Vegan Easter Awesome

I always remember Easter as being a pretty fun time when I was a kid.  Easter meant egg hunts, chocolate, and decorating eggs.  This year, with my niece about to turn two, the fun times can start again.  My mom and I orchestrated her first egg hunt, which she was super good at!  We figured two was a little young for egg decorating, and let's face it, it isn't exactly a vegan tradition.  So I came up with a better idea.  A way better idea.  Let's decorate egg-shaped cookies!  Not only are they vegan and less fragile, but once you're done decorating, you get to eat them!

I made the sugar cookie recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, some simple icing, and I had purchased a whole lot of fun sprinkles from bulk barn.  I taped some parchment paper to the coffee table, and handed her some freshly iced cookies for her to sprinkle at will - and sprinkle she did!  As you can see, they are masterpieces! :)  The cookies were delicious (albeit crunchy with the copious amounts of sprinkles), and I think I've just found myself a new Easter tradition.

My family had our celebration on Good Friday, and we discovered at the last minute that my sister-in-law, who is catholic, cannot eat meat on Good Friday.  Good thing there's a vegan at the table!  I made the vegan quiche from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, and put green onion, red pepper, and broccoli in it instead, and topped it with cheddar style Daiya shreds.  It was super yummy, and my sister-in-law thought so too (she even asked for seconds!).  Definitely omnivore approved! This quiche tasted just as good (possibly better?!) the next morning for breakfast, and I am going to start making it regularly as an easy make-ahead breakfast that is fast and nutritious for busy mornings.

What holiday would be complete without cupcakes?  These cute easter cupcakes are super easy to make.  First you take your basic vanilla (or chocolate if you prefer!) cupcake and fluffy buttercream icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  Then you colour some shredded coconut the spring colour of your choice, and roll the cupcakes in the coconut to form a "nest" around the outside (leaving the middle un-coconuted).  Then stick some mini-eggs in the middle, and ta-da!  Bird Nest Cupcakes! I know mini-eggs aren't vegan, but they make the perfect decoration (I gave mine to my mom to eat).  If anyone know of any vegan mini-eggs or something that would take their place, let me know so that next year they can be truly vegan, decor and all!

Step 1: Start with a healthy breakfast

So the first step (and arguably the most important) in "Breaking the Food Seduction" is eating a healthy breakfast.  The right breakfast can set you up for success, or failure, so choose wisely.  So what constitutes a healthy breakfast?  The two key components are 1) lots of fiber and 2) healthy protein.

Fiber is essential to winning the battle against cravings.  Fiber not only fills you up, but it also fills you up for longer.  Fiber digests slowly, gradually releasing a steady stream of energy all morning.  Low fiber foods (white toast/bagels, sugary cereals) release their sugar too quickly, raising and then dropping your blood sugar, opening you up to mid-morning cravings.  These refined carbohydrates (which you might as well consider pure sugar, because it takes no time at all for them to break down into sugar) increase the serotonin in your brain.  Serotonin regulates sleep, and mood.  These serotonin spikes can leave you feeling sluggish and drained - and reaching for a sugary and/or caffeinated pick-me-up.

Enter protein.  Plant-based protein blocks that extra serotonin surge and prevents the ensuing sluggish feeling.  I say plant based protein because most animal based proteins are laden with fat and cholesterol, and that is  not how we want to start our day.  I'll discuss more on the effects of fat and cholesterol in a later post, for now, let's stick with breakfast.

So here's a breakfast I had on a successful day:

Cantaloupe, dark rye toast, and scrambled tofu.  Fruits have lots of great soluble fiber that will keep your GI tract healthy and happy, and they help bundle up all those fruit sugars and make sure they are released gradually throughout the morning to give you the energy you need to make it til lunch.  Hearty whole grains, in particular low Glycemic Index whole grains like rye and pumpernickel, are also rich in fiber, to keep you full and prevent a mid-morning sugar crash.  Scrambled tofu is a quick protein source that easily replaces scrambled eggs, without all of the cholesterol or moral dilemmas.

If you have never tried scrambled tofu before, don't be afraid, it's really quite tasty.  Simply crumble up a block of firm tofu into a skillet.  You can add in diced onions and peppers for added flavour.  Season it with onion powder, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, turmeric, salt and pepper.  Saute it up til it starts to brown.  Voila!  That's it.  Seriously tasty, hearty breakfast.  That day I didn't crave pastries at work at all!  It had lost its appeal.

Other mornings where I've just had a smoothie, my resolve has not been so great and I find my sweet tooth aching quite quickly.  I either need to improve my smoothie recipe by boosting the fiber and protein in it, or have it along side some other hearty options.  This is still a work in progress, but I'm sorting it out.

Another easy breakfast that satisfies the protein and fiber in one fell swoop is beans.  You may not consider beans traditional breakfast food, but many cultures around the world eat beans for breakfast, and for good reason.  They are cheap, easy, fill you up, keep you full, and are SO good for you.  The easiest way to enjoy them for breakfast is in breakfast burrito form.  Saute up some canned beans with onions, peppers, tomatoes and/or salsa, and season it up with some cumin and chili powder.  Wrap it up in a whole wheat tortilla and you now have a portable breakfast.  The other great thing about this is you can make a lot at once, save it in the fridge, and you have a week's worth of breakfasts at the touch of a microwave button.

I'll have more ideas to come, but I thought I'd better update to let you know how it's going!

Reclaiming Control

For many people, going vegan is often accompanied by weight loss and healthier eating. After all, many of the fattening foods are now off limits, and you find yourself filling your plate with more veggies, beans and whole grains than ever before.  After a while of being vegan, however, you get better at it, and your options expand.  It's no secret that I love making cupcakes, but cupcakes are nothing but fat and sugar (delicious and adorable fat and sugar).  After a while you learn more about what you can eat: no butter vegan beaver tails!  Oh wait, more fat and sugar.  The fact is, there's plenty of junk food out there that is vegan that you really have no business eating (oreos, potato chips, french fries, passion flakies - readily available vegan junk!).  Here's the truth - just being a vegan isn't good enough if your goal is to be healthy and fit.

Or maybe, you start to lose your resolve, get a bit more flexitarian from time to time.  A bit of cake at a wedding here, a sweet treat at a coffee shop there.... sooner or later, that vegan line you drew in the sand gets washed away and you're nibbling from the pastry case on a daily basis!  Ok.  So I have a confession.  I've been a bad vegan.  I started working at Starbucks.  When I started out I restricted myself to only the vegan snack options (blueberry bar, sweet potato chips, packaged nuts), but I gradually started sampling more and more of the pastries, pastries I knew weren't vegan, but I wanted them anyway.  "To hell with it", I would think, "I'm not allergic, it's not going to hurt me."  Eventually I was eating non-vegan pastries every time I went in to work.  Even when I didn't want to eat them - I wanted to resist - I craved them, and the cravings won, day after day.  

It's not like I was craving the animal products, which are quite minimal in a lemon poppyseed loaf, peppermint brownie cake pop, or the new cinnamon swirl coffee cake that I fell in love with.  What I was craving was fat and sugar.  I used to be able to resist these treats.  In fact, I never used to crave sweets at all!  I used to be a salty snack craver (potato chips being my ultimate undoing).  This was desperate, I needed to break free of this craving cycle, I needed to regain control of my diet!  Enter Dr. Neal Barnard.  I've been a big fan of his for a long time, and when I became a vegan I read his book Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life.  It's a really excellent book that discusses the health repercussions of the "standard american diet".  It is well referenced, thorough, and in my opinion, a must read for everyone who wants to be healthy.  One day, guilt ridden after not having the will power to resist sugary temptation, I remembered another of Dr. Barnard's books.  Breaking the Food Seduction: The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings and 7 Steps to End Them Naturally.  I promptly got myself to amazon and ordered it.  It was high time I took charge, and I did that the only way I knew how - by learning as much as I could. 

If any of you find yourself at the mercy of your cravings, if you find yourself addicted to chocolate, sugar, cheese, or other unhealthy snack foods, I highly recommend this book.  It explains, on a scientific level (without being filled with complicated jargon), what is happening in your body and your brain when you crave and eat these foods.  Knowing is half the battle.  The rest of the tools are pretty simple, and the ones I'm going to talk most about on this blog are:

1. Eat a healthy breakfast

2. Choose foods that hold your blood sugar steady

3. Boost Appetite-Taming Leptin

One of the other steps is "Call in Reinforcements", and that's why I'm blogging about this.  It's like my version of AA.  I'm hoping to come on here and post about the foods that I'm eating that are helping me be successful, how many days I've gone without eating pastries (my current nemesis), and tell you about my failures a means to come clean and get back on track.  Stay tuned!

Veganism is not Deprivation

Don't believe me?

BEHOLD!!:

om nom nom...

Disclaimer: While veganism is generally healthier, and many people lose weight when they make the switch, this is not one of those recipes.  This recipe is for over-indulgence purposes only. Proceed with caution, and at least a pint of water.

Raspberry Chocolate Mousse Cake
you will need:
Chocolate cake
chocolate mousse
raspberry jam
fresh raspberries
Piping bag

Here's how I did it:  Make one chocolate cake recipe, in my case I used a double batch of the chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (if you don't have this book yet, I don't know what you're waiting for.  It's truly indispensable).  Bake it in 3 8-inch round pans.  Make a double batch of vegan chocolate mousse (again, from VCTOtW).  Yes this mousse recipe has tofu in it.  No, it tastes nothing like tofu.  Even my incredibly skeptical and picky brother had no clue. I promise.  Let the mousse firm up in the fridge for a few hours, and make sure the cakes are good and cool.
Ice the first layer, and pipe a protective lip around the outside of the cake, this will keep the raspberry jam from oozing out of the layers and making your outer icing a big mess.  Apply a thin layer of raspberry jam.  Gently place the next layer on top, and repeat.  Once the top layer has been placed, ice the whole thing.  If you find it's sliding around (mine did) place a BBQ skewer down the middle.  Pipe a fancy scalloped edge around the top of cake and fill in the top with fresh raspberries.  Keep refrigerated until you're ready to indulge, devour, and slip into a diabetic coma.

Brrr!

Well it's October. Don't ask me how it happened, I haven't a clue.  It's summer, everyone is warm and happy, you look away for one second and BAM! cold, damp, fall swoops in to put an end to sundress season.   Wasn't it only last weekend that I was sweating my butt off hiking through Gatineau Park on a beautiful 25 degree day?  Yep.  That was definitely only 8 days ago.  Regardless of what evil trickery brought it about, it's here now, and we're just going to have to deal with it. Autumn has arrived, and that means it's time to bust out the jackets and scarves, and it's also time to start making soup.

Lookout view over Gatineau park, Sept. 25 - the leaves just starting to turn

The really great thing about autumn (or as I like to call it "soup season") is that the fall harvest brings a bounty of produce to the local farmers markets.  So many soup possibilities await!  All of the produce in this warming, immune-system-boosting soup can be found at the farmers markets now.  You can make this in two ways: soup or stew.  I'll tell you how I made the soup, then what you can do differently to make it a stew instead!

Vegan Groundnut Soup 
Makes about 2 big meal-sized servings, or 4 small "on the side with a sandwich" sized servings

1 onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh ground ginger
1 red pepper, chopped
4 plum tomatoes, diced
1-2 sweet potatoes, cubed (1-2 cm cubes)
Enough vegetable broth to just cover the vegetables
Cayenne pepper to taste
1/4 cup peanut butter (all-natural preferred)

In a large pot, saute onions with a bit of oil for a few minutes until they soften.  Add in garlic and ginger and saute for one minute.  Add the tomatoes and red peppers and saute until tomatoes start to break down.

Add remaining ingredients making sure to only put as much vegetable broth in as is needed to cook the sweet potatoes - you can add more liquid later, but it's more difficult to take it away.  Bring to a boil and simmer until sweet potatoes are cooked.

Using a hand blender, pulse soup to form a thick, creamy base while still leaving lots of chunks of vegetables. Alternatively, you can remove 1/3 to 1/2 of the soup and puree in a blender, then return it to the remaining soup.  Add more liquid if needed to reach desired soup density.

Stew form: Chop vegetables into larger chunks, do not puree at the end, and serve over rice.  Top with chopped peanuts and cilantro.  You may also add beans, tofu, or faux chicken to this stew if it pleases you.

World Peace

You'd have to be a fool not to love cupcakes.  I strongly believe that if there were more cupcakes in the world, we wouldn't have all the war and civil unrest, and general bad behaviour that humans seem to be so good at.  It would take a particularly evil person to eat a cupcake and then go blow up a village.  The point I'm trying to make is you need to make more cupcakes.  To do so, and possibly bring about world peace, you will need to pick up a copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  Not only can $12 bring you boundless joy, but it will also bring joy to those you bake cupcakes for.  Need proof?

BEHOLD!!  Peanut butter chocolate chip mini-cupcakes with fluffy chocolate buttercream icing!!!

If I believed in heaven, I would also believe that upon arrival you would be served one of these cupcakes.  They're that good.

Peachy Green

I love smoothies.  They're hard not to love - delicious, healthy, filling, and can be consumed on your commute to work (unless you cycle, that would be tough).  But lately I feel like I've been in a smoothie rut, making the same couple of smoothies every day.  I needed to branch out!  Shake it up a bit!  So yesterday, while at the grocery store, I spied the box of spinach and thought to myself - it's time to go GREEN.

No one will argue the benefits of leafy greens.  In them you'll find vitamins A, C, K, folate, fiber, calcium and iron.  Wait a sec.... just what is vitamin K?  It's not one of those vitamins you hear a lot about.  But like all vitamins, it's extremely important.  It plays a major role in healthy blood clotting and it is also vitally important to bone health.  Post-menopausal women who are experiencing bone loss can help prevent fractures by consuming adequate amounts of vitamin K.  Vitamin K also inhibits calcification (aka "hardening") of the arteries that is commonly associated with heart disease.  Vitamin K deficiencies can lead to heavy menstrual bleeding, gum bleeding, nose bleeds, easy bruising, anemia, bone fractures and osteoporosis. [1] The best source of vitamin K?  Leafy greens.

Don't worry, you don't need to gorge yourself on leafy greens for fear that your blood will stop clotting and your bones will break.  One cup of cooked spinach has over 1000% of your required daily intake of vitamin K.  Leafy greens such as spinach, kale, collard greens, swiss chard (you get the idea) all have whopping amounts of vitamin K.  So as long as you make some leafy greens a part of your regular diet, you'll be just fine.

Back to the smoothies.   I have made a green smoothie or two in the past.  Search google for "green smoothie" and you will turn up over 1.8 million hits.  After a little searching and a few of my own attempts I have a few tips for my fellow green smoothie noobs:

1. Adding berries to a green smoothie will produce an unappealing brown smoothie.
2. Use well-ripened bananas for creaminess and sweetness.
3. Spinach has a mild flavour and is a good "starter green"
4. Blend like hell - you don't want leafy chunks in your smoothie.

Peachy Green Smoothie

1 banana (frozen)

1-2 peaches

1 tbsp ground flax seed

a handful of baby spinach 

Enough water or soymilk to make it blendable

Throw it all in a blender, blend on a high setting for at least a few minutes (or until the leaf chunks disappear)

The verdict: really quite tasty!!  The spinach flavour is barely perceptible, and I have to admit, I enjoy the green colour.  This will definitely join the regular smoothie rotation.