Campus News: Vegetarian Club

I have great news! I have officially started a vegetarian club at my school, with the help of a few others who wanted to get involved. Just wanted to share this with you because I'm SO very excited!

I'm a fourth year student at +Laurentian University - Université Laurentienne and I was always somewhat dissapointed in my campus experience since I lived off campus the whole time. The clubs aren't very active either, so I haven't participated to much as far as our campus community. There is more of a focus on sports I find, and that's not really for me.

Being vegetarian for most of my schooling and now fully vegan, my food options on campus aren't even close to being accomodating. +Tim Hortons has a few vegan bagels that I can get without butter, and the cafeteria has a fruit and vegetable bar that is usually quite unapealing, but it does have some tasty homefries and hummus snacks. So those are about all my options as far as food, and the prices are outrageous. Not really worth it.

I have started going to the Northern Vegetarian Society's monthly potlucks on a regular basis now, which have been fantastic! It got me thinking about wanting to be more involved, going to more events like these. In this town, that's about all we got. So I somehow got the idea to start a vegetarian club on campus. How have I never thought of this before?!?!? Now I'm graduating in 2 months and that's all I have left to be involved on campus! Better late than never I guess.

Beauty Haul: Lush Cosmetics

On my recent trip to Toronto (see my restaurant post) I did a bit of shopping on Queen street. I spotted on a Lush store on my way to the Loving Hut restaurant, and prepared myself for some massive splurging. I'm a huge fan of Lush for many reasons, one of them being the labelling of vegan products. The majority of their products are vegan and have this little V symbol to identify them. What a great way to kickstart my vegan beauty regime! Here are the all-vegan products I purchased:

Vegan Restaurant: Loving Hut Toronto

When in Rome! (or Toronto!)

I spent the long weekend (family day in Ontario) in Toronto and I knew right away I wanted to hunt down some amazing vegan restaurants. After a search on Happy Cow, I had a looooong list of places to visit. Ok, I went a little bit overboard. I know I can't even get to a dozen places in one day, let alone eat a dozen meals. My trip was then planned around the area I wanted to visit most (shopping!). Unfortunately, I only had time for one outing so the Loving Hut in Toronto was my restaurant of choice. Now, I'm not a restaurant critic by any means, so I'm just sharing my experience and my opinions with you. Enjoy!

What a lovely place! The staff is friendly and the decor is adorable, much like a popular cozy hangout kind of vibe. I was impressed with the large menu, since I'm used to being restricted to 1-2 options. Here's the best part: I ordered 2 meals, equalling 4 plates, to myself! I probably sounded crazy but I asked the waitress to bring me some take out containers so I could take half of each meal home. And extra ketchup, of course!

Chocolate-Glazed Mini Donuts (vegan)

This year, my sister bought me this donut maker from Babycakes for Christmas. I was SO excited to try it! Since we decided to do a cleanse for the month of January, it remained unopened for the month, sadly collecting dust. On the first weekend of Febuary, I took that baby out and got right into it! I tried the donut recipe from Chloe Coscarelli's cookbook, Chloe's Kitchen (my Christmas present to myself) but I replaced the nutmeg with cinnamon. When I was mixing the dry and wet ingredients together, I found the batter to be a little bit thick. After adding about 1/4 cup of extra soymilk, the batter was much better but still quite thick. Even with that, I found the donuts turned out a little dense, so I will try adding 1/2 cup soymilk to the liquids next time. Overall, the donut-making was great; super easy and quick. The donut-iron (is that what I'm supposed to call it?) took about 5 minutes per batch, and using the ziplock-bag method for piping the dough made the whole process so much easier!

January cleanse: extension week recap

The last little stretch is done! WOW! What an accomplishement for me. Feeling incredibly proud, inspired, and happy! Here's how it went:

Monday night I did some awesome yoga at my local Goodlife Fitness. I felt so great afterwards, it was a really good class! My sister had brought along two of her friends, who were very hesitant to trying yoga. Obviously, they came out of the class loving it! It was so nice to see this positive influence and the happy chatting afterwards (insert warm fuzzy feelings here). And then my sister and I went home and munched on guacamole and roasted red pepper hummus with Gluten-Free crackers, yum! It's actually really embarassing how much hummus we go through... Good thing we buy it at Costco!

So apparently I'm a runner now.... WHAT? I've never been a runner, a jogger, or even a big walker. Cardio has never been my thing. During this cleanse, I found that I have SO much more energy, and I need to do something more than bicep curls and squats to get it out. Since getting bad whiplash this summer, my back and shoulder area have been tense so I didn't want to work out too hard. Cardio it is. I've been doing pretty good, slowly working my way up to longer periods (watching longer Ted Talks videos!). My biggest issue before was the sluggishness (probably just unconscious laziness) and my lack of endurance. Now it's not an issue at all!