vegan

Even if you’re not a student, or don’t have kids in school (or kids at all), back-to-school season is still a great time to re-evaluate your life in terms of healthy eating. I actually find September to be a better time to start “resolutions” as it actually feels like a new beginning. (Unlike January, which here in central Alberta just feels really, really, really cold.)

Summers are so free-spirited – at least for me and my family. Perhaps, a little too free-spirited? Don’t get me wrong. I L-O-V-E summer. I’m totally a walking-around-barefoot-not-knowing-what-day-or-time-it-is kind of person for the entire month of July and about half of August. But then I get the itch. The itch for routine. For wearing shoes. For going to bed on time and eating home-cooked meals more often than takeout.

Every vegetarian and vegan has to have a tofu scramble recipe. Why? Because eggs. If you used to eat them regularly, they’re definitely missed when you go animal-product free. You’re probably also missing eggs if you can’t eat them due to allergies, which is one of the reasons that I don’t eat them – aside from the whole baby chicken thing.

Thank goodness for the versatility of tofu! This basic tofu scramble might not taste precisely like eggs, but damn it’s good in its own right. Especially on a wrap with some salsa. My four year old and two year old love it like that, even though the younger one can’t figure out how to hold a wrap and instead just sits in my lap and repeatedly says “bite” until she’s eaten all of mine. To be fair, she does this with pretty much everything I eat. Even when she has the exact same thing on her own plate. Sometimes food just tastes better when it belongs to someone else.

I write about a lot of different things on this blog. Design and decor, sustainable living, green products, healthy eating. I would say I possess a sufficient amount of knowledge in all of these areas. But there is one area I can confidently claim to be an expert on. And that area is gravy.

Perhaps being both a gravy expert and a vegan is an anomaly. But remember, most vegans did not start out that way and thus I consumed more than my fair share of gravy in my pre-vegan days. In fact, I’m quite famously known in my husband’s family for the time I drank A&W gravy through a straw on a road trip. Is it my proudest moment? No. But it’s up there.

This is one of my favourite fast salad recipes and it really does take less than 60 seconds to make (well, after you assemble the ingredients that is). I even filmed a video to prove it! In honour of this recipe’s no-fuss attitude (can coleslaw have an attitude?), I will jump right in… after I quickly tell you why coleslaw is so good for you.

Of course, regular mayo-laden coleslaw is definitely not good for you (to make it healthier – and vegan – sub in Vegenaise!). But the main ingredient of any coleslaw – the slaw itself – is packed full of nutritiousness in the form of raw, shredded cabbage.

When I was a kid, my mom’s cinnamon twists were the envy of all my friends. Every year as the holidays approached, my mom would pack these tasty bundles of cinnamon doughy-ness in my lunch and my classmates would just have to have ’em. They would offer me items from their lunch in exchange for just one cinnamon twist and – being the (somewhat) generous person I was as a child, I would share (sometimes).

Lucky for you, now that I’m all grown I no longer feel the urge to bogart the cinnamon twists and am happily sharing my mom’s cinnamon twists recipe with the whole internet. One catch though – I’ve made them dairy and egg free! If you’re vegan – this is great news. If you’re not – don’t worry, you won’t know the difference.

Once upon a time I ate “healthy.” This is what people do when they mean well and count calories and eat things labelled “low fat.” But a few years ago I turned into the “read every ingredient on the label and then painstakingly research it” kind of person and let me tell you, it was terrifying. On salad dressing labels alone: calcium sodium EDTA, high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch. If you’ve ever made a simple homemade salad dressing, you know that all you really need is balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil… which is exactly how you make one of my recipes!

I have a confession to make. Up until a few years ago, I HATED chickpeas. (Also known as garbanzo beans, which was the name by which I knew them during my decades long boycott.) I remember my mom used to buy a five bean salad from the grocery store deli that included chickpeas and I couldn’t even choke it down. I’ve written before about how I’ve since conditioned myself to love legumes. And out of this super nutritious food category chickpeas are at the top of my list. Can we just talk about how versatile they are for a second?