VeganMoFo: Black Bean Chili & Wild Rice

I was suddenly craving Chili and Rice today. I don't know if that's something normal to eat together or now, as I've never heard of being served together, but yuuummmmmmm! The Chili is a black bean variation on Pamela's basic recipe. Insanely quick & easy and we all loovvveeee it. That and a boxed mix of Wild Rice and we called it dinner. Made tons of extra Chili so we'll be enjoying those leftovers for days.


It's kind of pathetic seeing all the super fast foods we eat night after night, but I have a good excuse. Shae's little brother refuses to vacate my body.

VeganMoFo: Our favorite snacks

Today's VeganMoFo is is about the yummy snacks we've discovered along the vegan journey and fell in love with.

Shae's favorite snack are Tings. We can't buy them locally anymore so we order them from Amazon in bulk. These are perfect for lunchboxes or any snack really. The thing about these are that no one seems to care that they are vegan! Everyone we've shared them with love them.


I'm a huge Tings fan as well, but lately I've been much more interested in Terra exotic vegetable chips. I don't know what it is about these, but I just loooveeeeeee them. A friend of mine had bought a big box of these and her family wasn't too fond of them, so she gave them to us to try and I gave them some Tings to try out. Worked great for both of us!


Unlike Shae & I, Matt's not much of a snacker. (What's wrong with him?!) But he's become really obsessed with Primal Strips Teriyaki Jerky. I used to be, blowing $1.50 a pop at the local health food store constantly, but somewhere along this pregnancy I ate too many of them and haven't been interested since. Matt took over for me, I guess.


Shae thinks it's extremely important that I tell you his favorite snack ever is his favorite food ever and that nothing will ever be better than watermelon. He's not kidding either, he'd turn down a truckload of chocolate for watermelon in a heartbeat.

VeganMoFo: Dinner in a hurry!

Tonight was Shae's soccer practice night. We don't get home until 7:30-8ish and his normal bedtime is 8pm. After running around for 2 hours at practice, he's starving so we have to fit dinner & his shower in as fast as we can after practice. Usually what that means is doing the short order cook thing. We usually each pick something fast & easy and Matt & I both make it while Shae showers. Tonight, I was exhausted (oh, and yeah, due to have a baby who apparently is super comfy in my belly!) so Matt did all the cooking.

Shae wanted his usual soccer night quesadilla. Black beans, corn & tofutti soy cheese slices. Sometimes we add some leftover rice or different veggies, just depends on what's on hand at the time.

And of course Shae has to do the fun part himself, cutting it up with a pizza cutter.


I am currently obsessed with what we call "Pizza Sandwiches". We use our Cuisinart Sandwich Grill for these. Bread is the crust, and my fillings of choice are simple: spaghetti sauce, tofutti soy cheese slices & seasonings. This is something I serve to Shae's friends when they are over- all kids who live in the land of Mcdonalds and Burger King, yet they always love these and never question the type of cheese.


And Matt went with the old standbys: Boca Burgers. Yeah, we love the convenience of these babies. Lots of vegans trash processed pre-made vegan stuff like these, but not us. Just don't cook them in the microwave. Gross.


And that's how a lazy vegan family has dinner ready in under 15 minutes!

VeganMoFo: adorable mini corndogs!

I saw these adorable mini-muffin style corndogs on the ppk and knew we just had to have them! Shae instantly freaked out excited. Anybody remember this post from last year?

I used the cornbread recipe from Veganomicon (it's our favorite cornbread recipe) & smartdogs. These are so quick & easy and taste delicious! Pleased all 3 of us. Shae said they are "like a small crummy version of watermelon". That one puzzled me... You'd think crummy is a bad thing, right? Turns out it's not. It's his highest compliment. Crummy is just the opposite of juicy apparently and watermelon is juicy. Nothing trumps watermelon, ever, in Shae Land, so you can't get any better than being compared to it. He's super excited to bring some of the leftovers in his lunchbox tomorrow.




(Thanks for the great idea, Sprinklebutt!)

VeganMoFo: Vegan Kid makes pancakes!

Shae wanted to make breakfast this morning, he was determined. He's never made breakfast himself before, but since I was craving pancakes I went along with it. He asked for the "Isa Book" right away for the recipe- Vegan With a Vengeance. Our favorite pancakes. This recipe is so easy and no-fail that I even have a few omnivorous friends who use it now. Yay, vegan pancakes!

Shae measured & poured everything himself.


Measuring is serious business, dontcha know.


And as usual, using the mixer is the funnest thing possible. I wish I enjoyed things like this as much as he does!


I forgot to get a picture of him flipping his own pancakes! I suck, I know. But he was really proud of himself. He doesn't do much at the stovetop usually because mommy is paranoid of him burning his cute little hands off.

Here's a pic of him showing off his First Ever Pancake! Yay, Shae!


And closer up...


He made a bunch more too, including cute teeny tiny ones. All the while, talking about how he's going to be a "part-time" chef one day.

VeganMoFo: Shae's favorite place to eat out

Shae wanted today's VeganMoFo to be about his favorite place to eat out, this kind of changes but at the moment it's China Wok, the most veg-friendly chinese place in the area. We've been going there since Shae was 3 (he's 9 1/2 now!), everyone is wonderful about telling us ingredients and altering dishes to make them vegan, plus they even have a tofu dish on the daily specials! Pure shock and awe for this little town. They have our usuals memorized even if we haven't been there in months and there are adorable little kids (children of the employees) always sitting and playing at one of the tables. We forgot the camera at home, so we'll have to make due with camera phone pics this time.

Here's Shae enjoying his rice. He's been eating with chopsticks since he was 3, even taught his grandparents how to use them at some point! I remember in kindergarten, he'd bring leftover chinese food in his lunchbox and kids were amazed by his chopsticks. A few of his friends still mention this, 4 years later.


And here is a plate of spring rolls (the best! ahhh YUM!), some sesame tofu and shae's soy sauce soaked rice. Check out Shae's crazy finger.

Vegan Baby Shower!

Day 2 on VeganMoFo! Today I thought I'd talk about our baby shower. A few of my friends got together and threw it for us back in August. Nearly everyone else are omnis, but they all contributed vegan food! I have the best friends <3 Every single thing was vegan, it was amazing! Everyone ate & loved everything too. This is a huge deal to us because where we live, the only good vegan food we get comes from our kitchen. Having it made for us was a real treat.

First off,the yummy cake our friend Pamela made for us. You can find the recipe on her blog, Pamela Cooks. It was a lemon cake with raspberry jam between layers and buttercream frosting and decorated with gorgeous fondant flowers! Probably the best combo I've ever had. Pamela is the best! She was the only vegan at the shower besides the 3 of us.



Another friend made vegan cupcakes for us! She had never baked without eggs before! She always raves about our cupcakes at other events and wanted to try it out herself. YUM! These were cookies-n-cream variation from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World.


We didn't get many pictures of the food, probably because we were so busy eating it all, but there was tons!


And since the Vegan Kid is glaringly missing from this entry, here's a random picture of him running around all sugared up, after swimming in the pool. (the baby shower was a pool party)

Is 3 pumpkin muffins too many? I think not.

It's October! Know what that means? It's VeganMoFo, the magical month of vegan food! Lots of bloggers will be writing about vegan yum-ness for the entire month. Last year we started it all off, and boy has it grown since then!

We're in the final countdown to Shae's little vegan brother being born, but hopefully that won't take us out of the blogging world too much. Still gotta eat, right? Since I'm 9 months pregnant and will super-soon have a newborn to take care of, be prepared for our running theme to be convenience. Fast & easy and without too much of a mess hopefully! Vegans can be lazy too ya know.



Starting off the VeganMoFo with our favorite muffins. Isa's Best Pumpkin Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance . I've been trying to stock the freezer with healthy, yummy stuff to make life easier and these muffins are a huge part of them. We love them for breakfast or just snacks. All 3 of us are obsessed with them. Last week I made a double batch, we ate a half dozen and froze the rest. Did the same thing again today. I've already eaten 3. Within a few hours. That might seem excessive if you didn't know how tasty these little babies are. Shae barely made it in the door from school when he smelt them and ran to the counter for his. He's special today, can you tell? (nevermind that he's always special!)

It's coming!

VeganMoFo! October, baby. It's all about the food, all month long.



Also coming in October: Shae's little brother. Check out his cute little foot!

Lemon-Limeade

I made the best Lemon-Limeade the other day! I did almost by myself. Mom just cut them and watched me at the stove."


"First we put 2 cups of sugar into a quart of water in a pot on the stove and turned it into a syrup. Then I squeezed the juice from 1 1/2 lemons & 3 limes. I strained out the seeds, but left the pulp because it's good. Dad poured the hot water into the pitcher for me, and I poured the juices in and stirred it up. Then I added more cold water to fill it up and stirred some more. Then I asked mom to cut up the other half of the extra lemon and 1 lime. I put those in the lemon-limeade so it looks very fancy. It was a very fun treat to make!"

Layton!

Shae's not even in any of these pictures, but this is our buddy Layton and he's adorable, so that's reason enough to post them. These are from Layton's first birthday party. Shae was swimming somewhere in the background the entire time.

Yellow Rose Testers, yay joanna!

Maple Ginger Tempeh Strips on a TLT. We all devoured this one. Delicious!


Chick salad, huge hit here.


and closer up.


Lemon Mint Pasta with Zucchini and Petit Pois. Must make this again soon. YUM!

Joanna's next book will be just as great as Yellow Rose Recipes! <3

Shae & his "cous"

These are pictures of me and my cousin, Hailey. She's 5, the one with the cake is from her birthday party. And the one with her sleeping on my dad is after her birthday party. She's my favorite.

Birthday Cake and Chocolate Bunny

This is my dad's birthday cake, he's so lucky to get that!!! It was vanilla cake with oreos crushed up inside it and oreos on the top inside of the buttercream frosting. My mom, the best mom in the world made it!
(I swear he said actually that. haha)


Thank the easter bunny! He gave me this whole chocolate bunny! We never see these that I can eat anywhere, it was delicious!