this has not been a cooking year

The holidays are not a time of rest for the cooks and hosts of the family. I am about to type into evernote all the cooking assignments I have for the rest of the year with all the family gatherings and parties that are coming up and was thinking that this year hasn't been much of a cooking year for ole Liz Lemon, EvY. (Pics below are of this year's cooking adventures).

What changed a lot for our family was the news that Matt was allergic to eggs and dairy making us: VEGAN at home. Tan Tan Tan! Which opened up a whole new world of cooking and eating out. And though our options are much more limited eating out, cooking vegan at home has been a really enjoyable challenge. I don't have the balls to go fully vegan myself but I am trying to limit the eggs and dairy intake since honestly, dairy isn't that good for you to begin with. 

Expanding our horizons to veganism led to cooking outside of America and I have added ingredients to my cupboard I'd never even heard of.

I also never thought I'd make a pizza from scratch. Nope. Never.

And a 100% gluten-free and vegan s'more was a lot more delicious than I'd imagined.

To continue the theme that this has not been a cooking year, I'm going to be having the food catered for my biggest party of the year. I'm going to try to make a few lil' things but I'm not gonna beat myself up over the fact that I'm having someone else make it. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. 

Next year I'm gonna try to do more International cooking since it's been so dang delicious for us and led to our favorite veggie place.