3 Weeks Vegan... WHY?

I'm writing this blog post in part to figure out how I can better explain why I decided to go vegan to my friends and family. Especially since, once you full-on say "yeah, I'm vegan" it somehow seems irreversible. But there's no way around it... You can't have a slice of cake at your friend's birthday. You don't order your usual cheese pizza. There are questions.

Avocado Alfredo spaghetti.. So good!

I decided to go vegan based on timing, circumstance, and belief. For one, I'm firmly against anthropocentrism. I don't believe that humans, as a species, are meant to be at the center of the universe. I believe that we share this Earth and environment with animals. I think as soon as humans start to get too egocentric, we start to neglect our surroundings and let nature & the world around us falter. So on a purely moral basis, how can I logically choose to support the animal agriculture industry, an industry that is dangerously excessive, hostile, and abusive towards animals? I love my dog to bits, so how can I deny that same compassion to animals being unnecessarily slaughtered for food? But this idea is not new to me. I've always thought veganism was the right thing to do. It's the timing that made me choose to take the leap.

I can't realistically say transitioning into veganism is for everyone in any circumstance. I'm fortunate to be in a situation where I'm no longer in school & work from home, meaning I can spend time meal planning and cooking really hearty and wholesome animal-free recipes. I feel like this can't be overlooked. There are nutrients that your body is accustomed to getting from animal products (B12, iron, protein, etc) so you need to ensure that your meals can fulfill these needs. Without the proper planning and care, it would be easy to fall ill by not eating enough and not eating the right things.

I'm not vegan for health reasons. Yes, the health benefits are a perk, but ultimately I feel like I can't treat this as a diet like I might've in the past. Focusing on the "activism" side to veganism is what will ultimately make it last.

So far I think I made the right choice. I'm constantly tuning into documentaries and research supporting veganism, and every video I watch/article I read leaves eating meat & dairy far in the past. The only thing that has been a bit of a struggle is eating out (something I looove to do). I went to my favorite Italian restaurant the other day and was only able to have a salad. I thought I would be able to have a pizza without cheese but unfortunately they add yogurt to their pizza dough to keep it moist (bummer). Also, the waiters and chef weren't really keen to accommodate my needs even though I was extra polite and clear. That said, giving up my favorite restaurant is a compromise that I'm willing to make.

The major upside is that I've been very into cooking new meals and getting creative in the kitchen. I've been eating some really good stuff: lentil stew, polenta, homemade veggie burgers, stir frys, Asian noodle dishes, incredible stuffed "ricotta" pasta shells - you name it. This brownie recipe is the best I've ever used, vegan or not.

Perfecting my stir fry skills!

Now I know this kind of looks like pet food but trust me when I say this is the best dish I've cooked so far. Lentils, carrots, bell pepper and kale in the most delicious peanut sauce. SO GOOD

All in all, it's going to take some more getting used to, and my family & friends are going to have to adapt as well. But if they care about me & my life choices, they will come to support me.

I Love Pinterest

I didn't always "get" Pinterest. I thought the whole concept was kinda lame, but to be honest I never truly gave it a chance. Recently, however, I discovered the amazingness that is this website. Here is a collection of my favorite pins. You can follow my boards if you want.

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Easy Lava Cake Recipe

Hey everyone! I was craving dessert the other day so I decided to make these really simple lava cakes. My favorite part about this recipe is that it doesn't require any super fancy ingredients so you will more than likely have these ingredients in your house if you're mildly into baking.

Also, this recipe was actually given to me by my friend Marcella, so credit to her for finding it & perfecting it lol!

I'm really, really sorry if you're dieting.

Ingredients (serves 6):

- 1.5 sticks of butter (or 3/4 cups)
- 1 cup of semisweet chocolate
- 1.5 cups of powdered sugar
- 4 eggs
- 6 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
- 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla
- 3/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- powdered sugar (to sprinkle over top)
- 6 ramekins or tiny bowls

I apologize for the weird shiny-ness of these photos, but I had to use flash since I had no natural lighting :(

Step 1: Melt the semisweet chocolate. You can be fancy and do it over a double boiler, but I just did it in the microwave. If you don't have semisweet chocolate, feel free to use half dark & half milk. For this recipe I used all milk chocolate (that's all I had), but it definitely tastes richer if you use semisweet.

Step 2: Melt the butter. This should be done on the stove-top which will make the next couple steps easier. Make sure the heat is on low-medium so that it doesn't burn.

Step 3: Add the melted chocolate into the butter.

Step 4: Stir until the chocolate is fully incorporated.

Step 5: Crack the eggs into a bowl.

Step 6: Realize the recipe actually calls for 4 eggs, and add 2 more lol. Then just whisk it up.

Step 7: In another bowl, mix your dry ingredients together (the flour, powdered sugar, and cinnamon). If you don't like the taste of cinnamon feel free to exclude it or add more/less as desired.

Step 8: Add the vanilla to the chocolate-butter mixture and stir it until it's gone.

Step 9: Gradually add your dry mixture into the chocolate/butter. Add, stir, add, stir. The dough will begin getting really thick - kind of like a cookie dough consistency. I should add that you want to let the chocolate/butter cool off a little before completing this step.

Step 10: Finally, add in your whisked eggs, which will get the dough back to a batter consistency.

Step 11: Preheat your oven to 400F. You'll notice in the photo I did 375, but in hindsight it should have been a little more.

Step 12: Lightly grease or butter your ramekins/bowls.

Step 13: Evenly scoop the batter into the ramekins. Place in the oven for approx. 10 minutes. I say 10 minutes, but if you prefer a more cake than lava, give it a few more minutes.

DONE! While the cakes are baking, cut up some fruits for dipping. I recommend bananas or strawberries, but you can use whatever you want. Also, feel free to sprinkle some powdered sugar over top (clearly I was too excited to eat and bypassed this step).

Let me know if you end up making these for yourself! :)

Garlic & Herb Grilled Shrimp

Hey everyone! I have a bit of an unusual post today... Sometimes when I'm home alone I like to venture into the freezer and whip up some concoction with whatever's in there. Yesterday I happened to decide on some frozen shrimp, and I thought I'd bring you guys along during the making of them!

This recipe serves one, but like, I was really full after all this so you can probably cut down the portion size depending on how hungry you are (...duh...).

Ingredients (really imprecise measurements, sorry about that):

- Shrimp (I used 8 jumbo shrimp)
- One basil leaf (chopped)
- One parsley leaf (chopped)
- One clove of garlic (chopped)
- Butter (two knobs)
- Salt
- Skewers
- Zucchini (optional/can replace with any vegetable)
- 1/4 cup Basmati rice (optional)

The final product... Looks tasty, no?

Step One: You can very well use fresh shrimp for this recipe, but if you're using frozen shrimp, you'll need to soak them in a bowl of cold water for a couple minutes. They'll be easier to peel once they're thawed. While you wait, move on to step two.

Step Two: Cook off one clove of chopped garlic, two knobs of butter, some chopped basil and some chopped parsley. You'll know it's ready when the bits of garlic turn a faint golden color. BUT be careful! You don't want them to burn! Keep a close eye on this because they'll be golden one minute but burnt the next. Once it's done, remove it off the burner and let it settle. (You'll see a couple steps that I left it on the burner too long--oops!)

Step Three: When you're done with your herb, garlic and butter, you can go ahead an de-shell your shrimp. Then, you'll need to pat the excess water off.

Step Four: Here you can see that my garlic started to burn because I left it on the burner too long (see how there's a spotty kind of residue on the shrimp?). But, basically, you can just toss your shrimp in with the marinade and make sure they're coated evenly.

Step Five: Next, put the shrimps back on your cutting board/counter, and skewer them. If you don't have a grill, you can easily turn this recipe into a saute, so feel free to skip this step.

Step Six: Place the skewers onto the grill and cook for at least 10 minutes, I'd say. It depends on how you like your shrimp. Technically, they're still supposed to have a snap when you bite into them, but I prefer mine tender, so I leave them on a little longer. I also sliced up some zucchini, so if you want to grill off any vegetables, you can put them on at this point. Make sure to salt everything at this point. Also, if you want to serve rice with your shrimp, I suggest cooking it now as well. If you're opting for the saute, you will instead throw your veggies and shrimp into a skillet and go from there.

Step Seven: Place everything onto a plate and voila! Dinner!

Hope you all enjoyed my first food post! Let me know if you'd like to see more! :)

Vacanze Italiane Part 1!

Hello blog friends :) I mentioned in my last post that I was going to blog about my trip to Italy and I figured I'd finally get around to doing it. SO! Without further ado...

We started the vacation off way in the south of Italy in a small town called Agropoli located in the Salerno region. If we're to picture the "boot", Agropoli is on the arch of the foot. We spent a week here just shopping, going to the beach, chilling by the pool, and eating. Our hotel (Hotel Mare) was right on the beach which was really nice. To be quite honest, I'm not the type of person that can spend hours laying on scorching hot sand in the heat of the day... But my mom is. So I did that. I got a bit of a tan too except it's starting to fade which is a little disheartening. But I'll survive. We made our way up to the medieval town in the mountain a couple times to do some shopping and it's really lovely up there. The lower part of the town has been renovated and it's filled with cafes and shops, but if you take the hike up to the peak (I think it's well worth it), the buildings do date back to the Middle Ages. I can't quite remember the history of it, however the town is set up in a way that's meant to ward off pirates/on-coming attacks. The buildings are very tall and the walk up is a little lengthy. There's an old castle way at the top and it's stone walls are still standing. What I love about Italy is that it can be both a relaxing vacation as well as a cultural experience. I guess that can be said for mostly all of Europe but I feel like Italy is a special case.

Here's a shot of the lower part of the town in the mountains. You can see the modern restaurants on the side, but if you keep walking along this path, you'll hit the really old section. Also, literally every guy in this place was wearing shorts like that (short and bright-colored), but I guess Italian fashion is a whole other conversation.

All of the buildings are incredibly charming. I love the old brick on this one, the contrast of the fuchsia flowers, and the shop sign ("Cose Inutili", which translates to "Useless Things").

Another thing my mom and I did while we were in this Salerno area was take the train to Paestum. Paestum is a location that dates back to "Before Christ" times, making it incredibly, incredibly old. Here, you can basically find a series of three temples dedicated to various Greek deities (one to Poseidon, one to Athena, and one to Hera). The Romans took over the area in the year 274, and built a village surrounding the temples, of which only the ruins can be seen today. The only place is very fascinating and we spent about 3-4 hours wandering around, checking out the sites, and visiting the accompanying museum.

This is the temple dedicated to Athena, the first of the three. (That's my mom in the pic, lol)

This is the temples dedicated to Poseidon. Although this was the largest of the three temples, it surprisingly wasn't the "most important". The most important temples of the three was the only dedicated to Hera, wife of Zeus (which I conveniently don't have a picture of). The temple dedicated to Hera was where they would keep the treasure and all that.

The last little excursion I'm going to mention for this part of my trip is the "Enogastronomical tour" that my mom and I took. The day started off visiting the factory where mozzarella di bufala is made. We got to hang out with the buffalos and I actually really enjoyed myself. The buffalos looked really comfortable (despite living in a factory), and I got to pet a few of them which was fun. They are massive creatures though. The factory, called Vannullo, claimed that the only way to achieve quality mozzarella is to keep the buffalos happy and serene. They therefore played Mozart for them every morning and set up a station where they could get massaged... Not bad!

Next, we were off to an amazing vineyard in Agropoli. It was a private-owned vineyard and winery where we got to taste some great wines. If I wasn't a fan of wine before this trip, I definitely am now lol! They also had a ton of olive trees and made their own olive oil as well, which we got to taste on some of their home-made bread. Really yummy!

For lunch, we went to a tiny town located way up in the mountains called Castelcivita that also dates back to the Middle Ages. And when I say mountains, I mean WAY up in the mountains. It was a quiet, quaint little village--mostly attributed to the fact that the only people who still live there are 80+ years old. All of the young people in the town have moved out and gone to the larger cities. Anyway, it was really fun to see and we had dinner at a lovely restaurant that served locally-grown foods only. To be honest, I'd be incredibly happy living up there. Maybe I'd get a little city-sick once in a while, but it's got way too much character and life not to be appreciated. I don't know. It's really a gem. 

This was the view from the restaurant we had lunch at which was located a little further south from the major part of the town.

That pretty much wraps up the first week of the trip. Next on the agenda was four days in Monopoli, a city on the outskirts of the Bari region, located on the ankle of the boot, which means 6+ hours of train rides from Agropoli to there... Not fun considering my luggage weighed a million pounds. But hey. Once we got there we met up with my mom's friend Mariangela who invited us to spend our time there at her mother's house in Monopoli. My mom had already spent time with them last time she was in Italy but it was going to be my first time ever meeting these people so I was a little anxious, but they were so friendly and affectionate and caring and cooked the best food. Also, Mariangela had a niece my age named Francesca who spoke English so I spent a lot of time with her and her friends & family as well, which was nice.

They have these special cucumbers that grow only in the Monopoli region and they were SOOO good! Best spherical cucumbers ever!

One day we were driving around and came across this tiny beach... But have you ever seen water so stunning?!

I'll just quickly go over some of the things we did in Monopoli now... The first night I went to the beach with my friend Francesca and her friends. I was a little nervous, again, considering I didn't know these people and they didn't know me... But the whole thing turned out to be a lot of fun, even if I didn't really understand them since they spoke mostly Barese dialect (which is basically a whole other language. Seriously. It can't be Italian.). Anyway! Francesca's friend Davide picked us up in his silver convertible and we went to meet Francesca's other friends at a little shack by the beach where we picked up some beers and pizza. All of her friends were extremely friendly and all took the time to introduce themselves to me, and one bought me a beer which was cute. One thing I noticed, though, is that at least Francesca's group of friends (not sure if I can generalize this to "all Italian teens") drink much less than we do here in Montreal. Just an observation. But I think it goes to show that they genuinely just enjoy one another's company and aren't worried about not having a good time without drinking. It was refreshing. I'll try to describe her friends a little more...

One thing to be said is that Francesca is an activist for all different types of causes, from animal to human rights--the whole spectrum. And so are all her friends. I don't know if this is why, but I found them to be the least materialistic group of teenagers I've ever met (maybe besides the silver convertible, however I later found out it was environmentally friendly AND not to mention it had a WWF bumper sticker). Also, none of them were self-conscious whatsoever. All the girls were wearing bikinis and as soon as we hit the sand they all bolted straight to the water.

One of her friends brought his guitar along and made a very futile attempt at playing songs I might recognize (aside from some Beatles, they seemed to be really into Norah Jones... Really?). Davide let me flip through his iPod. I don't know why that surprised me. It was chock-full of Oasis-esque bands and classic rock. Later one of her friends was telling me he was in a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band, lol. Anyway, everyone sang and danced and talked all night.

This wraps up part uno of my blog posts on my Italian vacation (I honestly didn't think it would be this long and I'm tired)... So the rest will be up soon!