a very busy kitchen.  One of the fun things that we have started doing is creating a “monthly” theme in the kitchen Oct 2011 was all about sugar awareness we scrutinized the labels on everything (of course we always have) but when you are looking specifically for one ingredient and you find it in everything it is no wonder children of today have such a sweet tooth… not to mention obesity and diabetes.  Some of the most surprising items w hidden sugar veggie stock, salad dressings and pickles oh my... No wonder I spend my life in the kitchen striving to make everything from simple wholesome ingredients time to put on another batch of veggie stock (next year I atta can some of my own and jar it) the more you learn the more you want to learn.  Cereals are another hidden source of white refined sugar, liquid cane juice, organic liquid cane juice, evaporated cane juice however you want to state it, it is still SUGAR (which may have even been refined with bone char)! Virtually every cereal has sugar in it my quest to source a sugar free cereal does it exist? So on this sugar "high" I decided to check out the grams on some of the popular snacks parents tell me they feed to their toddlers absolutely astonishing would you give your child a snack that contained sugar and corn syrup as first to ingredients yikes – talk about predisposed to obesity and diabetes not to mention unhealthy eating habits!! I can't say I'm surprised rather reassured that making everything from scratch is the way to go... I also checked out a popular toddler cookie and it had 14g of sugar per serving that is 2 small cookies, even the most common teething biscuits the second ingredient is SUGAR... it is EVERYWHERE!!  Do you know how much sugar 14g is that equals 1 tbsp of sugar I am not sure how that physically fits into 2 small cookies… ok my sugar “high” has crashed I am sure that we will revisit that soon enough… as we will discuss different types of sweeteners flavour of the month right now is dates what a fabulous (high fibre) sweetener w a low glycemic.

So keeping with the monthly themes November is "use it up month" this is a common theme every few months in our household important to thin out the cupboards, freezer and use up any miscellaneous ingredients around the house as a food blogger and vegan cook constant creations will fill a freezer before long so always important to take inventory and not waste food.  Have you ever tried a monthly theme in your kitchen? Household?
 

I wanted to recap some of our favourite creations in the past few months as I refine the recipes I will be posting them if there is one that you would like now please comment below and I will get it to you:

Meals:

Quinoa and kale stuffed acorn squash
Tofuronni pizza
Tofu nuggets w honey mustard dipping sauce

Mac and ‘neese’
Not so Spicy Pad Thai
Tempha wraps
Everything but the kitchen sink bean burgs - polishing up chose your own adventure so you can make burgers with whatever beans you have on hand
Millet stuffed peppers
Spagetti squash bolognaise

Eggless “egg” salad

Soups and Salads:

Variety of Cobb salads

Sun-Kissed Kale salad
Roasted red pepper soup

Roasted carrot and beet soup

Squash soup

Spilt pea and parsnip soup

Creamless cream of broccoli soup

Snacks and Sides:
Tea biscuits
Whole wheat bran bread
Mama's wholesome sugar-free cornbread

Whole wheat dinner rolls

Vegan faux cheese ball

Mango banana creamless cream-sicles

For the “not so” sweet tooth in you:

Soy butter kamut ant hill cookies
Opal's honey bears (aka “teddy grahams”)
Green earth brownies
Soy butter crunch munch

Lemon poppy seed cupcakes w lemon butterless cream

Call me a Figgie newton

Peanut butter fudge (this one to fuel mom and dad no chocolate for our little baby yet) How old were your children when you gave them chocolate?

Date me figgie breakfast bars

Variety of raw cookie balls w dates

We also like to have themed dinners for my husband’s birthday this year we had an Arabian dinner party: tabbouleh salad, sweet potato somosas, roasted red pepper fava bean dip, falafels, kale coconut curry in the slowcooker (perfect when entertaining you have to love your slowcooker) 

We had such an abundant of delish apples this year I created a little apple fest in our kitchen as well everything apple: oat bran muffins, donuts, cookies, apple butter, apple sauce, apple crisp

So as you can see I have been busy now quest is to post all these recipes one by one and have things up to date by the end of the year… I have heard Christmas count downs already and I am not quite ready to go their yet of course the mild weather this November has felt like a fall extension and we welcome that with open arms enjoy your weekend!!

Just a little peak at the ‘growing’ inspiration of it all:

Simple - Pure - Wonderful