My two week hiatus

I'll admit keeping this blog thing up to date requires slightly more discipline than I had first expected. Therefore, the past two weeks, in which I was busy with several things, will be summed up below.

First off, let me tell you that I have not been entirely faithful to the vegan thing. I'm not proud to say it, but it's true. I have been vegetarian though. The past week of mine was spent in Toronto on a work trip, and that's what really threw me off track. I tend to have few problems when I'm at home, but when you are eating out for three meals a day, it's hard. Especially when the first two are at the work event, where the only food within a 10 minute walk was a food court consisting of a kobe beef burger stand, a hot dog stand, a pulled pork stand, and a corned beef sandwich stand. There was a pizza stand off in the corner, and at the time, that was my best bet. So, for four days my lunch was a slice of cheese pizza, and a fruit smoothie in the morning.

On my last night in Toronto, I happened upon a restaurant called Fressen. Walking in, I was very impressed. It is a fine-dining vegan restaurant. The service was a bit slow, but the food was amazing. It felt nice to have the choice to pick anything on the menu! If anyone out there knows of a fine dining vegan restaurant in Vancouver, please let me know. The experience was great!

I returned back to Vancouver yesterday afternoon, and immediately went to the store and loaded up on groceries for the week. Lugging back approximately my own weight in fruits and veggies, I thought about what I wanted for dinner. I ended up making a fantastic tomato sauce pasta from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook. I think it was called 9-minute tomato basil cream pasta. It really did only take about 15 minutes (my rice pasta had to cook longer), and turned out looking exactly like the picture. It was delicious! I added a splash of balsamic to the sauce, which gave it a little kick. I will note that tomatoes aren't exactly in season right now, and I imagine this would be even more incredible to make in the summer time when they are at their peak. This is one of those recipes you can give to even non-vegan friends and they would LOVE it.

My art has being going well also. It's part of a show at a boutique in downtown Vancouver. I'm excited about the opening next week, but nervous as well. I've been feeling like my creativity is at a low, so it's been hard for me to commit any time to painting. I plan on filling this weekend with cooking, baking, art and maybe getting my seedlings going for the spring season. I have a fantastic small patio garden, and with the knowledge I obtained from last years planting, I think this year will do even better.

-Niss