Lily's Vegan Adventures

It was my birthday last week, which means my weekend was filled with lots of good food and fun. Friday night, my mom made our family a beautiful build-your-own-taco spread. We had homemade corn tortillas, pan-fried veggies, refried beans, guacamole, salad, and quesadillas. For dessert, my mom baked a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and blackberry jam. The next morning, my partner and I drove to Victoria to spend the day eating vegan food and exploring. Our first stop was Fern Cafe and Bakery, which is one of our favourites. I was excited to see the pumpkin spice latte was back, so I ordered that with whipped cream. I also ordered their featured menu item, the “eggs” benny. Everything was delicious. The eggs were made out of tofu, and they were topped with tomato, cheese, and soy bacon, covered in a cashew hollandaise sauce. My partner ordered the fried chick'un and pancakes. Yum! After brunch, we drove to Hatley Castle in Colwood. The castle sits near the ocean on the Roy...

This cheese sauce is one of my favourite things to make. It tastes great as a mac and cheese or drizzled on top of cooked veggies. Or anything else that you enjoy cheese sauce on, really! Because I use it mainly for mac and cheese, this recipe is measured to mix with 500g of pasta. Why do I love this cheese sauce so much? It’s creamy. A couple tips I have found for making a creamy cheese sauce is to use a tablespoon of vegan butter, and use oat or soy milk. The vegan butter gives the sauce a bit of extra flavour and richness that you find in standard cheese sauce. Using oat or soy milk works best because these plant milks are a bit thicker than, for example, almond milk.  I haven’t tried using any other plant milk aside from oat, soy, and almond, but I found that almond milk was too thin for my liking. If you try a different kind of plant milk, please let us know how it worked for you in the comments below! It’s not made with cashews. Not that there’s anything wrong with cashews, b...

Now that things are opening up again, it is time for me to go back to working in person.  There are a lot of things about going back to work that will take some getting used to - like getting out of my pajamas every day - but a big thing I forgot about was having to pack a lunch every night.  I like to make packing a lunch as easy as humanly possible, and one of my favourite things to make are chickpea salad sandwiches. Chickpea salad sandwiches are a great cruelty-free alternative to egg salad sandwiches.  They are easy to make, affordable, healthy, and they taste really good!  This recipe is one of the few things I don’t get sick of eating all week. The main ingredients are of course chickpeas, along with vegan mayonnaise, yellow mustard, green onions, and salt and pepper.  For extra flavour I like to add dill pickles, dried dill, grated carrot, and a bit of paprika.  The grated carrot was inspired by an egg salad sandwich I had many years ago at a high t...

I haven’t done a ‘What I Ate Today’ blog post in a while, so I thought I’d make another one today (February 20, 2021).  The purpose of these posts is to show people what vegans eat and give some new meal ideas. I will also add links to any brands or recipes I mention so that you can make these foods too.  So, let’s get started! Today was a busy day.  My partner and I spent almost the entire day socializing Olive.  (If you don’t know who Olive is, she is our rescue puppy .)  Olive is definitely making some progress, but we still have a lot of work to do with getting her more comfortable with the world. Breakfast Before we set out for our first adventure, we had yogurt bowls topped with oranges and hemp hearts, and the last of our homemade banana bread (from the cookbook Fuss-Free Vegan ).  The yogurt is Riviera vanilla coconut-based, and it is definitely one of my favourites. Lunch After going to two different parks with Olive, we came back home for lunch....

I love sushi bowls because they are healthy, versatile, and packed with flavour.  This version is made with sticky rice, fresh veggies, protein-rich fried tofu and edamame beans, and of course nori pieces to give it that sushi flavour.  To top it off, I added a chipotle-lime mayo, which took the dish to another level! This recipe would be perfect for meal prepping.  Just assemble the ingredients into containers so that you can easily grab and go. Start by pressing the tofu.  As you can see by the picture below, you will require a VERY fancy tofu press.  Basically what I do is wrap the tofu in a dish towel and place something sort of heavy like a cast-iron pan on top.  Then you let it sit there for about 15 minutes or longer.  This will draw some of the moisture from the tofu. My fancy tofu press While you are waiting for the tofu to press, cook the rice by following the cooking instructions on the rice package.  You can use any type of rice. ...

What I love about this Creamy Pumpkin Curry Soup is that it is savoury, had tons of flavour, and is packed with vegetables.  This soup can be made in under an hour and is really simply to make.  Be sure to pair it with freshly baked biscuits ( my go-to recipe ). I think pumpkin season might be over now; however, it’s made with canned pumpkin, so you can make this anytime.  Pumpkin is good for you because it is high in vitamin A, so you really should probably eat this soup all year round! When I make creamy soups I usually use coconut cream, which is great for making things creamy, but sometimes you don’t want the coconut-y taste.  I started doing some research to see what I could use instead of coconut cream, and that’s when I discovered you can make cashew cream (and it’s surprisingly easy!).  I used this recipe , and the ratio was 1:1.   Creamy Pumpkin Curry Soup Prep time:  15 minutes Cook time:  40 minutes Makes about 4 servings Ingredien...