Bring the Box!

I am happy to report that I have finally started ordering the weekly box delivery of organic produce from Green Earth Organics! It's so nice - the company drops off several pounds of organic produce to Vancouver and Toronto homes once a week which means I HAVE to eat produce. Gorgeous, fresh organic produce. Yay!



I roasted the box's summer squash, potatoes, mushrooms and red onion with some carrots and made the super tasty Mushroom Gravy from my new cookbook "You Won't Believe It's Vegan" and you'd better believe it was good gravy.



I also baked two batches of cookies from Vegan Singles - two different recipes because I foolishly forgot I was baking from a book designed for one person - and while I'm fond of eating cookies, I'm also fond of sharing cookies.



The Classic Peanut Butter Cookies were super super and healthy enough with whole wheat flour but if I were to make them again I'd definitely double the recipe if I made them again.



The Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies weren't quite as good - they turned out having a slightly off consistency which might have been my fault as I subbed agave for maple syrup.

A Courageous Catch-Up

I hang my head in shame - it has been months and months since I've touched this blog - which doesn't mean I haven't been eating or cooking or getting obsessive about vegan cookbooks and food in Vancouver. I have been doing all of those things and I have indeed been photo-documenting a great deal of it so I really have no excuse (other than spending a month teaching in Africa, tackling third year at UBC, two part-time jobs, moving twice and now living on my own) to not be posting. In fact - I've missed the Vegan Vancouverite and will do my best to resurrect it! The courageous element of this post is going to be getting far too many photos uploaded on one post.

Check out these gorgeous slices of organic, vegan, wheat-free pie from Aphrodite's Cafe and Pie Shop in Kitsilano! This was a beyond amazing end to the summer - raspberry rhubarb and strawberry rhubarb.



Midsummer I made an incredible new vegan friend from Ontario who is partly such an incredible new vegan friend because she shared with me her incredible vegan Nawt Macaroni and Cheese recipe which I would share with you had she not whisked it away afterwards. I'll keep you updated.



I must admit that I was slightly frightened of the kitchen at the first place I moved into this summer (which I have happily since left) and only have one sad, lonesome meal to show for it - quinoa sushi which is a really good idea that someone else had for me.



Midsummer I went on a fantastic cycling trip around Vancouver Island - just my boyfriend and I, a tent and our bikes! I still can't believe we made it around Vancouver Island and Salt Spring what with my non-existent leg muscles.



I'm just a little sad that my first shot at henna from Vancouver's Folk Festival was sweated off two days after I got it.


Biking/tenting was such a great way to see the Island - we enjoyed many highways, several provincial parks, a broken bike chain in the middle of nowhere, a tented thunderstorm, lots of sunscreen, the Salt Spring Saturday market, and plenty of camping food.

As in affordable camping food - like raw oats and water for breakfast. Yum.



And cans of beans and rice for lunch.



As in cold beans because of the campfire ban.



And granola bars all day, every day.



And seaside peanut butter and banana sandwiches.



Salt Spring Island has a wonderful grocery store in Ganges called Thrifty Foods which I wish we had in Vancouver - they had tons of organic stuff at incredible prices you can't find in the city. We considered stocking up before remembering we were on bikes. We did, however, combat the sun with some soy ice cream that was not bad at the start with chocolate-covered coffee beans (purely for cycling energy).



I lucked out while waiting for the ferry departing from Salt Spring at Morningside Organic Bakery and Cafe.



It's super cute and full of organic and wheat-free breads and baked goods.



I got a gingerbread cookie and a blueberry spelt muffin for the ferry - yum!



Pizza! With soy cheese! With a whole wheat crust! On Salt Spring Island! At Pomodoro Pizza! Yum.



Back in Vancouver, I hit The Naam in Kitsilano about eight hundred times before summer was over, at all times of the day and night. It's so nice to have a twenty-four/seven vegan-friendly restaurant (with really good soy chai) so close!



The Naam now has new Daiya cheese - that's right; soy-free vegan cheese that actually melts. Due to The Naam's need to ensure their vegan nachoes compare to their non-vegan nachoes cheese-wise, they slightly burned the top of the mile-high pile - which somehow added to its cheesiness. Weird but fantastic.



While this does not (thankfully) directly have anything to do with me eating, I feel obliged to post some cute rabbit photos!



We discovered that the tame bunny colony down at Jericho Beach really likes freshly-picked seaside blackberries and carrots.



The final two weeks of my summer were spent sleeping on my friend's couch (rough times at the place I rented for two months in the summer - rough but now hilarious). We went crazy at Whole Foods on several occasions but all I have photographed is some mediocre pasta.



We tried to welcome back my friend from her three month stay in Italy with an Italian night so we made bruschetta



We also made the obligatory pasta and zucchini which was probably nothing like Italy but the thought was there!



.............

Copious Cupcakes

This is a cupcake-exclusive post, which is not to say that I haven't made anything other than cake and frosting - rather, nothing has been photographed other than that which Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World has provided me with.

For my birthday this year, we went out for some tasty brown rice sushi (and the best yam fries I can find in this city) at Mandala Iki Asian Bistro in Kitsilano. I sometimes feel weird bringing cupcakes to eat in a restaurant, yet continue to do so on a regular basis. At least I haven't been kicked out yet.



I happily made my own birthday "cake" to avoid the vegan challenge - Peanut Buttercream on Your Basic Chocolate Cupcakes.



My German friend Mia left for her other home and we sent her off with German Chocolate Cupcakes - Coconut Pecan Fudge Frosting on Your Basic Chocolate Cupcakes, which were much tastier than they may look.



Brooklyn Brownie Cupcakes for my dear friend Arianna's birthday.



Short, but rich. Just like her.



Orange Buttercream Frosting and Chocolate Buttercream Frosting for Andrea's birthday. I wish I could master the swirl!



Chocolate Buttercream on Your Basic Chocolate Cupcakes for Gabe's birthday:



Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes - no frosting equals easy transportation.



Tiramisu Cupcakes for Liam's birthday. Note: do not take photos with your Mac's Photo Booth. They look awful but were actually quite good - in fact, a friend of mine who never, ever eats sugar even splurged.



Chocolate and Cookies 'n' Cream Cupcakes for a fundraising for a Tanzanian school bakesale:



I can happily report that the funds were raised.



And chocolate again - I'm really not trying to be redundant, but Chocolate Cupcakes are really the go-to cupcakes of choice.



I seem to bake a lot of them. In fact - it's hard not to.

Natural-er Nanaimos

Nanaimo Bars are apparently actually native to British Columbia - that is to say, they were named after the town Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. I finally made some vegan ones after talking about it for at least year, using this recipe:

www.ravs.enviroweb.org/recipes/nanaimo.html



They turned out very tasty but when I remade them I doubled the middle which seemed more legitimate, if you can handle that much Earthbalance and sugar! Evidently I should have photographed the second batch - but you get the picture. Just the wrong one.

Greenpeace and Granola

I'm very lucky to have Monday afternoons off of school, which means I get our kitchen to myself to make lunch while no one's around to hear me singing. Today's mid-morning meal was from Foods that Don’t Bite Back - the Curried Lentils variation which I had on brown rice.



I should really make more lentils and brown rice-type dishes, as they are not difficult and you sense that there is the tiniest chance that you've consumed some iron, which is always a good feeling.

While waiting for the lentils/rice to cook, I whipped up Foods that Don't Bite Back's Creamy Chocolate-Orange Pudding with firm silken tofu. From cleaning out the bowl, it appears like it will be super good pudding for dinner's dessert. In fact, if it doesn't change drastically between now and consumption, it is probably the best vegan chocolate pudding recipe I’ve ever made.

Yesterday I made some really good granola from La Dolce Vegan - Apple Cinnamon Granola, with pecans and dried apples and sweetened with maple syrup.



When I worked at Booster Juice a couple of years ago, we sometimes made an acai parfait which I attempted with mangoes instead of bananas and Belizza Acai sorbet, topped with homemade granola. Perfection!



I finished this over a really interesting book – “The Greenpeace to Amchitka” by Robert Hunter, the co-founder of Greenpeace. I really enjoy the references to hobbits in between the awesome account of twelve Greenpeace guys travelling up the coast from Vancouver to Alaska to attempt to stop the nuclear bomb and save the planet. It’s fascinating how this voyage from the seventies continues to instil a sense of empowerment and can challenge one to revolutionize, rebel and save the Earth all thanks to “planet love.” I really appreciate his comments on avoiding paranoid grandiosity and warnings against becoming too eco-egotistical. Ha!

A Slew of Sugar

I made La Dolce Vegan's Chocolate Puddin’ Cake last week, only I used whole wheat flour because white scares me. I probably should have baked it in a higher dish, because mine exploded rather artistically.



I also recently baked some of La Dolce Vegan's Wolffie's Snickerdoodles, forcing in whole wheat flour again. They're not super healthy regardless and not super good, either.



La Dolce Vegan's Simple Oatmeal Cookies are not worth making again - weirdly dry. Possibly I should not have used whole wheat flour.



Simple Treats' Brown Rice Krispy Treats turned out alright - they held together while in the fridge but shortly after leaving they fell right apart. Still - they were noble attempts at healthy vegan rice krispy squares, I must admit.



I should probably mention that I am not single-handedly consuming all these vegan sweets myself - I live with three other people and usually end up giving cookies/etc. away, so don't be concerned.

Black Beans and Banana Bars

Earthsave's 25 and Under Group's September Youth Vegan Potluck was tonight, a relatively smallish one but enjoyable nonetheless. I made La Dolce Vegan's Wolffie’s Black Bean and Lentil Salad, full of red peppers, red onions and flax oil and surprisingly rather good.



I also made a dessert - La Dolce Vegan's Wolffie’s B’nanner Bars, which bascially combines white flour and white sugar with Earthbalance and bananas. Definitely not healthful - but not bad with La Dolce Vegan's “Butter Cream” Frosting which oddly enough requires cooking and tasted like the Vanilla Ryza I used as the milk substitute.



A word to the wise: when the icing says sit in the fridge for two hours, believe it.