Thanks to my parents, grandma and aunt, I am back in business with a camera! It’s so nice and fancy and takes the best looking photos. Check out our dinner last night:

I’ll admit that it’s not the best photo but that’s because the food was so hot that I kept getting a picture of the steam coming off of it.  This dish was really easy and is perfect for those clean-out-the-fridge nights.  I sauteed one small red onion with one clove of garlic in some olive oil.  Once soft, I added some frozen artichoke hearts, some chopped broccoli and cauliflower and sliced zucchini (broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini all organic from the farmer’s market).  After allowing it to cook for a few minutes, I dumped in one jar of organic marinara sauce and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the veggies were soft.  A little basil from my garden and the sauce was done.

We had this with some brown rice noodles, a gluten-free pasta that I picked up from Trader Joe’s.  I’m toying with the possibility of going gluten-free in an effort to fix my thyroid (that’s another post for another day), so I’ve slowly been buying G-F cereals, pastas, etc to try.  This is similar to how I transitioned to a vegan diet and I found that it was the best way for me to transition.  I’m not saying that I’ll for sure go G-F, but cutting out some sources of gluten certainly won’t hurt me.  Anyway, we all really enjoyed these noodles and I think I will buy brown rice pasta from now on.  No one was able to tell that it wasn’t wheat pasta.

I also made these cookies last week.  They are not G-F, but they were pretty tasty.  The recipe is a slight adaptation from the Cranberry-Walnut Oatmeal cookie recipe from Vegan Planet. I’ve made this recipe a few times– once with raisins and pecans– and this time with dried cranberries, pecans and white chocolate.  I think I preferred the first one with the raisins, but I liked this one too.  If you’re wondering where I get vegan white chocolate (good luck finding it in any store), I have to special order it from Vegan Essentials.  I order my vitamins from there too and usually do a big order once every three months.  If I’m low on the white chocolate, I’ll throw that into my virtual cart too.  Here’s a tip for ordering from Vegan Essentials: sign up for their email newsletter that they sometimes include discount codes in.

Have a good weekend everyone!