Your Vegan Mom

Trick or Treating with the Vegans

"I have wanted to be a pirate for years,"  moans the three-year-old. 

"That's why I'm going to be a pirate," he emphatically continues five minutes ago on October 30th, the day before Halloween.  

I'm not sure if I even answered.  He has changed his mind approximately 150 times this month.  And the amount of time he has his heart absolutely set on a costume is drastically decreasing as we approach the holiday.  Already this past hour he has been certain that he wanted to be a skeleton, Frankenstein's monster, a train engineer, and a chef.  

I'm afraid both the kids are going the emergency back-up costume route this year - their suits from the wedding, borrowed capes, and vampire teeth.

And they'll like it.

Desmond decided two days before the wedding that he wanted to be Anubis (the Egyptian god of the dead.)  Under limited time constraints, I did my best to hunt down an Egyptian-style jackal mask for a 6-year-old.  No luck.  

Halloween is feeling like a bit of an afterthought in our house this year.  When I was out doing other errands, I noticed all the decorations and remembered to buy candy (swedish fish and sour patch kids).  But if I had put a modicum of thought into it, I also might have come home with organic lollipops or root beer barrels or Halloween pretzels or Play-Doh.  Peta has a complete list of vegan candy.

In the elevator at Target we practiced saying, "Trick or Treat!' and "Thank You!" and not saying things like, "What's that?"  "Does that have cow milk in it?"  and "Can I have that one instead? I'm vegan."

And to be completely honest, do you want to know what I mostly do?  With our little dudes, we trick or treat on the early side.  So we come home, go through the candy, and put all the milk chocolate and gelatin bears back in the plastic pumpkin for other happy trick or treaters to enjoy.  Win - win.

Then I let my kids go nuts with what's left, and it's gone in the morning.  

What's your approach?  

Also, if you're looking for healthier fare, here's a couple links from last year when I was slightly more on the ball.  Did you see the bats up there?  I hung bats last year.  

Monster Milkshake

 

Halloween Soup

Jennifer Cornbleet's Chia-Blueberry Breakfast Pudding

Paul and I just got back from a beer-filled weekend in San Diego.  Our favorite stops were:

• the Hess Brewery where they make extraordinarily well-balanced silky smooth beers in pots not much bigger than mine, all in a business park garage.  
• Tiger! Tiger! where we had the most brilliant vegan take on poutine - hand-cut skinny fries scattered with fresh cilantro leaves served with a steaming bowl of creamy rich green curry sauce to pour over.  Those goopy fries were beautiful friends with both a crisp ESB brewed with English hops and a maltier organic brown ale.
• Afternoon coffee and sweet potato streudel from Stephanie's Bakery.  (And the boys were delighted with the tiny vanilla cupcakes we brought home.)   
• Oh!  And the house-made vegan sausage at The Blind Lady Ale House served with apple mostarda house pickled onions and whole grain mustard.  

I was shocked over and over by how seemlessy vegan-friendly every place we visited was.  Even the Mexican place that we stopped at on the way down for emergency lunch when traffic jacked up our plans had vegetarian enchiladas and potato tacos and vegan refried beans, and the waitress knew to let us know that the rice wasn't vegetarian.  We also had an unplanned and totally pleasant stroll along Doheny Beach, but still, please don't let me forget that we are taking the train next time.  

And then at the end of all that beer and streudel and tortilla chips and sausages and french fries, do you know what we did?  Went home, right?  Took a long walk?  Had a big glass of water?  Maybe did a load of laundry?  No.  We went to a four course vegan Oktoberfest dinner in Atwater Village.  There was more beer, and lights strung over a long table set for forty, and oompah music, and bread dumplings in mushroom gravy, and a lovely refreshing cucumber salad flecked with dill, and more beer, and housemade suaerkraut, and warm potato salad, and smoked king mushroom sausages, and ice cream for dessert.  It was pretty magical.   

So now, are you wondering where Jennifer Cornbleet's Chia-Blueberry Breakfast Pudding comes into it?

Miyoko Schinner's Cashew Cream Cheese

I hold out the jar in disbelief.  "Smell this," I command Paul.  (And then the next day Felix's teacher and two other parents at the preschool as well.)