Vegan in paradise

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

As I shared in my last post, my family and I spent a wonderful week on the Mayan Riviera over Christmas. This post is all about the most important part: the FOOD!

One of the reasons for choosing the resort was the quality and diversity of the food choices. Having been there before as a vegan, I remembered the excellent meals. To me, I don’t feel like I’m on vacation if I’m not getting great food!

There are several restaurants at the resort but we enjoyed the two buffet restaurants best. It was pretty easy to find healthy, delicious vegan food at each meal, but if we didn’t find anything that suited our fancy, we could ask the chef to make us what we liked. Most appreciated!

Typical breakfast: whole wheat toast with peanut butter, cashew-raisin granola, fresh fruit and fresh juice.

The fresh juices were new this year and each morning there were nearly a dozen different juices to choose from.

Below, a mix of cactus and beet that was surprisingly delicious!

Typical lunch: spinach salad with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and cranberries drizzled with olive oil, sauteed veggies, chips, guacamole and salsa. Fresh fruit for dessert.

For snack: a virgin banana daiquiri on the beach!

Typical dinner: rice with red beans peas and corn, roast potatoes, garlicky sauteed veggies and fresh fruit.

For dinner, if we hadn’t found enough vegan legume dishes (their bean dishes on the buffet usually contained pork), the staff seemed quite pleased to make us whatever we wanted. One night it was spicy black beans with roast tomatoes and broccoli…

Another night our custom meal was an amazing white bean stew with carrots and spinach, so delectable that we ate it all before I thought to take a photo of it. On Christmas I was craving pizza so the chef made pizza dough from scratch and topped it with re-fried beans, broccoli and mushrooms — delicious!

There were always loads of desserts, but very few seemed to be vegan. One night I had a delicious tart that appeared to be vegan; another night they had baked apples and cinnamon. Pineapple and melons were my typical dessert.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the amount of healthy, delicious vegan food at the resort. The restaurants were heavy on the white stuff (white bread over whole wheat, white potatoes over sweet potatoes, white rice over brown rice), but I’m sure that’s what most people want when they are on vacation so they were appealing to the masses.

The first meal I made when I came home was everything I missed when I was away: brown rice, tofu and kale! A square of dark chocolate for dessert.

It was a wonderful vacation, but it’s always nice to come home again, even when it’s leaving the tropics to come home to this!….

I am submitting this great day of eating to What I Ate Wednesdays.

Pizza, cupcakes and pie, oh my

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

I am so fortunate that my family is very supportive of my plant-based diet. Meals with my extended family are primarily vegan, even when I’m not the host. I never feel lonely as the lone vegan in the family when everyone is so accommodating. And really, what says I love you more than a non-vegan driving an hour and a half to buy vegan cupcakes for her sister?!
For my adorable nephew’s birthday celebration recently, my sister went above and beyond to make sure the meal would be enjoyable to all, including guests with allergies to gluten, egg and dairy. To keep things simple, pizza was ordered from Pizza Nova, including two cheese-less veggie pizzas. One had broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms. The other had olives, onions and green olives, to which we added Daiya at home and broiled for five minutes. Both were very good! Mmm, I love crispy Pizza Nova crust.

I brought my salsa for a snack; my mother provided her delicious hummus, chips and veggies. Click here for my salsa recipe.
The surprise dessert was decadent cupcakes from Kindfood/Kelly’s Bake Shoppe! My oh my, we were spoiled. Kindfood’s entire menu is vegan and gluten-free and they are one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at; you can read my review here. If you are anywhere near Burlington, Ontario, I highly recommend paying them a visit.

For dinner, my mother made Mujadara (lentils and brown rice with seven spices), a family recipe. Topped with caramelized onions, they were absolutely wonderful. A mixed greens salad with almonds and my maple buckwheat bread with hummus rounded out the meal.
Dessert was strawberry rhubarb pie with coconut milk ice cream. It’s amazing that a cheap grocery store pie could be vegan and so delicious!
A giant thank you to my amazing, loving family.

Since this was such a superb day of eating, I am submitting it for What I Ate Wednesday, with thanks to Peas and Crayons for hosting this blog hop.

Vegan at the cottage

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Our family vacation this summer was a week at a cottage in beautiful Muskoka, Ontario and the ten of us had a wonderful time.

I’m grateful that even though I’m the lone vegan in the family, the rest of my family members are either nearly vegan, semi-vegetarian or veg-supportive. All family meals were predominantly vegan. We saved time and stress by preparing many of the meals ahead of time and freezing them, like my BBQ burritos and my sister’s delicious vegan shepherd’s pie. I made sure to pack with me all the foods I wouldn’t want to go a week without and wouldn’t be able to find in the nearest grocery store, like my sandwich spread (Vegenaise + mustard + fresh herbs from my garden), Tofurky slices, hemp seeds, organic fruit, almond milk, etc.

So, for What I ate Wednesday‘s submission #2, here is what I ate one day last week at the cottage:

Breakfast: Raw cherry almond granola. Recipe coming soon. We adored getting to see this view every day as we ate. So peaceful. August’s WIAW theme is “summer staples”, celebrating the foods in season right now. For me, nothing says summer like fresh berries, and I used both raw strawberries and cherries in my granola. Summer food staples in my house are also burgers and anything else barbecued, which we certainly enjoyed at the cottage.

Lunch: Mountain Veggie Burger with Daiya, relish and tomatoes and almonds and watermelon for dessert. This was my first time trying this brand and I really liked it. It’s made from vegetables and beans and only 3 grams of fat per burger, a nice break from the fatty and soy-based (though delicious) burgers out there. They were bought at Organic Garage in Oakville. Snack of tortilla chips and salsa, Barbara’s blueberry fig bars and dried apricots.

Dinner: Sweet potato black bean burritos with cilantro lime sauce! Recipe coming soon. These were a big hit. I made them a few weeks before hand, wrapped them individually in aluminum foil and froze them before the trip. They defrosted over night in the fridge then barbecued about five minutes each side so they will be hot all the way through. We served them with Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream, guacamole and salsa. Delicious! Easily my favourite meal at the cottage.

Dessert: Birthday cake! We treated ourselves to Sweets from the Earth chocolate cheesecake for my son’s birthday celebration. I adored cheesecake before I went vegan and so far have not had lucky myself creating an excellent vegan cheesecake, but that’s okay because we can always get a delicious Sweets from the Earth cake to satisfy our cheesecake cravings. Their very best cake, in my opinion, is their carrot cake. Completely addictive. All Sweets from the Earth foods are made from natural vegan ingredients; no preservatives, GMOs, hydrogenated food or refined sugars. And they are from Toronto! Sweet indeed.

Thanks, Jenn from Peas and Crayons, for hosting another WIAW.

What does a vegan eat anyway? (Inaugural WIAW post)

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

What I Ate Wednesdays is a weekly blog party hosted by Peas and Crayons that celebrates food. The entries mostly focus on healthy plant-based eating, but not exclusively. Every Wednesday, bloggers are invited to share what they ate one day that week. Since I’m often asked by omnivores “what the heck does a vegan eat anyway?”, participating in WIAW seemed a fun way to answer that question.

So here’s what I ate last Sunday….

Breakfast: Chocolate banana smoothie (frozen banana, Vega chocolate protein powder and coconut milk), fresh organic fruit and walnuts for breakfast.

Lunch: Cherry chocolate chip banana muffins and raspberries and strawberries from my garden. The muffins were fresh from the oven and delicious. I think I had three, plus I couldn’t help eating some muffin batter (no raw eggs!) The recipe for the muffins is coming soon!

Snack of hummus and crackers.

Dinner at my parents’ house: I made gardein (wheat and soy protein) marinated in garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce and stir fried. I also ate potato salad, spinach and pine nut salad and corn on the cob with Earth Balance butter. Yum!

Look at the fruit salad in a watermelon my mother made for dessert! Creative and beautiful, just like my mom.

I intentionally ate fairly healthy through the day because I had made a decadent dessert to share and was looking forward to indulging….

Almond fudge rice crispy bars! Click for the recipe for this addictive dessert. I had two pieces. Okay, maybe three. I have no willpower when it comes to these chocolatey squares.

Thanks, Jenn at Peas and Crayons, for creating and hosting WIAW! I look forward to reading everyone’s posts.