Sanctuary

Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary

A couple weekends ago, Chris, Roman, and I took our very first trip to a farm animal sanctuary. We drove two and half hours north of the city to Woodstock, arriving just in time to hop on the last tour.

The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary currently sits nestled among the mountains of upstate New York. I don’t think we could have picked a better time of year to visit than the fall. The rolling mounds of patchwork orange, red, yellow and green surrounding us were stunning.

One of the first things we noticed as we drove up was a large array of solar panels on the property, announcing that sustainability is a priority here. Something else that I noticed immediately, before we even got out of the car, was the smell—or rather, the lack thereof.

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15-Minute Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin Butter

I have always been a big fan of pumpkin butter. Its silky smooth spiciness just sings of fall. So I can’t say why exactly, until about a month ago, it had been years since I’d had any.

Thankfully, my dad’s fiancée put pumpkin butter back on my radar again. When we were visiting, she pulled a jar from the fridge at breakfast. I stirred a little into my oatmeal and fell in love all over again. As I was enjoying the familiar, warmly-spiced spread, I did something that I typically do. I started thinking, Hey I could make this. In fact, I’m going to make this when we get home. No, you know what? I’m going to make a healthier version of this when we get home.

Pumpkin Puree & Dates

And so I did.

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What Vegans Eat

Breakfast

Breakfast: Oatmeal sweetened with maple syrup and spiced with cinnamon and a pinch of cardamom, diced pear, walnuts, chia seeds, and buckwheat groats. Not pictured: a cup of black coffee.

 

Lunch

Lunch: Leftover lentils, roasted garlic sesame mochi, and lightly steamed kale and collards.

 

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Buffalo Chickpea Dip

Buffalo Chickpea Dip

The Sports Center alerts constantly buzzing on my husband’s phone, followed by groans of disappointment over the status of his “fantasy team”, tell me that it’s football season. The holidays and the food-filled gatherings that accompany them are also fast approaching. Both of these make for good excuses to throw together the recipe that I’m about to share with you, but, truth be told, you don’t need an excuse. For the love of everything that is right and good, just make this recipe.

Buffalo Chickpea Dip, guys.

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Brrrrr

Today was crazy cold and windy, so we had to bust out some of the winter gear.  It looks like I might be going into my third season rocking my maternity winter coat, which worked well as a babywearing coat last year, and this year is just huge.  We were happy to find that Roman’s hat and mittens from last year still fit, because tiny fingers.  Also, adorable!

Winter Gear

World Vegan Month + Nablopomo = Done!

Pigs at Woodstock

Happy World Vegan Day, guys!

That’s right, November 1st is World Vegan Day, and it also kicks off both World Vegan Month and Nablopomo. Since starting Leaves of Kale, I’ve been planning to participate in Nablopomo, which is a challenge that bloggers take on to write a post each day of the month. (The organization BlogHer now hosts a challenge every month, but November is still considered the official month of Nablopomo.) Having already planned to take this on, when I realized that this month is also World Vegan Month—well, come on! It’s just too perfect.

So, since it’s Nablopomo, and in celebration of World Vegan Month, I am planning to write and publish a post here every day for the remainder of November.

I have no illusions that this is going to be an easy task, especially with a toddler to chase. My posts will no doubt range from fully photographed recipes to a list of articles that I’ve enjoyed reading, a few thoughts, or maybe a series of simple iPhone snaps of whatever I’ve eaten that day. I know that this month will challenge my perfectionist tendencies, and I hope that it will push me into a consistent blogging groove. It’s going to be an exercise for sure!

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Snacks on a Plane (and other vegan, toddler-friendly food tips for travel)

IMG_5086

Immediately after we booked our plane tickets for our visit to Minnesota/Wisconsin last month, I began to panic. Well, more like plan/panic. Planic?

The first two times we flew with Roman, the question of what we’d eat while traveling, and specifically on the plane, wasn’t a huge deal. We probably stashed a couple bars in my bag for ourselves and maybe bought some nuts or something at the airport. As far as Roman was concerned, well, I just made sure to wear a nursing top. His first plane ride was at 2 months old, at which point he was basically on the boob all the time anyway, and even on trip number two, at just shy of 11 months, I was still his primary source of nourishment. Whenever he was hungry or moody or tired, I’d just pop him on the boob. Easy peasy.

Twenty months, however, is a different game. While Roman is still happily nursing down for naps, bed, and comfort, food-food now makes up the more significant part of his caloric intake. The kiddo needs to eat and has definite mealtimes, which are essentially impossible to avoid in the several hour process of: travel to airport –> check in at airport –> wait at airport –> wait on plane –> fly on plane –> wait at baggage claim –> wait for car –> travel to destination. And while mealtime is so, so, so much cleaner than it used to be, he is still an uncivilized little animal who takes no issue with occasionally smearing food all the way up to his eyebrows, a complicating factor for in-air dining.

So two months out from our trip, in my early onset flurry of “planic”, I started searching for kid-friendly vegan travel eats. The lists I found included things like hummus, sandwiches, and hummus sandwiches. Others recommended nuts or salads (grain, green, and pasta). Don’t get me wrong, these are all great ideas—they’re just not the most toddler-friendly ideas.

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Moroccan Chickpea Stew

Moroccan Chickpea Stew

The first time I made this stew was one of those days where I looked up and realized that it was somehow, impossibly five-o-clock and I didn’t have anything planned for dinner. I began to panic and texted Chris to see if he might be able to bring something home. No response. He was probably in a meeting.

With dinnertime looming, I couldn’t just wait around and do nothing. The frantic fridge and pantry raid began. Almost immediately the three cans of chickpeas in our cupboard jogged something in my memory. I’d once made a Moroccan chickpea soup that was pretty decent and had called for three cans of chickpeas. Did I have everything else on hand? I found the recipe and confirmed that I did.

But….

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Pumpkin Spice Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

Pumpkin Cake

Many exciting things of the nuptial variety have been happening in our families over the past few months: one of my cousins got married, two of my other cousins got engaged, and we finally received the call from my sister-in-law Amy telling us that her boyfriend had proposed! (Sorry for using the word “finally”, Jeff, but we knew you were the dude since, like, the day we met you, so we’ve all been waiting. 😉 ) Their wedding planning is well underway, and Chris and I are excited and honored to have been asked to be members of the wedding party.

I was also incredibly honored when my mother-in-law asked me to make a cake for Amy and Jeff’s engagement party. Chris’ aunt, a seasoned baker, would be making a regular cake already. We have a fairly significant list of dietary restrictions in our group, though, so I was tasked with producing a vegan, gluten-free, soy-free cake as well.

No problemo!

(Hindsight being 20/20, this cake should and could have been nut-free also, but I made it using homemade cashew milk. Apologies to the nut-free cousins!)

After a few inquiries as to what the guests of honor might enjoy, I decided on a season-appropriate pumpkin spice cake with a hint of cardamom and a vanilla buttercream frosting. Sound good? It really was. But before I get into how good this cake is, let me first tell you that this is apparently (thankfully) a forgiving recipe.

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Vegan Among Omnivores

Proud vegan kitchen 2
We returned last Wednesday from an almost week-long visit to the Midwest. It was great to spend some time with my family, who we only see once or twice a year. Plus we were glad to be there to celebrate my cousin’s wedding and, a few days later, my not-so-little brother’s twenty-sixth birthday. However, it was also—a bit unexpectedly—the most difficult visit we’ve made yet.

We knew it would be more challenging going in. First, we’d be traveling with an active and independent toddler; the last time we took a trip like this with Roman, he wasn’t yet walking and still slept pretty easily through flights and car rides. Second, this would be the first time that we weren’t spending a good portion of our visit in the Twin Cities area. When you’re near a major metropolitan area, you can be fairly certain that you’ll have at least a couple of vegan dining options available. Pizza Luce is a staple for us whenever we visit, and we know that we can always hit up Whole Foods in either St. Paul or Minneapolis for provisions if needed. This time, we would be spending our entire visit in northern Wisconsin.

We prepared as much as we could for both of these things. We bought a set of headphones and downloaded a few episodes of Thomas for Roman and made sure to pack my entire purse and half of a small suitcase full of food and snacks (I’ll share some of my travel tips soon). Chris was pretty insistent in the days before we left that I was over-preparing food-wise. By the end of our trip, though, we were mighty thankful for Thomas the tank engine and glad for every bit of food we’d brought.

So while there were trying moments with the kiddo, and while we definitely found ourselves feeling hungry more often on this trip than others before, overall we felt that we prepared pretty well for the challenges we foresaw. What made things really difficult for us this time around was something that we didn’t see coming—how hard it would be simply being vegan in a region that is decidedly not.

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