Monday, June 27th, 2011

One of my favourite meals EVER is a risotto. It’s creamy and rich so it tastes like comfort food, but if you load it with veggies it can be so good for you! I also cut down on the fat a little but I will provide alternatives if you want to keep it full fat! It’s also easy to make vegan and of course it’s naturally gluten-free, as it’s just made with rice!

My favourite risotto is a mushroom risotto. This is often a version you will find in restaurants as well because chefs recognize how well the earthy flavour of mushrooms works with the creaminess of the risotto. However, as there is a mushroom hater in our household (hi Mom), I cook the risotto all together and then split it in half at the very end, adding other vegetables to hers. Then I inevitably get jealous of all the yummy vegetables going into her half and want some for myself, so my risottos rarely end up purely mushroom. I have provided the recipe here for my mushroom and vegetable risotto, but you can swap out any of these vegetables for your favourites. If you haven’t had it before though and you like all these vegetables, try it this way! You might just like it :).

Saturday, June 25th, 2011

So my birthday is July 1st, and pretty soon after I moved to Canada I realized that meant I would never be able to celebrate my birthday on my actual birthday, as I cannot compete with a country’s birthday! So Canada Day takes precedence, and my friends and I all gathered to celebrate my birthday a week early :).

On Saturday I had a dinner party at Milestones in Yaletown, booking their private room for my party of 20. It was such a great time, and I have to give major kudos to the restaurant. They were easygoing, helpful, and completely reasonable in that there was no fixed charge or minimum charge to have the room, there was no cost for refrigerating and serving the cake that I brought in (outside food too!) and they had the room ready for us from 4pm, allowing us to go in and cover it with decorations! We left after their closing time and though I tried to do some clean-up the table was still a mess but they assured us it was fine. Super awesome restaurant; highly recommend that kind of customer service!

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

It’s been a really crazy week. I’m getting ready for my birthday party on Saturday night so running errands almost every night, and when I’m not doing that, I’ve been going to some more evening hot yoga classes than usual. So dinners haven’t been as well planned as usual. My mom did make a curry earlier in the week, which gave us a few dinners, but I had already blogged that recipe so didn’t want to bore with a repeat. Other than that I have relied somewhat on sushi but mainly on my favourite frozen meals, which I thought I would blog about in this post.

Yes, frozen meals! They’re not usually the mecca of health food, but honestly if you choose well there is enough out there on the market that it’s still going to be better than a drive-through the fast food restaurant or snacking on candy bars and potato chips and other junk food because you don’t have time to cook.

In fact, most nutritionists I have spoken to recommend this particular brand that I will blog about today as they are far less preservative-filled and ultra-processed than most frozen dinners. So welcome to the wonderful world of Amy’s frozen meals! I have relied on these many a time. This brand is so fantastic – everything is vegetarian and organic, and so many of their products are low in sodium, gluten-free, dairy-free – take your pick! Chances are, no matter what food or nutrient you are trying to avoid, they will have a product that caters to your diet. Other variations for dietary consideration that Amy’s frequently caters to include cholesterol free, low fat, soy free, nut free and kosher. Yep, they’re pretty awesome!

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

Barbecues are always fun, and for many they are a summer tradition. I have heard more than a few times that barbecues can be what dissuade someone from becoming vegetarian.

“But I can’t face the idea of never eating a barbecued burger again!”

“It’ll make me so anti-social; all my friends host barbecues in the summer and I won’t be able to eat anything!”

Well, newsflash: vegetables taste amazing when barbecued, and that’s just Vegetarian Barbecuing 101. There are lots of vegetarian burgers that cook just as well on a barbecue as in a frying pan or the oven (see here for one burger recipe I have already posted – and there will be other burger recipes to come!).

Monday, June 13th, 2011

June 13th wasn’t a Friday but it was still pretty unlucky…yep, the Canucks got thrashed once again in Boston – 5-2 this time (if you count the disallowed goal, 5-3, but it really wasn’t a goal). So not as painful as the 8-1 and 4-0 defeats Boston have delivered when at home in the past but this one was perhaps even more painful because it meant that the Stanley Cup finals would go to a tense and nerve-wracking Game 7, to be held Wednesday night in Vancouver. Thank the Lord for home ice advantage!

The neighbours who had kindly hosted us for the most disastrous of all Boston-Vancouver games (the 8-1 game), and who had fed us the flatbread and summery salad I had blogged about here, came to ours for this game and I put out a spread of appetizer-type items for everyone to pick and choose from.

This provided a great opportunity for a post on hosting a party vegetarian style. Many people have commented to me that this “must be so difficult”. I realized that apart from miniature sausage rolls I never really ate much at a party that had meat in (before I was vegetarian, of course). You can of course take the opportunity to put out a bunch of dishes that I call hardcore vegetarian, ie dishes extolling the virtues of tofu and tempeh or using sprouts and recyclable containers. (Because all vegetarians have to be eco-freaks too, apparently. Though I am all for environmentally-friendly practices, so don’t get me wrong! It’s just that I don’t own any hemp clothing and I wash my hair every other day.)

But generally what I prefer to do is have the party be vegetarian and have people leave without even really noticing that they didn’t eat any meat that night. So I put out really basic party food that you would find anywhere, and that way the fact that it is all animal-friendly fare tends to go right over people’s heads.

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Tonight was quiche night. Most people might think this is because you need a lot of time to make a quiche and therefore Sunday works best but honestly, this is such a fast recipe. It was a nice, warm-ish day today (I cannot believe it’s halfway through June and if the day hits 20 degrees we are celebrating, but that was today for you) so salad and quiche was a fitting dinner.

I didn’t really eat lunch today because we went to Eat Vancouver food festival downtown at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Basically you pay $16 to get in and there’s a whole bunch of people trying to sell things to you, but there are also tons of samples so you can actually try things to see if you want to buy them. I appreciate this because very often I don’t want to commit to buying a whole ton of something that I’m not convinced I’ll like (example: vegetable juice, or an asiago and artichoke dip by Fontaine Santé that we actually did walk away with, or interesting flavours of chocolate, such as Green & Blacks‘ organic Maya Gold chocolate or Lara Bar‘s chocolate coconut chew bar, both of which were favourites from today). By the way, the vegetable juice was blended by a Vitamix exhibitor and I have to say, was amazing! He shoved half an apple (core, seeds and all) into its blender with a bunch of green grapes, spinach leaves, baby carrots and a wedge of lemon and it was sweet and refreshing. I have always been scared of vegetable juices but you couldn’t beat this, seriously.

Friday, June 10th, 2011

Friday night was Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals and that meant celebrating West Coast style – eating sushi and watching ice hockey :).

I’ve blogged about sushi before and also warned that I would probably blog again about it as I LOVE sushi and have it often. Last time I blogged though I didn’t have my camera with me so couldn’t show you the rolls I was eating. This time I took a photo of some of the sushi we got so you can see some of my favourite vegetarian sushi rolls and see how exciting and delicious sushi végétarien can be!

I got our sushi from Genji Japanese Restaurant at Market Crossing in south Burnaby. It’s 5 minutes from where we live so we go there often and it is my favourite local sushi joint. It is fairly pricey – the rolls below were $5 each which – as most people who live in Vancouver will know – is quite a lot for regular sushi rolls. By comparison, my favourite North Vancouver sushi place, Capilano Sushi (I work in North Van so go there on workdays) charges $2.50 for similar rolls. So yeah, it’s pricey-ish. However, if you eat in the restaurant has a really nice ambience and decor. And for takeout they almost always give free miso soup.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

On Wednesday night my mom, Pat, made her lentil shepherd’s pie, which has come to be a staple in our house as well – at least during the fall/winter/spring. Probably we won’t eat it as often now summer is coming in as it’s a great ‘comfort food’ dish, but you certainly could! It’s also great for leftovers.

Here’s what Mom had to say:

“In this dish the lentils replace the meat in a traditional shepherd’s pie; they provide protein. Vegetables added are as per personal choice – or whatever happens to be available! In this recipe I used carrots, onions and broccoli but you can add or substitute peppers, zucchini, yams, etc according to taste.”

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

My Chinese veggie stirfry is something of a staple in our household – we have at least once a month usually. It’s really easy and really good for you, and it’s delicious. So it’s pretty easy to see why it’s a favourite! If you are vegan or entertaining vegans this is also a great dish to serve them as it does not use any dairy or animal products.

The flavour in this dish really comes from the sauces. You can use any combination of Asian sauces. I use soy sauce and sometimes splash in some Worcestershire sauce also. If you want a gluten-free option use tamari (gluten-free tamari) or Kikkoman’s new gluten-free soy sauce, made with rice flour. If you are not too strict a vegetarian (or not a vegetarian at all) you can use oyster sauce. Any of these give the dish a great flavour that enhances the veggies and nuts in the dish.

Monday, June 6th, 2011

I was planning to make a Chinese-style vegetable stirfry for dinner Monday night (I’ll make it Tuesday night instead, so the recipe will be up this week!) but was hesitating as it was so nice and sunny and warm outside – better for a lighter, cooler meal. Something involving a salad, at least. But stirfry ingredients were what I had in the fridge so I resigned myself to eating stirfry. And then when I got into my elevator I saw my neighbour’s daughter, who was hanging out with her mom for the night and watching the hockey game. We had had them over for tea a while ago so she returned the favour on the spot by inviting us up for the game and some dinner. Her mom had some flatbreads in the freezer, she said, and she had brought some salad ingredients.

I quickly agreed, not too worried about the vegetarian thing (I hadn’t mentioned to them before that I was vegetarian) as she had said there would be salad, and I am good at surviving on salad when I find myself in a meat-heavy environment! I am a big-time salad lover!