Woman in Real Life

Does anybody else feel that January is just whipping by? It's like the Christmas tree was up yesterday and now it's almost time to get out the heart garland and searching for vegan Valentine's Day recipes. Unbelievably it's the last week of Veganuary and our #VeganCookbookLove theme will soon come to an end. (Although if you know how much I love vegan cookbooks, you know there will be more to come this year!)

For this final week, I thought I'd share a recipe from a vegan classic - Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. As cookbook authors Terry Hope Romero and Isa Chandra Moskowitz note in the intro to Veganomicon, "it's a good old-fashioned, all-purpose cookbook." Of course the word "old-fashioned" is used loosely here - because there is little that's old-fashioned about a vegan cookbook. But you get the idea.

I love to eat out at restaurants, so when we're road-tripping I always find out what restaurants are on our route - bonus points if they are vegetarian/vegan! On the way to visit my parents this past weekend, we stopped in my hometown of Hamilton to munch on vegan goodies from Democracy on Locke. (That's my girl waiting for our food, above.)

When I took a look back through my food photos this week, I noted that many of them reflected recipes I had made from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen: 150 Pizzas, Pastas, Pestos, Risottos, & Lots of Creamy Italian Classics. So I decided I had better just combine my review of this amazing new cookbook with my What I Ate Wednesday post.

My love affair with Italian food began when I met my husband-to-be back in high school. More specifically, when I met his Italian mother. She introduced me to homemade gnocchi, fresh lasagna, canning of tomatoes and pasta of all shapes and sizes. If eating pasta is wrong, I don't wanna be right!

With the Internet problems we had in Cape Cod last week, I didn't manage to get my "What I Ate Wednesday, Cape Cod edition" up until Thursday. So, I missed linking up with Jenn at Peas & Crayons. If you want to see our Cape Cod eats, you can find them here.

We took a day trip to Boston last Friday, before we headed back to Canada on Saturday.

We picked up these delicious rosemary fries at one of Boston's handy Clover Food Lab trucks. We washed the fries down with some iced tea, perfect for a very hot Boston day. We were a bit surprised to find that it is basically cold tea, because we are more accustomed to the sweetened variety.


My son selected (and enjoyed) this barbecued seitan sandwich.


I had this "BLT" in which the B stands for tempeh.


We did a quick visit to the chaotic Faneuil Hall, which has a busy food court with many, many selections. I went for the veg sushi.


The family went for pizza. Boy it would have been nice to have a table to sit at. We ended up moving to an outdoor bench.


Among the items I found at Trader Joe's (which we don't have at home) was these frozen banana slices covered in chocolate. They were nice to sample, but not my favourite treat.


Before we left Cape Cod on Saturday, we stopped at Trader Joe's in the morning for some snacks. I got this noodle dish for my husband.



And this super spinach salad for me. This way we could avoid picking up lunch at the dismal rest stops.


A delicious Trader Joe's treat...these chocolate covered nutty bits. Yum.


Back at home, we are doing laundry, cleaning up and eating easy meals, like this salad, nachos and (Daiya vegan) cheese and hummus lunch.


Dinner: some simple pasta in an olive oil sauce along with breaded and fried tofu and salad.