Posted in Vegan Baking, Vegan Food, tagged chai muffins, christmas dinner, cranberry vinaigrette, haluski, lasagne, tamales, vegan christmas, vegan cookbooks, vegan cookies on 5 January, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post about this, but HOORAY! My family Christmas this year was successfully, 99% vegan (my ‘rents used nonvegan dressing on their salad and my mom made nonvegan cookies)!
I may have come up with a menu that was a little too much for lil me to handle, but now I know that for next year. 3 main courses plus no appetizers equals a hungry family all day, oops!
At least my brother brought chai muffins from VegWeb for breakfast:
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Posted in Traveling, Vegan Baking, Vegan Food, tagged baketivism, breadsticks, chicago, chicago veganmania, chili, culinary activism, isa chandra moskowitz, kelly peloza, milwaukee, Pizza, quesadillas, the vegan cookie connoisseur, vegan cookies on 17 October, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Last week I took a few days off from school and flew to Milwaukee to visit my good friend Kelly Peloza (author of the upcoming Vegan Cookie Connoisseur), see Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and of course go to Chicago VeganMania! I had a great time reacquainting with old vegan friends and meeting new ones, helping bake cookies for Kelly’s demo, and eating lots of amazing food.
Thursday.
I arrived in Milwaukee and we went to UWM to see Isa’s cooking demo, where she made an amazing root veggie and lentil chili. I’ve never cooked with lentils before, but she inspired me to do so because they are ridiculously easy to cook unlike other dry beans which take hours!
We then went to the Milwaukee Art Museum because Kelly had a class there, and admission is free on the first Thursday of every month. Her friend Corey and I took the audio tour of the new European Design exhibit, then got our picture taken in Egypt with a 3-D camera.
After Kelly’s class it was back to the UWM for Isa’s presentation on Culinary Activism: Becoming a Baketivist and Beyond, in which she pointed out that people are more likely to listen to you if you have a tasty cupcake. She also showed that vegans can multitask to help people as well as animals by holding vegan bake sales to raise money for Haiti or having brunches/dinners to raise money for other charitable causes. This discredits the argument that many people employ saying vegans only care about animals, not people!
The day was so busy we hadn’t had a chance to eat much of anything, so we all went out to Classic Slice for pizza after the presentation.
Cheezy breadsticks
Mediterranean pizza
Friday.
Friday was spent baking, baking, baking. We made 150+ cookies for Kelly’s demo at VeganMania: hypnosis cookies, chocolate peppermint creme bars, and my personal go-to cookie: chai. All from Kelly’s upcoming book, which you should buy from her blog!!
Hypnosis cookies
Chocolate peppermint creme bars
Chai cookies
Corey and I made quesadillas for dinner filled with Daiya cheese, Tofurky turkey slices, spinach, and salsa, and topped off with guacamole and more salsa. It was a nice break from all the cookie baking that was going on. Photo from Seitan Beats Your Meat
I’m afraid that’s all the energy I have to write up tonight, I’m still working on catching up on all the sleep I missed because there was so much going on! Stay tuned for Part 2: Vegan Mania (the climax!) and afterwards (the falling action!)
