A Vegan Baby Shower

These past few weeks, Eric and I have been preparing for a baby shower for our dear friends/mentors, Maria Elena and Tony. I met Maria Elena when I first got to the UW and she is the reason I’m working on animal ethics/studies. She is an amazing advocate for animals in the academy and has done so much to get animal studies going at the UW. She is compassionate, strong, and a real ‘do-er’–and of course she is positively glowing pregnant. Her husband, Tony, is also just plain awesome. His work is on Latin American politics and border issues and he is a fantastic teacher, a funny guy, and a kind soul. So you can imagine my delight at the opportunity to host a baby shower for them.

All of the food was vegan, of course, and we made all of it ourselves…The exceptions being hummus, chips, bread, crackers, olives, and the lemonade. We made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), strawberries, salsa and guacamole, double chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered strawberries… 

hummus, pita, veggie platter with vegan sour cream onion dip, apricot/raspberry shortbread thumbprints, lemon glazed shortbread cookies (AKA what I like to call “lemony stars from heaven”)…

kalamata olive tapenade with baguettes and crackers, cucumber tea sandwiches with dill and chives (my favorite part of the menu!)…

Of course, we had WAY too much food. We sent people home with plates and plates of food, took some over to our neighbor, sent cookies to work with Eric and still, there’s so much food to eat. I guess I know what I’m doing today…EATING!

Thank god Eric was here–putting on a baby shower is a lot of work and he’s so good at taking care of hosting people in our house. And Eric’s mom (Ruth) came over on both Saturday AND Sunday to help. Thank you, thank you to both of them! Unfortunately, I lost my shit for about 15-20 minutes Sunday morning (Eric picked out the “wrong” vase for the lovely tulips Ruth picked up and that pushed me over the edge–I get a little crazy sometimes under the pressure…Maybe ‘a little’ is an understatement)…Sorry guys!

We couldn’t have asked for a more gorgeous day weather-wise… about 75 and sunny all day long. My grandmother gave us this rooster watering can a few years ago and it was perfect out on the front porch with flowers…

For drinks, we made ice tea with mint, lemonade with strawberries and lemons…

Maria Elena and Tony brought some beer and wine, and we made a champagne punch, which was kind of fabulous… I found the recipe online. We made an ice sculpture using our fairytale cottage bundt pan (Eric and I went through a phase of collecting crazy bundt pans… we have a lot of them) with lemonade, chopped mint and lemons to keep the punch cold…

Then we added all the booze and juice and some lemon slices for good measure… Delish!

For an activity at the shower, we set up a table with origami paper and pens…The idea, which came from the lovely Rain over at Rainblissed, is as follows (write a wish/hope for the baby on the white side of the paper, after the parents have read the wishes, fold the paper into paper cranes and make a mobile for the nursery).

Most people who came wrote a wish and then after everyone left, Maria Elena and Tony read them…

This is the kind of lovely wishes/hopes the baby has to look forward to…

As a favor for people to take home, I put together little organza bags with confetti hearts made out of paper embedded with wildflower seeds… the idea was that everyone would take a bag of hearts and plant them to celebrate the arrival of the baby. I ordered the paper hearts online from Botanical Paperworks.

Eden, for one, is happy the baby shower is over and he has the basket of leftover favors to keep warm…His favorite part of the shower was licking the icing off of two of the cupcakes when my back was turned!

The cleanup was relatively straightforward… Eric is a rockstar and put away a lot of the food and washed the platters… We used compostable plates, napkins and forks and recyclable cups, so almost nothing went into the garbage!

Most of the people at the shower were not vegan and it was a great moment for a quiet kind of activism for animals… When people found out all the food was vegan (after they’d eaten and enjoyed it) they were amazed. One man even said that he was delighted that he didn’t have to rush home to take his Lactaid! Sometimes a light handed touch can be so effective in changing people’s perspectives on veganism/ plant-based diets…that veganism is not a diet of deprivation, but rather a celebration of plant-based foods in tasty and attractive ways. Love it!