This vegan caesar salad is my go-to recipe for entertaining because it is a flavour BOMB thanks to roasted garlic and smokey tofu bacon crumbles! Big thank you to Sunrise Soya Foods for providing us with Canadian-grown and non-GMO tofu for this recipe!

Hello friends! It’s been over a month since I’ve last written a blog post. March and April were spent tackling assignment deadlines and final exams so I could wrap up my undergraduate degree. It’s surreal to be able to say that I’m graduating; the feeling hasn’t quite sunk in yet because it’s almost too good to be true. The only life I’ve known for the past 17+ years, the student life, has come to an end.

Looking back, there are many events that characterize each year of university. I naively thought I had my life figured out and was such an adult as a freshman, ha! University challenged me emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I lost a lot of brain cells and countless hours of sleep but gained friendships and clarity in my identity and purpose.

When this post goes live, I’ll be in Hong Kong at the annual bun festival (yes that is a thing, Google it) probably stuffing my face with mango mochi. Meanwhile, join me for a walk down memory lane as I ransack my brain for as many funny and odd memories as I can! Consider this my ode to university.

Hang tight, I’ll also give you the rundown for how to make the best vegan caesar salad that omnivores will fight over.

First Year

Rooming with my best friend. Giving up on studying for our math final and getting pho instead. Garlic Plus seasoning on everything. Shrinking my new $80 UBC hoodie in the dryer. Learning the appropriate amount of groceries to buy after far too many moldy incidences. Investing in a new fridge and wall paint that I would later regret. Spending an absurd amount of money on ice cream (our record was Rain or Shine 3 times in a week) and thinking about the value of everything based on the price of a double scoop in a waffle cone ($7.35 in case you we were wondering). Keener me joined more clubs than I could juggle on top of my full course load and unfortunately never dedicated enough time to any single club to make meaningful connections. Thinking we were geniuses for dressing up as ‘fresh men’ on Halloween only to learn that nobody wore costumes to lecture during the day. Attempting to be like normal university students and lining up to buy tickets to a Halloween party, but ended up spending our $10 on ice cream because we ran out of patience (and never really wanted to go in the first place, ah social pressure). Unintentionally drank the water streaming from my helmet as I biked in the rain for Storm the Wall. Math was so hard that I answered a one-page question on the final exam by drawing a stickman standing on an oval because I didn’t know what an ‘elliptically shaped track’ looked like nor how to calculate how fast one’s head must turn in order to watch Bob run at a speed of who-even-cares. A new detour on campus everyday as the new student building was under construction.

Second Year

Pretty sure ketchup succeeded Garlic Plus as ‘flavour of the year’. I also learned to live off of frozen vegetables (shout out to Kirkland’s Normandy mix for keeping me alive). Regular late-night ranting sessions at Rocky Point Ice Cream in the middle of winter (pretty sure the staff were just as informed about my school struggles as my best friend). Experienced major burnout and didn’t go to class for a whole week. Carrying entire cakes, platters of food, and bags of props to the park next to my apartment to shoot blog photos. Last minute swap for Storm the Wall and I got thrown into the pool in the dorkiest blue and neon orange ensemble. Climbing over the wall with the next heat because I swam back crawl in a competitive race and Abe couldn’t walk down the hill. Got my first part-time job and had to take the very first bus into campus to make it to my 6am shift. Working at what I thought was a charming cafe on campus but quickly quitting after they made me shred an massive hunk of roasted meat and wear jeans. Battling insomnia and stress acne like never before. Battling Friday afternoon rush hour and flying down the escalators in attempt to catch the now-extinct 97 B-line. Still had the luxury of being driven across the city with my trunk-load of stuff every Sunday evening.

Third Year

8am student council meetings, Tuesday Bachelor/Bachelorette nights. Feeling very inspired, but daunted, after my intro to entrepreneurship class. 3am chats with Chew on her couch wishing we could just drop out of university and start a bakery. Making the life-changing and liberating decision to not pursue dietetics. Almost freezing to death at the first year ‘frosh’ retreat because our yurt thing did not have heating and I brought my ‘dollar store sleeping bag’ (what Chew calls it because it reflects the quality/warmth). My blissful 4-day weekend schedule. The annoying neighbour downstairs complaining about every little noise inconvenience including the leaking sink i just found out about and us sitting at my dinner table eating pizza and doing tongue twisters at 9pm on a Monday (what kinda neighbour complains about sober 2o year olds doing tongue twisters?! It ain’t even my bedtime yet, and I sleep at 10pm sharp!) The highlight of each week was cooking dinner at ‘The Castle’ for our newly formed ‘family’. Doing a community group project in which we never actually met the community partner and accomplished nothing so we had to reeeeally b.s. our infographic and report. Evergreen line opens and it finally doesn’t take 2+ hours and 3 transfers to transit home! Spending the first half of summer in Hawaii cooking on a farm and getting credit for it 😎.

Fourth Year

The 4th year student that split her crystals all over her bench in a 2nd year organic chemistry lab and literally screamed “CRYSTAL!!” (coincidentally, that was my TA’s name). Finally ran out of sh*ts to give and skipped the first day of all my classes, only to learn the hard way and write two extra papers because I didn’t read the syllabus thoroughly and end up doing poorly on both. Rolling a luggage full of banana bread to the north end of campus for our first annual Christmas charity fundraiser.

Fifth Year

The worn out 5th year student in lower-level electives that are completely unrelated to her major like Family Studies and Introductory Sociology. Riverdale + dessert nights with Chew. I wrote a paper on peanut butter and on coughing llamas. Skipping classes became a regular thing. The question “what do you want to do after university” gets increasingly intimidating and frequent as graduation approaches. Talked about breastfeeding all semester. Meal of the year was soba zoodle bowls. Couldn’t avoid 8am classes forever, had to take one in my last semester. Blazed through all my final final exams to be the first one out because I’m here for the credit not the GPA. Probably spent more time at hot yoga than studying. Had the best group project team (coming from a person who usually dislikes group work) and it was randomly assigned by the professor! Discovered Yoga Chapel on campus and managed to attend their last few events; loved every one of them. Constructed a sign out of three probiotic boxes to cheer Chew on in her iron woman races.

University-level material is difficult on its own, but what made the past five years challenging was learning to keep up with school on top of housework, a part time job (so I’m not completely penniless, not that there are pennies anymore in Canada), all while staying sane (hence all the yoga). By the end of my fifth year, I think I got the hang of it 😉. If I had to pick one major achievement, it would be figuring out my work-life balance and knowing how to mitigate stress before it burns me out.

Do you know what else is a great achievement? This vegan caesar salad. Whenever I get teased about how sad it must be to only be able to eat salad as a vegetarian, I just refute them by saying they’ve just never had a good salad. There are plenty of bad salads in this world, and I wouldn’t choose to eat them either. But this vegan caesar salad is so flavourful and filling that I’d happily eat it as a meal.

What makes this salad superior to all other vegan caesar salads?

Firstly, it has a base of kale and romaine. One of the best restaurant salads we’ve ever had was a kale and romaine vegan caesar salad; naturally I had to make a copy-cat version. Well-massaged kale is a must because it’s hearty and doesn’t taste like water. However, too much kale and your GI tract won’t appreciate the amount of roughage it needs to digest. Romaine steps in to lighten up the salad and add some crunch.

Secondly, we have roasted garlic and tahini to thank for the best creamy vegan caesar dressing ever! I created this dressing on a whim a few months ago and it is literally the most perfect salad dressing. The consistency is thin enough to easily coat all the greens, but thick enough that it will cling to the greens rather than pool at the bottom of the bowl. When my family pulls the barbecue grill out, I’ll definitely be drizzling this dressing over grilled romaine!

Finally, the tofu bacon. Oh my gosh this is what makes the salad taste like a ‘real’ caesar salad. I didn’t have high hopes at first because on its own I didn’t think it looked much like bacon, and it also lacked the crunch crumbled bacon usually has. However, once I tossed the greens together with a very generous amount (i.e. the entire batch) of tofu bacon together, magic happened and the tofu bacon transformed the entire salad. Both my omnivorous best friend and brother couldn’t get enough of this salad!

Whenever I need some vegetables on the menu for my parties, this is my go-to salad. Both Chew and I have a signature kale salad: her’s is on the sweeter side and mine is more savoury. If you have troubles getting your friends or family to accept leafy greens, definitely make them this vegan caesar salad. Maybe even make a double-recipe because it is so good they’ll be fighting for the last portion!