Sorry I haven’t blogged in a few days 😦 My sisters baby shower was at my house this past Sunday, of which we had been preparing for for several days beforehand! To those of you who are not familiar with hosting a party, that means lots of extra cleaning and food & decoration planning/preparing/etc. My sister is gluten free (and mostly soy free) so we were getting pretty creative with our food ideas. I snapped all the pictures of the food before the guests came. Last week, my family was hitting our freezer and fridge pretty hard to make some room and we ordered take out twice to make things easier on ourselves! Phew! I am feeling very happy and relieved – now if I can just relax for a few days until my kids MUPPET BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT this coming Sunday! 🙂
Yes, Sunday’s baby shower was a smashing success, if I may say so! The shower theme was woodland animals… owls, foxes, etc. So we had all kinds of cute munchies and eats. Check out all the awesome stuff we all made!
This is the "tree of advice" where we all clipped cards written with our own motherly words of wisdom. My mother made each and every one of the little leaf clips!
homemade baked corn tortilla "owl" chips
Thanks to my oldest sister, the martha stewart of our family... She made a bunch of these beautiful tissue-paper pompoms (which I am keeping up until after the next party and then recycling them).
My sister also made these incredibly cute “mushrooms” made of tomato and mozzerella (not vegan)…
The tomato and mozzeralla "mushrooms" (not vegan) were so adorable!
AND these super cute chocolate covered cherry mice. I really need to find a way to get a hersheys kiss mold so I can make these vegan at some point. They were amazing.
These chocolate-covered cherry mice were a hit! If only they made vegan hershey's kisses!
My mom whipped up three kinds of sugar cookies (regular, vegan, and gluten free) shaped as owls, moose, bears, rabbits, etc. They were really cute too… and absolutely delicious! I am waiting for her to send me her vegan recipe so I can make some muppet sugar cookies for my kids party next week!
Of coarse, we had chips & salsa, hummus & veggies, and a mixed organic fruit bowl… the usual party staples… I must also brag that we also used all recycled paper products and compostable silverware… This was a seriously green party 🙂
In this next picture, you can see my deviled v’eggs (tofu “egg” salad inside of silken tofu squares)… and in front of them, are the “pinecone” crackers (brown rice crackers with tofutti cream cheese and slivered almonds).
I also made a big pitcher of fresh carrot-apple-ginger juice with my juicer. You cant beat freshly juiced juice! Mmmmmm!! It was gone so fast I didn’t even get a picture because the pitcher was practically empty!
And of coarse, no party is complete without cupcakes. These were the “Chocolate Freedom Cupcakes with Vegan (soyfree) Buttercream Frosting”. I used the gluten-free chocolate cupcake recipe from the cookbook “vegan cupcakes rule the world”. They were awesome!! They were made by using a blend of different gluten-free flours – quinoa, white rice and tapioca. If you dont have this cupcake cookbook, I consider it a must-have. Buy it. Now.
Chocolate vegan (& gluten free) cupcakes with soy-free vanilla vegan buttercream frosting. And of coarse, the cute stick was made by my sister Martha - I mean Jenny 😉
Of coarse, we had to thank our guests for coming with a thank you basket full of goodies! Our thanks consisted of a Larabar raw food bar (or in some cases, a Luna bar), an organic (vegan) lollipop, a homemade laminated owl bookmark, a pack of flowers (to plant in the container itself come spring), & a packet of green tea and a packet of chamomile tea. I had actually made birdseed ornaments to hang outside, but they didnt make the cut. Better luck with those next time!
Several of the recipes seen here are already on my blog (v’egg salad & hummus) and some are simple and just easy to throw together (like the tomato/mozzarella shrooms for the non-vegans or the pinecone crackers) and some are soon to come (like vegan sugar cookies & cupcakes).
One of my friend’s just had a baby, so we are helping them out by making them a vegan lasagna for dinner one night next week, so I will be sharing my vegan lasagna and tofu ricotta recipe in the next few days too.
Make sure not to miss my upcoming blog about my kid’s muppet party! There will be lots of funny muppety snacks and crafts!
Your Vegan Neighbor 