Beautiful regenerating weekends. Part one – Vegan potlucks.

The weekend before last was one of those weekends where you make a small plan, that grows and sets in motion several other events, which all end up wonderful, and you realize just how much you needed the time away.

It all began a few weeks ago when Sarina, of Earthgiven Kitchen invited us to a vegan potluck in Waterloo. Then JC asked if we were going to Niagara VegFest. Well of course, yes to both.

Then I started thinking… why not stay in Waterloo or Kitchener. Sarina suggested we stay at a little vegetarian B&B called Little City Farm… so we did, and made a cohesive weekend get-away out of all of our food related events.

Other than the awesome veg related events happening in the Niagara Region this weekend, we also had contractors painting, and fixing up our townhouse to get it up for sale, so it was even nicer to get out of the house and out of the city.

The drive was only about an hour and a half, but green and lush. It was nice to finally meet Sarina for the first time. The funny thing about connecting with people online, is that sometimes you never actually introduce yourself in real life.

After being introduced via (the vegan)Lisa, & the Vegan Food Swap nearly a year ago, it was nice to put a voice to the face. Also, we got to meet her absolutely lovely inspiring children (and husband.)

My ambitious plans for the Vegan Potluck Brunch were foiled when our kitchen was taken over by the painter a little earlier than initially planned. So instead, I brought along one of my favourite things to have for brunch at home, tasty, but also very simple, Daiya cheese biscuits.
A slightly modified version of Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s drop biscuits from the 30-Day Vegan Challenge recipe book.

Sarina made a whole bunch of awesome delicious stuff (as did the other potluck guests.) You can read about everything in detail here on Sarina’s blog. But I just need to give an extra shout out to the delicious earl grey tea cookies Ms. Earthgiven Kitchen made. The recipe came from Cèst La Vegan, and they were so so so awesome. I’m going to have to try and make them at home sometime.

JC and I had a great time meeting everyone and eating delicious food. Sincere thanks to Sarina for organizing such an awesome event.

Before heading to the B&B we stocked up at Zevia (seriously – we bought a flat of it…) at an great health food/grocery store in Waterloo called Healthy Foods & More. They specialize in allergy friendly foods, and they are also full of vegan-friendly stuff, and gluten free too. It reminded me a lot of Earth’s General Store. Aisles were wide and well organized, and I found a bunch of products I haven’t seen in Toronto. (Like these tiny containers of rawtella!)

I’ll have to talk about our stops at Thrive, Little City Farm, and Cafe Pyrus in a future post, but we had a truly lovely time in the area.