Wednesday, October 01, 2008

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. :)

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am a veganmofo, too. So glad that you're participating. I like your idea of sharing everything new. Pumpkin pies and cakes are an experience I miss but I love cooking with celery root.

Anonymous said...

Nom to the chocolate pumpkin cake! I quite like celeriac mixed 50/50 with potato atop a shepherds pie, but I'd completely forgotten that until I read your post! I've added one to the shopping list... Happy MoFoing!

Lisa (Show Me Vegan) said...

The new experiences theme is a great idea for VeganMoFo! That's so cool that you're doing your wedding as green as possible.

Nicole said...

Hooray for VeganMofo and pumpkin and chocolate!!!

Judy's Nutrition said...

Wow, that looks so chocolate-y and awesome! And you sound like such a great teacher :)

jessy said...

i like the idea of calling it a Book Club for the kids - that's really cool! and i like the idea of having them each take some responsibility of bringing in a snack to share - brilliant! how awesome is that - the vegan chocolate pumpkin cake!?! mmmmmmmm! i would have never thought to combine pumpkin & chocolate - this i'm gonna have to try! while i'm on the subject of trying - i still have yet to have celery root. it's a bit intimidating and i'm not too sure what to do with it, but i like your idea of mashing it up with some other yummies! yay!

have fun at the environmental committee meeting, and that's so awesome on the no rsvp cards! eco = the way to go, fo 'sho! :D

Catherine Weber said...

I love the sound of that cake! I will have to file that away in my brain for future experimentation!

Lauren said...

Wow that cake looks amazing! YUM!

Alicia said...

I want that chocolate pumpkin cake. It looks too good!

Oh, and great news on your vegan wedding, it's good to see how you manage to have the wedding you want to have, despite the industry behind.

Anonymous said...

Your so lucky with your students. Bringing specially baked vegan sweets to school.
Great you joined the environment committee. At my work we're starting one too and I'll have my first meeting in three weeks.
It looks like I somehow missed your news about you getting married. Sorry for that, I hope I'm not too late with my congratulations.

Anonymous said...

You certainly teach kids who have very open-minded parents. I love how they send along vegan goodies with the kids!

Congrats on the celery root mash. I like how you found something to do with it and make it taste great after it started off not smelling so good! Very industrious and quick thinking!

Anonymous said...

VeganMoFo Forever Baby! We rule! Your cake is making my mouth water so badly!

River (Wing-It Vegan) said...

How cool of that mom to make a vegan cake! It looks delicious!

And how cool of you to be planning an eco wedding!

That "action shot" looks so steamy and good! :)

aTxVegn said...

Welcome to MoFo! This post looks great, and I need to take another look at the post below. I don't know if I can keep up with everyone this month!

Vegan_Noodle said...

Great news about your wedding invites!! Very cool to have your guests rsvp via email.

That chocolate pumpkin cake looks awesome!