Conquering my vegan fear...

A dear friend of mine is vegan.  I admire her greatly for her commitment to her vegan lifestyle but, I'm not going to lie, it scares me a bit.  I'm always paranoid that if I were to have her over for dinner I would accidentally serve her something non-vegan, or if we were to go out for dinner to a restaurant that I picked and that says it's vegan online, we'll show up and it won't serve a single vegan dish.  Needless to say, I'm always thrilled when she invites me over for dinner.  Not only is her cooking delicious, but I figure if I eat her cooking enough and get enough ideas, that I may be able to one day conquer my fear of cooking a vegan meal.  The photos below outline my most recent scrumptious meal at her house.

French baguette (this was my contribution to dinner...it freaked me out a bit that the bag said "may contain dairy, eggs, nuts, etc." but turns out that's okay in the land of vegan cooking because it's just a cover your bum for allergies), vegan pesto made of parsley, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, and a baked tofu spread.  My vegan friend had pressed the firm tofu for a day then mixed it with either soya sauce or hoisin sauce (my memory's failing me!) and baked it.  Both of the spreads were very yummy.  It took every ounce of will power I have not to eat all of the pesto myself!

Baked broccoli and cauliflower.  She'd mixed up a light dijon-based dressing, drizzled it over the veggies and then baked them in the oven.  If there's one thing I love, it's baked broccoli!

White bean houmous.  I love houmous.  People who have to smell my breath afterwards don't necessarily love it...but it's worth it!

Kale salad with sliced apples, raisin and a poppyseed vinaigrette.  I've never made a salad just with kale because I always thought it would be so tough and bitter.  Turns out that when you massage the leaves with the dressing they're as soft as lettuce and have a similar flavouring.  I'm definitely going to start adding this to my repertoire more often.

Rice.

Vegan baking!  Short-bread cookies with a cinnamon swirl, gingersnap cookies dipped in chocolate, chocolate cookies, and shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate.  Delicious!  And, random fact of the day, did you know that butter is made from dairy fat?  I didn't until tonight.

 

Thanks for the delicious dinner my lovely vegan friend!