My Vegan Weekend

This was such an exciting weekend. My aunt and my parents who are both very supportive of my vegan diet, even if they aren't completely sold on missing out on cheese and meats, we decided to try out some vegan recipes. Here was our menu for the weekend. 

Friday Night: Thai Pineapple Fried Rice
This was delicious! It had a little bit of a kick to it from the curry

powder and the red pepper, but even for someone like me who is very sensitive to spice, I could handle it. I will definitely be making this again. 

Saturday: 
Breakfast: Rolled oats with cinnamon and nutmeg cooked in vanilla soy milk (found at Trader Joes) After it was cooked we added bananas and honey as we wanted to our bowls. It was very good and very nutritious. 

Lunch: Zoodles or Spiralized Zucchini with vegan butter (Earth Balance) salt, pepper, and garlic. This was surprisingly good.

My aunt added Parmesan Cheese to hers and to be honest, I cheated a bit as well and put some on mine, but I didn't need to. It would have been just as good without it. This meal was very simple and super easy to make. You can buy the Zucchini already spiralized from Whole Foods or Lunds or you can do it yourself and then use them in place of any pastas you might use. This was my first experience with Zoodles and I can see how they would make a healthy pasta substitute as well as make Zucchini a great veggie to add to all sorts of recipes. 

Dinner: Spaghetti with Vegan Garlic Bread and Meatless Meatballs with homemade marinara sauce, and Kale Salad with Annie's Raspberry Vinaigrette and Sliced Almonds and dried cranberries.   We got the marinara recipe from pinterest, so if you want to make it feel free to check out the link

above. Making your own sauce, is A LOT of work. We started by stewing all the ingredients together for an hour, and then used the food processor to make it smooth which was not only hard work, but it was very messy. The results were so delicious. Eating fresh sauces will be my saving grace. Adding something flavorful to recipes is what the vegan diet needs. Once everything was completed. I made some vegan/gluten free veggie pasta and added the sauce and the meatless meatballs that I purchased from the frozen section of Whole Foods. We made the garlic bread with vegan french bread we found at trader joes and vegan earth balance butter and garlic. It was so delicious to take the pieces of garlic bread and dip them into the fresh sauce we had made. The vegan meat balls were not the greatest at first. But when I ate leftovers the next day, I enjoyed the meatless meatballs more because they had been soaking in the sauce overnight.

Dessert: Gluten Free Vegan Black Bean Brownies with Coconut Milk Ice Cream

These brownies were surprisingly good, especially with the coconut ice cream and as an added bonus, they were low sugar and had protein in them! They are rich and delicious. I strongly recommend the vegan coconut milk ice cream on the side to cut the richness. It can be found at Whole Foods.