Who Needs 5 Days Vegan?

When you can have every day vegan?

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Buckwheat pizza with steamed sweet potato, zucchini-tomato-chickpea curry, carrot ginger soup, snobby joes & Mexican millet, apple cinnamon muffins; all brilliant recipes from Eat Drink & Be Vegan, Veganomicon and of course, 5 Days Vegan!

Lunch yesterday rocked!

Spaghetti squash mexicana with tropical avocado salsa fresca, grapes from the farmers market and an apple cinnamon muffin – who could ask for anything more??

I also had another great dinner at Live with Melly. She chose the black bean wrap

And I went with the *delightful* rainbow kale salad

Mel had never been, but really enjoyed the meal! Especially since we shared some awesome desserts

Almond butter cup and peanut chocolate brown rice crispie square. Two of my childhood favourites made even better!

In the spirit of passing on the vegan love, here’s the vegan chilli I made last week that was inspired by the vegetarian chilli in Eat Clean cookbook.

Easy Vegan Chilli

1 tbsp oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 bell peppers, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, grated
1/2 zucchini, grated
2 tbsp cumin
3 tbsp chili powder
pinch salt
pinch cayenne
1 can each: black beans, white kidney beans, red kidney beans (rinsed)
1 can diced tomatoes with juice
2 tsp oregano
1 c. corn (thawed if frozen)
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tbsp agave
juice of 1 lime

In a large pot, heat up the oil.
Add garlic, peppers, onion, carrot and zucchini and sauté until onion soft and smelling delicious (about 4-5 mins)
Add cumin, chili powder and salt, turn down heat and cook for about 10 minutes.
Add remaining ingredients and mix everything together. If too thick add 1/4 cup of water until you reach your desired consistency (I didn’t add any) Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Serves 6

Great on its own, with tortilla chips, over rice or other whole grain or in a wrap. It tastes even better the next day.

Joey’s response, “Honey, you’re getting really good at making healthy food taste great!” Mission accomplished.

It’s been more than two months now and I am feeling so great eating this way! I have lots of energy, no pain, great skin and I’m sleeping like a baby.

In other news, I got twitter this week. I found myself reading people’s twitter pages and didn’t have a good way to keep up with them so I got it. I also thought it would be a good way to keep in touch with my readers as well as maybe get some new ones. We’ll see how it goes! You can follow me at www.twitter.com/ashleydtl (Clearly my name or dancing through life weren’t options because that would be too easy, so I went with ashley with the initial dtl for “dancing through life”)

What are you up to this weekend? I’m heading down to Nathan Phillips Square today for the Canadian kick off of Lose for Good. I’m so excited that we’re participating in this amazing event that is going to help donate lbs and lbs of food to those who need it. I’m also looking forward to being back to my meeting on Saturday and then having a “creative date” with Joey – more details next week! For those of you participating in 5 Days Vegan, I hope you enjoy you last days of the tutorial and I can’t wait to hear about the recipes you discovered this week and whether or not you plan to continue with the vegan goodness!