Happy 2014!

I hope the new year's been treating you well so far. The weather hasn't been great here, more snow on the way (oh I hope those of you who are affected by the snow storms are ok!). But I've been enjoying the feeling of starting anew. I feel like everything is possible. Well I'm gonna make everything possible! :)

New Year's celebrations center around counting down on the new year's eve to the new year's day (and possibly being hungover in the morning, hahaha) in western countries. In Japan, however, they consist of reflecting the year that's going to pass on the eve and celebrating a fresh new start on the first 3 days of the new year with families, relatives and friends. THREE days! (And if weekends are included, it'll be five days this year)

We may not have been able to enjoy long holidays like that, but we celebrated our new year's in Japanese style.

It's a Japanese tradition to eat noodles called toshikoshi soba on new year's eve. This year, though, our son is still avoiding buckwheat (it's a high allergy food) so we instead had udon noodles (although I doubt this was real udon).

I served the noodles in tsukimi style (literally means viewing the moon) with egg, mochi rice cake, shiitake mushrooms and green onions in kelp dashi soup. It's called tsukimi probably because the egg looks like the moon.

I found a great tutorial on how to make dashi soup with kelp (kombu) here by the way.

We also had vegan "duck" I found at a local Chinese grocery store. I just fried it but it tasted pretty good. I served it with hot sauce and lettuce to make lettuce wraps. yum.

And here's our Japanese style new year's meal.

On the top is mashed sweet potato called kinton, vegetable stew called chikuzen-ni, and tempura. The bottom right is zoni soup and the bottom left is agar. The traditional Japanese new year's meal is called osechi which includes several kinds of food. I just made two of those this year. I tried something different and threw in some apple in my mashed sweet potato, which turned out great. Our son couldn't have enough of it :) Kinton represents money. Hope this will bring some good luck in our finance this year!

I made the agar cake in white and red because the combination of the colors red and white is thought to be celebratory in Japan. I used milk for the white and cherry juice for the red. I got some of these ideas from Japanese cooking sites.

I hope you all have a successful year in your chosen field, whatever you do. I'll continue to share more handmade fun so hope you'll stick around!

babyfood 10 month old

Starting this month, the baby's food was getting more adventurous and fun with the introduction of herbs and spices. Our meals are getting more similar and sometimes we're even able to share some of our meals, which is awesome.

quinoa, chickpeas
Now Baby can eat two of my favorite foods too. yay. I love that quinoa can be the main grains of a meal as well as the protein source.

I used to serve pureed beans just as it is but I started to spread the puree on toasts this month. He seems to like it.

Udon
Udon is a type of Japanese noodles made of wheat. It is usually introduced at a fairly early stage of babyfood in Japan and I thought of introducing it earlier. But I didn't have a chance to go to an Asian grocery until this time. Since they are long like spaghetti, I break them into pieces before cooking and cook longer than what it says in the package till the noodles become really soft.

Herbs/Spices (Garlic, Cinnamon, Sage)
I love adding herbs and spices to babyfood. They can add tastes without making the food salty. For example, Baby doesn't like oatmeal very much probably because it's bland, but with cinnamon, he'll eat it. The same goes for steamed broccoli. Although he used to like broccoli, he's started to dislike it (ugh). He picks it up and throws it out from his high chair! But when I saute broccoli with a tiny amount of olive oil and garlic and/or sage, it becomes his favorite food. yay.

Onion
Actually, my husband and I hate onion. I could eat it if it's cooked really well, in the form of onion rings, or red onion in a small amount, but husband doesn't at all. So naturally we don't buy onion. However, when my parents were here, they bought some and left it in our fridge. Then I thought, why not. This would be a great chance for Baby to try onion. It turned out he loved it! I guess there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't like it just because both his parents hate it, right? I think I'll buy some time and again, since onion makes his food interesting too.

Butternut Squash
I would have introduced this earlier but since butternut squash is a fall vegetable, I waited till this time. I think it's important to eat seasonal produce even if baby doesn't know yet :)

Miso
I made a very weak miso soup so he could get used to the taste. Weak because otherwise it'll be too salty for babies. He loves it. In fact, I couldn't eat enough of miso soup when I was pregnant. Maybe baby wanted it before he was even born :)

Cheerios
I read again and again that doughnut shaped cereals are one of the best first finger foods for babies, so I've decided to give cheerios to him. He loves it. I think he thinks he's eating cookies or something :) Now cheerios became his regular breakfast along with fruits and soy yoghurt.

Next month, I'm planning to try seaweeds, some more herbs and spices, and perhaps mushrooms? It's going to be fun!

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 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 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 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 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.

[vegan mofo day 12] pasta salad

When it comes to food, my husband likes it hot or warm, with possible exceptions being salad (as a side dish) and sushi. He prefers hot noodle soup to cold noodles (like cold soba noodles), toasted bread to non-toasted one, and hot sake to chilled one, for example. So meals like (vegan) gazpacho or vichyssoise will be out of the question. And pasta salad is not appreciated very much.

I, on the other hand, do like chilled meals, especially in hot summer days. Last night's dinner was just for me and the baby, so I went ahead and made pasta salad, which I wouldn't make if I were cooking for two (and a half). Husband will probably be enjoying non-vegan food outside the home. I enjoy chilled dishes when I don't have to cook for him. It's our unwritten agreement, perhaps? :)

My pasta salad consisted of kale, lettuce, cucumbers and lentils, dressed with olive oil, nutritional yeast, some herbs, vinegar, grated garlic, salt and pepper. Simple but tasty. (ETA: I remember I added a little bit of vegenaise in the salad too)

Baby's pasta "salad" had pureed kale and green beans, dressed with a dash of olive oil. He also had lentil spread, which was his first lentils.

[vegan mofo day 10] kale and tomato pasta soup, black bean, corn & cucumber salad

 

Soup: kale and pasta in tomato sauce based broth. I made this tomato sauce from scratch. Husband had a chance to get a bunch of tomatoes from his co-worker's veggie garden. They were too mature to eat raw, so I turned them into tomato sauce by just simmering them with a bit of olive oil. Fresh tomato sauce tastes delicious. Since the sauce itself didn't have salt or herbs, Baby had the same sauce over his pasta, with pureed kale.

Salad: black bean, corn and diced cucumber, dressed with cumin, paprika, chilli powder, apple cider vinegar, canola oil and salt & pepper. I'd have added a splash of lime and chopped cilantro if I had them but it was still good. Instead of the salad, baby had black bean spread.

We also had the homemade bread. Baby looked still hungry. So we shared my bread. He can't get enough of my bread. As a baking enthusiast, it makes me really happy. I'm thinking about what to bake for him next.

[vegan mofo day 8] homemade no-knead bread and Mochi's Sunday

 

After a successful introduction of wheat into baby's diet in the form of pasta, the next logical step would be to introduce bread. I, however, am a bit reluctant to give store-bought bread at this stage because of all the ingredients and additives that I often don't even know how to pronounce. So I decided to bake one.

I may not be great at cooking but I think I can say that I'm a pretty decent baker. Or at least that's what my husband told me ;-) But something weird happened during pregnancy (as in many aspects of life in those 9 months), and I couldn't stand the smell of baked goods. After the delivery, I was too exhausted to tackle baking projects, barely having energy even to cook everyday meals. So I'd been away from the oven for quite some time. Well, I guess it's time to get back to baking then!

The above is a no-knead bread my MIL taught me how to bake, who in turn was taught by her friend. So I cannot post its recipe, but it's really easy to make and delicious. I used to bake this every week. I usually sprinkle sesame seeds, poppy seeds or oatmeal on top of the bread but unfortunately I didn't have any of those at hand this time.

With simple ingredients like flour, water, salt, yeast, and flax seeds, homemade bread is more natural, tasty and inexpensive (unless you can find a 99c loaf of bread that tastes ok like I sometimes find at a local grocery store. I don't think I can beat that price by making at home). And you know for sure that it's vegan. No nasty egg or milk or gelatin (or high fructus corn syrup if you're avoiding those).

There's also something about the process of baking. I find it relaxing and rewarding.

And the baby loved it! What's more rewarding than your own child devouring the bread you baked for him?

Well, maybe looking at this cute face can be pretty rewarding too :)

 

 

Happy Sunday! 

[vegan mofo day 7] leftover night - roasted vegetable pasta

 

I don't know what happened, but the post I wrote and published disappeared :( ugh. Just to let you know that I had roasted vegetable pasta using the roasted vegetables on Thursday and the arrabiatta sauce on Wednesday.

Baby had ratatouille (I made a while ago and was stocked the freezer) on pasta, steamed carrots and apple sauce.

[vegan mofo day 6] Agedashi Tofu

 

Some of you may already know, I grew up in Japan. So our dinner table includes a fair amount of Japanese meals, or something akin to those (due to the limited access to Asian ingredients). Or they may be roughly called Asian style dishes.

Agedashi Tofu, which is fried tofu served in dashi-based broth, is one of my favorite Japanese foods. For this time, however, I made an, um, terrible broth, which kind of ruined the crispy fried tofu. ugh. Should've just dipped it in soy sauce. 

You can make the crispy tofu in agedashi tofu by, first, wrapping the tofu in paper towel and letting it sit for a few hours to get rid of the water in the tofu. Then dust the tofu with cornstarch, and fry them up. You can use either silken, firm or even extra firm tofu but firmer tofu may be easier to cook. I used silken for this, though.

The broth is another story. The main sauce usually used in the broth contains fish so either I have to find one without fish, or I have to be creative. My attempt at the latter was a .... well, unsuccessful one :(

Other foods on the plate: corn on the cob flavored with liquid smoke and soy sauce, and stir fried veggies on rice. Of course a few drops of sriracha sauce are a must.

Baby had diced tofu, kale rice and some steamed zucchini. Yes. My baby loves kale and tofu :)

[vegan mofo day 5] roasted veggies and black bean patties

Roasted veggies: cabbage, carrots and turnip. Simply with olive oil and salt.

Black bean patties were a bit too dry, although the taste was pretty good. Maybe I'll add cooked rice next time. Seasoned with nutritional yeast, soy sauce, fennel seeds, sage, salt and pepper. I might make a sandwich with the leftover patties for lunch today. Yum.

Baby had pasta in carrot and tomato soup (which was stocked in the freezer), steamed turnip and black bean spread.

[vegan mofo day 4] baby's first pasta night

Now that Baby can eat several kinds of vegetables & fruits and protein sources (like tofu, beans, edamame) I try to put the same (or similar) food items as we eat on baby's plate. I'm not really a fan of "kid's meal", and this is my attempt to get him used to the taste of the foods we eat (fingers crossed!). I also want him to get used to the Japanese(-esque) food I make and I grew up with, despite the fact that Japan is thousands of miles away.

I usually decide what we will eat for dinner first, then pick a couple of the ingredients from what eat and prepare them differently. This time, however, I wanted to introduce pasta into his diet, so we went along and had a pasta dish also. His pasta is with tomato and eggplant. Ours is arrabiatta with artichoke and broccoli. He seemed to have enjoyed it a lot :)

[vegan mofo day 3] quinoa salad

Here's the vegan food items I got from this week's grocery shopping trip. Kale was a dollar for two bunches and corn was 19c each. Great deal! The total of the items in this photo was probably around $35? Yes. I do some couponing. And I mainly go after sale items to save money.

And luckily my husband got these fresh vegetables from his co-worker's veggie garden. yay. So these and the stuff in the pantry are the ingredients I'll be dealing with this week.

Looking at lots of vegetables inspired me to make some quinoa salad, including lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and capers. I whipped up some dressing using olive oil, dried italian herbs, white vinegar, garlic powder*, salt and pepper. I usually just make up dressing from whatever I feel like adding for a particular occasion. I don't buy dressing anymore. It's not just for saving money. Homemade dressing tastes more fresh and better. I like an impromptu process.

And quinoa! Don't you just love it? I can't believe even the sight of it made me sick when I was pregnant. I really wanted to eat quinoa because it's packed with protein but I couldn't. Not until a couple of months postpartum. But fortunately my taste buds returned to normal and I've been happily enjoying this nutritious gem.

Baby had two of the vegetables that were used in the salad: carrots and eggplant. the carrots were cut into smaller pieces at the table. And some mashed edamame. In retrospect, I should've put edamame in our salad too.

Did you acquire weird dislikes for any food that you used to love during pregnancy?

* no garlic powder for hubby's dressing. He hates garlic! :(

[Vegan MoFo] being vegan on a budget

Welcome fellow vegan mofo-ers as well as regular readers! This is my second year of participating this exciting, sometimes overwhelming, vegan blogging event, though it'd be the first from this blog. I wanted to do last year also but I was heavily pregnant back then and didn't have much energy left to keep up blogging every day. I'm happy to say that this year I'm joining in the fun with the cutest boy in the world (I know every parent says that. Bear with me), and the cutest cat named Mochi :)

this was when he was about 4 months old
(no. he didn't start solid yet. it's a Japanese custom of "pretend eating"
to wish for the abundance of food for the rest of his life)

With the cost that associated with pregnancy and the new expenses, we've decided it's time to tighten our wallet and be strict with our budget. We'd love to give him the best education possible (as well as the deepest love from us) after all, and for that we don't mind giving up one day of dining out or a few (or many).

According to the budgeting website the Fun, Cheap or Free Queen, 100 dollars per month per person for groceries is their benchmark for budgeting, so that's what we've been aiming at, which comes to 75 dollars per week for three of us and a cat. The grocery budget includes, not only food, but anything and everything else that you buy from a grocery store.

I don't know how 75 dollars per week for groceries sounds to you, but I know that this is not enough to frequent Whole Foods and buy vegan goodies often.

Not that we have Whole Foods or Trader Joe's in our vicinity anyways :(

I do purchase vegan specialty items once in a while though, using the money set aside for other uses like craft supplies, entertainment etc. After all, food can be an entertainment, right? :)

So this is what I'm going to write about for this year's vegan MoFo: everyday vegan meals on a budget. We'll see what vegan meals I can come up with within this budget, including baby food (although I'd like him to be, he's not a vegan baby however. sorry). The meals I'll be making won't be grand and scrumptious as most of the vegan recipe bloggers make. My hope is, however, to show that vegan meals don't have to be "special". Vegan meals can be accessible to anybody (vegan or otherwise), quick to make and tasty. I'm not even a great cook.

OK. This post won't end without a picture of food. hehe.

This is vegan chili with black beans topped with avocado. The baby had black bean spread and avocado on rice. yum!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy my vegan mofo posts (and beyond!)