Things are going pretty smoothly. It helps that we are cooking and preparing interesting meals rather than just randomly taking cheese and milk out of our diets.

Martin and I have dreamed for quite some time of having a coffee shop in which we also serve soup, bread, and pasta. We are slowly building up our collection of "winner" soups and tonights meal is definitely getting added to the pile! We might even do a vegan coffee shop! That would be interesting:) So this recipe came from The Garden of Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer.

Tanya's Curried Squash Soup

1 medium onion
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cups cauliflower
2 cups yams, chopped
2 cups squash (any kind), chopped
1 medium potato, chopped
1 leek, sliced (white and pale green parts only)
4 cups vegetable stock
1 can coconut milk
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp soy sauce

In a large soup pot on medium heat, saute the onions in oil until translucent. Add the cauliflower, yams, squash, potatoes, and leeks and simmer for an additional 3 minutes. Add the stock, coconut milk, curry, turmeric, and soy sauce. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are cooked. In a blender or food processor, blend 1/2 or all of the soup until smooth, return to pot and reheat. Makes 4-6 servings.

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I fed six people and it was all gone but everyone was quite satisfied. No left-overs!! We did figure out that it needs a bit of salt to make it REALLY good. I'm always tickled when I can get so much nutrition in a meal that my kids gobble up. And the plus side is that it was a fairly cheap meal.

The non-vegan members haven't complained yet. Don't even think they are noticing that they are eating vegan, teehee.

Well, I'm going to give this vegan thing another shot. Kev has made the choice to remain vegan for life and through that I am slowly learning how to cook vegan and to have more interesting food choices than the first time I did it. I've been cooking all vegan dinners for the past 8 weeks or so. A gal that I'm doing yoga teacher training with is also vegan so I've been picking her brain.

I will blog about feelings, recipes, etc. and maybe it will be an inspiration for others to live a more healthy lifestyle. Like I said before, lots of people have asked me, "What the heck do you eat?" so I may list an entires day worth of meals once in a while to give people an idea of how vegans, or even vegetarians, eat on a daily basis.

Last night I happened to make a recipe from a vegan cookbook that ended up tasting exactly like a non-vegan recipe that I make quite often. Calista didn't even realize that it was a different recipe. The interesting thing is that it had TOTALLY different ingredients. Even Martin gobbled it up and he is the only meat eater in our family. A friend of Kev's, who isn't even vegetarian, RAVED about it so it is proof that vegan eating doesn't have to be bland and boring. It was a time consuming recipe but there are plenty of others out there that aren't.