5 Amazing Potluck Dishes

This was meant to come up last night, but to start off your week, here are some yummy food pictures from Andrew's birthday party this weekend. Hopefully, it will inspire you on what to bring to your next vegan potluck!

1) Harvest Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash

Made by our lovely friend, Kadri, these babies were stuffed with cranberries, nuts, wild rice, apricots, and all sorts of other indescribable harvest-y yummies. They were as tasty as they were gorgeous!

2) Polenta and Ratatouille

So I've been wanting to try polenta for ages now, but have never really had the opportunity. 'Lo and behold, but the wonderful Angela comes over with polenta covered in all my all time favourite... ratatouille! Now there's a winner! As for my first taste of polenta? Everyone always told me polenta is bland, and I suppose that the taste is kind of understated, but there's something about the texture that is way too fun!

3) Vegan Chili, Roasted Squash, & Soup Fixin's

With some of my roasted pink banana squash featured in the background (roasted with rosemary, thyme, maple syrup, olive oil, and salt), is Rob's perfectly spicy chili. Though I suppose not for the faint of heart, it was the perfect level of mouth tingly goodness to me... that, and I was apparently having a thing for corn that evening.

4) Spicy Flu-Curing Kale Soup

Oh Ashley, like I mentioned already, this soup literally rocked my world. I always eat kale raw, and this was such a good reason to make me change my mind. It was full of flavour, garlic, onion, basil, cayenne... I was really excited that I was able to have its leftovers for dinner last night. Also, she taught us the neat trick from Mexico of putting avocados in your soup. Weird? Think again! A warm avocado is delicious!

5) The Desert Assortment

What's better than one birthday cake? Two birthday cakes! Kadri provided a lovely vegan carrot cake and I made a raw chocolate chipotle decadence torte/cake/brownie thing with spicy chocolate, avocado frosting. Though not featured here, these were both paired with triple berry gelato made by our circle's gelato expert (it's always good to have one). Reports said that it was perfectly creamy and what Italian ice cream dreams are made of (and I may have licked the spoon to check, and yes... they were right!)

6) Laury's Stuffed Artichokes

And just because I can never stick to the number I put in my post title, I also made my version of Laurie's to-die-for Quinoa & Tempeh Stuffed Artichokes early this week and had to rave about. Though Andrew's not a huge fan of stuffed foods, I definitely am. I'll stuff a pepper, a zucchini, a tomato, a squash, a cucumber, an eggplant, and now an artichoke! I'm all for self-contained meals. 

Actually, of all things, these reminded me of one of my favourite childhood Chinese treats: zong zi. Essentially, there glutinous rice and other goodies (my favourite was always peanuts, mushrooms, salted meat, and tiny shrimp) wrapped and steamed in bamboo leaves. The flavours are always so delicious, and somehow this recipe had that same aromatic taste.  

Is life always this delicious? Have a good week!