Day 2 of Vegan!

My fiance and I like to challenge ourselves with a little detox diet for the month of January. After all of the holiday food and drink it helps us to feel a little less guilty. It is also fun to create new dishes we would never have otherwise tried! This year we decided to do Vegan, no alcohol, and no caffeine for the month of January.

I have decided to take it a little further this year and have a food goal for each month and then blog about it! The other months won't be quite so intense (although maybe a few will be. My sister is trying a raw food month). For example, I would like to create 2 Indian dishes a week in the month of February. It won't effect my daily food intake as much but it will push me to cook new foods.

We have had some minor set backs thus far. Last night, we went to see the Giant's game at a bar in Park Slope. We already had our vegan dinner an hour earlier and so we weren't very hungry. We felt guilty ordering seltzer, tea and some guacamole when we knew we were going to be staying for a while. My fiance (Rich) looked at me after the bar tender came back to see what drink we would be having. He decided to take one for the team and have a drink or two. My brother, who was also with us, gladly joined him. We decided we would just have to add one day on to our month. That was setback number 1. Today we went for a nice long run through Prospect Park and were starving afterwards. We talked about how excited we were to have a vegan carrot muffin at the Park Slope Food Co-op. There was a blueberry muffin next to the carrot, I just happened to grab it. "Wow! I cannot believe how good this vegan muffin is! I will have to figure out how to make mine this good!" I said as I ate it. Afterwards, I looked at the label. Butter, sugar, and milk were among the first ingredients. Humm…I guess not ALL of the muffins are vegan, just the carrot one. Oh well, one more day added on!

Things got better this evening when I made some great peanut butter sesame vegan cookies! I used a recipe from Veganomicon as a base. It just called for too much sugar and brown rice syrup which I didn't have. I altered it a little and they came out great! The recipe is below.

Peanut Butter Sesame Vegan Cookies!

2 1/2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh nutmeg
1/2 cup Earth Balance
1/2 cup smooth unsalted peanut butter
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup soy milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup candied ginger chopped (I would add more next time)
1/2 cup white sesame seeds for rolling

Method

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside.

In another bowl, mix the Earth Balance, sugar, peanut butter, soy milk, and vanilla together.

Stir in flour mixture with a spatula.

Fold in ginger candy.

Roll in sesame seeds.

Bake at 350 for 11 minutes.

They were very tasty and not too sweet!