Being Cognizant: Celebrating the 5-Year Veggiversary!

A series about the ways I work towards being cognizant through decisions that make me more mentally engaged with various facets of my day-to-day life.

Cognizance (noun): Awareness, realization, notice, knowledge, perception.

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On March 1st, I celebrated five years since I started following a veg*an lifestyle!

I am not perfectly inside one dietary box, in that I do not exclusively eat vegan but I do not eat meat and I try to purchase items that are friendly to animals in addition to not eating meat or consuming many animal by-products. It has been a journey for the mind and body as I try to find balance of protein, exercise, iron, vitamins, and satiation. I haven’t been the best at finding this balance, but I have really enjoyed the journey and the way it has caused me to reflect on what I eat more often (and the food blogs I have discovered for vegan baking along the way).

Each year, I celebrate by going to a beloved vegetarian restaurant. For three years, I did this with my vegetarian partner-in-crime before he returned to the omnivorous side, but he joined me each year to celebrate my personal continued commitment to keep vegging out. This year, a different partner-in-crime joined me for a new celebratory location – C.C. and I went to Meet on Main for a late-night vegan dinner!

We shared a plate of Hot Chiggin’ Things before moving on to a bowl of goodies for C.C. and a BLT Croissantwich for myself, followed by a chocolate raspberry crumble (tears of joy).

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Days 10, 11, & 12

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Pumpkin Cookies

It was a beautiful thing to revisit my pumpkin days with this new recipe (that I will definitely keep handy for next October)!

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Days 8 + 9

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Donut Icing Cookies

These cookies began with a great struggle.

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Days 6 + 7

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Chocolate Snowball Cookies

These might not be your mama’s snowball cookies, but as a first-time baker of such a treat, I deem them a success (and so does C.C., who affectionately calls them “crack”).

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Days 4 + 5

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Dark Chocolate “Walnut” Cookies

A few substitutions later, and here were the results.

The recipe called for many oats, but I used flour, and it called for walnuts, but I used pecans. In the end, I believe I missed out on some fun texture but still had a delicious batch of cookies – simple and good.

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Vegan Eggnog Cookies

I dropped the ball on what I hoped would be the best recipe of the whole bunch.

This recipe was so exciting to me! I love vegan eggnog. The batter was tasting pretty good, but I could feel it turning to glue as I tried to mix in some liquid – I think the biggest problem was in neglecting to mix the leavening agent at the right time, so the dough remained doughy even after baking.

I will try these again one day, though, because there is TOO MUCH potential to not give it another go!

 

 

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Day 3

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Chocolate PB Bark with…. “Pretzels”

These are not so much cookies as chunks of sweet and salty goodness.

I used my miniature CrockPot for the first time to melt some dark chocolate with cacao nibs in it, and melted some Earth Balance peanut butter, and made some swirls. They were meant to have pretzels on them, and I can see how how that would be good…. However, I did not have pretzels in my cupboards or in the most conveniently-located stores, so I was forced to choose the only other salty alternative nearby: Multigrain Tostitos. I have been told by all who have tried them that they are still winners!

12 Days of Plant-Based Cookies: Day 2

A short-term challenge for the month of December courtesy of Earth Balance! I am pretty excited to have some motivation to do some vegan baking this month. Some of the recipes are out of order from the website’s sequence, but I’ll make sure we cover everything.

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Gingerbread Cookies

These are so good.

Very-close-to-right out of the oven, they were already tasting pretty delectable, but when I tried them the next day, they had the chewy and almost-but-not-quite sticky texture of the gingerbread cookies you might buy at a coffee shop. What was possibly missing was the coconut sugar coating, but I was missing this key ingredient and thus settled for a coat-less batch.

I don’t often rave about my vegan recipe productions, but this one turned out about as well as I could have hoped! Highly recommended.