What Vegan Littles Eat

Now that I have two little vegans, mealtimes are somewhat more challenging. However, that doesn't mean they can't get a well rounded meal!  These are some examples of meals for my 4 year old and 16 month old. These kiddos keep me busy!

 Rice with avocado, veggies, kale chips.

 Left is for R -- grilled "cheese", sweet potatoes, rice, beans, broccoli. On the right for S is basically the same thing, just chopped up into smaller pieces.

 Refried beans with chips, nuts and raisins, carrots and "ranch," strawberries, bananas, and chips with avocado.

 Black beans with Daiya "cheese," chips with avocado and beans, Gardein "chicken" nuggets, homemade veggie muffin, and rice.

 Daiya mac n "cheese," Gardein chicken nuggets, avocado on chips, cucumbers.

 Pinto beans with chips and Daiya "cheese," olives, avocados on chips, carrot and celery sticks with hummus, red lentils.

 For little S -- olives, peas, green beans, barley and roasted golden beets.

Vegan Birthday Parties

Little S turned one in April and Big Girl R just turned four this month of August.  Vegan birthday parties and actually pretty easy, delicious and super fun!

For S we did a baseball theme and had vegan versions of everything you might find at a ballpark, plus a little more!

R requested a purple party, so I made a purple cabbage salad, served purple carrots and hummus, purple boxes of popcorn, and snack baggie butterflies with purple, pink and white cereal.  (Also some various purple candy!) We also had cupcakes with purple sprinkles and a taco bar which isn't pictured. 

Tomato Soup

This is one of my favorite foods ever -- homemade tomato soup.  It's easy to make and SOO delicious.  Basically all I do is saute whatever veggies I have in the kitchen, add a ton of chopped up tomatoes, simmer for a few minutes until nice and hot and bubbly and all veggies are cooked. I add about two cups of water, simmer again.  Finally, I blend the whole concoction until smooth and creamy.  I could eat this pretty much every day.

Veggie burgers and Slaw

I had actual frozen veggie burger patties but they turned out to be disgusting so I just cut the tofurkey sausages leftover from Sunday in half and piled the buns with lots of veggies! Yum!

Smoothie Bowl

Megan brought a smoothie bowl from Roots Market a couple weeks ago and it was so good. I decided to make one myself with my new blender. And I'm officially obsessed. I haven't jumped on this smoothie bowl train yet, but I apparently have been missing out! These things are amazingly yummy! This one has frozen bananas, frozen raspberries, kale, almond butter, hemp seed, flax and topped with granola. Breakfast never tasted so good! And healthy right?

Fancy burgers

Since I have been so disorganized with meals lately, this was a last minute meal. We had frozen veggie burgers and buns (and French fries) in the freezer so there you go. I didn't have lettuce, but we didn't even miss it once we piled on these other toppings: roasted red peppers, avocados, homemade pickles, farmers market tomatoes, and chives. We called them fancy burgers and they were delicious.

Carrot-top Pesto

Carrot top pesto with almonds. Just cut off the tops of the farmers market carrots, added some almonds, garlic and olive oil in the food processor and blended until creamy.

Potato Salad, Polenta, and Chard

Sautéed some chard, cooked some polenta and made my favorite potato salad from McDougal's cookbook. 

Farm Fresh Salad

Salad made from local farm stand produce, topped with quinoa and a white bean salad.

Borscht

Made primarily with loca farm stand produce on Monday May 3.

Mushroom, Kale, and Pasta Soup

I am feeling really congested today and have had a major sinus-headache, so I really wanted something "brothy" tonight.

This recipe from my Garden of Eden Organic Farm Box was perfect!  I made my own vegetarian vegetable broth in the slow-cooker this afternoon and by the time dinner came around it was ready for me to add the fresh kale, parsley and mushrooms.  I also added garbanzo beans and kept the pasta separate and just combined the soup and pasta in my bowl.

Vegetable Broth

10 cups water
Celery
Carrots
Parsley
Leeks
Fresh rosemary
Fresh Thyme
Garlic
Yellow squash

I threw everything in the slow cooker for a couple hours and let it all "stew."

Two hours later, I put about 5 cups of the broth in a pot on the stove and added a bunch of kale and mushrooms and parsley and garbanzos and let it heat up for about 5 minutes.  In a bowl, I added the pasta and ladled some brothy soup on top of it.  Added some salt and pepper and it was so good!

The Lusty Vegan

For Christmas I received a new vegan cookbook called The Lusty Vegan.  I have made two recipes already and to be completely honest am not super impressed so far.  They just seem kind of bland, so I end up adding a ton of salt and other ingredients. 

First, I made the Bean Dip.  I followed the recipe exactly, and in the end, it didn't really taste any different than if I had just heated up the can of refried beans by itself... I mean, I love refried beans, but I was expecting something different.

Then, I made the coconut, rosemary stew (pictured above).  Again, very bland and this time too coconuty.  I had to add cumin, turmeric, and curry powder, and of course plenty of salt.  It actually tasted a lot better as leftovers over the next few days.  I mean, I felt like I had to eat it anyway because it would have been a huge waste of all those yummy vegetables! 

I'm skeptical about trying anymore recipes from this book, but I won't give up yet!

Veggie Meatball Subs

I don't know what inspired me to make these, but they turned out to be AMAZING.

Ingredients
Frozen vegan meatballs
Marinara sauce
Sauteed onions and red peppers
Daiya vegan cheese
French baguette

I mean, it's pretty obvious -- just put all the ingredients together, and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Pretty fast and easy to make too.

Six Month Review

You know, I've still been taking pictures of my food, but posting on this blog has definitely gone by the wayside.  So in an attempt to catch up, I will post a quick review of the past six months of food.  June-October.

Here we go.  Try to keep up and enjoy!

Swiss Chard rolls

Enchiladas

Pasta with farm fresh veggies

Vegan pizza at St. Joseph Pizza in Michigan

Salad; probably straight from the farm stand

This zucchini noodle salad was amazing!

Burrito with fresh homemade salsa

Tomato salad on toast and white bean relish

Favorite summer snack=tomato toast

Another pasta and farm fresh vegetables (a super easy delish meal)

Thought I'd try this out and it's not bad!

Toddler food.

Farm stand loot

Vegan nachos with homemade cashew cheeze

Sweet and sour tofu with soba noodles and bok choy

Yep, pasta again.

Birthday nachos at Native Foods

Another favorite late summer snack... yummmm

Toddler meal

Frozen vegan Daiya pizza

Vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!  AMAZING.

Broth Bowl

There are these new broth bowls at Panera that are really good.  So a while back, we decided to try and recreate them.  We used that box of Miso broth from Trader Joes and some soba noodles and then just threw in a bunch of veggies and lots of sriracha.

SO GOOD.  I want to eat this every day.

And also, Will made it, so even better.

Love of Salad

Just had to post a picture of this amazing salad with ingredients all from the local farms around my house!  (Except the mushrooms.)

See previous post about my love of eating local produce. 

Roasted Veggies with Carrot Greens Pesto

This is true local eating right here. Everything in this dish is from my weekly CSA box from Garden of Eden Organic Farm, and that's the way I like it.

By the way, we've been eating MOSTLY local organic produce ever since I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and I love it.  I have found three great farms under five miles from my house, and that is where I get all my produce now!  It's great, and the food tastes so much better!  I would love to grow my own food too, of which I'm attempting to do this summer, but that's a story for another time...

Anyway, back to this dish:

I roasted the carrots and radishes and made a pesto out of the carrot top greens and basil.  When the veggies came out of the oven, I mixed them with the pesto. So yum!  The only ingredients not from the box are the garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper.