I’ve decided that, in addition to posting a day’s worth of meals each Wednesday, I’m going to start doing one of these link round-ups each week.  I read a fair amount of articles throughout the week on a wide range of topics and will pick my favorites to share here.  Obviously a lot of them will be oriented toward animal welfare and plant-based recipes/nutrition, but I’ll also include others that I found especially fun/interesting/thought-provoking.  Sunday seems like a good day for this, so here we go!

… 

Read More »

After having an extremely productive week, I decided to take the morning off.  Sort of.  I still made breakfast, but, instead of jumping up immediately after we finished and starting on the dishes, I decided to sit and finish my coffee.  This of course meant that lunch would either be a total hassle or we’d be picking something up.

You see, we live in a two loads of dishes per day household.  Our dishwasher is on the small side, but I also cook and serve three to four meals a day (including snack).  Doing one load each day will leave me with a sink full of dirty dishes at pretty much all times.  So two it is—one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

It also happened that I was too busy to get my afternoon load of dishes in yesterday. So, not doing my post-breakfast load of dishes today meant that the kitchen was a bit of a mess, thus complicating lunchtime.  Uff.

… 

Read More »

This week I decided to take my little man out for an afternoon coffee date at the new Starbucks in our neighborhood.  We swung by Juice Generation first to grab a couple of gluten-free, vegan pumpkin muffins, since, despite their efforts to fit in with the neighborhood aesthetically, Starbucks’ baked goods selection still lacks these options.  When we arrived, I snagged a cute little container of blueberries in case Roman wanted something in addition to his muffin and ordered a soy chai for myself and some steamed soy milk for my date.  We pulled a high chair up to a small, round table for two and enjoyed our afternoon snack.

After finishing off his muffin, Roman fed me his entire container of blueberries and then began to eavesdrop on the two men talking behind him.  Every time they laughed, he let out a loud, fake guffaw in response.  Shushing him only made him do it louder, which made me laugh too.  I was clearly not going to be effective in deterring this behavior, so I pulled out a book to bring our attention back to our little table.  After reading it for about the sixth time, Roman looked up and said “Ah-geh?”  I suggested that we go out for a walk instead, before it got too dark.

… 

Read More »

Today Chris and I celebrated our fourth anniversary of marriage as well as our 8th anniversary together (yep–we were married on the anniversary of our first date!).  We didn’t do anything fancy.  Chris took the day off of work, and we spent it chasing Roman through the playground and walking around our neighborhood as a family.

Chris had some really lovely ideas for things that we could have done just the two of us, but that kind of time can be difficult to coordinate.  And while doing those things would have been nice, it felt totally fitting that we spent the day with our son.  He did surprise me with an incredibly thoughtful gift, though: a replica of my bridal bouquet.  I loved the one I carried four years ago, and this one was a beautiful reminder of that day.

So, I’m thinking I may start doing one of these posts each week, maybe every Wednesday.  We could call it “What Vegans Eat Wednesday.” I’ll try to mix things up, but you’ll probably notice that I tend to have some things pretty regularly–like chia seeds and buckwheat groats basically every morning. 😉

Breakfast: Homemade soy yogurt sweetened with a little maple syrup, with chia seeds, buckwheat groats, diced apple, and pumpkin butter. Black coffee.

 

Lunch: Quinoa cakes with a quick, creamy sauce made from Miyoko’s Kitchen Sundried Tomato Garlic cheese and water.  Also, an entire 10-oz bag of frozen spinach.

… 

Read More »

Chris surprised me by taking Friday off of work, giving us all a three day weekend together.  Today was gorgeous, but Friday and Saturday were hat-and-mittens cold.  We still made sure to get out and about quite a bit, including a couple of excursions to get Roman some new books.  We’ve given him two of them so far, and I’m pretty sure we’ve read them each about three dozen times.  That kid loves his books.

Today I thought I’d share a list of the things that I’ve been reading (other than Good Night Trains), cooking, and enjoying lately.  Enjoy and hope you all had a good weekend!

 

… 

Read More »

Our trip to visit Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary last month was a 2-day affair. We drove up on Saturday to visit the sanctuary, stayed in a hotel overnight, and got up the next day with the intention of stopping off to do some apple picking on our way home.

Unfortunately, as we pulled up to the orchard, we notice a “closed” sign hanging out front. It turned out that the weekend prior had been their last of the season (wah wah). The day was cold and windy anyway, so, instead of finding another orchard, we decided to head down to New Paltz and bum around the town.

I wouldn’t have expected it, but between Woodstock and New Paltz, we had ourselves some seriously good eats that weekend. We even came home with a borderline shameful haul of vegan treats (pictured above). Most of the places we visited were ones that we had pinned down prior to heading on our getaway, but a couple were surprises. All of them were great.

… 

Read More »