The one year anniversary of my wedding is fast approaching.  For those of you who are new to the blog, Jeremy and I got hitched on September 3, 2016. You can see some photos of the big day here.  It was a crazy, amazing, world-wind day that I'll definitely never forget. Our wedding had some traditional elements, but it was very progressive in many ways.  Leading up to the wedding I jokingly described it as a "feminist, non-secular, vegan wedding".  It was all of those things, but it was also so much more. It was literally the best party ever (I'm sure most of the attendees would agree) with the best people ever, and we can't thank friends and family members enough for their massive help and support in making our dream wedding possible. 

I'm often asked what we served for food at a vegan wedding. Given that most people have never attended a vegan event I completely emphasize with their curiosity. There were very few vegetarians, let alone vegans, at the wedding and it was a huge privilege to introduce everybody to this style of cuisine. Jeremy and I are fairly healthy eaters. If I were to give it a label, I'd say we eat mostly plant-based whole foods. Basically, we eat LOTS of vegetables and we go to great efforts to eat seasonally and locally. It was very important to me that our wedding menu was reflective of that. Of course, since we were feeding a lot of non-vegans, I also wanted to make sure it tasted really, really good! 

In the last many months, I've been dreaming of publishing an eBook featuring all the recipes from the wedding. If you follow me you'd know that I've had a really busy year full of travel, events, and a lot of business growth, and because of all that I've been pushing this off for ages. I honestly don't have a lot of time to work on an eBook, but I'm committing to it.  I hope to have it out within the next few months and I'm working with a few others to make it happen. I don't have a set-in-stone release date just yet, but I'm putting it out there so that I can't renege on my promise. 

As a token of my gratitude to those of you who've been following and rooting for me, the eBook will be FREE to newsletter subscribers. (If you haven't yet subscribed to my newsletter, you can do so HERE.) As I continue to work on the eBook, I'll be releasing a few of the recipes on my blog prior to the launch date.  Most of the recipes were developed by our wedding chef, Nancy Leclerc, or me, and some are inspired by other recipes we found online or in cookbooks (of course the latter will be credited). 

In this blog post, I'm sharing one of my absolute favourite appetizers. This fig and olive tapenade is truly a go-to for parties and pairs perfectly with cashew cheeses. Everybody (except the odd olive hater) loves it.   It's not the prettiest thing to photograph, but Anne Bouchard, our wedding photographer, managed to get a few nice snaps as you can see below. For the full recipe, please scroll down. 

FIG AND OLIVE TAPENADE

Yields about 1 1/4 cups

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dried figs (I've used either Mission Figs or Turkish Figs)
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1/2 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, minced
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Directions:

Roughly chop the figs and olives. Add to food processor and pulse a few times.

Add rosemary and balsamic vinegar. Then pulse several more times, frequently scraping down the sides with a spatula, until you have a nice chunky consistency. 

Serve with crackers or a sliced sourdough baguette.  Enjoy immediately, or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. 

Note: if you don’t have a food processor you can chop everything by hand. 

Modified from the original recipe by Kayb featured on Food52.