Two years old...

Hi everyone! I'm back from Brisbane, and I've got a few photos and stories to share, including a meet-up with another blogger. But I haven't had time to sort through said photos, so I will leave that post for another day. But I definitely wanted to post today becuase...

It's the two year birthday of the Tropical Vegan blog! When I started this blog two years ago, it was actually called the Travelling Vegan (hence the url), and I intended to document my journey to Australia and then to other exciting places... but I ran out of money and didn't get to many other exciting places! So I changed my focus to a vegan food blog that also discusses politics, life, and other things that I feel like discussing. It's been a fun two years of getting to 'know' lots of other bloggers, and even meeting a few in real life.

That's as gushy as I'm going to get here. Now, onto a few before and after photos from my trip.

Before I left, I had about 24 hours to mark 35 essays. They were only 500 word assignments, but they are by first year students and so some were very difficult to get through. The difficulty was exacerbated by Nacho, who decided the stack of essays looked mighty comfortable...

Luckily I got the essays done with plenty of time leftover to pack and get ready to go. I even had time to make some Tofu, spinach and soysage Canneloni in a mushroom cream sauce for dinner. Since the oven was on, we threw in some potato gems as well. The canneloni was good, but next time I think I'd leave out the soysage.

During my 9 day trip, Nacho turned 6 months old, and she had grown up noticeably when I came back. For starters, she was bigger. And she was able to jump to places she's never been before, like the top of the kitchen cabinets or the fish tank. This made for a bit of a headache for Andy, since the kitteh was trying to catch guppies and splashing water everywhere before I came home (heh, I'm glad he had to deal with it and not me).

I love coming home to my own kitchen, even when the fridge and cupboards aren't super stocked. For dinner the day after I came home I made a variation of 'African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew' from Vegan Planet. Instead of sweet potato, I used a combination of pumpkin and regular potato, and I added some more spices. I really like this dish.

And for dessert, Andy made me a lovely carrot cake, an amalgamation of two recipes. The result was a gooey delicious cake full of crystallised ginger... yum!And now I'd like to share some news that I think you might be interested in... Last week I posted a few stories about a kangaroo cull in Canberra that was being protested by a coalition of AR activists and Aboriginal elders. I was pleased to hear that the cull has been put on hold while they experiment with moving the kangaroos... what a revolutionary idea.

And since I'm sharing news, I saw this article yesterday that I really liked. It talks about how a vegan diet can be the cheapest around. Granted, it was written by Peta so it's not like an 'unbiased' reporter has come to our side, but still. It's a well written article and it makes some very good points.

I'll post about my trip soon!