4 Ingredient Vegan and Things You Wouldn't Expect

First I want to start by saying that I am having a ton of fun cooking all this new and yummy vegan food! I recently purchased a cookbook called "The 4 Ingredient Vegan" and have tried a couple of the recipes so far. Two nights ago I made Mediterranean Penne (and added zucchini to it) as well as the Roasted Eggplant and Pesto Roulade. Personally, I enjoyed this eggplant dish the best. I can't find any links at the moment to these recipes but I'll try writing them out for you in a later post!

I'm also having fun "veganizing" my food when we eat out. Today we went to Ingredient (one of my favorite Kansas City area restaurants and our go-to place when we are fresh out of ideas of where to eat!) and I ordered the falafel sandwich which was delish! To make it vegan I ordered it without the tatziki sauce (which is yogurt-based) and had fresh grilled veggies on the side. I love Ingredient (and could devote an entire post to it) because they have so many veggie options including the West Coast Veggie Burger, pizzas with soy cheese, custom salads with really fresh ingredients, a great portabella melt and a fabulous vegan black bean soup. Is there any wonder we keep going back?

While trying a lot of these new recipes, I am finding that it is truly a learning process. I never realized how many food products contain things made with milk, cheese, and eggs. It is easy to cut out those products per say when you are simply switching from dairy cheddar to Daiya cheddar (another vegan product I am loving right now) or from skim milk to rice milk. But when I was making the eggplant dish above, I included pesto and didn't realize until later that you actually have to buy a vegan pesto because the regular kind has parm cheese in it. Also, things like sugar (sugar!!!) have animal products in them. (Many types of granulated sugar are made with bone char, made from the bones of cows). I never would have known this before because it is not on the ingredient list. My goal in this whole process is to cause the least amount of suffering possible. If I read an ingredient list and it says flat out that it contains milk or eggs, I will avoid it. I keep thinking of all the things I've been learning and it makes it so much easier to avoid these products... By the way, since going completely vegan (with a few mishaps of course!) I am feeling fabulous! Oh and we had the gingerbread waffles again this morning and they were just as yummy as last week.