Happy Veganiversary!!!! Summer vegetable soup, and gluten free pasta with zucchini gratin

Happy 2 year veganiversary to my son! It was my 3 year veganiversary this summer but I forgot to post. Oh well now I have.

When we first moved to this area last year my son wanted to pet a cow. (There are many cow ranchs in the area with cows roaming all over the hills.) So almost every evening for a month or so we would drive to this one area and stop to visit the cows and talk to them, trying to lure them close enough to pet. This particular cow up above, my son not only got a chance to pet his head but the next day when we came back, he remembered my son.

The story is, we pull up the next evening and there is a group of cows by the fence. My son gets out and starts talking to the cows, grabs some grass and puts it through, trying to get one of them to get close while looking for the one he got close to the previous day. Well we were there for a while and you know they all have their personalities, one usually is the brave one and the others watch to see what he does, and some are very shy and run away but look back to see what's going on. It's really rather cute and enjoyable to watch. Anyways, so one cow is slowly getting closer to my son then next thing you know, we hear something, we look to our left and their is a cow running down the hill, through the other cows and comes up to my son. It was the same cow my son was able to pet from the previous day! It was an amazing sight to see. You had to be there. I hope you enjoyed this little story about an animal whom many view as food, but to us are very gentle, curious, and they each have a personality just like us.

Same cow another day!

I think I posted about using my zucchini's up in recipes, well here are another 2 that I used them in. This is just a nice summer soup with fresh corn, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, carrots and onion in a vegetable broth. Really nice for a cooler summer evening.

This is a DeBoles, rice, quinoa and amaranth pasta with a basil pesto sauce. On top I made the Pesto Zucchini Gratin from Karina's Gluten Free Goddess blog. The only addition was I made a small amount of a cheezy like sauce and drizzled some before baking it. My husband loved the gratin on a baguette.