Weekly Favorites 1/25

Hi everyone. 

Education
This week I've found these really cute letter and number heart puzzles to do with your preschoolers/kindergarteners. They are perfect for a Valentine's day theme so I'm planning to try them next month with Little Guy. As I linked to their activities many times earlier, Totshooling is a great site to find free educational printable activities for preschoolers and kindergarteners. If you find it useful, make sure to subscribe to their newsletter because there are more free printables for subscribers and I found most of them really good.

Finance

Now that I've sort of started to take control of my time (thanks in part to bullet journaling), I've started to work on our finance. Our financial situation has improved dramatically in the past couple of years, which is good, but it also made us lazy about our financial dicisions. So I've decided to make more conscious decisions with regards to our money. These two articles, How to Make a Spending Plan and Why I'm Tracking Every Single Purchase I Make in 2017 put me on track.

Yum!

Lastly, I have this yummy White Bean and Avocado Baked Burritos recipe for you. I've made this a couple of times before and it's always been a hit. This time, in addition to making brritos as per the recipe, I just baked the fillings to cut down on the amount of wheat I eat. I did cover the fillings by putting a tortilla over the fillings so it won't dry while baking but did not eat it together. It was delicious this way too.

If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flipboard to get notified as soon as I share them. Have a wonderful day :)

Weekly Favorites 1/4

I hope you all had a wonderful winter holiday with friends and families.  Sadly some nasty colds caught us all and our holiday wasn´t as eventful and active as we had planned. But we instead had a goood rest and a warm family time sitting in front of the fire or watching a few movies together, so that wasn´t bad after all.

Here are my favorite reads these past weeks:

Education

As an introvert myself, I wish one of my teachers had thought of this when I was a student:
How to teach a young introvert

Some great tips for a teacher who's just come back to school: 
Teacher tips for the first day back from winter break

Home

I wish I came across this article before I had that birthday party

10 Little Things To Do Before Company Arrives

Have you ever thought it'd be awesome if things you created with Lego blocks actually moved? Now they're making that thought come true. And kids can learn how to code too. Sounds very fun.

Lego Boost teaches kids how to bring blocks to life with code 

Music

This article explains how a piano was invetned pretty well. I listened to the recording after reading the article, and I could easily imagine the people back then amazed at this new instrument, perhaps with a little skepticism. Beautiful sound.

What does the world oldest surviving piano sound like

Yum!

I've recently tried this Creamy Butternut Squash Linguine with Fried Sage, and really liked it. I thought the sage might get overpowering but actually it just adds a nice salty accent to the pasta. I'd add more next time. If you omit the red pepper flakes, it'll be very kid friendly. My son loved it too.

Miscellaneous

An inspiring article for these first days of a new year to set goals, decide how to approach your goals and work on it. I've started to make my 100 things to do list too. Hope it helps me reach my goals, as right now they are very messy and I need some structure to tackle it.
How To Invest In Yourself

I remember how sad I felt when I heard of the passing of Alan Rickman. Seems like he was indeed a good person. RIP

Kate Winslet Remembers Alan Rickman Using His Harry Potter Fortune for Good

And speaking of Harry Potter, here's a fun little article:

J.K. Rowling’s 12 Biggest ‘Harry Potter’ Revelations of 2016

I know Christmas is over but here are two fun articles about some unique (and maybe a bit strange) " Christmas traditions" in Japan:

Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas

Why the Japanese Eat Cake For Christmas

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Flipboard to get notified as soon as I share them

almond parmesan

I could see the fall has come because one day when I opened my pinterest page, it was filled with butternut squash recipes. In fact, I just made creamy butternut squash pasta the previous night*. I don't look forward to chilly days but I love fall comfort foods and fall colors.

Among the recipes I found on my pinterest page, this roasted butternut squash with kale and almond pecan parmesan particularly caught my eyes. It looked so comforting and delicious. I still had some butternut squash so immediately tried this. I had to made some modifications because I didn't have all the ingredients. I even had to omit pecan from the almond pecan parmesan but I loved it! It perfectly fit this particular recipe but I can see that it also goes with many other dishes. For example, I made pasta salad the next day for lunch and sprinkled some of my almond parmesan. It was oh so good. I'm going to have to make the original pecan version too. It must be delicious.

I modified her recipe to make almond parmesan as follows. I omitted the pecan, reduced the amount of the nutritional yeast and olive oil by half, and added salt to taste. 

Do you have favorite butternut squash recipes?

* I made this pasta the following way. First, I steamed the butternut squash and mashed it. I put some aside for babyfood. Then, I thinned out the rest of the mashed butternut squash in a pan with water and coconut milk over medium heat, and added nutritional yeast and other seasonings. yum.

Baby food - 8 & 9 months old

I wrote about what Baby and I ate most of the days of the last month when we had the vegan month of food event, which you can see it here. And here's the list of the new foods Baby tried during his 8 and 9 months.

8 months old
yoghurt
I know. this is not vegan. I couldn't find soy yoghurt that did not contain sugar, so I was going to wait until he was able to eat yoghurt with fruits and sugar. However, when my MIL came to visit us, she also brought her plain yoghurt (she knew we didn't have any at home). She offered us some and I thought hmm maybe it was a chance for Baby to try some since I didn't have any intention of buying dairy food.

The face he made was so cute though :) He looked as if he bit into a lemon or something because it was rather sour. Anyways, currently he's happily consuming silk soy yoghurt, the peach and mango kind. This is the only variety he can eat, since I haven't introduced other fruits yet. I give him only a portion of it at a time because I'm still reluctant to give him food with sugar.

prune juice
yes. he was constipating. casual google research told me that prune juice was effective to relieve constipation, so I gave him about a tablespoon every morning. I don't know if it worked but he liked it :)

edamame, green beans, grapes, broccoli

around this time, he started to grab his food and bring it to his mouth on his own. so the food was getting chunkier and thicker. sometimes I gave him diced foods so he could practice his pincer grasp.

well, I can tell you letting him grasp his rice will result in a huuuge mess lol

9 months old
my goal this month was to introduce beans, wheat and olive oil. I've also introduced napa cabbage.

beans
black beans and lentils were successfully introduced and Baby loved them, as seen in this baby shepherd's pie.

And we tried Natto! :)

Natto is fermented soybeans. Just like other fermented foods, it has a distinctive pungent smell. And it's sticky and slimy. you may wonder why we eat such stuff but it tastes good (perhaps if you regularly had some when you grew up) and it's good for ya.

Baby didn't like it at first but with a tiny amount of soy sauce he ate it all! I didn't want to use soy sauce yet but I admit it's hard to eat natto without any taste so a little bit should be ok. Natto is a popular food for Japanese babies in Japan.

wheat
Baby had pasta and homemade bread. For him to be able to eat pasta or bread makes it a lot easier for mama to carry snacks when we go out. yay. As I mentioned in those posts, he loves both pasta and bread, especially the bread.

[vegan mofo day 30] baby avocado & broccoli pesto-style pasta and conclusion

This is a pasta dish I made for Baby the other day - the avocado & broccoli pesto-style pasta! The photo doesn't do it justice but the actual pasta has this beautiful green hue from the avocado. With some sprinkles of salt, this will make a tasty meal for adults too. I think I'll have the adult version for my lunch someday.

Last night's meal was a collection of leftovers. The stuffed eggplant that I took home from the farmhouse dinner, the seared tofu, chickpea salad and corn from the previous night, and some rice. Hubby prepared this dinner so I didn't have to do anything :)

This concludes my veganmofo posts this year! phew. With two posts that covered two days, I've managed to write for every single day of the month! yay. I didn't stick to my theme for the last week (because we had guests), but I hope I was able to show you that one could eat a variety of tasty and satisfying vegan food even on a budget. And I hope you've enjoyed seeing a glimpse of what a vegan mama feeds to her baby. At first I was going to just list what Baby and I had but for almost each meal I made, I had something I wanted to say. I'm actually surprised that I have so much to say about the food I make!

Thank you so much for reading my vegan mofo posts. I'm sorry I couldn't visit your blog. I have, though, a full intention of reading all other vegan mofo posts even after September ends, so I may surprise you by leaving you some comments several months later. hehe.

My blog will go back to regular crafting and Mochi related posts. I hope you'll stick around, especially if you are either a) a crafter, b) a vegan mama or dad, or c) a crazy cat lady (or dude). If not I hope to see you at the next year's vegan mofo! Thank you and have a great week.

[vegan mofo day 28 & 29] Chinese takeout and seared tofu

Day 28
We had a Chinese takeout

We shared several meals but I had Mapo Tofu over rice and vegetable fried rice (asked to leave out the egg). For some reasons I'm fond of those Chinese takeout boxes. They're so cute :) We don't see this type of Chinese takeout very much in Japan so my parents also enjoyed it. Takeout is great especially with a little one.

Day 29

The omnivores ate some non-vegan main meal so I made seared tofu steak-style. I didn't add any seasonings, just splashed some soy sauce before eating, but it tasted great. The side dishes were chickpea salad, corn on the cob, sauteed asparagus (not shown in the picture) and rice, made by my mother. Baby had the same seared tofu but he hasn't tried any of the ingredients in the side dishes yet, so he had broccoli and carrots instead. I thought the amount of rice was too much but he ate it all! I can't believe how much he eats now. The amount increased a lot even during this month alone. It's fun to be able to see the changes in his diet from the pictures I took and for that also I'm glad I joined vegan mofo this year.

[vegan mofo day 27] the farmhouse

Since my parents kindly agreed to watch Baby, my husband and I went out to have a lovely dinner. I know we're on a budget but we've been doing pretty well so far and I think we deserve some treats ;-)

Husband chose the farmhouse because they were one of the few who offered a vegan option, and it did not disappoint. The staff was friendly and explained to me that their stuffed eggplant was vegan. Ah. The joy of offering something off the menu without changing anything! It's probably not a big deal for big city people in this day and age but the places where I've been in the past few years, this is very rare.

We shared their farmer salad with the non-vegan items on the side so husband could eat them.

Their food tasted really fresh. I'd probably prefer a little bit stronger (saltier) flavor to my taste, but it might have been better this way so we could enjoy the real taste of fresh ingredients. I love eggplants and this eggplant meal was delicious, fun and filling. The atmosphere was great with the dim light (hence not a stellar photo. sorry). It's been a while since I dined in the midst of the city's bustle. I didn't miss it so much but it's nice to experience city's liveliness once in a while. All in all I really had a good time :)

The farmhouse

300 Delaware Street

Kansas City, MO

[vegan mofo day 25 & 26] we all ate vegan!

ugh. I couldn't post my 25th mofo post on time, so here's my entry running over two days.

day 25

 

Apparently, omnivores around me enjoy vegan ground beef style crumbles very much. They do notice "differences" when it comes to vegan chick'n, beef strips and other veggie meats but the ground crumbles, they never complain.

So my mother made this tomato sauce based spaghetti with vegan ground beef with lots of vegetables. I'm the only vegan (let alone vegetarian) in my family but we all ate the same vegan spaghetti and enjoyed it a lot. woohoo!

I never expected such a night to come. It may be just one dinner but it seems that just staying vegan does have a positive impact on people around me :)

day 26

I tried this soy meat (100% soy. nothing else. non-GMO) from Japan. It comes in a dried form and when it's soaked in hot water for 5 minutes, it becomes softer and expands a little bit.

The package says you can eat it as it is, but it tastes too much like "soy" to me so I've decided to cook it.

Fried with salt, soy sauce and nutritional yeast, it became pretty tasty :) The texture was just like other vegan chik'n we find on the market in the US, so it made a pretty satisfying meal. But with no additives and isolated protein and other stuff, I might like this one better. I imagine this will make a great vegan schnitzel!

[vegan mofo day 24] Daikon salad

My mother made this beautiful daikon salad (daikon radish, carrots, cucumbers were dressed in vegenaise, salt and pepper and served over lettuce). So I made daikon "salad" also for Baby - cubed daikon and carrots tossed in olive oil. The rest of the family members had a real thing so I had my veg prawns. I don't think these taste like prawns so much (as I remember) but the texture and that pink color are amazing. Baby had edamame instead.

[vegan mofo day 23] Dining Out

Since my parents are visiting, the last week of my vegan mofo posts will digress from the vegan foods on a budget theme and I guess I'll just journal what I eat this week.

Last night we went to chipotle. I don't think it's necessary to mention that I love this restaurant, when so many vegans are already showing their love. But let me say that it's so nice that I don't have to play a guessing game when eating out. The only thing though is that we don't have sofritas in our region yet! I'd love to try it. When will it go nationwide??

For today's lunch, we went out to an Italian restaurant. We've decided to share our meals so we ordered a couple of non-vegan meals for everybody else but me plus a couple of what I thought were vegan meals. Unfortunately, I misread the menu and the pasta we ordered had cheese in it. Oooops. So I just had the salad that I asked to leave out the cheese from, and the bread. The salad had a few kinds of grilled vegetables and actually was pretty good. Everybody else had a glass of wine but I had to have a non-alcohol drink because I'm still breastfeeding. Too bad :(

I gave Baby some food before we went out, but he looked like he wanted to eat with us. So we shared some bread and the vegetables. He loved them a lot. Now he had a taste of grown up food (as opposed to kinda bland babyfood), I'm not sure if he'll be satisfied with babyfood anymore ;)

What did you do when you misread the menu and what you ordered wasn't actually vegan? Or am I the only one who makes such mistakes? :(

[vegan mofo day 22] Amy's soup and old-fashioned chocolate pudding pie

I made some dessert (mentioned below) and got too tired to cook so decided to just have this Amy's lentils vegetables soup. Our budget doesn't allow us to buy Amy's very often, but this was on clearance at Target. I got this for $1.12. Great deal. I love that Target sometimes has vegan and/or healthy convenience food on clearance.

I served the soup over rice, adding a little bit of spiciness with hot sauce. It turned out to be a quite satisfying and delicious meal :) The cocoa strawberry muffin finished up our meal nicely.

The dessert I made was this old-fashioned chocolate pudding pie from Vegan Pie in the Sky. My parents are visiting us (all the way from Japan!) to see their oh-so-adorable grandchild, and I wanted to make some treat for them. I can't believe I have to wait for a few more hours to try this. It's sitting in the fridge, challenging me not to eat it.

Have a great weekend!

 

[vegan mofo day 21] stir fried vegetables in thick sauce and pickled cucumbers

A kind of a light meal last night. Stir fried veggies (collard greens, napa cabbage and red pepper) in a sauce that was thickened with cornstarch. Hubby got a lot of cucumbers from his co-worker's veggie garden so I pickled a few. They were soaked in sesame oil, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, crushed chilli peppers and a little bit of syrup.

I still have a lot of cucumbers but run out of ideas for what to do with them. I'm not that much of a fan of cucumbers except for the pickled cucumbers my grandmother used to make. Her pickles were the best. She used to make excellent Umeboshi (pickled ume plum) too. I can't eat any other umeboshi because hers were so good. Sometimes grandma does know the best. Too bad she's too weak to do anything now :(

 

Baby had sweet potato, zucchini and green bean "salad", and stewed napa over rice. His first napa cabbage, and he liked it :)

 

[vegan mofo day 20] cocoa strawberry muffins

 

I made these cocoa strawberry muffins using the cocoa raspberry muffin recipe from Vegan Brunch. I didn't have enough strawberries at hand so decided to add a drop of strawberry jam to each muffin also.

Too delicious for a word.

 

[vegan mofo day 19] Collard green rolls with lentils

Collard green rolls. Filling is made by mixing lentils, chopped green beans and red peppers, panko, flax seeds as a binder, water and olive oil. Stewed in tomato sauce. I just used leftover pasta sauce. I thinned it out, drizzled some olive oil and placed two bay leaves to make it more flavorful. 

This really reminded me of the cabbage rolls my mother used to make and I felt good. Although, I put too much flax seeds and the filling ended up being a bit too slimy :( I don't hate the slimy texture but I might try baking the leftovers to see if they will have a more cooked texture.

The collard green rolls were served with roasted potatoes and homemade bread. Trying to mimic the collard green rolls, I made a mixture of tomato sauce, kale and lentils with a dash of olive oil for Baby. He also had mashed potato and bread.

[vegan mofo day 18] "cheesy sauce" pasta

"Cheesy sauce" pasta with roasted zucchini and lentils salad.

The sauce was made with flour, olive oil, nutritional yeast, soy milk, a little bit of soy sauce, salt and pepper. As soon as he had a mouthful of his pasta, Hubby said "did you make this cheese sauce? Good!" That's a good sign :)

Instead of cheesy sauce, I made a white sauce with thinned out mashed potato for baby's pasta. He also had steamed zucchini and lentils. It's funny he has had and liked pureed zucchini before but he refused to eat this chunky zucchini at first. Same food, different texture, and he didn't look like he recognized it as food lol

[vegan mofo day 17] potato pancakes, stir fried tofu and green beans

 

The other day I bought a 5lb bag of potatoes for less than $2. Great deal! So we're having many potato dishes, one of which was the shepherd's pie I made the other night.

And for this meal, I made potato pancakes. I chopped the raw potato and cabbage into tiny pieces in a food processor, mixed in about 1/4C of flour, made it into patties and fry them up. Served with vegenaise and sriracha sauce. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, they were pretty good :) I'd add some seasonings and herbs next time I'll make though. I'm thinking chives, perhaps? Hubby said cilantro will go well. Sounds good!

Baby's potato pancake was made by frying the mashed potato that was shaped into a patty. When it comes to the foods that were on the dirty dozen list, I try to buy organic as much as possible if I'm going to feed them to my son. I'd love it if I could buy organic for us adults too but we cannot afford them at the moment :( Besides, our local grocery stores carry only limited varieties of organic produce, which is way too expensive even for organic fruits and vegetables. Anyways, I didn't want to use the same patties I made for us since our potatoes are not organic. Luckily I had some mashed potato I made using organic potatoes in the freezer.

Other foods on the plates are stir fried tofu and green beans. I dusted tofu with corn starch to make it more crispy. Baby had kale on rice and mashed edamame. Edamame is a bagged frozen one but this is also organic. I'm trying to avoid GMO soy when I can.

How often do you buy organic fruits and vegetables?

[vegan mofo day 16] lazy Sunday dinner - instant curry from Japan

I was too lazy to cook last night so I decided to try this instant curry my mother sent me from Japan. I know this doesn't really fit my theme "cooking vegan on a budget" (except that food gifts are always appreciated when on a budget as long as it's vegan), but thought it'd be fun to introduce some vegan goodies. 

 

It's keema curry with lentils and soy meat. No animal ingredients or sugar are used. Awesome! It says the spiciness level is medium-hot but I'd have loved it if it had been a bit more spicy. Nonetheless, it was pretty good. I'd love to have it again (yes, mom? hehe).

Since this was a lentil curry, baby had lentils on rice, steamed carrots and some soup. All stocked in the freezer.

Japan is, in my mind, not a country I'd think vegetarian friendly, let alone vegan. At least that was the case when I visited there last time. Japanese meals may be healthier and I do think they eat more varieties of food on average, but most of the traditional meals contain meat or fish. The animal-based broth is used in ramen noodles. The broth in miso soup usually contains fish. Even an innocent looking loaf of bread sometimes has gelatin in it to make it soft or whatever (ugh).

But, fortunately, as far as I can see from stories I read online, vegetarianism has been gaining popularity lately. Vegetarian restaurants are popping up in many cities across Japan. My mother has sent me all kinds of interesting vegan products, like mapo tofu sauce, cold noodles, ramen noodles etc. Even mentaiko (roe of fish) pasta that uses amaranth. They may not use the V word in the package (just saying "without animal ingredients"), but that's ok. I'm happy that I will be able to find restaurants that I can look forward to visiting or won't encounter as many confusing looks as before when I say I don't eat animals. Well, maybe not the latter because a lot of people still don't seem to get that I don't eat animals. never. Not just half the time, or 75% vegetarian. But that'll probably change in the future too, I hope.

[vegan mofo day 15] French Toast

A stale bread has turned into some delicious treats for a Sunday morning. I made this french toast by soaking slices of bread in the coconut milk (the kind that came in a can) and syrup mixture. Then, I sprinkled toasted coconut flakes with powdered sugar. mmmm.

[vegan mofo day 14] Lentils Shepherd's Pie and Baby Shepherd's Pie

I love shepherd's pie. I think it's one of the most comforting foods. I don't know if it's the mashed potatoes or the fact that it's baked (I love baked foods), or the combination of moist filling and soft, silky layer, but I just like it. On one Thanksgiving, my MIL made a vegan shepherd's pie as a main dish for me. It was awesome. Who needs turkey for Thanksgiving if there's shepherd's pie (well, I don't want turkey if I had only salad and bread anyways but you know what I mean :) ).

I made the filling by sauteing diced carrots, green beans, corn and lentils. I seasoned them with celery seeds, sage, fennel seeds, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, salt and pepper. The fennel seeds added an interesting kick to the taste and I liked it. Sorry I didn't really measure any of the ingredients, so there's no recipe.

I also made a baby version of shepherd's pie. This turn out to be really cute and tasty :)

I happened to have all the ingredients pureed or diced in the freezer already so I just needed to assemble them. Pretty easy but looks... can I say impressive?

Baby Shepherd's Pie 

ingredients

1 Tablespoon each of pureed lentils, green beans

1 Tablespoon of steamed carrots, diced into tiny pieces

a tiny amount of olive oil

2 Tablespoons of mashed potato

(I'd add some herbs if I've introduced them already)

1) mix the vegetables and lentils with a small amount of olive oil in a warm pan

2) place the vegetable mixture in an oven safe container

3) place the mashed potato over the vegetable mixture

4) baked in the oven for about 10 minutes at 400F

5) Serve at a room temperature or chilled (not directly from the oven. it'll be too hot for little ones!)

 

 As always please make sure your baby can tolerate all the ingredients and consult with your pediatrician if you have any concerns.

[vegan mofo day 13] fried rice, seared tofu and a bit about steamed muffins

Fried rice: with green beans, carrots, corn and diced potatoes, cooked in canola oil, salt, pepper and soy sauce. Of course I drizzled a few drops of sriracha sauce over the fried rice :)

I wanted to make some salad with the seared tofu as a side dish but alas our family members were getting too hungry. I had to serve it as it was lol

Baby had a few pieces of the seared tofu, and steamed carrots, turnip and rice.

Not shown in the picture, but I also made some steamed muffins (or cupcakes) ("mushipan" in Japanese) as baby's snack between meals/our dessert. I didn't add any sugar in baby's mushipan, but the banana inside gave a natural sweetness, making it perfect for a baby snack. Ours was chocolate chips and banana mushipan. yum. They need some tweaking, but I hope to write up a recipe during the vegan mofo.