Christmas Recap

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Sasha Itterman, R.H.N.

It is so hard to believe that Christmas has already come and gone! I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas (or holidays) filled with family, friends, and lots of delicious vegan food!

With a Christmas tree upstairs, I don’t do a tree in my place, but I did do a bit of decorating for the first time.

So glad I remembered where I’d tucked away these snowflakes that my late Grandma made years ago! 🙂

I’m officially done one third of my Natural Nutrition program and enjoying a nice break from my studies. Which gave me time to sneak in a couple days of baking before Christmas Day. The week before, I’d made these Peppermint Bark Raw Brownies to share at work.

Monday, Jem and I had our annual Christmas Baking Day. We like to turn on some Christmas music and make a few different goodies at once, mostly to share with family and friends over the holidays. Since I made the switch to vegan, Jem is lovely enough to let all our choices be vegan. This year we choose to make Thin Mint Cookies, Pumpkin Blondies, Chocolate Chai Shortbread, and Coconut Sugar Cookies (from Vegan Food Gifts). (The links will take you to the original recipe, but I did make some changes, which I will share with you in later posts.)

(Please ignore the non-vegan red sprinkles on Jem’s cookies.)

And Christmas Eve I baked a Cranberry Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (this one, but with fresh cranberries added), and Christmas morning I baked fresh Herb Drop Biscuits. These were my contribution to my family’s Christmas brunch.

I’m feeling completely spoiled from Christmas! This is all the vegan/cooking/baking-related stuff I was lucky enough to receive.

Can you detect any themes? Seems as though my family has figured out that if I get kitchen stuff and Lush stuff, I will be a super happy camper!

Not sure if I’ll have another post for you before the end of 2013, so just in case I miss it: have a very Happy New Year! See you in 2014!

P.S. – I am so excited about my new Crockpot, but have never used one before. Does anyone have any favourite or tried-and-true vegan slow-cooker recipes they’d like to share?

Also, I’d love to hear about your favourite moment or favourite gift from this year’s holidays!

Holiday Hello

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Sasha Itterman, R.H.N.

Hello!
I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season!

I just realized that I haven’t posted anything for over two weeks! So sorry for disappearing again! To be completely honest, December has been a very difficult month for me and as much as I have been looking forward to some aspects of Christmas, I’ll also be relieved when it’s over. This will be my family’s first Christmas without my dad and missing him has made everything else about this holiday time seem quite overwhelming. Throw in a full work load, a kitchen that seems to be falling apart (problems with both my sink and my stove this month), and a (slightly over ambitious) list of homemade gifts to make, and it’s not hard to see why I haven’t been able to focus my time on any new posts.

I have lots of ideas about things to post for the holidays, but I guess I won’t be getting to any of them this year.

I do want to extend a huge thank you to both Raechel of Rebel Grrl Kitchen and Meshell of Meshell In Your City for nominating me for some awards (The Liebster Award and the Sunshine Award, respectively). I truly do appreciate nominations but I won’t be passing it on at this time. Just the thought of meeting all the expectations (writing random facts, answering questions, making questions, and finding blogs to nominate that haven’t already been recently nominated) feels like way too much for me right now.

I participated in the vegan food swap again this month, so I should have that post for you around the end of the month. Other than that I can’t see posting again until after the holidays.

Also, I just wanted to mention that Christmas Day will also be my blog’s 6 month anniversary! Even when I can’t post as much as I would like, I am so glad I made the decision to start One Small Vegan. Thank you to anyone and everyone who views, follows, and comments!

I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and I will see you in the new year!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Sasha Itterman, R.H.N.

Vegan MoFo 2012 Post #6

A friend posted this on my Facebook and I just had to share it! 🙂

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving (if you’re in Canada), but I’ll be at work most of the day tomorrow so I just thought I’d say it today. Happy Thanksgiving!

Honestly, Thanksgiving has never meant much to me. I’ve never looked forward to the big turkey dinner (even when I did eat meat), and it always seems to me that the dinner is the sole focus of most people’s Thanksgiving’s. And that dinner usually seems like way more trouble than its worth.

What I do like, is the excuse of getting everyone together for a family dinner. With busy lives and crazy work schedules its really difficult to spend quality time with family these days, and it takes a lot of advanced planning to get everyone together. I am really looking forward to spending some time with everyone and am actually looking forward to dinner. My omnivore family has always been really good about making sure that I can eat the vegetable side dishes and I have a Gardein Turk’y Cutlet in the freezer ready for its first try. Last year I had one of the Gardein Herbed Stuffed Turk’y and it was really good, but unfortunately my local grocery store isn’t selling them this year. I am also making these Sugar-Free Sweet Potato Biscuits from One Happy Table, and making this Dark Chocolate Cranberry Tart to contribute to dessert.

Thanksgiving is really supposed to be about being thankful. And I am. So much.

While I am hugely missing my Dad today, I am extremely thankful for all the time I did have with him, all the great memories, and for all the wonderful family I still have around me.

I am also extremely thankful for every single one of you. This blog will probably reach 2000 page views today (a small number for some, I know, but huge for me) and I truly do appreciate each and every one of those views, as well as every comment, like, and follow. I am having lots of fun with this blog so far, and I’m really glad others are enjoying it as well.

Hope all the Canadians have a lovely holiday, and everyone else also has a great day tomorrow.

Thank you.

Questions:
What are you having for your vegan/vegetarian Thanksgiving?

What are you thankful for today?