Vegan MoFo day 2: The Foundation

Let us talk today about The Foundation. A cozy, quirky hipster restaurant on Main Street in Vancouver. For the life of me I can't find a link to their website. Which is such a shame because their menu is all vegan + vegetarian and all delicious, and I'd love to share it with you. 

I've been on the veg wagon for 24 years and I still get excited when I see a menu that I can order almost anything from. My favourite dish at the Foundation is Molten Tofu - a mixture of black beans, tofu, broccoli & spinach, and amazing peanut sauce. I first visited this restaurant a couple of decades ago,  (ffs I'm old!) and this dish, or variations of it, have been a staple for me at home ever since. What can I say? Peanut Sauce, black beans, broccoli and tofu are just meant to be together. 

I snapped up a photo of my co-worker's lunch, but I forget what it's called. It's a collision of mango, black beans and quinoa, and it's super scrumptious. She orders it every time we go there.  

Cheers to The Foundation! And please build a website. That is all. 

Vegan MoFo day 1

 I met up with a couple of my good friends for lunch, and we went to a little place at the beach called Pajos. They have mostly non-veg stuff on the menu, but I love them for serving veggie burgers and veggie dogs that don't taste like cardboard. And they make a killer lemonade.

I'm happy to support local small businesses who make an effort to provide delicious veg options. Cheers to Pajos!

Goodbye coffee, hello juice

In the spirit of New Years resolutions, at my workplace there is a 30 day challenge that kicked off today. Voluntary participants make a pledge to do (or not do) something for 30 days. Health or hobby, it doesn't matter, just commit to something.

So I'm giving up coffee for a month. I typically drink about 3 cups a day, and by "cup" I mean a venti-sized travel mug from Starbucks. My pocketbook will surely thank me now that I won't be ordering $6.00 lattes all the time. And if I stick with it, maybe, just maybe those migraines I get when I haven't had a drop of coffee in 24 hours will be a thing of the past.

Less coffee means more herbal tea, and delicious juices, like one of my new favourites, Mean Green Juice by Joe Cross. He's really on to something with his juice crusade. Even my 6-year-old is a big fan of this vibrantly coloured juice.

 

 And speaking of my little one, how about a lunchbox pic? This is what I packed for my daughter to eat at school today:

 

Clockwise starting with the package of roasted seaweed - spinach wrap (Daiya cheese, lettuce, Gardein ground "beef") celery & carrot sticks, blackberries, banana tofu, gala apple, and crackers.

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!

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.

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.

Watermelon bunnies & Cucumber bears

I love cutting fruit and veggies into little shapes for P's lunch.  This one has fun watermelon bunnies and  cucumber bear heads.  There's also some Kashi puffs, rice crackers, soy yogurt and brown rice pasta with a chopped up veggie dog.

Another lunchbox that came home empty!  I'm sure one of these days I'll strike out and P won't like what's in her lunch, but I'm really excited that she's eating all this good stuff.

Marmalady's Vegan Pesto & Eggplant Curry Spread

A while ago I wrote about Marmalady who brings a wealth of delicious lunches to our office every Wednesday with her lunch cart service.  Chef Salima told me about some new vegan items that she was adding to her catering menu and asked if I would be interested in sampling them.

 Would I?  Heck yeah!

First up was her vegan pesto - when she first told me that there was no nutritional yeast in her recipe, I wondered if would still have that je ne sais quoi...and I'm happy to tell you it did not disappoint!  It is already so packed with flavour, there's no need for nooch.  Chef Salima uses walnuts instead of pine nuts, so there's a good dose of Omega 3 in her pesto too.  You can buy the pesto at Drive Organic on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.  I made brown rice elbow pasta and slathered on some pesto. Deeelicious!!

The other sample she generously bestowed me with was a huge sandwich with a vegan curry eggplant spread (also available at the Drive) Sadly, I can't find my photo of it, but I can tell you it was mega-delicious and if you have a chance tyo get yourt hands on some, you should get it.

Marmalady now has a website: marmaladycatering.com.

Canada Day Recap: Brick Oven Bread, Greasy Fries and Solar Powered Street Lamps

Yesterday during our Canada Day festivities, I discovered an amazing jewel of a bakery.  It's called Romania Country Bread, and I was lured in by a Romanian man sitting outside the bakery at a checkerboard table, telling the throngs of passersby that inside was the best bread we have ever tasted.

He was not kidding.

If organic stone-ground whole wheat bread is your only product, it better be good- and trust me, it is fantastic!  The rustic loaves come in two sizes, 1/4 kilo for $5.00 or 1 kilo for $10.00.   The reason their bread is so amazing is because it's made the bread was supposed to be made - in a massive brick oven.  I was talking with some people outside of the bakery and apparently it took them years to get a permit from the city to build this oven because of fire safety hazards and such.

I bought two of the 1/4 kilo loaves. One of them was mostly eaten by the time we got home (yes, I shared).

We also visited Pajos at the beach to grab a veggie dog and greasy fries served in a cone of paper.  I love how the picnic tables have holes carved in them to accomodate the cones of fries.Unfortunately Pajos doesn't have do-it-yourself condiments, so this is what I got when I asked for mustard & relish.  (Note the ketchup and absence of relish.) It's a good thing I like mustard!
 

And the final highlight of my day was not food related, but environmental.  A lamp post unexpectedly powered by a solar panel and wind turbine.  It's part one Richmond BC's pilot projects and I hope we see more initiatives like this become mainstream. 

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers, I hope you had fun celebrating Canada's 143rd birthday :)

Oh, Canada...red white and GREEN lunch

I started with a red & white theme for Preciosa's lunch todayin keeping with her daycare's Canada Day theme...but I didn't feel right not putting something green in her lunch.  I couldn't do it.  So we've got vegan cream cheese and vegan "Canadian Bacon" on homemade bread, celery with sunflower seed butter and golden raisins, a white nectarine, salt & vinegar CheeCha puffs, and Glutenfrreda raisin flax oatmeal, with a little container of peas tucked under it.

Canada Day Lunch Box

Ever since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Preciosa has been randomly singing our national anthem  "Oh, Canada."  She's going to be very excited this week at daycare when she finds out the theme of the week is "Canada Day."

I thought it would be a fun suprise if her lunches this week were also inspired by this theme. I made her a Canadian flag sandwich with strawberries & vegan cream cheese on a slice of homemade bread. Next to the flag sandwich are some bright, juicy gem tomatoes, and above those are potato salad balls a la Vegan Lunch Box, and last but not least, soba noodles with a bunny filled with Bragg soy sauce.

Here's Preciosa's latest rendition of "Oh Canada":

Blue Corn Tacos & Laptop Lunch #2

I bought these beautiful blue corn tacos (Whole foods 365 brand) because they are so pretty.  I baked some corn bread from La Dolce Vegan, chopped up a bowlful of peach salsa, and served them with refried beans.  It was a super yummy quick and easy dinner.

Unfortunately I used almond milk in the cornbread recipe, so I couldn't put any cornbread in Preciosa's lunch - there's a strict no-nut policy at her daycare.  I made her a little burrito filled with the peach salsa and refried beans, left yesterday's corn & beans in the hopes they would get eaten, a packet of oatmeal and some apple slices with a squeze of lime, and some gummy vitamins completed the lunch.  The corn and beans came home for a second day in a row.  Strange, because she has eaten them before.  I guess she just isn't in the mood this week.

Little girl, big appetite

Little preciosa is getting big - her appetite is too big for her poor little lunch kit so it's time for an upgrade.  I knew I wanted something that was going to be durable enough to last for a long time, it had to be environmentally friendly and of course, it had to be cute.

I ended up getting a Laptop Lunch; the BPA-free bento style lunchbox made famous on the Vegan Lunchbox blog.  I always enjoyed making Preciosa's lunch, but now it's even more fun.  Maybe it's the fact that her lunch actually fits inside the box, or maybe it's the cute pink containers, or the pink floral carrying case...or maybe a combination of all of those things.

Preciosa's first laptop lunch featured an English muffin with sunflower seed butter, a vegetable patty with green beans and corn, peaches & raspberries, gummy vitamins (vegan) and soy yogurt.  She wasn't interested in the beans and corn but everything else got eaten.

Soy-free lunch and wannabe Mexican dinner

Happy cinco de mayo!  While I really wanted to whip up an amazing Mexican meal tonight, I was in a hurry because I had to meet my training partners for a run.  It's our last practice before the 10k run we're doing this Sunday.

I did manage to make Spanish rice, with some veggie ground round and a side of steamed veggies with "melted" soy cheese.  There's also some perfectly rip avocado on top.  I just adore avocados!  Did you read my haiku about avocados? If I had a can of black beans I would have added it to the veggies before I put them in the oven to melt the cheese. 

And here's a pic of Preciosa's soy-free lunch:  oatmeal, animal cookies, brown rice pasta with tomatoes & mushrooms in olive oil & garlic sauce, fresh pineapple, a sunflower butter &  mango jam sandwich, and chicpeas with corn.  If it seems like a lot of food for a 2-year old, it is both breakffast and lunch.  All of it was eaten except a couple of animal cookies.

In with the seed butters and all kinds of beans!

It seems like there's an increase in the number of children with peanut allergies these days.  More and more schools and childcare programs are introducing no-nut policies.  Such is the new rule at the daycare that  Preciosa attends, which makes things a bit more difficult when I'm trying not to rely too much on soy products for  protein.  Gone are the days of cashew sauce on pasta, and almond butter sandwiches for lunch.

It's completely understandable, as two of the children at the center have severe allergies.  Now, if only someone could have a meat allergy...all joking aside, there's still plenty of acceptable protein sources out there.   In with the seed butters and all kinds of beans! 

Today I sent Preciosa on her way with french toast on freshly baked whole wheat & rye bread, with organic maple syrup, rice vermacelli with teryaki tofu & veggies, strawberries, and soy yogurt.

And also I wanted to show you this crazy beautiful weird heirloom tomato I found at Whole Foods recently. Isn't it amazing?!  I've never seen anything like it.

Corn Chowder for a Cold Day

There's more than a crisp chill in the air here in Vancouver...the first snow of the season will be upon us any day now.  And cold weather definitely calls for a nice hot cup of soup!  After spending Sunday afternoon at the Santa Claus parade, some corn chowder was calling my name. 

Corn Chowder

2 tbsp olive oil
1 small white onion
8 nugget potatoes, washed and diced
1 can creamed corn
1 cup peaches & cream corn
2 cups unsweetened almond milk

1 red bell pepper, washed and diced
1/8 tsp cumin
salt, pepper and paprika to taste

In a large saucepan, saute onion and potatoes on medium heat until onions are transluscent - about 6 minutes.  Add both kinds of corn, almond milk and spices.  Bring to low boil on medium heat.  Lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Using a ladle, scoop 1/2 of the soup mixture into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.  Carefully pour back into the saucepan, add bell pepper and simmer for another 10 minutes.  Serve hot.

* * *

One of my favourite parts of the Santa Claus parade was from the City of Vancouver's garbage collection, which was encouraging people to think about how much garbage we will create this holiday season.

Gordita's lunchbox - a day in the lunchbox of a vegan toddler

What do vegan toddlers eat for lunch?  Well, Vegan Lunchbox is the Queen of healthy vegan lunches that you can send your kids off to school, and it's clear that there is so many other options than a PB&J sandwich.  Gordita isn't in school yet as she's not yet two years old, but she does get cared for while I'm at work, so I pack her breakfast and lunch every day.  I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share with you what's in her lunchbox from time to time.  Here's today's lunch:

Clockwise from top:  Organic apple & cinnamon oatmeal, whole wheat naan bread, peas tossed in olive oil, lunchbox fondue, organic banana, strawberries sprinkled with ground flax, wildberry juice box, Salba crispy rice treat, and peach soy yogurt.  She also had a bottle of soy milk which isn't in the photo.  I kinda wish this was my lunch today!

A Day at the Farm

I recently took Gordita to Westham Island Herb Farm, when they were hosting thier annual "Day at the Farm."  It was less about animals and more about promoting local agriculture, and there was so much to see and do: A zucchini contest, hayrides, lots of booths full of educational material about agriculture, and more.  Here's Gordita with her biodegradable balloon from one of the vendors:

We sat under the shade of some trees which have just started to shed their golden leaves, and and enjoyed freshly picked corn on the cob and veggie dogs for lunch!

We went on a hayride and got a tour of the farm - they have vast fields of potatoes, strawberry patches and lots and lots of herbs. 

It turned out to be a very hot day, so after the hayride I sipped a refreshing raspberry flavoured organic sparkling green tea made by Steaz.  It was my first time trying this brand, and it really hit the spot.

And lastly, I leave you with a photo of the most curiously shaped squash I have ever seen: