A Week of Homecooked Vegan Meals

One of the many things that drew us to Atlanta was the incredible vegan scene. When we first arrived we were so overwhelmed with not only the abundance of vegan options, but the convenience that we had never experienced. We are used to driving an hour or more to get vegan food (we used to drive almost two hours to go to our favorite restaurant, Veggie Galaxy), but now there’s a plethora of plant based options less than 30 minutes away (some less than 10!).

This last week, we chose to chill out on our excitement of supporting all the local vegan businesses and trying ALL the things, and instead we committed to a week of homecooked meals. We celebrated our four year anniversary of veganism by trying new recipes from Vegan Every Day by Doug McNish, as well as a recipe we grabbed off the Internet.

I am so grateful to Jason for the love and energy he put into these home-cooked meals. I will give him credit for doing most of the prepping and cooking. It is such a blessing to finally have a kitchen that we both can enjoy making meals in and truly feel inspired to create the dishes in our many cookbooks.

We started the week off with Stewed Lentils With Mushrooms and Sweet Potatoes (page 337, Vegan Everyday). This recipe was delicious. This is a meal I could see myself eating daily. I definitely would give this dish a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. The textures and flavors were on point. I was glad to have leftovers so I could eat this over brown rice as well as with quinoa. I think the addition of an avocado to the portion is delightful. This is definitely a meal we will be making again.

The next meal was Roasted Cauliflower Alfredo Bake (page 270, Vegan Every Day). We don’t eat nearly enough penne or baked pasta, so this was definitely a treat. I would give this 4 out of 5 stars.

I loved adding Violife Parmesan on top along with crushed red pepper and NOOCH.

My wonderful fiance surprised me with Filipino flavor-inspired seltzers. I was so thrilled for my calamansi and lychee flavored seltzer.

The next recipe lasted a few days and was probably my favorite. This one was not from the cookbook, but was an online recipe for Spicy White Chili with Soy Curls. This is a 5/5 no doubt. The flavors and textures impressed me, and I definitely recommend familiarizing yourself with soy curls. This was definitely did not disappoint me, it was indeed SPICY. Jason was sweating while he consumed his portions.

Condensed coconut milk, who knew?!

I enjoyed adding half an avocado to my portion.

On Soul Food Saturday, Jason really spoiled us with not only Maple Baked Beans (page 205, Vegan Every Day), but jalapeno corn bread, Mac-Uncheez and collared greens. This was another 5/5 meal. I am a food mixer and it all came together so well. I loved the way the flavors complemented one another.

The final meal we created was the least favorite. I would like to give it negative stars. Creamy Sweet Potato Linguine (page 264, Vegan Every Day) did not live up to the expectations. This is through no fault of my Chef Fiance, but instead the recipe is pretty bland. It took a lot of additions to personal dishes to make this something that could be eaten. We have too many leftovers, unfortunately.

That’s our week of homecooked vegan meals and I am definitely inspired to continue making recipes from the cookbooks versus eating out.. Which ones did you think looked the tastiest? Will you try any of these recipes? Thanks for stopping by for our FIRST blog post!! 🙂

-Nikky