2026 Contest Wins

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I like to have a yearly blog post of the contests I win. It is nice to have these posts to look back on for memories. You can see the previous posts here  2024 Contest Wins  and  2025 Contest Prizes I haven’t won anything since October last year. If you know me I usually have some decent luck but it’s been an unlucky few months for me. I currently have been out of my apartment for almost two weeks because of my buildings water valve breaking right outside my unit. I have had so many more things happen lately but let’s go back to contest winnings. Yesterday my old boss texted me after a long time and I was remembering how I used to win big prizes after I met him. Well I won a contest right after that so he definitely brought my good luck back. The mall had a contest for its newsletter subscribers for a $25 gift card it was an instant win, I received the gift card today. It was a little bit of a pain to get the card because I had to download an app and then I was able to ad...

Vegan bucatini with soy curls, fresh tomatoes, and basil


 

A couple months ago I moved from Vancouver to Ottawa. I will save the story for another post. After staying in a hotel for over a month I am finally in my own apartment. I am still getting settled but I was ready to cook a meal. 

The area I moved to has everything in walking distance. The neighbourhood has so many good restaurants, shops, and cafes. The area also has a farmers market where I purchased the amazing looking basil and tomato’s. The olive oil is from a specialty oil store. The bottle I bought was from a brand new batch that was delivered today. The vegan cashew cheese was from a vegan festival that was held a few days ago.

I bought these ingredients because I wanted to make pasta. I used to use my always pan often when I was in Vancouver I gave it to my aunt before moving. I bought a new set of the always pot and pan. When I only had the pan I always wished I had the pot for cooking pasta. My mom had given me some bucatini that she hadn’t used and I had some soy curls in the fridge. 


I recently bought the No chicken bullion powder at natural food pantry because the ingredients are simple. I put one tablespoon in a bowl with hot water and marinated the soy curls for thirty minutes. Then I heated some olive oil and sautĆ©ed the soy curls while adding a teaspoon of vegan butter. They tasted really good. It was not necessary to put the soy curls on the fry deck I bought it with our place points even though I don’t deep fry and just wanted to try it out. 

I saw a hack on Instagram that if you put cherry tomatoes on an ourplace plate and another one on top you can run a knife across to cut the tomatoes. It worked pretty well even though I only had a small knife. 



The tomatoes were added to the pan with olive oil and cooked until mushy. Once the tomatoes were cooked I added pasta water and basil. I also have very fresh capers that I got from the no waste store so I added some to use them up. It is so creamy even without any vegan cheese added. 

Even creamier after adding the sun dried tomato vegan cashew cheese from Zengarry.


Topped with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, black pepper and basil. I hope you make this it is a delicious vegan meal.




 






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