Vegan Feast

Blurg, another weekend shot by. So many fun things I wanted to do and so little time. Oh well, hoping work won’t be as crazy this week, we’ll see! Last night we hung out at my sister’s house, the husbands entertained my nephew playing Xbox games while we played in the kitchen drinking wine and chatting, great night! It was especially great that we prepared and enjoyed a huge vegan feast using the opportunity to try a more complicated recipe, so we decided on this Lentil Loaf recipe.

There were a lot of steps and ingredients to it cooking lentils, chopping and sauteing veggies, mixing the tomato topping, and forming the loaf carefully to bake. But it hardly seemed bad when many hands make light work.

We also threw together a massaged kale salad to go with the loaf.

And had gorgeous, veggie-loaded plates for dinner.

The lentil loaf came out fantastic with a lot of tangy flavor and a hearty texture.

But what really made it a successful dish for us was both my hubby and my sister’s hubby cleaned their plates and even went for seconds.

It’s not always easy finding hearty vegan recipes my non-vegan husband loves, he’s not quite the fan of huge salads or raw vegan soups as I am. So I was thrilled to find a recipe he liked as much as a traditional meatloaf. Even though the recipe might be too labor intensive for a weeknight, it’s one that can be made ahead and frozen in single servings for fast weekday dinners and lunches.

We also threw together a double batch of Mama Pea’s Gingerbread Bars for dessert and to take home which was much simpler compared to the lentil loaf. But I’m not as skilled with the icing apparently, we giggled as I tried to make squiggly lines and surrendered to just spreading it as an even layer. Wine and decorative icing do not mix for me! :-P

They may not have as looked as pretty, but they were very tasty!

This recipe can very on what type of vanilla protein powder you use and how much stevia and ours weren’t as sweet since we used Nutribiotic Vanilla Rice Protein powder which isn’t that sweet by itself. But that was a good thing, the bars were sweet and flavored enough to be satisfying with a nice cinnamon kick, but not so sweet that we were tempted to eat more. Next time I might try the sweeter Plant Fusion vanilla protein powder.