we had a veggie good time

the scott's of saltcoats visited today. always a fun time, but recently, rather more challenging meal wise, since my daughter became a vegan!

i love recipe books, i love owning them and paging through them. following a recipe though, now that is an entirely different matter.
however, needs must and the whole vegan experience is new territory for me.

for today, i scanned the internet and i decided on vegan chilli. this involved green lentils, kidney beans, tomatoes, spices and chick peas. hubble, bubble...tasted rather good actually! for pud i made baked cinnamon bananas with vegan ice cream and halva.

yep ... vegan ice cream, there is also vegan custard, vegan cream and vegan mayonnaise, vegan margarine. a whole new world. for instance, did you know ... there are two types of glycerine, one animal and one vegetable. did you know ... some flavours of potato crisps have milk in them!

i have a new problem in my life, how come the ingredients listed on a label are set in such small type? indeed, how come are these aging eyes of mine even trying to read ingredients? calories, fat, salt, sugar and now glycerine as well! i must admit that my beloved daughters conversion to veganism is stretching both my eyesight and my mind.

my eldest two grandchildren, joshua, aged twelve and mairin, aged eleven, are both tall and skinny, they have humongous appetites and eat like horses! ah, the appetite of youth, i love heaping their plates full of food and watching them wolf it down, always ready and game for seconds. alaska, aged nine and in the middle, family order wise, has a much more delicate appetite, although she too always finishes her somewhat smaller helping with relish. liam, aged eight and savannah, aged six, have inherited the picky eating habits my own children exhibited. if they like it, it disappears from the plate as if by magic, if they don't care for the dish, well ... they try politely and valiantly, but man oh man, eating is just not that easy for them.

fortunately, vegan chilli, rice and roast veg went down well with everyone and who the hell has a problem with ice cream?