[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.