Almost-Vegan Valentine's Day ;)

Sorry for my lack of blog posts lately.  :P  So, for those of you who may have been keeping tabs, our month of vegan eating actually ended about a week ago.  I know, I know...I meant to post something earlier, so I promise I will be writing a separate post very soon.  But first, I thought I would share some pictures from our Valentine's Day.  :)  Since last Sunday (Valentine's Day) was the first day after our vegan-eating month ended, Dave and I did end up eating some non-vegan foods, particularly cheese (well, and bacon for Dave).  But, not everything we ate that day was non-vegan.  My awesome husband was very sweet and bought me several different kinds of vegan, fair trade and/or organic chocolate (some of which I mentioned in my previous post about Valentine's Day gift suggestions). :)  In the picture above is some sparkling wine we got from New Season's and a bar of Equal Exchange chocolate. The wine was okay, but the chocolate sure was tasty...and it sure didn't last very long.

Dave also bought me these awesome, local, vegan truffles from Wingnut Confections.  You can order them online, or buy them at some stores, such as  People's Food Co-op.  I highly, highly recommend them!  Our favorites were the Peppermint and Rogue Hazelnut Spiced Rum truffles. :)  And, even if you're a little skeptical about eating "vegan" chocolate, trust me, it's just as good--if not better, in my opinion--than regular chocolate.  It just has a much more rich, chocolate taste...and less of the sugary, milky taste that most mainstream chocolate brands have (which I'm not a big fan of anyway).  But, don't take my word for it, try it for yourself. :)

And, last but not least (by any means), for dessert we made vegan chocolate covered strawberries!  I found this recipe online, so we decided to give it a try.  Since we don't have a double boiler, we did have a little difficulty melting the chocolate...but Dave just added more coconut oil and they turned out great.  They tasted even better the next day, after being in the refrigerator longer.  Oh, and we ended buying semi-sweet chocolate chips (and not adding any honey), but next time I definitely want to try using unsweetened chocolate instead.  I recommend trying this, or  a similar, recipe.  Yummmmy. :)  Hope you all had a very Happy Valentine's Day!