A newly vegan girl back in her hometown

I spent last weekend over at my parents' house in Loretteville, a beautiful suburb of Quebec City. As a newly vegan though, I was a bit nervous about going back home and having to deal with questions and concerns about my new way of life.

Everything went really well! My mother showed some sincere interest into what I had to say about veganism. My dad took me to the grocery store so that I could buy food I would want to eat, and I had brought a huge bag full of vegan basics like nutritional yeast and dates and nuts.

I was lucky enough to be there for a really warm and sunny weekend; I got to use the pool and go on bike rides. It felt good to be alive! I also made this little video to show you guys what it's like to live with my new body.



And nooowwww, the noms!

I made this delicious iced chocolate and coffee drink. I simply blended cold coffee, vanilla soy milk and cocoa powder into this smooth, sweet and decadent treat!

The best meal I had over the weekend was definitely my tofu skewers. I marinated the tofu in orange juice, tahini, soy sauce, chili pepper flakes and garlic. I had the tofu with cumin vegan sausages, bell peppers, eggplant, butternut squash and onions.

Mes soeurs se sont bien amusés à mettre leur grain de sel dans mes vidéos ;) Mais à voir leur réaction devant mon hummus de fèves noires, je pense qu'elles ne peuvent pas juger mon végétalisme :P

For the love of good bread

I've been craving the bread Sean and I had gotten at the Première Moisson bakery at the Marché Maisonneuve; it's an olive oil bread with herbs. It's not exactly a focaccia, not exactly a ciabatta either. Although I can't really figure out what it is, I decided that I should still make something similar to it to satisfy my craving. So, armed with a lot of research on the fabulous Internet, I decided that today would be the day I'd make my very own focaccia.

Like I said in my last video, I got myself a Larousse Gastronomique, often referred to as THE book any aspiring cook should have in his kitchen. Here is what the Larousse Gastronomique says about "focaccia":

An Italian olive-oil flat bread, of very ancient origin, since it dates to bakestone days. It is a hearth bread, traditionally flung into the oven just after the fire has been raked out, when the temperature is still too high to bake a larger loaf without burning the crust.

I made my focaccia with part whole wheat, part white flour and I added some dried herbs on top. Other than that, I pretty much followed the recipe on HubPages. Making bread is a labor of love; it takes time and a bit more effort than if you were just grabbing a slice of bread from the fridge. The kneading, how you wait for the dough to rise, the baking, and mostly, the anticipation...

When I took the first bite from my homemade herb focaccia, I understood how worth the efforts all this was. I enjoyed mine with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and some leftover smoked salmon from dinner last night. What a perfect way to spend this warm Sunday afternoon!

Je n'aurais pas pu trouvé meilleur compagnon pour le saumon fumé qu'il me restait du repas d'hier soir avec mes parents. Mon focaccia est bien croûté avec un centre moelleux, les herbes et le sel relèvent son goût de farine de blé parfaitement. En plus, il faut avouer qu'il est vraiment beau, non? :)

From black beans to squealing

In my last entry, I mentioned WHFoods.com and how every week, I pick a food item from their list and try to add it to my diet. Last week, I let Sean pick an ingredient for me. He looked at the list and picked black beans because he likes them. Ok, black beans... How can I use black beans without going for the obvious Mexican food? And then it struck me: hummus. Black bean hummus. Oh I could just taste it already; the beans, the soft sweetest of the tahini, the potency of the garlic. Yes, black bean hummus sounded like such a good idea! I quickly Googled it and realized that I was not the first one to think of this brilliant combination. I stumbled upon this recipe and it was love at first sight: the recipe called for cumin. SOLD!

Now, whenever I would buy hummus at the grocery store, I'd also get tzatziki and nacho chips and just have a "dip" kind of a meal. So since I was going to make my own hummus, I might as well make my own tzatziki. I found this nice little video on YouTube by DedeMed. Simple enough!

Now, the chips... I was not going to make nacho chips, especially since I was trying to get away from the Mexican-food idea in the first place. What else could I use to dip into those two delicious mixtures? Toasted pita bread! Could I be adventurous enough to make my own whole-wheat pita bread? According to this recipe, they're simple to make. I guess I can give it a try! I'm not used to baking though, I'll have to be careful with these.

Being a real foodie, I thought about my pita bread, hummus and tzatziki for days. I figured I'd spend my usual food-minded weekend around it. Saturday, I went to the Jean Talon market, the Maisonneuve market and two different grocery stores to pick up the very best ingredients. I went to bed that night with only one thing on my mind... am I being too adventurous? What if I forgot something? What if the pita breads don't puff up?!

Sunday, full of confidence after a life changing weigh in, I put my apron on and got ready to cook.

I started out with the pita since they would take the longest to make, and while the yeast was doing its thing, I worked on the hummus and the tzatziki. I pretty much followed the recipes, with my own Vero-twist of course, like a lot more tahini and lemon juice in my hummus and a ton of fresh mint in my tzatziki. So far, so good. And then it was time to put the pita dough in the oven. I swear, I squealed when I saw the round piece of dough puff up in the oven. I had made pita bread. 

J'étais tellement fière de moi quand j'ai vu mon beau panier, rempli de pain pita au blé entier, de hummus aux fèves noires et de tzatziki. Je suis vraiment une perfectionniste; je réfléchis longtemps avant de faire quelque chose, j'essaies d'anticiper tout ce qui pourrait arriver de "croche", de prévoir toutes les possibilités. Je n'ai pas l'habitude de faire de la patisserie ou de la boulangerie, donc évidemment, j'appréhendais le résultat de mes pitas. Et j'ai réussi mon beau projet. Parfois, il ne suffit que de se faire un petit peu plus confiance qu'à l'habitude et on arrive à faire à peu près tout ce qu'on essaie!

Now that's what I call a good morning!

I've always liked fruits. They are juicy, tasty and sweet; I could have them all the time. But when I was bigger, I pretty much stopped eating them and replaced them with ice cream, chips and chocolate bars. Sad, isn't it? Anyway, when I decided to change the way I eat, fruits were pretty much the first thing that came back into my diet. And my absolute favorite way to have them is for breakfast. On the weekends,  when I have them with some yogurt, cereal and flax seeds.

You can pretty much use any fruit you want in this parfait, and it will always be the most delicious thing you've ever had. Also, I personally use Fiber One cereal to top my parfait because they're tasty and they are packed with fiber. You can have a small portion of this parfait as a side to something like an omelet or you can do what I normally do and just have a really big serving of it.

C'est vraiment une tradition du weekend pour moi; je ne mange pratiquement que ça le matin les samedis et dimanches. Ce matin, j'ai mélangé une banane, une pomme Granny Smith, des fraises, des mûres, des raisins verts, , du yogourt à la framboise, des céréales Fibre 1 et des graines de lin moulues.

My very-berry smoothie

A couple weeks ago, I was looking for a way to have some protein for breakfast without having cheese or meat. I quickly thought about making a smoothie with vanilla soy milk, add a couple berries and some flax seeds. And come on... isn't this pretty?

Here it is, my Very-Berry Smoothie!

1 cup of vanilla soy milk
75 grams of strawberries
50 grams of blackberries
1 tablespoon of flaxseed meal

Mix everything with a hand blender and tadaaa! You've got yourself a delicious treat for breakfast or for a snack.

If you want to sweeten your smoothie, you can use sugar, but I prefer using Stevia, a natural sweetener.

J'adore le p'tit déj. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais c'est toujours un vrai délice, peut-être parce que c'est le matin que les fruits m'attirent le plus et avec toutes les jolies couleurs, ça ne peut qu'être appétissant. J'adore mettre des baies dans mes smoothies. On mélange les fruits avec du lait de soya à la vanille pour ses protéines, on ajoute des graines de lin moulues pour les fibres et hop, un vrai délice!