the big one

Baby girl has been complaining lately that she's still hungry after lunch and that I need to make her a bigger lunch.  So I really tried to make this lunchbox substantial and filling.

Pasta salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing and peas, corn & broccoli, soda crackers filled with pupkin seed butter & strawberry jam, a few organic cookies, Sun Rype fruit bites, a juice box, celery matchsticks, strawberries sprinkled with ground flax, 2 pieces of gardein chick'n strips and ketchup for dipping, and a "bat" sandwich (multigrain bread with vegan cheese). It's her new favourite.  Apparently she ate the "bat" for breakfast and then cried because she wanted another one. Also no pictured is a packet of maple oatmeal. 


Baby girl ate the entire lunch except a few lone spirals of pasta and the celery sticks, which she never eats anyways.  And then she refused to eat dinner because she wasn't hungry.

The Green Lunch

There was no lunchbox yesterday because baby girl "skipped out" of daycare for her ballet lessons.  She ended up having lunch with abuelo (grandpa).

Today's lunch colour is green. I was overwhelmed with green produce in my fridge, so there was no shortage of choices, but it was tricky trying to balance protein and carbohydrates.  I didn't just want to make a lunchbox full of salad.

So here we've got soba noodles, which baby girl pointed out are not green.  True, but it's got a pretty decent amount of protein and, hey, buckwheat is green at some point before it's harvested. Next is a mixture of peas and lima beans. I'm fairly certain that each and every lima bean will still be in the lunchbox when she comes home, but it's worth a shot.  Moving along, there's some cucumber slices tucked into the side compartment with a fun green turtle fork, kiwi fruit and an ancient grain quesadilla stuffed with daiya cheese and cilantro.

And to quote another article from livestrong.com, "Green foods also serve as a source of vitamins A, C and K, and iron and calcium. Green vegetables contribute to your daily fiber intake, which can help reduce your cholesterol levels"

It's day two of "colours" week at baby girl's daycare.  Today's lunchbox celebrates one of nature's most beautiful hues, orange. According to dietitian Julie Garden-Robinson on livestrong.com, "orange and yellow produce is rich in carotenoids, which help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease, can improve immune system function and aid healthy vision"

Beginning in the top left corner, there's Gardein's Mandarin Orange crispy chick'n piled on a bed of organic brown rice and sprinkled with sesame seeds, Pete's organic mango tofu, pumpkin pancakes (mini-container of maple syrup not pictured), and a blood orange.

Have a colourful day!

The Red Lunch

This week's theme at my daughter's daycare is colours.  So naturally, I was excited to incorporate the theme into her lunch box.  Each day this week I'll focus on a different colour.  Today I chose red.

The Roma tomato quesadilla is stuffed with refried beans and Daiya cheese. There's a red cabbage coleslaw (oops, I forgot the sunflower seeds!) strawberries sprinkled with ground flax, and an Ethiopian-style stew with red & white nugget potatoes, chickpeas, carrots and a dash of cayanne and other spices.

Although my little chica is too young to understand the health benefits of her brightly coloured lunch, I found myself intrigued and did a little bit of research. Lance Armstrong's website livestrong.com contains a wealth of information about the benefits of coloured food.

According to one of thier articles, "red fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes and beets, may help reduce the risk of several types of cancer, especially prostate cancer, and red berries may act as powerful antioxidants that protect cells from damage."

Vegan Mofo 2011

I just signed up for this year's Vegan MoFo, where vegan food bloggers from around the world blog their hearts out for an entire month (October 1-31).  And it's no random month - October 1st is World Vegetarian Day, and the entire month of October is World Vegetarian Month.

Deadline to sign up is Sept 28, so head over to veganmofo.com if you're interested in participating.


There's still a week left until the official kick off, so to reminisce about the good ol' Vegan Mofo days of yore, here's a few of my posts that I wrote in Vegan MoFo days past:

• Home made red pepper jelly
• Vegan french toast
• Scrambled Tofu breakfast wrap
• Maple Glazed Acorn Squash

The Green Experiment

I haven't made a smoothie for a while and lately I've been craving greens, so it seemed sensible to combine the two in a harmonious blended beverage.  Unfortunately my creation lacked a very important element - deliciousness.

Unsweetened vanilla almond milk, banana and kale do not make tastebuds dance.  At least not mine.  I attempted to save my green potion by adding blue agave nectar, but this stubborn smoothie was just not meant to be saved.

At this point, it was way past snack time so I set my sights on a lunch that could not be screwed up. A pita stacked with fresh veggies and a generous dollop of nayonaise & dill.

It's been a while since I posted a dinner meal.  Sometimes I'm exhausted after a long commute home and I just want to throw something easy together.  So here's one of those meals that takes very little preparation and allows me to unwind and relax while it's cooking.

Wild rice - it takes an hour to cook, but if I get it going the stove as soon as I walk in the door, it's ready when I'm ready.

Gardein Crispy Tenders -  delicious, packed with protein and easy to bake in the oven.  I mixed up some agave nectar with mustard for a dipping sauce. 

Veg spring rolls - one of my all time favourite foods in general.  Plus they are easy to pop in the oven and these mini spring rolls only take 12 minutes to cook.  By the time I toss them in the oven, I've already changed out of my work clothes into something comfy and had a chat with baby girl about how her day was.

Edamame - again, so easy to make, steamed and sprinkled with a bit of sea salt.

Hello Halo!

Another delightful discovery at the little grocery store that I mentioned before.  I usually skip past the shelves full of cookies and wafers because there's never anything vegan-friendly there.  Well, now I know why one should never say never.  These tasty treats called Halo are organic and made with vegan marshmallows. 

I bought two flavours: S'mores and Nutty Marshmallow, and packed them in a couple of my lunches.  The bars weren't quite what I was expecting - I kind of envisioned them to look like the pictures on the wrapper.  But they satisfied my sweet tooth :)

Torfurky Pizza!

There's a small locally owned grocery store in our neighborhood that constantly surprises me with random organic and vegan groceries.  For example, the other day I was delighted to discover a few varieties of Tofurky pizza in the freezer section.

I thought I'd try the Tofurky Italian sausage with fire-roasted veggies first.  They also had a cheese pizza and a "pepperoni"version.  I raced home and snapped a few pictures before baking it in the oven for dinner.  Unfortunately I didn't trake any photos of the baked version. 

YUM!  Although I don't often buy frozen prepackaged meals, this was a nice treat, and I'm looking forward to trying the other kinds of Tofurky pizzas.

Summer lovin

Loving the chili lime hummus that I bought at the market recently.

Garden Lunchbox

Lately they've been celebrating different themes weeks at baby girl's daycare, and I try to incorporate the theme into her lunch.

For Garden week, I added some fun colored sushi grass along with the cinnamon-raisin bagel with tofutti cream cheese and watermelon balls.  There's a butterfly nestled into the chickpeas, and a "cheese" flower rests on a bed of spaghetti.  And a little packet of organic bunnies for a treat.

Nice little catch from the local summer market

There’s nothing like a bountiful farmer’s market to herald the beginning of warm breezy summer (even though we're still waiting for sunny skies here in Vancouver).

I took baby girl to the market with $40 and a handful of change in my purse and came home with $20 left over and a small stash of goodies. 

Fragrant helitropis plant, fresh carrots and aromatic sweet basil, granola king (sweetened with honey), Bean Boy chili lime hummus, and two varieties of vegan pate.  All from local merchants.

I just did a big grocery shop the other day so we didn’t really need to stock up on much.  I had my eye on a few other things, and since this particular market comes every other week, we’ll definitely be grabbing more goodies next time around.

The Bean Boy chili lime hummus wasn’t too spicy, baby girl liked it and she isn’t usually a big fan of spiciness.  The lime really comes through and is an exciting difference from traditional lemon hummus.  It was a fantastic accompaniment to our fresh carrots!

The chili lime hummus was the most expensive thing we bought at $5.50.  $2 for the granola, $3 each for the pates, $2.5 for the basil, $5 for the heliotropis plant, and $2 for the carrots.

mission impossible: no eating out for 2 weeks

I've been seriously craving to get back to blogging for a while. It's been tugging at the back of my mind every time I put a meal together or order a great meal at a restaurant. So finally here I am, diving right back into it. 

Coinciding with my return to blogging is a diet of sorts, so there won't be a whole lot of sinful treats to be seen here for quite a while.  And I'm sure my pocketbook will thank me for not eating out once or twice a day anymore. I'm on lockdown!  I'm imposing a 2 week freeze from eating out.  Hopefully I'll manage to skip visits to my favourite restaurants for longer than that, but I'll re-evaluate once I get to the two-week mark.

This is gonna be painful because it's patio season in Yaletown, which means slushy drinks and tapas are everywhere  I seriously had the best gin infused peach lemonade last Friday on a rooftop patio lounge.  Somehow I'll go 2 weeks without going back for more, which may or may not involve me trying to recreate that lip-smacking good, lucious peach lemonade in my own kitchen.

Anyhoo, today is a sunny Monday that deserves a bright and cheerful bento box lunch for my 3-year-old girl to take to daycare.

A half sesame-seed bagel with tofutti cream cheese, fresh organic strawberries, rice crackers, chickpea & celery medley, hummus dip and matchstick carrots and yellow bell pepper slices. 

And mine is pretty similar:  For breakfast, I've got the other half of baby girl's bagel & strawberries, and for lunch, a Caramel Nut Brownie Luna bar and a herb salad with chickpeas, carrots & yellow bell peppers.