I am a VEGANMOFO

I can't not participate in something with such a fantastic name. But, since every month is a Vegan Month of Food, I decided that I would add my own little spin to this month of Daily Vegan Food Blogging. My plan is to centre my posts, and therefore my cooking, around new experiences, tastes, products and recipes.

To start this off I have two new tastes that I wanted to share. One with a recipe and one without.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

Doesn't that sound delicious? At school, I run the regular old Literature Circle in a bit of a different way. Rather than having kids take on the usually boring-by-November roles of Literary Luminary, Word Finder, Illustrator etc, I try to treat their conversations/activities about literature in a more adult way - hence the grown up name of Book Club. Like most adult book clubs these kidlets also have snacks when they meet - with each group responsible for sharing the load and breaking up the responsibility. This year, some of my high flyers are reading Wuthering Heights, and I decided that rather than let the two of them teach themselves first year university English, I would jump in and share in their literary discussions. Last week, I brought in some vegan ginger snaps for us to share....but to be honest - they were out of a box....shame, shame. One of the girls was responsible for snack this week and her and her mom actually made VEGAN CHOCOLATE PUMPKIN CAKE! It was decadent and well worth the extra 20 minutes I spent spinning on the bike at lunch time. My first time indulging in that combo of flavours. Yum Yum!

Celery Root Mash

Kevin's action shot which he insisted I use for this post

This idea came from the brain of my British boy, who spent his early years knee deep in root vegetables and other northern England comfort foods. We picked up a massive celery root from the market on Sunday, and I got around to playing with it last night. After peeling the big dirty sucker, I found the intense aroma of celery not all that appealing. So, I nixed my first idea of making celery root fries, and grabbed some carrots from the fridge. I boiled the carrots and celery root in about 3 cups of water. After the boil down, I added a clove of roasted garlic, a little bit of almond milk and a whole lot of pepper; I started the mass up with my electric mixer and finally moved to the old school potato masher. It was actually really good! I would be happy to turn it into something a little more stewish - with perhaps a mushroom gravy or something of the kind atop.

In vegan wedding news - I finally placed the order for my invites last night. We decided to go with InviteSite, and selected the Seedling Design. We are trying hard to keep this wedding as Eco as possible and went with this company for their commitment to recycling and for being cool and allowing us to say NO to RSVP cards (since it will save paper by having people reply by email) and by having cards that are not only made out of recycled paper, but having cards that can be planted in our guests gardens. Cool stuff.

Ok - I am off to my early morning Environmental Committee meeting - my first one since taking on this new role at the school. Should be interesting.

Oh - and to Becks et al - I promise to include a Rabbit Sock Shot as soon as they come out of the wash. :)