Vegan Crisis Brownies

New Year, New Resolutions (Not Really)

2012-01-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

Like many others, I start off the new year with the usual array of "get healthy," "lose weight," "exercise more" resolutions. After watching "Forks Over Knives," and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead," along with a heaping helping of "Food, Inc.," (all available streaming on Netflix for the time being) I decided to launch myself back onto the vegan wagon.

Over the past few days, I have made some of my old favorites, from Steel-Cut Oats with Cranberries and Almonds and Scrambled Tofu for breakfast, to Red Lentil and Quinoa Stew for lunch, but I am always on the lookout for new ideas, especially things that I can make from scratch, because the manufactured protein sources can be expensive.

I got a good recipe for seitan from a friend of mine, and made up a batch last night.

Phenomenal.

I sauteed a few slices quickly in olive oil and added a touch of Szechwan stir-fry sauce with green beans for a quick dinner.

Tonight I am going to try Vegan YumYum's recipe for Seitan and Broccolini with Clementine Teriyaki, though with a few changes based on what I have on hand.

Here's the seitan recipe I used:

Baked Seitan

Ingredients

1/2 c. cooked white beans - I used great northern beans, but cannellini should work fine
1/4 c. soy sauce - I used Braggs liquid aminos
1 1/4 cups stock - I used Better Than Boullion's No-Beef Base to make a fake beef stock
2 cups vital wheat gluten
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
2 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)- you can omit this depending on how salty your broth is. I omitted it.
1/2 teaspoon onion and porcini mushroom powder (optional) - I made it by grinding up dried porcini mushrooms with a bit of dried minced onion in a coffee grinder

Directions:

Mix the cooked beans and soy/Braggs in a food processor or blender and then pour in as much broth as needed until everything is all nice and liquidy. Then add the rest of the broth and mix well.
In another bowl, mix together the dry ingredients and then make a well in the center and add the liquid ingredients, stirring until everything is well combined.
Turn the mass out onto a board and knead for a few minutes.
Shape into a loaf and then warp in well-oiled foil (I just blasted it with cooking spray). Then wrap it in another layer of foil. Place in a roasting dish, pour in water to a depth of 1 inch and bake for 1-1/2 hours at 350F or until the packet is firm when you poke it.

Coconut-Curry Tofu with Jasmine Rice

2012-01-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

The tofu cubes really sucked up the sauce; in the end, they were like little coconut-curry sponges, very tasty. Using the toasted coconut shreds in the coconut milk really amped up the coconuttiness, but I think that it works well with the other flavors, especially the peanut and lime.

If fat content is an issue for you, you can use light coconut milk, but don't be fooled, that still has some fat in it. You wouldn't be wrong to put chopped cilantro in the coconut milk puree which you add to the rice. I love cilantro usually, but I was out of it and was feeling too lazy to go out to the store JUST for that one item, so I said, "No cilantro today." It was just fine and tasty without it.

Coconut-Curry Tofu and Jasmine Rice

Ingredients

1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1 3/4 cups water
1 t salt
1 cup jasmine or basmati rice

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1 T minced fresh ginger
1 T fresh lime juice
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 t dried jalapeno flakes

2 T canola oil
8 ounces extra-firm tofu, pressed, drained, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup onion, chopped
2 t curry powder
1 t ground cumin
1/8 t dried jalapeno flakes
1/2 cup yellow cherry tomatoes, chopped

hot sauce to taste
2 T chopped peanuts
lime zest

Directions

In a dry skillet over medium-high heat, toast the shredded coconut until light golden, about 5 minutes. Stir constantly and be careful not to let it burn. As soon as it starts to smell toasted and reach a nice golden color, remove it from heat and transfer to a bowl.
Bring 1-3/4 cups water and salt to boil in heavy medium saucepan. Add the rice and let boil again.
Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until all the water is absorbed, about 18 - 20 minutes.
Puree 1/2 cup of the coconut milk, 1 teaspoon ginger, lime juice, and 1 clove of garlic in a blender. Add the toasted coconut and blend for a few seconds.
Mix the coconut milk mixture into the rice and set aside.
Heat some canola oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the tofu cubes and saute until golden.
Add the onions, curry, cumin, jalapeno flakes and the rest of the ginger and garlic. Cook for 2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and stir everything well.
Serve over the coconut jasmine rice, add hot sauce to taste and top with chopped peanuts and lime zest.

Steel-cut Oats with Cranberries and Almonds

2010-12-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it's snowing again. Still. We've got another snow day for the kids, another day of shoveling a foot of snow at a time, and that means another day of warming, filling foods. My mom gave me an unopened canister of steel cut oats when I was there over Thanksgiving. I'd been meaning to try them out - I'd heard good things about them - and we love oats in this house anyway. I was intrigued by others' description of the chewy texture, rather than the glue-like paste of some rolled oats' dishes.

This version is pretty low-maintenance to boot. Instead of standing over a pot for a half hour, stirring constantly to keep the oats from sticking, you start these the night before and then let them sit overnight to soak. In the morning you just heat them up, sweeten to taste and then serve.

Steel-cut Oats with Cranberries and Almonds
Makes 3 servings

Ingredients
3/4 cup steel-cut oats
3 cups water
1 teaspoon orange peel
1/4 cup chopped salted roasted almonds
1/4 cup dried cranberries
Agave nectar
Directions
In a large saucepan, boil the oats, dried cranberries and orange peel in the water for 1 minute. Cover, remove from heat and set on a heat-resistant surface.
Let sit overnight.
The next morning, uncover the oats and bring them to a boil over high heat.
Reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring frequently, until the oatmeal is hot and creamy, about 5 minutes.
Garnish with the chopped almonds and some additional cranberries if you like and sweeten to taste with agave nectar.

I Need Cheesecake

2010-08-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

I am on a desperate hunt for an exceptional - not just decent - vegan cheesecake.

Could it be as simple as substituting blocks of Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream for Philadelphia and Breakstone's and using Ener-G egg replacer for those salmonella bombs formerly known as eggs?

It could be, and with the week I've had, I am tempted to comfort eat my way through a cheesecake.

Tabouli

2010-08-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am going to a family picnic today and since I will no doubt be the only vegan there, am bringing a dish that will appeal to omnivores and vegans alike. One of my favorite summertime bring-along dishes is Tabouli, a cold salad made from bulgur wheat, chopped herbs and vegetables. The dressing is a simply mixture of olive oil and freshly-squeezed lemon juice, augmented with a bit of garlic and S&P. It is a refreshing, light salad and you can garnish it with olives or feta (for the non-vegans).

Tabouli

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups bulgur (cracked wheat)
1 ½ cups very hot water
4 small persian cucumbers, diced finely
4 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped finely
4 green onions, sliced
¼ cup fresh chopped mint
1 cup fresh chopped parsley
Juice of 3 lemons (about 1/3 cup)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
pepper and salt to taste

Directions:
Place the cracked wheat in a bowl or plastic container, and pour the near-boiling water over it. Cover and let sit for about half an hour, until the water is absorbed.

Drain out any excess water, if necessary, and squeeze dry.

Mix the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper together. Whisk with a fork and let sit.

Prepare the vegetables for the salad by dicing them finely.

Stir the bulgur, vegetables, and dressing together in a medium bowl. Taste to adjust seasoning, and then chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

I like to garnish it with more chopped parsley and kalamata olives.

It's a sandwich kind of day

2010-08-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'd been under the weather the past few days with a 3-day headache. Over the past few days I've had plenty of water to drink and eaten as many fresh fruits and vegetables as I could, and it seems to have passed. I think I finally decided that it was from making the switch to a vegan diet. If I recall correctly, I was hit with a killer headache about a week into the vegan diet last year when I made the switch. I can't imagine what else it could have been: it did not feel like one of my migraines, nor was it similar to those awful caffeine-withdrawal headaches. I wonder if this is a common malady for people who cut out all animal products?

Anyway, the pain has passed, and today I really wanted a sandwich. I had an intense craving for bread, so I hunted around my kitchen for a bit and then made a sandwich from a whole wheat flatbread, some of my favorite hummus,* sliced tomato, grated carrot and sprouts.

Yum.

Today I finally got around to watching Food, Inc. Finally.

I never did get to go see it when it was playing in Ithaca, and I totally missed it when PBS aired it earlier this spring. I'd read the companion book of essays, "Food, Inc: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It" last year even before the movie came out.

I got a kick out of seeing Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farm, because I remember reading about him in Michale Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Joel Salatin is a man who obviously feels quite passionately about farming, real farming on a recognizable farm with a red barn, open pastures of wild grasses and a family working together to tend the livestock, versus the type of farming exemplified by modern agriculture's Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO**), or feedlots.

The segment on Monsanto is worth seeing. The documentary, "The Future of Food," snagged from Snagfilms in my right sidebar, first brought to light some of Monsanto's practices, and "Food, Inc." continues that as it follows a few soybean farmers' battles with the chemical giant over patent infringement lawsuits. Sobering, and it affects all of us, eventually. Left unchecked, Monsanto could eventually own the patents to all soybeans grown and processed in the United States.

I highly recommend the movie if you eat food or know someone who does. Not just meat, but FOOD.

Hummus

Ingredients:
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 (15-oz) cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed very well
1/2 to 2/3 cup of tahini (sesame paste)
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t salt
1/4 t cayenne

Directions:
In a food processor, combine the garlic, chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, 1/2 cup water, and olive oil. Process until smooth. Taste to adjust, adding more tahini or lemon if you like.
Add cumin, cayenne and salt to taste.
Serve as a sandwich spread, or with crackers, pita triangles or as a dip with vegetables like carrots or celery.

Notes:

You can go crazy with the add-ins. Roasted garlic is one of my favorite, as is a mixture of sundried tomato and fresh basil. Chopped kalamata olives and parsley make another nice variety. Hummus is pretty forgiving, actually.

** For more on CAFOs, read CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

2010-08-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I needed something heartier than a salad, and while perusing my other food blog, was tempted greatly by the crab & Boursin-stuffed portobellos I had made some months ago. I had two gorgeous portobello caps in the fridge, and some raw nut cheese I'd made from sunflower seeds and pine nuts.

There is nothing remotely crab-like in this recipe, but the nut cheese does give the filling a nice creaminess. I might try different recipes of nut cheeses in this. I am especially fond of some of the cashew cheeses I've made. Those are even creamier than this sunflower seed puree. This was delicious, though, and very satisfying. The nut cheese added a level of satiety that was wonderful.

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

Ingredients:
1 portobello mushroom
olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced finely
1 carrot, grated
1 stalk celery, diced finely
1 clove garlic, smashed
sunflower seed/pine nut cheese*
thyme
salt
pepper
panko bread crumbs
vegan butter spread
paprika

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.
Clean the mushroom cap and scrape out the gills.

Saute the onion in olive oil over medium-high heat until soft. Add the celery and carrots and let them soften, about 5 minutes.

Add the garlic and thyme and saute for a minute.

Scoop out about 2 T to 1/4 cup of the sunflower cheese mixture and add to the pan, breaking up with the spatula and stirring well so that it is incorporated into the mixture. Let cook down about 3 minutes or until it is a nice, soft mix.

Scoop into the mushroom cap, packing down well.

Mix the panko crumbs and paprika with 1 T vegan spread (I like Earth Balance) until it makes a mixture that resembles coarse crumbs.

Top the mushroom with the bread crumb mixture, packing down well.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Raw Sunflower Seed Cheese

Ingredients:
2 cups sunflower seeds
1 cup pine nuts
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
3 green onions, chopped
½ tablespoon sea salt
Directions:
Wash/rinse the sunflower seeds very well and then soak in cool water for 6 hours.

Rinse the seeds and let them dry in a colander for at least an hour. You may have to shake them from time to time to let more water out.

In a food processor, process the sunflower seeds, salt and pine nuts until the mixture resembles a fine meal.

Add the lemon juice and olive oil. Process again until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. It will form a ball of dough as it moves around your processor.

Process until smooth yet very thick. The longer it goes the creamier it will become.

At the end add the chopped green onions and pulse a few times to incorporate them into the cheese.

Let stand for 30 minutes, then refrigerate or use as a spread immediately.

Eggplant in Curry Sauce (Baigan Bharta)

2010-08-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

Thank God I love Indian food. When I eat vegan, I make a disproportionate number of Indian-inspired dishes. The past few days my house has had this divine scent of spices lingering in the air. I have a cauliflower loitering around too, and I am very tempted to make aloo gobhi (potato and cauliflower curry) or cauliflower with red lentils in a balti sauce. I toyed with the idea of doing something non-Indian-inspired with the cauliflower, but none of the recipes I looked at briefly yesterday seemed all that appealing.

My one gripe, minor though it is, is that unless I want to eat the same dish for 4 days in a row, I have to halve or quarter the recipe, since I am cooking for one. My kids are still a bit leery about eating anything that has exotic spices in it, but I am sure that I will win them over eventually. My older daughter tried out Chicken Korma a few months ago, and she loves tofu, so I am sure I can find some way of melding the two together. I can even make a vegan variety of the sauce with coconut milk instead of yogurt.

So, yes. Plenty more Indian recipes to come. In the meantime, enjoy this eggplant curry. :)

Eggplant in Curry Sauce - Baigan Bharta

Ingredients:
1 medium eggplant
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
¼ teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
½ cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon red curry powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garam masala
Dash cayenne
Dash cinnamon* - I am a freak, but I love it in some of these dishes and when I smelled it simmering, something inside me said “Add cinnamon,” so I did. You may not want to do this.
3 T cilantro stalks and leaves
2 cups chopped tomatoes - I used 1 15-oz can and 2 fresh tomatoes
Directions:
Roast eggplant: Preheat oven to 350. Split the eggplant in half. Sprinkle salt on the cut sides and let sit, cut sides up for 30 minutes.

Brush off the salt and accumulated water and then brush the cut surface of the eggplant with olive oil and place, cut sides down on a cookie sheet.

Roast for approximately 1 hour.

In a large pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and minced ginger and sauté until they start to get fragrant – don’t let them burn – about 3 minutes.

Add the chopped onion and saute until the onion starts to get translucent, about 5 minutes or so. Add the garlic and stir. Cook another 3 minutes.

Add the coriander, cumin, chili powder, cayenne, turmeric, garam masala and curry powder and stir well to coat.

Cook for another 3 minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes. Stir well, cover and let cook down 7 minutes.

While it’s cooking, scoop out the roasted eggplant pulp into a bowl.

Add the cilantro stalks and leaves to the tomato curry sauce. Add the eggplant and stir well.

Taste to adjust the seasoning - as with any of these dishes, you may prefer more or less heat, more cumin, more cilantro, etc.

Now is where I add the cinnamon and extra cilantro. Stir well and serve with basmati rice or naan.

Notes:

Since I am currently avoiding specific carbs, rice and bread, even brown basmati and whole wheat flatbreads, are verboten. I had a low-carb, high-protein whole wheat wrap with my bowl of this curry. I just ripped off pieces of the wrap and spooned the curry in it.

Perfection. :)

Quinoa Porridge with Apples, Cinnamon and Walnuts

2010-08-16T04:41:00.001-07:00

This morning for breakfast, I craved something porridgey. Actually, when I woke at 4 am, I really wanted my usual raw apple breakfast, but my food processor bowl was in the midst of a cleaning cycle in the dishwasher because I had forgotten to run the dishwasher last night. Oops.

Then we had a series of heavy thundershowers roll on through which dropped the temperature here, so I started thinking longingly of a lovely cinnamon-infused rice porridge, but shuddered at the thought of the carb-crash that would bring along with it. For the next few weeks I am trying out a sort of veganized low-carb induction phase in the hopes of speeding up weight loss. Yes, I am impatient, and yes, I know, impatience is not often a great thing. I'm sure I'll go more in depth about my ED issues in another blog along the way. *sigh* You can chastise me there.

Anyway, I plan to stay away from almost all rice and flour-based carbs except for the occasional piece of peanut butter toast or veggies stuffed inside a low-carb, whole wheat wrap, so I nixed the idea of toast or a rice porridge for today's breakfast. Then I thought, "Quinoa, why not do something with quinoa?"

Quinoa is fairly high in protein for a grain, and with a glycemic index of 35 compared to rice's 70, it carries along with it a lower glycemic load than rice. In other words, it won't cause that spike in blood sugar that overly-refined carbs will. Those blood sugar spikes can then go on to cause the dreaded sugar crash, and what follows a sugar crash but a craving for fast energy in carb-form?

In my own experience - no hype, I promise - I find that I have fewer cravings when I avoid those refined carbs. This makes the bread-fiend inside of me very sad, but it's true. My appetite stays in balance, in other words, when I avoid these foods. Quinoa and oats seem to be fairly safe carbs for me, as long as I don't overdo it.

So, I settled on quinoa and figured I'd prepare it the same way I make my kids their oatmeal, and the result was fantastic. Check it out.

Quinoa Porridge with Apples, Walnuts and Cinnamon

serves 2

Ingredients:
1/2 cup quinoa
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
chopped walnuts
vanilla soy milk
agave nectar

Directions:
Put the quinoa, water, 1/2 cup vanilla soy milk, chopped apple and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to a boil then reduce heat to low. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir well.

Put into 2 serving bowls and add more soy milk until you get the consistency you like.

Add a drizzle of agave nectar if you like and then and add more cinnamon to suit your taste.

Top with chopped walnuts.

Baked Tofu in a Peanut Sauce

2010-08-16T03:39:00.000-07:00

I have been making an awful lot of scrambled tofu lately, and while that quickly soared to the top of my Vegan Comfort Foods list, I was looking to do something a bit different from the pan-fried or scrambled tofu dishes.

I love a good savory peanut dish, and thought that it would go nicely with slabs of baked tofu. I had this for dinner last night in wraps made from large leaves of green leaf lettuce along with some spaghetti squash. I couldn't resist and spooned some extra peanut sauce on top. Lovely.

Unfortunately, I scarfed this down before taking a picture. Yes. It was that good.

Baked Tofu with Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:
tofu
peanut sauce, jarred or homemade*

Directions:
Take a block of tofu and slice it into uniform 1/2-inch thick slabs.

Press the excess water out by placing the tofu pieces on a flat surface lined with a double thickness of paper towel. Cover with more paper towels and place something heavy on top, like a cast iron skillet. Let sit for 3 hours.

Pour some of the peanut sauce in a container. Add the tofu and cover with more of the sauce. Be generous. Cover and put in the fridge and let marinate for a good 6 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying with cooking spray or brushing it with olive oil.

Lay the slices of marinated tofu on the sheet and spray lightly with cooking spray.

Bake for 20 minutes. Take out the sheet and flip over the pieces, hitting them again with the cooking spray and bake for an additional 15-20 minutes until golden brown and delicious. The longer you bake it, the denser and chewier it will be.

Serve over noodles, rice, or in a wrap.

Optional: Garnish with chopped peanuts, lime and cilantro.

Spicy Peanut Marinade

Ingredients:
½ cup water
¼ cup creamy peanut butter
2 T soy sauce – I used Bragg’s liquid Aminos
1 T apple cider vinegar
2 t agave nectar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small hot chili pepper, minced - add more to taste if you like it spicy
Directions:
Mix the liquid ingredients together.

Add the minced chili and garlic.

Add the peanut butter and stir well with a whisk until the mixture is well-combined.

Notes:

I saw an ad for the Tofu Express, which looks intriguing, though really I can do the same thing with a plate, a bunch of paper towels and a cast iron skillet, and it doesn't cost me $40.

I have to wonder, though, looking at it: Where does the excess water go? Is there a channel for it to run off and away from the tofu?

Mock Tuna Salad

2010-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

The July/August issue of Vegetarian Times had a recipe for a mock tuna salad made from sunflower seeds. I thought it looked intriguing and so yesterday when I was scrounging around for some sort of protein and fat-dense food, I stumbled upon the cup of pureed sunflower seed & pine nut mixture I had left over from my nut cheese-making adventure. I thought that this recipe would be the perfect way to use it up. After making some changes to the recipe based on my taste and what ingredients I had on hand, I found that I was right.

Once I tasted it, I realized how often we may try to mask certain flavors with other, stronger ones. This dish was very reminiscent of my favorite way to prepare tuna salad because of the strong notes of dill and celery imparted by dill pickles, fresh dill, celery and celery seed. I never never eat a can of tuna straight from the can, no seasoning, so really what I usually tasted in my salads were the melange of flavors from the many other ingredients. The nori strips added that fishiness or taste of the sea that you'd normally get from the tuna. All that and I did not have to fight off my cat as I ate it. A very satisfying salad.

Mock Tuna Salad

Ingredients:
1 cup soaked sunflower seeds and pine nuts*
olive oil or flax seed oil
juice of 1/2 of a lemon
1/4 cup celery
2 dill pickles
2 T fresh dill
1/4 t celery seed
small handful toasted nori strips
1-2 T vegan mayonnaise
salt
pepper

Directions:
In the food processor, chop the soaked, drained* seeds and nuts very well.

Drizzle in the oil and continue pulsing until the mixture is a rough pâté.

Scrape the nut mixture into a large bowl and add the juice of 1/2 of a lemon.

Finely dice the celery and dill pickles and add to the mixture.

Chop up some dill, crumble a small handful of nori strips and add to the bowl.

Add the mayo, celery seed and salt and pepper to taste, mixing well.

Serve on a green salad or in a whole wheat pita.

Notes:

I was making sunflower and pine nut "cheese" and had some leftover pureed nut mixture which I used for this.

If you are going to make this from scratch, take your mixture of pine nuts and sunflower seeds and put them in a bowl. Cover them with cold water and let sit for 4 hours. Drain them very well and let sit for an hour to air dry. Then proceed with the recipe.

The nori added a hint of the sea to this. The original recipe called for dulse flakes, but I have no idea where to purchase those or other seaweeds. I can find nori pretty easily in my grocery store, so I used that.

Jicama, Mango and Avocado Salad with Lime-Agave Dressing

2010-08-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

The sprightly (yes, I said sprightly, can you dig it?) flavors of this salad dance on the tongue.

Seriously, that is all that I can descriptively say about this dish. Good God, is it tasty! With each successive bite, my Mmm-mmm-MMMMMMs got progressively louder and more impassioned.

Everyone knows that the mango's distinctive sweetness pairs well with the luscious, creamy and fatty mildness of the avocado, but tossing in julienned strips of jicama* adds that crunchy dimension that makes this an especially satisfying salad. The lime juice and agave nectar give the dressing a bright sweet-tartness which fades to a slight after-burn from the cayenne.

In short, it is FABULOUS.

Jicama, Mango and Avocado Salad with Lime-Agave Dressing

Serves two

Ingredients:
1 jicama
2 mangoes
2 avocados
1 lime
1 T agave nectar - non-vegans may use honey, although that will change the flavor
1 T flax seed oil (or quality extra-virgin olive oil)
pinch cayenne
salt
pepper
cilantro for garnish

Directions:
Make the dressing by juicing the lime, and then whisking it with the agave nectar, flax seed oil, cayenne, salt and pepper. Taste to adjust the seasoning.

Pour into a large bowl.

Peel the jicama and slice into thin strips. Place in the bowl with the dressing and toss with a fork to coat.

Cut the mango flesh into cubes and add to the bowl.

Cut the avocado flesh into cubes and add to the bowl, tossing well to mix.

Pour into two bowls, garnish with chopped cilantro and eat.

Notes:

I prefer the lighter flavor of agave nectar to honey now. Honey tastes almost cloyingly sweet to me since I have stopped using it.

See my thoughts on jicama here.

Never cut a mango before and are not sure how to do it? The best way to learn is to see someone else cutting it, and since I neglected to take step-by-step pictures (I have no tripod anyway), and because I am feeling lazy today, I will link you to an excellent demonstration: How to cut a mango

Need to know how to cut an avocado? Check it out here:

I Feel Good

2010-08-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

No, I really do. I've only been back to eating vegan for a few days and I have been sleeping better, feel less sluggish and, praise be, my jeans felt less snug this morning when I put them on.

I really doubt that I've been burning huge amounts of my fat stores the past 2-3 days. Most likely it is just my body finally getting rid of all that water I've been retaining - I've felt like a camel for the past month, one of the many reasons I dislike summer. I honestly have no idea if eating vegan has had anything directly to do with getting my fluid retention under control, but I am grateful for whatever is doing it.

Breakfast

I had my new favorite raw apple breakfast this morning. I've been looking forward to eating this when I get up in the morning now, though there will still be those morning when I need a plate of scrambled tofu to stand in for a mess of eggs.

Ingredients:
1 apple, cored and sliced into 8ths - today I used a Ginger Gold
1/4 cup old fashioned oats
1 T almond butter
1 t whole flax seeds, ground
1 t agave nectar
nuts, berries and seeds - I used a trail mix I made of sunflower seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted edamame, dried blueberries and goji berries.
Directions:
Pulse the apple, oats and almond butter in a food processor until chopped.
Put in a bowl and sprinkle with ground flaxseed, agave nectar and nuts, berries and seeds.

So, my younger daughter and I went to the grocery store this morning and spent a fortune in the produce aisle - insert generic rant about the high cost of healthy foods versus the low cost of crap, processed foods - but I have a fridge packed with greens and my counters are overflowing with baskets of fruits and vegetables, the stuff of culinary inspiration.

Possible meals for the next week include:

some Indian-inspired cauliflower curry, like this or Aloo Gobi

marinated roasted eggplant and zucchini on homemade multigrain sub rolls,

a salad of raw green beans with fresh lemon juice, flax seed oil, garlic and dill,

spaghetti squash with tomato and fresh basil- somewhat like this one

sweet and spicy carrot salad,

mango, jicama and avocado salad in some sort of lime and agave dressing -I'm winging it, as you can see, (8/14 update: I made it - here)

avocado and cucumber soup with fresh dill

any number of fresh fruit smoothies

Now, about cheese. I still have not pin-pointed what it is about cheese that is so appealing: is it the taste itself or the creamy, full-fat mouthfeel of the stuff?

I have really enjoyed the cashew cheeses that I have made, though I have to make sure to process everything until it is truly creamy. It takes a lot longer than you might think for the nuts to break down all the way to a rich, creamy texture. Mind you, when it is grainy, it is still mighty tasty, but more like a nut butter than a nut cheese.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this blog post on raw nut cheeses and saw that some of them were based on a recipe for raw cheese with spring onions. I started soaking the sunflower seeds and pine nuts and just have to process everything in the Cuisinart. I am also thinking about doing a few fancy things with a probiotic capsule, some cheesecloth and a strainer that I saw yet another person doing with their sunflower seeds cheese, so this ought to be very exciting. lol

I am looking forward to tasting the result. I'll post pictures and my adapted recipe as soon as I've got them.

Let's see, what else? Midway through writing this I realized that I had forgotten to pick up some ginger root. Ok, so I remembered to put down the jicama on my list -and surprise, surprise, my store actually had it - but I neglected the ginger root which is necessary for at least 3 of my planned recipes. Where is my head?

So anyway, that means another trip to the store. My 7 year-old is thrilled to pieces (not really) about another trip to the store today, though I have to say, she is being adventurous and trying out these dishes.

All good things come to those who wait, right?

Have a great Friday the 13th!

Red Lentil and Quinoa Stew

2010-08-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

This was so good that when I tasted it to adjust the seasoning at the end, I uttered something that was both really profane and really, really obscene. For the sake of people's sensibilities, I won't repeat it here.

Once again, I am at the scraping the pantry stage of the grocery cycle where I challenge myself to create delicious dishes with just what I have on hand, forcing myself to make substitutions as needed. Since I am eating vegan again, this brings along an additional layer of complexity as I may try to veganize old recipes.

At the moment, I have very few vegetarian/vegan specialty items like tempeh or seitan, but one thing I do have in abundance is a whole mess of dried legumes. I am silly with them, in fact, from black-eyed peas, to black beans and great northern beans to a variety of split peas and lentils. I made my wonderfully spicy lentil soup yesterday with those earthy brown lentils, and today decided that I needed more spice and more lentils, so I adapted my take on red lentil dhal and created a red lentil and quinoa stew.

After I had devoured my bowl of the stew, my 7 year-old daughter came over and sniffed the bowl cautiously before asking me, "Is this some kind of soup, Mommy?" I told her that it was, and that it was yummy, and she asked for some, saying, "It looks like a carrot soup," "Yes," I said, "There is some carrot in there," and ladled out a bit for her to try.

"YUM!" She said, giving me a thumbs-up.

Sometimes Mommy just flat-out rocks the house and gets it right. ☺

Edit: The kid scarfed down two bowls of this stew. That's right, TWO.

Red Lentil and Quinoa Stew

Ingredients:
1 stalk celery, diced finely
1 medium onion, diced finely
1/2 red bell pepper, diced finely
1/2 cup of grated carrot
1 large clove garlic, chopped (about 2 T)
1/4 cup diced tomato
3/4 cup red lentils
1/2 cup quinoa
5 cups water or broth
1 T tomato paste
onion powder
garlic powder
chili powder
coriander
cumin
turmeric
1 bay leaf
hot sauce

Directions:
Heat 2 T olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.
Add the chopped onion and celery and saute for 2 minutes.
Add the bell pepper, carrots and garlic, stirring well.
After 5 minutes or so, when the vegetables have softened significantly, add the tomato and stir well.
Add the spices and let cook for a minute.
Add the red lentils and quinoa, turn the heat to high and add the water and the tomato paste.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, keep covered and let simmer for 30 minutes.
Taste and adjust seasoning. Here's where I add the hot sauce.
Simmer uncovered another 15 minutes until the lentils are no longer crunchy. Fish out the bay leaf.
Serve, adding more hot sauce as your palate dictates. Today, my palate commanded a heavy hand with the Cholula.

Notes:

I used half red quinoa and half white quinoa (1/4 cup each), but it would be delicious with either one of those or black quinoa if you can find it.
I could not find my coriander powder in the horror show that is my spice cabinet, but I did have a jar of coriander seeds, so I broke out my handy mortar and pestle and crushed them up.

If you decide to do this, be sure to crush the seeds very thoroughly so you don't have to bite down on the sharp husks of the coriander seeds. Although I use whole coriander in some Indian dishes, those sauces tend to simmer for a very long time, softening the seeds. If this is too much work for you, then make sure that your coriander powder is easily accessible.
I was purposely vague about the seasoning amounts today because, well, I didn't even measure anything out, I just "salted" everything, although I can tell you that I used about 1/2 teaspoon of coriander seeds and about the same amount of ground cumin, and only 1 bay leaf.
Speaking of salt, as you can see, I used none in this recipe, though you are certainly free to S&P this dish to your liking.
If you are itching to garnish this with something, I'd go with chopped cilantro. I realized way after the fact that I have a bunch of cilantro languishing in the crisper of my fridge. Sometimes I think that the crisper is where veggies go to die. Things get lost in there. Tsk.

Hot sauce - After years of being a Frank's aficionado, lately I have been reaching for Cholula, but have been meaning to try some of the hot sauces made by the folks of our own Dinosaur BBQ right here in Syracuse.

They have Devil's Duo Pepper Sauce and a Garlic Chipotle Pepper Sauce. If those sauces are near as good as their barbecue slathering sauces and rubs, I predict that they'll be out of this world.

Click the picture to go to the site.

Chipotle-Spiced Roasted Chickpeas

2010-08-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

I made Indian spiced roasted chickpeas a few months ago, and quite literally devoured them almost immediately. I need to consider portion control when eating these as a snack, but my goodness, they are delicious, and can be made very cheaply especially if you use dried beans in place of canned.

Here is a handy-dandy conversion chart for most bigger beans like black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans and chick peas.

A standard can of beans is 15 ounces. Small bags of beans you get at the store are usually 1 pound, but sometimes 2.

1 (15-oz.) can of beans equals
1/2 cup dry beans, before cooking
1 1/2 cups beans, after cooking

1 (1-lb) bag of dry beans equals
2 cups dry beans, before cooking
6 cups beans, after cooking
OR
4 (15-oz) cans of beans

Chipotle-Spiced Roasted Chickpeas

Ingredients
1 28-oz can of chickpeas
1 T olive oil
2 teaspoons chipotle chili seasoning*
sea salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.
Drain the can of chickpeas into a colander and rinse very well under cold water.
Dry them thoroughly. I like to shake the colander a bit, and then let them sit for a while. Then when I am ready to season them I dry them even more with a paper towel.
In a large bowl, toss the chickpeas with olive oil, chipotle seasoning and salt, making sure that everything is coated nicely. You can taste to adjust the seasoning or wait until they are done to add more.
Spread onto the cookie sheet.
Roast for 30 minutes, then take them out and shake the pan to move them around a bit and then roast for 20-30 minutes more checking to be sure that they are not burning.
Add sea salt and taste to adjust seasoning if necessary.
Put in a large bowl and eat immediately.

* Chipotle Chili Seasoning

I made this to replace the sodium-laden packet of taco seasoning for that 7-layer Taco dip. It was so good, that I've decided to use it in everything that might be considered remotely Mexican.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder, or pulverized dried chipotle chili
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika - if you can find pimentón, smoked Spanish paprika, use this
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:
In a small bowl, mix together chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes, oregano, paprika, cumin, salt and pepper.

Store in an airtight container, like an empty spice jar.

The Self-Loathing Omnivore; or, Hi, It's Me Again.

2010-08-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Yep. I fell off the vegan wagon almost a year ago and tried unsuccessfully to climb back on a few times, and here I go again. I jokingly call myself the Self-Loathing Omnivore. I really want to be vegan for a variety of reasons, but am just terrible at resisting certain temptations.

The thing is, I am a really rotten ethical vegan because I do not honestly care what other people eat, at least not enough to support legislating food ethics. I think that until the day when mammals start talking to us as equals, that the decision of what foods are ethical to eat remains a personal decision.

I am mostly concerned about the health issues associated with what goes in our bodies. I am wholly opposed to industrial agriculture and a corporate culture of food production whose emphasis is on monetary profits rather than nutrition or labor equity.

Most selfishly of all, I am concerned about my own physical health and that of my kids.

My biggest problem was dealing with the cheese cravings. I can go without meat, chicken, sausage, eggs, no problem. It is the siren song of cheese that had me dreaming about piping hot pizzas and loaded cheese fries last year while I was on a vegan diet.

I have no idea how to counter that other than simply by gritting my teeth and gutting my way through it. Most of the vegan cheese substitutes I have tried so far have ranged from merely mediocre to downright revolting. I do enjoy a nice homemade cashew cheese, but even though it make a tasty vegan substitute, it does not match cheese's melty wonderful mouth-feel.

So. Here we go again! :)

This comic wasn't especially relevant, but my God it was funny!

Spicy Peanut Noodles

2010-06-09T06:07:00.001-07:00

I absolutely love peanut butter. I prefer natural varieties. My current favorite is Smucker's Naturals, chunky, of course. I haven't bought the standard sugar and salt-laden pb in so long that when I had some a few months ago at someone else's house, I was shocked at how cloyingly sweet it was. Plus, for some reason, the texture struck me as unnatural and kind of icky.

Food confession: I love peanut butter so much that I will sometimes eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon and call that a snack or a mini-meal. Now, I don't particularly care for peanut butter paired with sweet foods, except when combined with chocolate of course; I generally prefer peanut butter with savory foods. When I crave a peanut butter sandwich, I am more likely to add wheat germ and sunflower seeds instead of jam or jelly.

A nice spicy peanut sauce will really make my taste buds happy. Pair it with chicken, or tofu like I did today, toss in some noodles, and we're in business.

Spicy Peanut Noodles

Ingredients:
Cooking oil (peanut or canola)
Red pepper flakes
1/2 onion, halved and then sliced into thin strips
1/4 cup carrot, cut into matchsticks
the whites of 2 green onions, chopped
Minced fresh ginger
1 clove of garlic, crushed and chopped
1/4 package of tofu, pressed of water and cut into strips
Noodles, vermicelli, spaghetti, Chinese noodles, whichever you prefer - today I used a block of ramen noodles
1/3 cup peanut sauce, jarred or homemade*
Sesame oil
Chopped peanuts
Green onions, chopped (optional)
Toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Directions:
Pour some oil into a large skillet, and sprinkle with red pepper flakes and let sit.

Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package. Drain the noodles, put them in a bowl and toss them with 1 T of sesame oil. Let sit and cool.

Over high heat, sauté the onions, ginger until onions are just starting to brown.

Add the carrots and cook for 2 minutes. Toss in the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Add the strips of tofu and cook until golden brown.

Add the peanut sauce to the skillet, stirring to coat well. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings to your liking. Add more of the sauce if you like.

Toss the drained noodles into the skillet, mixing everything well.

Garnish with chopped peanuts, green onion and sesame seeds.

*Homemade peanut sauce

Ingredients:
3 cloves of garlic.
1/2 c. peanut butter
1/4 c. soy sauce
2 T honey or agave nectar
2 T rice vinegar
2 T. chili oil
1 chopped hot chili
Directions:
Put the garlic in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.

Add the remaining ingredients and puree until smooth.

Add water to thin the consistency if you find it necessary.

Refrigerate any unused sauce in a tightly-lidded container.

You may use more or less chili pepper to suit your taste for spiciness.

Notes:

I might start a series of recipes titled "Things to Do With Ramen Noodles."

Purple Smoothie

2010-03-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned Green Smoothies here before, now it's time for the Purple Smoothie which also has a green, or at least blue-green, element to it with the addition of the spirulina.

The "superfoods" in this drink (antioxidant-rich blueberry and EFA-packed flaxseed oil ) ought to keep even Dr. Oz happy. It is very tasty. I get a touch of the spirulina taste, which doesn't bother me at all, but if you're not all that keen on algae, knock the powder down to about half the amount or omit it entirely.

Purple Smoothie

Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 T flaxseed oil
1 scoop Michael's Super Defense powder
1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 scoop protein powder (I like vanilla flavored whey protein powder, but a soy protein powder ought to work for those who are vegan)

Directions:
Blend everything up until is is thick and creamy.

Drink it down.

Snack Time: Roasted Chickpeas

2010-02-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

This high-protein snack is incredibly addictive and it definitely satisfies my craving for a crunchy snack. I sat down with a bowl of these while watching Snakes on a Plane this weekend and attacked it like those vipers flying through the air attaching themselves to people's jugulars.

Wow.

I like how versatile it can be just by changing the spice mixture you use. This past weekend I was on an Indian food kick, so I seasoned them with garam masala and red curry powder, but I bet they would taste good with a chipotle chili seasoning mix.

Indian-Spiced Roasted Chickpeas

Ingredients
1 28-oz can of chickpeas
1 T olive oil
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon red curry powder
1 pinch turmeric
sea salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.
Drain the can of chickpeas into a colander and rinse very well under cold water.
Dry them thoroughly. I like to shake the colander a bit, and then let time sit for a while. Then when I am ready to season them I dry them even more with a paper towel.
In a large bowl, toss the chickpeas with olive oil, garam masala, red curry powder and turmeric, making sure that everything is coated nicely. You can taste to adjust the seasoning or wait until they are done to add more.
Spread onto the cookie sheet.
Roast for 30 minutes, then take them out and shake the pan to move them around a bit and then roast for 20-30 minutes more checking to be sure that they are not burning.
Add sea salt and taste to adjust seasoning if necessary.
Put in a large bowl and eat immediately.

And now for a close-up.

January 14: A Food Journal Again and Thoughts on Choking

2010-01-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

I'm keeping a food journal again to help me keep track of what I'm eating. There is just something about seeing it written down starkly - as long as I am completely honest with myself - to give me perspective on what I am putting in my body.

Thursday, January 14

Breakfast:

Scrambled tofu with tomato, onion and carrot
1 10-oz. glass of water with multivitamin and 3 SlimQuick Hoodia tablets

Snack:

1 mug of authentic Korean ginger tea - Ginger is supposed to help digestive ailments.

I don't know if I'm having reflux issues or what, but it's worth a try. The thought of seeing a gastroenterologist and getting scoped is enough to make me cry. I have no problem being knocked out and cut open for a surgery, but scopes skeeve me. :/

10:30 snack - raw apple "granola"
- 1/2 Granny Smith, cored, but with the peel still on
- 1/4 cup of oats
- 2 heaping T raw sunflower seeds
- 2 T almond butter
- drizzle of agave nectar
- pumpkin seeds
- 1 T ground flax seeds
  
  Process the apple, oats and sunflower seeds until finely chopped, then add the almond butter and pulse a few times until mixed well. Top with ground flax seeds, agave and pepitas.
1 10-oz. glass of water

Lunch:

Zucchini pasta and raw marinara sauce
1 10-oz. glass of water

Snack:

Dinner:

Notes:

I really did well with my food yesterday even despite the sour cream on my 2 bowls of lentil soup. Not vegan, I know, but I wanted it. And it was good.

Two of my meals were flat-out raw: the Raw Apple Breakfast and Zucchini Pasta with Raw Marinara sauce. I made a spicy lentil soup which was vegan, but then I nixed that by topping it with a dollop of sour cream.

My snacks were all vegan and raw except for the occasional mug of hot tea.

Also, I drank water regularly, every few hours, every time I had something to eat. I think that really helped keep cravings under control.

Something weird - last night I woke up choking on something. Before I went to bed last night it felt as though there might still be a fragment of a lentil stuck way back on the soft palate part of the roof of my mouth. Maybe I breathed it in last night and choked? Sometimes I do wake up choking on nothing but my saliva.

When I woke up last night, after trying to cough it out, I got up and drank some water. Nope, didn't help. Then I got back up and had 4 whole wheat crackers with cheese and another glass of water.

I can still feel something in there though and no amount of clearing my throat or coughing is helping.

Something gross - I have a choking phobia. This may be a bit TMI, but one time during my last pregnancy I woke up choking on a tiny bit of vomit. I was actually choking and panicking until I could cough it out, but the acids burned my throat for days. I have only ever had problems with reflux and heartburn when I was pregnant, but maybe now that my weight is up, it's recurring?

Another weird thing - I have that same sensation that everything is being forced up inside me as I had when I was pregnant during the end of the 2nd trimester and the 3rd trimester. It just feels as though there is something more in there than just my organs. I don't know, could that be just a sign that I've got too much fat hanging around in there? I mean I am nowhere near The Biggest Loser-morbidly obese, so I wouldn't think that that would be a problem.

I mean, sure wouldn't it be cool to find out that there is one of those 50-lb, benign tumors loitering in my abdomen? So maybe I'm not overweight because of lack of exercise and eating too much. *sigh* I can dream, right? I'm always hoping for a Deus ex Machina, but no. My only choice to to make better choices for myself, NOT hope for some freakish medical anomaly!

So anyway, it feels as though something is literally shoving things back up my throat. I am not eating a lot in one sitting (except for my 2 small bowls of soup last night), so why should I feel over-stuffed?

Zucchini Pasta with Raw Marinara Sauce

2010-01-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

Today's two main meals so far have been raw. For breakfast I had the raw apple breakfast, and for lunch, this tasty take on pasta and sauce.

Zucchini Pasta and Raw Marinara Sauce

Ingredients:
1 tomato
½ cup sun-dried tomatoes
near-boiling water
1/2 yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 heaping tablespoon jarred sun-dried tomato and minced garlic or 1 clove of fresh garlic, minced
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon sea salt (or to taste)
Dash black pepper (optional)
2 medium zucchini
Directions:
Place the sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl and pour enough hot water over them to cover them and then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for 15 minutes. Drain.
Place the fresh tomato, sun-dried tomatoes, bell pepper, and garlic in a food processor and process until smooth.
Add the olive oil and spices and continue to process, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
With a mandoline or a spiral-slicer, cut the zucchini into thin ribbons.
Toss the zucchini with a bit of salt and pepper and ladle some sauce over it.

Makes 2 servings.

Green Smoothie

2010-01-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

Today's lunch.

I had forgotten just how delicious these are.

Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
1 banana
3/4 cup fresh pineapple
3/4 cup water
1 oz baby spinach leaves
1 scoop Michaels Super Defense Food powder
Directions:
Blend.

Drink

Enjoy.

Red Lentils over Quinoa Pilaf

2010-01-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

I love red lentils in soups, stews and dhals. Just as the various spices that accompany them lend heat to the dish, so does the vivid color of the lentils perk up the dish. On this frigid day I have been looking for a comforting dish to warm me up, so I tossed some things together and served it over the leftover Quinoa Pilaf from last night's dinner.

Red Lentils over Pilaf

Ingredients:
1 stalk celery, diced finely
1 medium onion, diced finely
1/2 red bell pepper, diced finely
1/2 cup of diced carrot
1 large clove garlic, chopped (about 2 T)
1/4 cup diced tomato
3/4 cup red lentils
4 cups water
1 T tomato paste
onion powder
garlic powder
chili powder
coriander
cumin
1 bay leaf
turmeric
hot sauce

Directions:
Heat 2 T olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

Add the chopped onion and celery and saute for 2 minutes.

Add the bell pepper, carrots and garlic, stirring well.

After 5 minutes or so, when the vegetables have softened significantly, add the tomato and stir well.

Add the red lentils, turn the heat to high and add the water, the tomato paste and the spices.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, keep covered and let simmer for 30 minutes.

Taste and adjust seasoning. Here's where I add the hot sauce.

Simmer uncovered another 15 minutes until the lentils are no longer crunchy. You may add more water if you prefer a more stew-like consistency, but I prefer it with a texture more like dhal. I even sometimes use a potato masher and smash the lentils a bit.

Serve over rice or pilaf of your choice.

Notes:

See this post for my pilaf technique.

Raw Apple Breakfast

2010-01-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my attempt to eat many more light & healthy meals throughout the week to balance out the times when I indulge in full-cream, full-fat decadence - and believe me, I do indulge - here is a fiber-rich, deceptively filling, delicious breakfast that may have you thinking, "Hey, some of these raw vegan dishes are pretty damned tasty!"

Unlike many raw dishes which require some fancy footwork with a food dehydrator, the only pieces of equipment you need here are a food processor and a coffee grinder.

Raw Apple Breakfast

Ingredients:
1 apple, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
1 heaping tablespoon of almond butter
1 tablespoon flax seeds
2 T pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)

Directions:
Peel, core and cut the apple into quarters.

Process it in a food processor along with the almond butter until it is in small pieces - you don't want to make a puree.

Grind up the flax seeds in the coffee grinder until they've become powdery.

Serve in a bowl topped with pepitas and the ground flax seeds.

Notes:

This filled my cereal bowl pretty well, so it was a good portion for one person.

Next time, I may drizzle some honey or agave nectar over the top for a teeny bit of extra sweetness.

Other additions which might be nice:
- chopped almonds or walnuts
- chopped dried fruit
- untoasted sesame sees
- unsalted sunflower seeds
- maple syrup
- wheat germ
- a dollop of Greek yogurt
- blueberries
- cinnamon

Gearing up for the New Year

2009-12-30T13:57:00.001-08:00

Gearing up for the vegan kickstart:

I am looking forward to my morning scrambled tofu again. That stuff is just damned-tasty.

I think I'll probably make some Indian dishes:
- I remember making Cauliflower and red lentils in balti sauce, and although it was tasty, the recipe needed some tweaking.
- Aloo gobhi will likely make an appearance as well. I'll have to peruse some vegetarian Indian recipes & blogs for more ideas.
- Oh! There are those spicy chickpea dishes, Channa Masala (chickpea curry) or Aloo Chhole (chickpeas with potatoes). One of my local Indian restaurants makes killer Aloo Chhole. I could just eat that with garlic naan and call it a meal.
- I know that there are some excellent vegetarian curries with spinach as well. I need to hunt those up.
- I've got a few recipes for naan and onion-stuffed kulchas, and will give those a whirl to accompany the Indian dishes.

I don't want to rely as much on the fake meats & soy cheeses; they seem to be every bit as over-processed as any sodium-filled crap out of a box or a can. More reliance on pulses and beans for protein. The goal is to eat the least -processed foods as possible. I'll make some exceptions for tofu and tempeh. Those are pretty great.

I can't even begin to count how many different rice and beans recipes I have, from the outstanding Cuban-style black beans and rice from Dinosaur BBQ, to Mexican-style, to a great Cajun red beans and rice recipe. More rice and beans. More Beano, too. ;-)

Now is as good a time as any to cut out my Diet Coke habit. It's insane, really. I have been drinking hardly any water at all, and that is just not good. 6 - 8 glasses of water a day is my new goal.

Again, for snacks, I'll opt for nuts and fruit, but if I feel hungry, I'll start with a tall glass of water. I recall reading somewhere reputable that lots of us are so over-fed that we mistake signs of thirst for hunger. So when we're reaching for a bag of potato chips or something else fairly laden with empty calories and salt, what we really ought to be doing is downing a glass of water.

I'm Back

2009-12-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

I fell off the wagon this fall.

No, actually, that's not quite right. I didn't fall off so much as jumped off the wagon.

Right into wheelbarrow filled with sausage and cheese.

I've talked about lapses with other vegetarians and vegans, so I know that it happens. Still, I could only describe myself as a self-loathing omnivore. With every bite I took I was torn between the decadent taste and the suffering behind it. I wanted the cruelty-free ethical lifestyle, but not as much as the taste of the food I grew up with.

I didn't realize I could be that weak.

I don't know if I had trouble sticking to a vegan diet because I dived in feet-first, going straight from omnivore to vegan instead of easing in gently.

I resolve to try again.

Starting January 1, I'll be climbing back in the wagon via the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart.

I suppose I'll take it from there and see how it goes.

Four-legged Vegans in the House?

2009-07-28T07:13:00.001-07:00

Now, my cat ate a squashed pea off of the kitchen floor the other day, and he's been known to snack on house plants from time to time, but unlike some vegans out there, I will not insist on trying to turn my perfectly lovely 9-pound carnivorous tabby into a vegan.

There's ethics about what your yourself eat, and then there's a step into Crazyland.

At some point, we have to accept the facts: cats are carnivores, from their sharp teeth to their razor-like claws to the chemical makeup of their stomach juices and length of their intestinal tract. Forcing them to an all-plant diet because you don't want animals to suffer is ludicrous. You'll only be passing the suffering onto your beloved pet.

Now I know that the anti-vegans out there will take this argument and project it onto humans and make wild claims about meat as an essential ingredient for human development, but even that is a subject of fierce debate. Did we evolve as scavengers? Was our brain development contingent on adding meat proteins to our diet? etc etc etc

My own personal belief is that for people, it is a different issue. We can survive without meat; unless there is scientific evidence of which I am unaware, conventional wisdom states that cats and dogs, as carnivores, can not. For people, it is a choice to abstain from meat for whatever reason, be it health, ethics or even aesthetics.

Making that choice for your pet can't be healthy. I don't know of any vets who propose a vegetable-based diet for animals.

I do agree that the pet food industry has been tainted by association with the meat-packing industry and the factory farming model. The leftover bits of livestock are ground up for pet food, and considering the quality of the "mechanically separated meat" that ends up in our tinned meats and soups for human consumption, I can not begin to imagine the meat that's leftover for our pets!

I do understand the desire not to participate in supporting the industrialized food model, but I can not put my pet's health at risk to do so. I haven't really researched organic pet foods - Hell, I don't know if they even exist - but I'd like to see what I can do to avoid Purina and other companies which I imagine use the dregs from the killing floors of the big slaughterhouses.

Sweet Potato Fries

2009-07-27T06:18:00.001-07:00

I've been down lately, and true to form, when slightly depressed, have been running into the comforting arms of carbs. My latest carb-obsession has not been desserts or home-baked breads, but instead, sweet potato fries.

I know, I know, like who really needs a recipe for this, right? I thought I'd share it anyway.

I like my sweet potato fries with a bit of a kick. I love the sweet and spicy flavors together. I tried making these with creole seasoning last week, but they were far too salty, so I switched back to my standard Old Bay until I can hunt down a creole seasoning blend which has less salt in it.

Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Mayo

Ingredients:
1 sweet potato, sliced into matchsticks
Olive oil
Old Bay

veganaise
whole grain mustard
Old Bay

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425.

Slice the sweet potato into batards/matchsticks NOT julienne slices.

Toss in a bolw with a generous amount of olive oil and a good tablespoon of Old Bay.

Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray (I like grapeseed oil for high temperatures).

Spread out the sweet potatoes in one even layer.

Bake for 15 minutes, take out and flip them and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

While they're baking, mix the ingredients for your spicy mayo, seasoning to taste, then devour.

Mini Key Lime Pies

2009-07-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

These were oh-so-good. If you are expecting some unnaturally green plasticky pie, this is not it. Try a lime gelatin pie for that. :p

Mini Key Lime Pies

makes 6

Ingredients
1/2 package silken tofu
2 T agave nectar
1 T arrowroot powder
3 T Key Lime Juice

6 mini graham cracker crusts, prepared or homemade

Turbinado sugar (for garnish)
Lime (for garnish)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Place the 6 mini graham cracker crusts on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan.

Place the tofu and agave nectar in a bowl. Whisk together well.*See Notes below.

Add the key lime juice and continue to whisk briskly.

Add the arrowroot powder (or tapioca starch) and stir until well mixed.

Pour the mixture into the prepared crusts.

Bake for 25 minutes. Take out and let cool on a rack, then chill for at least 2 hours.

Sprinkle the top with turbinado sugar and slices of lime.

Eat and faint from joy.

Notes:

This is the first time I've made any sort of dessert with silken tofu, so I am still getting a feel for it.

They were very tasty, but I think that I did not whisk well enough, because the texture wasn't the perfectly smooth and creamy custard of the non-vegan Key Lime Pie. It was a bit grainy, which I think I could overcome by whisking more, or even using an electric mixer.

The flavor was wonderful- sweet and tart, no hint of "tofu-ness" which puts a lot of people off desserts with silken tofu. The key lime flavor really bursts forward in this recipe.

If you would like a full-sized, 9-inch pie, double the filling recipe and add 10-15 minutes' baking time.

Day 53: Mock Crabcakes

2009-07-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

I saw a recipe for mock crabcakes made with tempeh at the Post Punk Kitchen. The thought of using tempeh instead of tofu, like most of the recipes I found, intrigued me. I made some changes to the recipe to keep it closer to the original Maryland crabcakes I used to make when we lived in southern Maryland in our little house by the Chesapeake Bay. *wistful sigh*

The Old Bay seasoning is essential. I swear, it's in everything down there. We would joke that new transplants to the state would get a huge tin of the stuff in their welcome basket, along with a diagram on the only correct way to pick crabs. My ex got to using Old Bay in place of paprika in his Saturday morning homefries. It adds a nice bit of bite and spicy flavor to the potatoes.

Another change I made was adding crushed Saltines, although Ritz crackers would have been my first choice. I remember talking to someone down in Maryland who swore that Ritz crackers were the super-secret ingredient for the perfect crabcake.

While the original recipe looks tasty, I can't recall ever eating a real Chesapeake Bay crab cake that had bell pepper in them. Celery and minced onion, yes. Then again, there have got to be as many ways to craft the perfect crabcake as there are cooks. I wanted to recapture the essence of the crabcakes I remembered.

This recipe came pretty close. The texture of the tempeh is nice, much closer to real lump crabmeat than tofu would ever do, in my opinion.

Mock Crabcakes

Ingredients:

8 ounces tempeh
water to cover
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon Bragg's liquid aminos
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise
2 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 tablespoon Frank's Red Hot pepper sauce
1/4 cup minced onion, rehydrated
2 stalks celery, minced
2 1/2 teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning
8 Saltines, crushed
1 handful toasted nori, crumbled
Panko breadcrumbs

Spicy mayo:

3 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 tablespoon Frank's Red Pepper hot sauce
1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

Directions:

Crumble the tempeh into a sauce pan. Pour in enough water to cover the tempeh. Add the Bragg's, olive oil and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, uncover and let boil for 12 minutes. Stir occasionally. Drain well.

Transfer contents to a mixing bowl, remove bay leaf, and mash with a potato masher. Let sit and cool for about 15 minutes.

Toss in the minced onion and celery and mix well. Add the crushed saltines and crumbled nori and stir well. Fold in the mayo, mustard, hot sauce, Old Bay Seasoning and mix thoroughly.

Fill the bottom of a pie plate with panko breadcrumbs. Take a small handful of the tempeh mixture and form into a ball. Press them into the panko crumbs in the pie pan and flatten them. Coat the top and sides well. Be careful with these cakes, as they will fall apart with rough handling.

Gently put about four cakes in a large oiled skillet, frying them over medium-high heat. Fry the cakes for about 5 minutes on one side until (GB&D) golden brown and delicious. Fry for 2 minutes on the other side and transfer to a plate. While the second batch is frying, whip up the spicy mayo by mixing all the ingredients together.

Top each cake with a generous dollop of the mayo and eat while still warm.

Notes:
This recipe made 8 generous-sized crabcakes. You could make them much smaller for hors d'oeurvres.

They are very fragile. I had to use two spatulas to turn them. I would not recommend turning them more than once. Make sure that you let them cook longer on the first side and come to a nice GB&D state before flipping.

Day 52: A Touch of Autumn

2009-07-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

It's been cool and rainy here lately. This morning especially, I got a hint of fall on the breeze, and even though I know it's only temporary, I thought I'd celebrate this autumnal mood with apples. I'm also down to the scraping the barrel of the fridge and pantry. I really need to get to the grocery store soon, but I love those days when I have to take stock of what I've got in hand and see what I can whip up. Honestly, I've made some of the best meals that way.

Today it was individual apple crisps. The girls said that I need to make those again, so next time I'll have a photo. Also, bear in mind, I was tossing things together as I went, so my measurements this time are inexact.

Maple- Brown sugar Apple Crisps

Ingredients:

2 apples - I used 1 Granny Smith and 1 Jonamac. With my apple pies I like a mixture of sweet and tart apples. These make a nice combination.
2 T pure maple syrup
3 T brown sugar

1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 T wheat germ
vegan margarine (or butter if you're not a vegan)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Peel and slice the apples into very thin slices.

Place into a bowl and drizzle with maple syrup.

Add the brown sugar and stir well. Taste to adjust. You may like it sweeter or more mapley.

Put the mixture into greased ramekins. This made enough for three.

In a food processor, pulse the walnuts until coarsely ground.

Add the oats and pulse again until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

Dump this mixture into the same bowl that held the apple mixture. The bowl should still have some of the maple syrup/brown sugar mixture in it. Stir well to mix in all the syrup.

Add about 1/4 cup of brown sugar (I usually add it in tablespoon increments and taste as I go) and mix well. I like to add a tablespoon or two of wheat germ too.

Cut in about 2 T of butter or vegan margarine. (I like Earth Balance) and work with your hands or a pasty cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Divide between the three ramekins, packing down the crumb topping firmly.

Bake in a 375 oven for 25 minutes or until it's bubbling nicely around the edges.

Take out and let cool on a rack for a bit and then serve warm topped with vanilla ice cream.

Day 46: Strong Hearts Cafe

2009-07-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, as I predicted yesterday, I could barely wait until 11 am to try out the vegan cafe in my city. I dragged the girls off with me for a vegan luncheon. I promised them pizza, only to discover that I had not read the menu very well. They serve pizza on Friday nights from 6pm until 2 am only. Oops. That elicited a bit of sulkiness from my Tween-in-training, but I snagged a few menus and pointed out to her that they served breakfast all day and emphasized the long list of milkshakes and she was ok.

In the end, Natalie had waffles topped with powdered sugar, fresh strawberries and real maple syrup and washed it down with a huge pumpkin milkshake. That milkshake tasted like a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, oh my! Lucy opted for a BLT using the fak'n bacon stuff, vegan cheese (Teese), vegannaise, lettuce and tomato on grilled whole wheat bread, and to drink, had a thick, creamy blueberry milkshake. I had a TLT: a generous slab of marinated, baked tofu with tomato, lettuce, sprouts, pesto & vegannaise on grilled whole wheat bread. Although the milkshakes were tempting, I had a yerba mate after finding out that they'd sold out of my first choice Thai Iced Tea.

The verdict: Delicious. The girls loved their food too, and any mom, vegan or otherwise, can tell you, that's no mean feat.

The sandwiches came solo, unaccompanied by chips, fries or even a small salad, so the prices were a bit, well, pricey for simple sandwiches, but I'm ok with it, and let me tell you why. This place is 100% vegan, and it's rare that a restaurant offers any vegetarian items at all, let alone any vegan offerings. I'm more than happy to support them. Sure, I won't be eating there every week, but I don't eat out anywhere every week, but when I do go out, I will be going there instead of spending my money elsewhere.

I am happy to spread the love; in fact, I told my sister-in-law about the place today. She hadn't heard about it either. They've been open for a little over a year now, and are going strong. I hope that they continue to do well. We could use more places like this.

Day 45: Dining Out

2009-07-01T04:15:00.001-07:00

I've only dined out twice since I've made this switch. The Thai restaurant had a whole vegetarian section filled with tofu and vegetables and when I asked if there were hidden animal products like broth, the waitress told me that it was all totally vegan. The Friendly's menu, on the other hand, was not terribly vegetarian-friendly, let alone vegan-safe. Nevertheless, they accommodated my request to un-cheese my veggie fajita quesadilla and it was pretty tasty. I rarely eat out, so it hadn't really occurred to me that this would be quite the ordeal.

I did a little bit of online searching and found the Vegan Eating Out Guide, which researches popular sit-down restaurants and fast food chains and details what, exactly, on their menus is vegan. Some restaurants, like Red Robin, Hooter's, Denny's and TGI Fridays, offer nothing. Nope, not even a fruit cup, a bowl of plain oatmeal or a green salad. I was stunned, really. I had figured that vegan dining out would be an exercise largely reduced to a plate of anemic-looking iceberg lettuce passing itself off as a "green salad" or picking and choosing from side dishes, but for some restaurants to have nothing free of animal products, like not even a baked potato, for God's sake, well, that's an eye-opener.

Panera and Au Bon Pain, on the other hand, had some soups and sandwiches which were either already vegan as-is or could be made so simply by omitting the cheese.

I was surprised and disappointed to discover that Ruby Tuesday's Veggie Burger was no longer listed. A few more searches on Google later, and I found that they had switched suppliers and their veggie burger mix had mayonnaise in it. So now, the only stand-alone vegan offering on their menu is their salad bar. I did not become a vegan so that I could be relegated to eating salads wherever I went. Is it really that difficult for a restaurant to add a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich to the menu? I'm not asking for fake meats or seitan, here.

I was perusing the Vegan Eating Guide's of fast food restaurants which serves 100% vegan foods and saw that there was one listed in New York. I clicked on it, wondering what in the world a fast food vegan restaurant could possibly be like and I nearly fell over.

The link took me to a place called Strong Hearts Cafe, the largest vegan cafe in New York state outside of New York city, and it's right here in Syracuse.

How the Hell did I not know this?!

Now I am so excited I can barely stand it. They have a full breakfast, lunch and PIZZA menu! I told the girls that we would go there soon for pizza. Hell, let's see if I can wait as long as 11 am.

They have milkshakes, soups, salads, sandwiches and.... did I mention the pizza?

You can expect my review as soon as I've gone there. Check out their menus here.

Day 44: "Mexican" Quinoa & Rice with Corn and Chorizo

2009-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

This was a spur of the moment, "the pantry is empty" recipe that ended up tasting delicious. I was inexact with my measurements, so if you're trying to recreate this, bear that in mind.

"Mexican" Quinoa & Rice with Corn and Chorizo

Ingredients:
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup long grain white rice
1/4 cup quinoa
1/4 cup red quinoa
1 can Rotel tomatoes and chilies
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t (heaping) chili powder
water

1 vegan chorizo, diced (I used the LightLife Smart Sausages brand)* A poster kindly pointed out that these sausages are not actually vegan, as they contain egg. I believe I will try to make steamed seitan sausages from scratch this weekend.
3/4 cup frozen corn
dried, minced onion, reconstituted * for some reason I am using this stuff in everything lately

chopped avocado
shredded vegan cheese
chopped cilantro

Directions:
In a sturdy saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat.

Add the chopped onion and saute until translucent.

Add the garlic and the rice and two kinds of quinoa. Stir well, be sure that everything is coated.

Dump the Rotel tomatoes, chilies and juice into a measuring cup and add enough water to make 2 1/2 cups.

Add the spices to the rice and onion mixture, stir well, increase heat to high and add the tomato and water mixture.

Cover, bring to a boil and reduce heat to low and let cook for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat. Let sit at least 10 minutes before removing the lid. The longer it sits, the better.

In a medium-sized skillet, saute the diced chorizo in olive oil over medium-high heat until browned.

Add the corn and reconstituted onion, stir well and cook until it's as browned as you like. I like the corn to have a bit of color.

When it's done, add the chorizo mixture to the grains, stir well. Serve in a bowl topped with cheese, avocado and cilantro.

Notes: This recipe uses my basic pilaf technique:

I saute the aromatics (chopped onion or shallot) in olive oil over fairly high heat until it just starts to sweat and turns translucent, then add the garlic and then almost immediately the grains.
Up the heat to high, stirring pretty frequently, making sure that the grains are nicely coated. You can saute them longer until they're slightly browned and give off a nutty smell, and then add the liquid.
Cover immediately with a tight-fitting lid and bring to a boil I like to use a pot that has a glass lid so I can see exactly when it's come to a nice boil - then lower the heat and let simmer for 13-15 minutes. This is where the glass lid comes in handy. You can see the surface of the rice if there are holes, like small craters where the hot air has forced through but there is no more liquid bubbling, it's perfect.
Turn off the heat, and let it sit for at least 10 minutes before you remove the lid to fluff the rice.
I use this for mixed-grain pilafs and when I was a dairy eater, would add grated cheese and a pat of butter at the very end when I would stir in the last ingredients.
One of my favorite mixed-grain pilafs uses 1/2 cup of rice, 1/4 cup of bulgur and 1/4 cup of quinoa and 2 cups of liquid.

Day 42: Sunday Morning Vegan Fry-up

2009-06-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

I've never been a fan of cold cereals, pancakes, waffles or french toast for breakfast. I've tried the light breakfasts of fruit and granola, and on the whole, they just don't work for me. I need a solid breakfast under my belt to get me going in the morning. On those occasions when I want a big breakfast, I'd always opt for a big greasy plate piled high with eggs, sausage, some mess of fried potatoes and toast.

I have fond memories of when I was in Korea after partying in Itaewon, my friends and I going back to my apartment where I'd make a late-night( or very early-morning ) breakfast mess of a huge skillet filled with fried potatoes cooked down to a lovely golden crisp with sauteed vegetables and topped with scrambled eggs. We called it the Peasant's Breakfast Special, but oh my GOD was it good, just thing thing after a night of too much beer, soju and the greatest disco hits of the 70s.

There's nothing like a nice fry-up on the weekend, and there's no reason you can't have one, even if you're a vegan.

Vegan Sunday Fry-up

Ingredients:
olive oil
1/3 package vegan Gimme Lean Sausage
4 T dried, minced onion, reconstituted
1/3 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 tomato, diced

1/3 package extra firm tofu, blotted dry
1/2 onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, smashed and coarsely chopped
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t turmeric
1 T nutritional yeast

Directions:
In a skillet, over medium-high heat, cook the sausage in olive oil until it starts to brown. Add the reconstituted onion and stir well.

In another skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat, then crumble the tofu into the pan. Stir well and cook until browned.

While the tofu is browning, add the red bell pepper to the sausage mixture in the first skillet, stir well, then lower the heat and let cook through.

Once the tofu starts to get lightly golden-brown, add the chopped onion and garlic. Stir well.

Add the onion powder, garlic powder and turmeric to the tofu mixture and stir thoroughly to coat.

Add the chopped tomato to the sausage mixture, stir well.

Add the nutritional yeast to the tofu mixture, turn up the heat to high briefly, stirring constantly, then add the tofu to the sausage and vegetable mixture in the first skillet. Fold it all together, then serve and eat.

Day 41: Refreshed

2009-06-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

For the past 8 years ever since my son's death, a good portion of the month of June is hard for me. I often disappear from the radar, I'll stop blogging, avoid my usual internet haunts, hole up at home, reading books, watching movies, and quite often, just go to bed.

This past week I did not eat healthily; I ate completely vegan, but I basically ate nothing but bread. I took in no fruit at all, and very few vegetables. I took refuge in homemade naan and whole wheat flatbread. I craved Korean and Indian food for some reason, and made aloo gobhi and kimchi fried rice. Kimchee fried rice was one of my comfort foods when I was teaching in Korea: cheap, easy to make, and very filling, it satisfies.

This morning, though, I feel as though I've finally woken up. The girls have been begging me to take them to see the movie "Up," so we're off to the movies in a little while. They also asked for Chinese food, but I told them that a trip to the movies and take out was too much for one day, but said that we could do our DIY takeout, and they liked that.

So, later on, we'll be making mandu, veganized, 0f course. I'm planning on two kinds: the fake ground beef sort adapted from my original meat-based recipe here (I'll use the Gimme Lean fake ground beef), and veggie mandu filled with baby bok choy, tofu, shiitake mushroom, green onion, soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

I have some nice asparagus that I'll roast, glazed with soy sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and I still have some leftover sticky rice that could heat up as an accompaniment. Presto! DIY takeout Chinese night. It keeps the girls happy, and as the three of us sit together at the dining room table making the mandu, we do silly things like sing songs and tell stories. Then we'll eat pic-nic style in the living room while we watch some dvd.

The girls' gradual introduction to vegan replacements for old standards has gone very well. They are actively taking an interest in what I eating and are willing to try things out. They have found that "these things taste good," which is the usual fear with healthy foods.

I'll post pictures of our mandu feast later on.

Have a great weekend!

Day 32: June 18th

2009-06-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Today is the 8th anniversary of my son's birth and death and I'll be going to the cemetery later on, so this will be short and sweet.

It's rainy, cold and gloomy out, a fitting parallel of my mood. I needed a hearty breakfast this morning, and decided to veganize one of my comfort food breakfasts: Scrambled Eggs with Onion & Tomato.

Scrambled Tofu with Onion and Tomato

Ingredients:
2 T olive oil*
1/2 block of extra firm tofu (I like nasoya organic tofu best)
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 tomato, chopped
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t garlic powder
1/4 t turmeric
2 T nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Put the olive oil in a pan and turn the heat to medium-high.

Drain the tofu and blot it with a paper towel.

Crumble the tofu into the pan and saute until it's nicely golden-brown.

Push the tofu to the sides of the pan and add the chopped onion and saute until translucent.

Add the tomato and stir the mixture together.

Stir in the onion powder, garlic powder and turmeric and mix well.

Fold in the nutritional yeast, making sure that everything is well coated. Let it cook for about a minute more, then plate.

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

*Unlike Rachael Ray, you'll never see me prance around the kitchen calling it EVOO.

Notes:

It looks amazingly like the real deal scrambled eggs, thanks to the turmeric and nutritional yeast.

I always preferred my eggs on the dry side which is why I did not opt for any additional moisture, but if you like yours creamier, you can whisk your nutritional yeast into some warm soy milk or soy creamer first and then add it to the tofu and vegetable mixture.

I may try something like this in my quest to make the perfect vegan omelette. Omelettes were my favorite egg-based dish. If I coudl recreate their essence with tofu I would be very happy indeed.

Day 30: Perspective

2009-06-16T02:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it's not what I'm eating, there's something else going on because as of this morning I've gained 5 pounds since yesterday, all in excess water I can feel sloshing around in my tissue. All day yesterday I was ridiculously thirsty, drinking glass after glass of ice water, and running to the bathroom constantly. Nevertheless, I have accumulated 5 pounds of fluid, so obviously there is more going on here. My first thought, especially because of the extreme thirst, was diabetes, but I was just tested, and my numbers were fine. I'm not nearly at a weight that would put me at risk for it either, so unless this thirst persists for days, I will rule that out.

Then I got to thinking, I did start a new medication two weeks ago, and for some lucky reason, I am prone to weird side effects of medications. Reading the literature on this medication I noticed that a rare side effect is... hyperglycemia or diabetes. Great. I think I'll call and have them order a blood glucose test for me and see if perhaps my blood sugar numbers have sky rocketed in the past few weeks. Or I suppose could just stop taking it, it's not an essential medication, it was just for migraine prevention.

So in other words, staying true to my ideal of eating healthy should be the way to go. I may put the Eco-Atkins on the back burner for now and continue to eat smart, eat healthy and choose from all the groups, and to Hell with the scale.

In other news, today we have our big day at the zoo. My younger daughter's long-awaited class field trip to our local zoo is today, and I somehow volunteered to be a chaperone. I still am not sure how that happened. She's so excited that I'm coming along, and packing our lunches in the laptop lunch boxes. The forecast is for a beautiful day, I'll get plenty of exercise walking around herding kindergarteners, all in all, it should be an epic day.

If only I can keep from running to the bathroom.

Enjoy your day, everyone.

Day 29: "Now is the Time on Sprockets Ven Ve Dance!"

2009-06-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, not really. In fact, in the swirling torrents of my mind right now, it actually goes something more like "Now is the time on Sprockets ven ven obsess over our veight."

Ugh. I weighed myself today, and inexplicably, I am up a pound and a half from Friday. I knew it was happening too, because I could feel the water weight accumulating over the weekend. I hate that. It makes me feel like a bloated sponge. I wish I could just wring myself dry.

What. The. Fuck?

I haven't been eating unhealthy foods, I haven't been overindulging, the portion sizes aren't gluttonous, yet *BAM* I haven't even been overdoing it on the breads, well, except for yesterday. I made my whole wheat flatbreads to accompany the cauliflower and lentil dish and had four of those; 1 "tester" straight off the griddle when I was cooking them, another to test the cauliflower dish as it was simmering and then two later on with the meal. Granted, they're small, but still. I'll have to put them in the freezer until I can sort this out.

So, how lovely, my firm resolution of the other day is basically all shot to shit, and I am now obsessing over the idea of doing this Eco-Atkins plan that's got people's tongues wagging. Basically, for two weeks I'd eliminate the carbs I do eat: the whole wheat bread, whole wheat tortillas, potatoes, grains & the occasional Guiltless Gourmet chips. Oh, and the damned vegan pancakes. I never really cared about pancakes before, I don't know where this craving came from.

Part of me really hates that I've become so scope-locked on this as primarily a weight loss issue, instead of as a healthy lifestyle & ethical change, when it's both. I guess I assumed that now that I am eating healthily (and virtuously for God's sake, I'm saving cows and pigs and chickens), the pounds should be melting off of me as quickly as they did the first time I adopted a vegan diet. I remember losing 20 pounds pretty damned quickly, but then again I am 40 now, and was 18 then. Big difference in metabolisms.

Anther option would be to go raw, which would mean no cooked or processed anything: bread, tortillas, hummus, refried beans, cooked lentils, tofu, seitan, tempeh, fake meats. Basically a lot of what I've spent money on the past three weeks at the grocery store. It's just not economically feasible to throw food out, that's throwing money out, so I'm going to say no to going totally raw. I am going to continue keeping the bulk of what I eat raw fruits and vegetables though.

So I think that for the next two weeks I'll just cut out what flour-based items I have been eating, along with the occasional rice or potato dish along with the snack indulgences and anything that might still have sugar in it, though to be honest, I haven't used white sugar in months. I'll increase the amount of protein because I've read that boosting the higher-protein plant foods might be especially helpful for vegan women looking to lose weight.

I am keeping the fruit, at least for the next two weeks. If the pounds don't start sliding off in a steady manner, then I'll see about taking the drastic step of eliminating them for two weeks.

So, a sample menu for my day on an Eco-Atkins diet would probably look something like:

Breakfast:
Monster Green Smoothie
Snack:
20 almonds
water

Snack:
apple with peanut butter
water

Lunch:
1/2 cup of hummus with 2 cups of raw vegetables: raw red bell pepper, celery, grape tomatoes
water

Snack:
1/4 cup of roasted soy nuts
water

Snack:
Celery sticks with cashew cheese
water

Dinner:
Tofu and veggie scramble
water

So, lots of raw vegetables, beans, nuts, soy and legumes for protein, plus some fruit and plenty of water. Oh, and I won't be stepping on the scale again in a while. Let's see where I am after two weeks of doing this.

Of course, getting back to the title and the sentiment Dieter's expressing in the photo to the right, you know, I really should get up and dance, or so some cardio daily. My copy of Yoga Booty Ballet beckons.

If the weather cooperates today, I will walk instead of drive to pick the kids up from school, and tomorrow is my little one's big day at the Zoo, and she made me promise to come on the field trip with her, so no doubt we'll be walking all day, plus I'll have my own bevy of kindergartners to herd.

This would all be so much easier if I had the support of a loving spouse, but yet again, one of life's big lessons is that if you don't love yourself, then really why the hell should anyone else love you? It's especially difficult in those times when you feel as though you really want to give up, but you know that you can rely on a loved-one to buck you up. Don't get me wrong, I get a ton of support from my friends, and I appreciate every bit of it, but it's a different kind of support from the type you get from someone who loves the hell out of you. So yet again, I have to suck it all up and just pull through this shit on my own. It's tiring, and kind of demoralizing after a while.

Well, enough of that Monday morning negativity.

Day 28: Indian Food in a New Kitchen (Sort of)

2009-06-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

The girls and I embarked on a long-overdue spring cleaning of sorts yesterday. They'd put off really cleaning their rooms and I'd put off really laying down the law with them until things reached a critical mass yesterday. I held out the reward of a cool pet keepsake craft kit with a scrapbook and a photo album which they could do while watching a Pokemon movie.

I must say, that worked as a pretty effective carrot on a stick. You call it "bribery;" I call it "two clean kids' rooms."

While they toiled upstairs, I sorted out all of the stuff from the lower cabinets in my kitchen, ripped out the old contact paper, washed the shelves and applied new contact paper. I tossed out some old stuff hanging around, like a package of beef jerky still lingering from my South Beach Diet days (won't be needing that anymore), an old can of soup which I believe we actually moved with us up from Maryland 8 years ago, and a seasoning packet for pasta salad that had hardened into a solid lump of salt. *shudder*

Now my flours are all in nice containers, nicely aligned, my rices and grains are nearby, everything looks nice, although I could devote an entire post to how un-Martha I am. I'm pretty sure that some other chick has taken the title of the "Anti-Martha," and although I do not smoke, and believe it or not, don't really drink much anymore either, I am the idea of the Martha who's got a strong drink on the counter, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and a stream of curses flying out of her mouth as she struggles with the contact paper.

That contact paper is the devil.

Although my cabinets are all in order, the top of my counter is a different story: jars of at least 8 kinds of nuts, seeds and trail mixes squeezed in what small space can be found between the blender, food processor and juicer - each of these vital to my daily routine. If I can dredge up the will to do it, I'll go through the upper cabinets and reorganize things there so I can shift the jars of nuts up there and give me back some counter space.

Of course I'd probably just clutter it up with the food dehydrator which I've been dying to use. Some of the raw food cracker recipes look mighty tempting, but that thing is a monstrous space-hog.

We'll see. At any rate, I was looking around for vegan recipes for cauliflower when I stumbled on this: Cauliflower Dal with Panch Phoran from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. The critical ingredient for this dish is a Bengali spice blend called Panch Phuran. Despite a trip to Wegman's early yesterday, I seemed to be fresh out of this stuff. Fortunately for me, we do have a few Indian groceries in my area. A quick trip through Google later and I was nearly salivating on my keyboard, ready to roll down the hill to get to Kashmir's and sample their vegetarian samosas, rotis and naan. I'm trying my best not to go out to the store for specialty items every day though.

My craving for Indian food now completely stoked, however, I have been poring over Indian food blogs and recipe sites seeking out recipes I could make using what I have on hand, when it occurred to me that I already have a tried and true recipe for Cauliflower and Chickpea Balti that I could adapt. I've been heavy on the chickpeas lately, in fact, today's lunch was a hefty dose of Sabra Chunky Hummus and an assortment of raw veggies. Delicious. If you haven't tried their hummus, do yourself a favor and pick some up the next time you're wheeling past the kalamata olives, baba ganouj and feta.

Anyway... to keep from overdoing it on the chickpea quotient, I thought I'd satisfy another craving and add red lentils to this recipe.

Cauliflower and Red Lentils in Balti Sauce

Ingredients:
¼ cup red lentils
½ t turmeric
½ t salt
1 cup of water

2 Tb vegetable oil
½-in piece ginger, minced
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
1 onion, chopped
2 shallots, chopped
1 cup of water
3 tomatoes, chopped
2 T chopped fresh cilantro
1 t ground cumin
½ t turmeric
¼ t chili powder
½ t paprika
½ t garam masala
1 bay leaf
3 green cardamom pods, slightly crushed
1½ t salt

½ head of cauliflower cut into fourths
fresh cilantro leaves for garnish
garam masala (optional)

Directions:
Rinse the red lentils well, then drain. Place them in a pot with the salt and turmeric and 1 cup of water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
While the lentils are cooking, heat the oil over medium heat.
Add the onions and cook until they are translucent.
Add the water and bring to a boil. Add the garlic, ginger, tomato, cilantro, cumin, turmeric, chili powder, paprika, garam masala, bay leaves, cardamom pods and salt, cover and simmer on a low heat for 30 minutes.
Remove the bay leaves and cardamom pods, add the cooked lentils and cauliflower, cover and simmer until the cauliflower is just tender.
Stir in the coriander. Just before serving, sprinkle additional garam masala on top. Serve with flatbread or over basmati rice.

This makes 4 sizeable servings.

Notes:

I had to cook more lentils to add to the sauce. By the time the cauliflower had finished cooking, there was no sign of them, so I turned off the heat and cooked some more red lentils.

The original recipe also had green chili peppers in the sauce, but that was on ingredient I didn't have. This recipe is deliciously spiced, but not spicy. The chilis add a wonderful heat to it, so if you want it hotter, go for it. :)

The next time I make this, I'll make a lot more lentils and add them last, when the cauliflower has finished cooking.

When I heated these leftovers up, I added some chopped pickled green chillies (mirch achaar), because I wanted some heat. Excellent. I went on to use some of them in the straight in the curry sauce when I made aloo gobhi instead of jalapenos.

Day 26: What Not to Eat

2009-06-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

It may be easy to assume that the majority of vegans eat a healthier diet than most non-vegan Americans, but it's worth nothing that that's not necessarily so. Even though vegans have cut out synthetic trans fats and animal-based saturated fats, they still run the risk of swamping meals with "healthy" fats like walnut oil, olive oil and flaxseed oil, also with high-fat fruits like avocados and coconut products, and then there are all of those nuts for snacks.

There are still carb-laden junk foods, like bagels, Oreos, Fritos, unfrosted Pop-tarts, tortilla chips, Cracker Jacks, pretzels and potato chips. Yes, those are all vegan! Then there are varieties of organic and "healthy" junk food alternatives in the natural foods section of many large chain grocery stores.

So what if they're organic? They're still more or less empty calories! Simply making a one-to-one switch of the animal products to plant-based ones, like eating vegan pizza topped with cashew cheese and fake meats instead of a regular Meat-lover's pizza from Pizza Hut three times a week may bring some benefits, but it's not as healthy as ultimately changing the way we eat.

You could eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bagels with Tofutti cream cheese, nachos assembled from Guiltless Gourmet blue corn tortilla chips, vegetarian refried beans, guacamole and soy-based casein-free "cheese," and topped off with salsa, vegan sour cream and black olives and say, "Hey, I'm a Vegan!" and still not get a healthy allotment of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

I know. I've done it.

My food credo, if you can call it that, is to eat the majority of my food in as close to its natural state as possible: more natural food and less "industrial food," as Michael Pollan would say. In his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, he described industrial food as "any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain." In the Standard American Diet (SAD), this probably means corn or some derivative thereof, and wow, is it everywhere, from the sweeteners, to the flour, to the wax on a lot of the produce, to the grain that fattened the cattle who ultimately became Quarter Pounders, or fed the chickens who turned into your kids' Purdue Dinosaur Chicken nuggets; it even fed the dairy cows who produced the cream in my old favorite pint of Chubby Hubby ice cream.* Edit: upon some review, it appears that Ben and Jerry's actually makes real efforts to work with dairy farmers who pledge to use grass-based dairying, whose benefits are many; among them being a more sustainable agricultural practice with less need for chemical fertilizers, and a healthier herd, so less call for drugs.

The Egg McMuffin? A lot of corn behind that baby, plus a smidge of overly-refined wheat flour.

So, no more with the military-industrial complex and their frankenfoods. I haven't even touched on the issue of genetically-engineered foods and the evil that is Monsanto.

I resolve to eat most of my fruits and vegetables raw, same goes for my nuts and seeds. Unlike with a 100% raw diet, I'll have baked whole-grain bread, though I may try some dehydrated cracker recipes from raw food sites. I do have some processed soy and vegetable protein items, (soy milk, tofu, tempeh, soy-based meat and cheese replacements) but they will not constitute the bulk of my diet.

In fact, I am still delving into what's "ok" and what isn't. I recently discovered that my favorite soy milk, Silk, no longer uses organic soy beans. From what I've read, genetically modified soy beans have pretty much contaminated the general supply, so unless the package is specifically marked organic, chances are good that you're consuming a genetically modified organism (GMO).

Silk did not substantially change their packaging except to remove the organic stamp and the "organic soy beans" from the ingredients list. They did this with as little fanfare as possible. In fact, I only heard about this through vegan blogs and a twitter-fest over the past week. Now I have to check the labels even more thoroughly on my soy-based items. It's not enough that many of the "non-dairy" soy-based cheeses aren't actually vegan because of traces of casein, something which I discovered to my chagrin after I bought three blocks of Soya Kaas last week. No, now I have to worry about the quality of the soy beans in my supposedly healthy food.

How aggravating.

I have to work twice as hard and spend more money to feed my kids and myself the healthiest foods, as free of pesticides, antibiotics and suspect science as possible. The food industry markets the most unhealthy food the most aggressively. They have the grocers' associations on their sides as well as the food manufacturers because their bottom line is a financial one, although it is patently absurd, since at the end of the day, they all have to eat too. But here is where there is a disconnect: they don't see the animals and plants as anything other than commodities to be processed into other exchangeable items.

I see animals that have been poisoned, inhumanely slaughtered -against our own laws, even- and contaminated food that has been processed and stamped USDA-approved thanks to the ridiculous concept of an industry regulating itself. Let's be realistic, if fraternities can't manage the honor system, we can't expect billion-dollar corporations to do so.

That's just scratching the surface. /rant

So, what to eat, then?

There's been a lot in the news in recent days about the Eco-Atkins, or a veganized version of the Atkins diet, and yesterday I was excited about it because I'd done a low-carb, high-protein diet 3 years ago and lost a good deal of weight, only to have some of it come back when my unresolved eating disorder issues popped to the fore during times of stress.

Now I know that it's naïve of me to assume that switching to a vegan diet/lifestyle would be a panacea for all that ails me. I know I'll probably have to see a therapist about this at some point, truth be told, but I know from my past experience that weight loss with a vegan diet is quite common. Hearing about this vegan version of the Atkins got me revved up until I realized that I've been losing weight already, albeit slowly; what's more, I have been feeling great ever since I made the switch. So, why mess with a good thing? Besides, as of this morning, I'm down another pound, so, as far as I'm concerned, I'm good.

Using a Vegan Food Pyramid as a guide, the base of my diet will be fruits and vegetables instead of grains.

I have to be wary of which grains I eat because of they way they affect my blood sugar levels. Rice, even brown rice, is tricky for me. I can eat a huge serving of a brown rice dish and be craving something shortly thereafter even though I'm not hungry. I have already given up pasta except on rare occasions, going on 3 years now. At first I thought I'd die if I couldn't have pasta 3 times a week, but look, I haven't! When I do make it for the kids, I try to use whole grain varieties, which are expensive, I admit, so there's even more of an incentive to try other things like quinoa, millet and bulgur.

Whole grain breads don't seem to have the same affect on me as pasta and rice do, which is nice since I am a bread-making fiend. I can make a mixed grain pilaf with rice as long as I am heavy on the other grains (bulgur and quinoa are my favorite) and add some beans and nuts as well and round out the meal with plenty of raw vegetables. I can't make that dish very often though.

All in all, I like the emphasis on fruits and vegetables instead of grains. Most of the pyramids use the grain and cereal group at the bottom, and it seems to suggest to people that they can go ahead and eat 2 bowls of cereal or have 3 bagels or snack on pretzels all day and they're set.

That's nuts.

-Source VeganMethod.com

Day 25: The List

2009-06-11T03:50:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned way back in the beginning, 25 days ago, part of the reason I switched to a vegan diet was that I wanted to lose weight. Although my blood-work came back with outstanding test results despite the number on the scale (I still secretly think that the scales in doctors' offices are set a good 5 pounds heavier), I decided that I need to drop some mass off my frame.

Since making the switch, I've felt really pretty awesome. I've lost some weight (6 pounds), feel energized, have increased my yoga workouts, instituted a meditation practice and even started some cardio. Hurray. That one pebble thrown in the pond has cast some wide ripples. /zen

Always looking for more ways to stay motivated, I'm taking a cue from two friends who've embarked on a journey to lose a bit of themselves in order to find themselves (heh, that's hokey, but I'm keeping it), and creating a wish-list of the things I'd like to do once I'm in the shape & fitness level I've always dreamed I'd attain.

1. Take a yoga class at the local yoga center and not have to wear a tunic-sized t-shirt.

Hell, that roomy shirt always ended up down around my neck when we did the inverted positions anyway, so why bother, right? Ok, I'm not saying I'll be traipsing around, scantily-clad, in a sports bra and spandex shorts, but I do have a workout shirt with a built-in bra that would fit the bill... once I lose some of this winter padding around my waist.

I am actually planning on registering for their next session, starting June 29^th, although I will not be wearing that top. I'd need to go down like two cup sizes before I'd feel comfortable wearing that in mixed company, but that's just me.

2. Take an adult ballet class.

I know, my God, I know!

I took 10 fucking years of dance when I was young, and bitched about it for, oh, about 9 of them. Once I stopped, I missed it almost immediately. I am extremely fortunate that all those years of dance gave me a good muscle base and a sense of balance as a foundation on which I can rely even now, as out of practice and shape as I am.

Still, there's no way in hell I am squeezing my ass into a leotard until I lose some body mass.

3. Take part in a mass cross-country skiing event.

Ok, it doesn't have to be the massive endurance ski across Greenland. What? Think I'm joking? Check out the Greenland Icecap Challenge:

The race distance is 550km and competitors will have a choice whether they are supported or unsupported. The route will follow an arc just above the Arctic Circle from the West to East coast. Competitors will pull their individual and team stores in sledges, sleep in tents and deal with diverse challenges such as surviving in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees, navigating the crevasses, as well as watching out for Polar bears on the East coast.

Sounds exciting doesn't it? Insane, too. I bet it will be filled with men named Sven, Olle and Kjetil. I hope National Geographic will film it so I can watch it from the warmth, comfort and relative safety of my living room as I sip coffee laced with whiskey. Lykke til!

Anyway, I'm sure there must be a shorter race somewhere closer to me without the threat of plunging to one's death down glacier crevasses or being eaten by polar bears even if there will be a profound dearth of men named Sven, Olle and Kjetil. :p

Note: the event pictured above is the American Birkebeiner race, not the Greenland Icecap Challenge, which is slated for 2011.

Another note: a little extra padding is actually a plus for this event. The polar bears like that too.

4. Attend a week-long workshop at the Kripalu center

Talk about pie in the sky dreams. I'd have to sell a kidney or create the next big pyramid scheme to come up with the money for this, I think.

This place is like yoga summer camp for grownups. It's in the Berkshires, and it is literally, right on the mountain next door to Tanglewood. You can sit outside on the hill and hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra play. If that isn't a little bit of nirvana right here on earth, then I don't know what else could be. As an added bonus, it's in New England which is just the vegan icing on the cake.

5. To any of you that ever made some crack about my looks (like calling me "pudgy" or *shudder* "chunky" God, I hate that word), I will hunt you down on Facebook and haunt you with a skinny & young-looking picture friend request, only to delete you and tell you to fuck off.*

Ok, probably not, that's too bitchy & spiteful even for me, but I can sure as hell daydream about it. I mean, what else are those revenge fantasy scenarios good for if not to get that crap out of our systems so we can move on, right? Sure.

C'mon, we all indulge in those secret fantasies where the people who wronged us on the playground of Borough Elementary school when we were 8 get their comeuppance at some hazy point in the future, and all is right with the world. Right? I can't be the only ~~crazy~~ one here who does this...

Ok, I'll put the crazy back in the box for now. /crazy

6. Have a custom-made dress for a fancy occasion.

Sure, I have no idea what occasion that would be, I'm not exactly going to red carpet events on Viggo Mortensen's arm here in CNY, and the last time I got an invitation to take tea with the Queen was some time ago, and I'm hardly into haute couture. Frankly, I think it's a waste of money to devote to stuff which is out of style every season. That said, it would be nice to have a dress for special occasions made just to fit me, in a style that flatters my body shape, and in a fabric which I actually like.

Sadly, I am no fashionista; I would commit the high crime of fashion and wear it more than once. :p

7. Go to some fancy-schmancy resort spa for a weekend.

I am not a girly-girl spa girl. Shocking, no? Oh, if you could see me now, braless in a t-shirt and yoga pants with my hair twisted in a bun, you'd have no doubt. I've had 2 manicures in my entire life, rarely even paint my nails myself, have never had a professional pedicure and frankly hate spa facials because instead of leaving my skin feeling invigorated, they make my skin feel like an oil slick. Yuck. I'm 100% in favor of the hour-long massages though. Bring those on!

Nevertheless, I'd love to go to one of those places for a whole weekend and get plunked in a mud bath, wrapped in seaweed so that I look like a walking California roll, and have all the hair waxed off of me (as long as they numb me up first) and whatever else they want to throw at me... except a high colonic.

Juice fast? Yes. Gourmet macrobiotic dishes? Yes. Microdermabrasion from shelter-rescued kittens? HELL yes! Fish pedicures? WTH, why not? Enemas? Noooooooo....

Best of all would be if my GP girlfriends were there too. Now THAT would be epic.

8. Take a cross-country cycling tour.

This would involve my bringing the bike up from the spiderweb-infested depths of its corner of the basement, taking it to the local bike shop for a tuneup, actually hauling my ass onto the seat once in a while, and finding the time and money to break away from this random assortment of stream of consciousness moments I like to call a "life," but yeah, I think it'd be fun. It would be even more fun to do with a significant other, but that's making another huge assumption that I won't even address here.

Oh, but fret not, I would never, ever ride as a couple on a tandem bike! The cutesy-and-gag factor there is just too high.

9. Take the all-day horseback trip over Flattop Mountain... again.

When I was 16, on a family vacation out to Colorado I went on this totally awesome trail ride from Grand Lake to Estes Park over Flattop Mountain. My sister, who was forced (by our parents, not by me) did not think that it was so cool.

Anyway, we got to the stables in Estes Park at some ungodly hour of the morning, and drove with a cowboy-looking guy whose nickname ought to have been "Slim" in a rattly truck on these terrifying switchback roads along the side of a mountain range to the Grand Lake stables where we were matched up with our trail horses. Then it was like 10 or 11 hours in the saddle as we trekked over a damned mountain back to Estes Park. Totally awesome, even if I did walk bow-legged for three days afterward.

10. Just be happy and comfortable with my body as it is.

This one might take a miracle.

Or therapy.

Or a lobotomy.

*I stole this one pretty much verbatim from Shannon. Thanks sweetie!

Food Nazi

2009-06-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

"You want to sit me down and force-feed me kale." Stephen Colbert to Eric Schlosser

Day 24: A Green Smoothie Addict

2009-06-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

I can't get enough of these green smoothies. For the past 3 days I have had what I've been calling "Monster Green Smoothies" for two meals. They're "monster" because they're big and green: 24 oz of tasty greenness.

I know I ought to seek out new recipes so that I don't get tired of drinking exactly the same smoothie every morning, and I do mix it up a bit, but I stick to a base of banana and spinach. I have come to like Michael's Super Defense Food Powder quite a lot. I have some soy yogurt which I could use as a base once I run out of bananas. I think I'll hunt down some new smoothie recipes today.

Breakfast:

1 Monster Green Smoothie:
2 bananas
1/4 of a fresh pineapple
1 cup of water
1/2 cup of pineapple juice
1 oz of baby spinach
1 scoop (2 teaspoons) of Michael's Super Defense Food powder

1 glass of water
1 multivitamin, 1 flax seed oil, 1 evening primrose oil

Lunch:

Potato-veggie Tofu Scramble*
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack:

2 glasses of water (lunch was very filling)

Dinner

1 avocado
1 tomato
3 T tomatillo salsa

ok, yes, basically, I ate a bowl of guacamole for dinner, but my GOD was it good! The ingredients were organic, and all so fresh that it didn't need the enhancement of tortilla chips (no, not even Guiltless Gourmet or my homemade ones) or tortillas. I was eating this with a spoon until I thought better of it, got up and sliced up a red bell pepper.

1 red bell pepper
2 glasses of water

Note: I didn't even eat the whole bell pepper or the entire bowl of guac.

Potato veggie Tofu Scramble

Ingredients:
2 medium red potatoes, diced
1 vidalia onion, diced
5 cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 block of firm tofu, diced
1/2 oz of shredded soy cheese
1 tomato, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 heaping t of smoked paprika
salt and pepper

Directions:
Saute potatoes and onions in a skillet that's been coated with cooking spray over high heat.

Cover tightly so the steam helps cook the potatoes.

Cook 5 minutes, then add the mushrooms, stir to coat and cover again, but stirring from time to time.

Once the mushrooms have released much of their liquid, add the red bell peppers, stir and cover.

Mix the tofu, shredded soy cheese, tomato, garlic and spices together in a bowl. Toss well.

When the potato has cooked through, add the tofu-cheese mixture.

Stir well, heating through, and serve hot.

Makes 2-3 servings

Food Log for the day

2009-06-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

Breakfast:

1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

1 Monster Green Smoothie:
2 bananas
1/4 of a fresh pineapple
1 1/2 cups of water
1 handful of baby spinach
1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food Powder

Morning Snack

1 piece of peanut butter toast
1 glass of water

Lunch:

2 vegan Italian sausages (Lightlife)
1 red bell pepper
1/2 vidalia onion
3/4 cup of chunky tomato sauce
2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack#1:

1 bottle of raspberry Guayakai Yerba Mate (16 oz)

Afternoon Snack#2:

1 glass of water
2 oz Terra Stripes and Blues Chips

Wow, these are really good!

I love Terra chips; their exotic vegetable chips, like sweet potato, yucca and taro chips are outstanding. These are no exception.

Dinner:

1 monster Green Smoothie
2 bananas
1/4 of a fresh pineapple
1 1/2 cups of water
1 oz of spinach
1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food Powder

Notes:

My earlier blog post has got me all het-up over this issue of food-activism. I'm no wide-eyed naïf (ha!) but even I, in all my jaded cynicism, was surprised by the level of corruption and greed between the U.S. government and the food industry. Before reading these books, I had actually thought that the government had more power than it does, and that there could be no way that our elected representatives would let the rights of the many (read: all of us) be outweighed by the interests of a few wallets.

How revolting that it's not so.

The girls had Tofupups for lunch. Now over the years I've bought tofupups, smart dogs or Yves's brand of meatless hot dogs more often than regular meat hot dogs, mostly because I found the idea regular of hot dogs, that is, stuffing all the leftover bits of "whatever's left and then some" to be pretty revolting.

In all that time, the girls have never complained about tofu dogs tasting yucky or meaty franks being better, so there ya go. :)

The way I see it, a good deal of the flavoring in any sausage is in the spices, not the particular meat. Very often sausage makers used heavy spicing to disguise what sort of meat and other stuff was inside the casing.

They've been asking me for deli meats for their lunches. Now, Lightlife and Yves do make fake ham and turkey deli slices, but compared to the deli counter, it's not exactly frugal. Still, I'll see what I can do. I need to get them involved in coming up with creative lunch ideas to fill their laptop lunchbox Bento boxes.

I have become seriously hooked on these Green Smoothies. I get so that I crave it during the day now.

Wegman's had organic bananas on sale for 69¢/lb, and the regular bananas were 49¢/lb, so I bought four bunches of the organic bananas, at only 20¢ more per pound. Totally worth it. I got two containers of cored organic pineapple, and a huge 11-oz package of organic baby spinach. I've been using the smaller scoop that came with the Michael's powder and haven't felt it to be overpowering at all.

Day 23: The More I Read, The Angrier I Get

2009-06-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Christopher Cook's Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, in which he takes a hard look at the food industry.

It's seriously insane, the power that the industry wields versus how impotent the federal government regulatory agencies are. What's so troubling is how in bed the U.S. Department of Agriculture is with entities like the U.S. Cattlemen's Beef Association, Monsanto and the meatpacking industry (to name but a few). It's like an interlocking directorate of conflicting interests.

Add to this the legacy of deregulation starting with the Reagan and Bush administrations and zero enforcement of the Sherman anti-trust legislation, and you have a taxpayer-subsidized juggernaut devastating the environment which also affects our health in so many ways from levels of obesity which the CDC has now termed epidemic, to the outbreak of food-borne pathogens that sicken thousands every year.

I wonder if this is the issue which will spur me to activism.

The thing is, this is not a vegan issue. It isn't an animal rights "fringe" issue. This issue affects anyone who eats anything grown, raised, bred, manufactured or processed anywhere: in short, it affects everyone.

We are, all of us, being fed poison, shit, drugs, diseased tissue and pathogens, all of which has been stamped USDA-approved.*

What the fuck?

The trailer for Food, Inc.

This could be the food revolution for all of us, vegans, vegetarians, flexivores, frutitarians, unabashed omnivores, or I-only-eat-fish-on-Fridays-in-Lent-ivores.

*Don't believe me? Check out my abbreviated reading list:

Diet for a Dead Planet, Christopher Cook

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

Food, Inc: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer, and What You Can Do About It Karl Weber, editor (companion guide to the upcoming documentary Food, Inc. The Movie)

Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry, Gail Eisnitz

USDA Inc.: How Agribusiness has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Philip Mattera (pdf document)

Day 22: More Weight Gone

2009-06-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, more weight gone, I am down 6 pounds in total, and I know I am walking a tightrope of judgmentality here by even saying this, but it's an undeserved weight loss. I say this because this past week, I have been eating a lot of junk food, even though it's been 100% vegan junk food. I made vegan nachos three times and vegan pizza twice. Good God. Oh yeah and then there were the pancakes, which I made twice. Twice, for the love of GOD! I didn't make regular, non-vegan pancakes two times in the preceding 10 months, let alone twice in the same week! What the HELL?! What's next, deep-fried, vegan Oreos?

Also, after the catastrophe that was my post-migraine phase, my coffee consumption went back up to a pot a day from a cup a day. I need to ratchet that back down.

*deep breath* So...

This week I start anew with the emphasis on raw fruits and vegetables first.

I will begin each day with the Green Smoothie for breakfast, though I'll be reducing the amount of Michael's Super Defense Food powder, because frankly, there is just some ingredient in there that is overwhelming, and not in a yummy, good way. Sad to say, it might be the spirulina. Or perhaps it's the Atlantic Kelp, or maybe even the barley grass juice powder. Hell, I don't know, but there's something in there that is a wee bit overpowering although I do feel damned energized afterward. Actually, I just opened the container and inhaled it. I think it's the cilantro, which is odd, because I love cilantro, (unlike these people) I just don't normally add it to my drinks. So whatever, I'll just add less and see if I don't get accustomed to the taste.

Back to vegan junk food: I'll allow myself a vegan junk food indulgence on the weekend, be it nachos, pizza or both. I've finally found a decently-melting vegan cheese: Soya Kaas makes both a mozzarella and a cheddar version in blocks so I can grate it myself.

Yoga & meditation. I will commit to do one or the other, if not both, every day. I've been pretty good about it over the past 5 days.

There.

God, I wonder if I am the only vegan who is also struggling with an eating disorder.

The odds would suggest not. In a way, it's twice as harsh because now I have yet another thing to add to the column of self-loathing, as if general body image and food issues weren't enough, now I can add vegan ones to the mix. Huzzah. So really, one might say that I am setting myself up to be critical of myself no matter what I do. Hmm. Interesting.

Okay, I really need to break out of that mindset; it's destructive, not constructive, even if it is somewhat illuminating.

To put a positive spin on things, I have had more energy in the past 3 weeks since I started this. So despite the demon of food issues rearing his ugly head, it's been a good thing.

So getting back on track, I'll post my food log here this week:

Breakfast:

1 cup of coffee with vanilla soymilk and stevia

1 monster Green Smoothie:
2 organic bananas
1/4 of a fresh pineapple
1 cup of water
1/2 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food Powder
1 handful of organic baby spinach leaves (1 oz)
2 ice cubes

Early Lunch:

Vegan & Raw Creamy Cauliflower Soup* see recipe
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack:

1 garlic portobello mushroom burger
1 tomato
1/4 English cucumber
2 T hummus
2 T crunchy sprouts
1 glass of water

Late Afternoon Snack

1 pieces of peanut butter toast
2 glasses of water

Dinner

Monster green smoothie:
1 banana
1/4 of a fresh pineapple
1 mango
1 cup of water
1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food powder

*Vegan & Raw Creamy Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients:
1/4 of a head of cauliflower
appr 3/4 cup raw, unsalted, organic cashews
appr 1 - 2 cups of water
a dash of fresh lime juice
red curry powder
sea salt

Directions:

Blend all ingredients in a blender or food processor until you reach the consistency you like.

Add more salt and red curry powder to taste.

Serve at room temperature.

This makes two fairly large servings, and is very good, though with the extremely high fiber content and the fact that cauliflower is a cruciferous vegetable, I'd suggest taking bean-o with it if you are unused to eating raw cauliflower. Also, drink plenty of water.

Day 20: Finding My Center

2009-06-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

I got up and meditated and did the AM Yoga dvd with the girls this morning, at their request. I hadn't realized just how stiff and uncomfortable and "wrong" I was feeling with my body. It felt wonderful to shed some of that with the stretches. Now, I am planning on a busy day working on the book, plus there's a painting I'd like to get a start on today, but I think I really need to spend a good hour devoted to meditation.

As always, I have to focus on mindful eating rather than automatic eating.

No more self-loathing for cravings for the animal products. I accept that this is a process, a journey. Eventually I may reach the place where I no longer crave cheese. In the meantime, I'll accept that these things are likely to happen, and move on.

There. I feel a bit better just acknowledging it.

Now onto the other cravings: I had a fleeting thought yesterday about the types of things that I typically crave, the starchy, salty, carb-laden, cheese-covered things and wondered what it was about the taste/eating experience that I craved.

Was it the mouthfeel of the dense starchiness?
The heaviness, the solidity of it in my stomach afterwards?
The sharp saltiness on my tongue?
The creamy cheesiness?

Not sure yet.

I certainly don't crave iceberg lettuce. Hell, I can't stand that stuff. There's nothing redeeming about it, nutritionally or gustatorily. A salad made of romaine, spinach, endive and radicchio is much better than some limp, soggy mess of slimy iceberg lettuce.

But I digress.

What is it exactly about these comfort foods that I crave? It's nothing to do with a nutritional deficiency: I certainly can't claim that in times of stress my body's stores of salt and carbohydrates suddenly plummet, sad to say.

Is it some emotional connection with those foods and if so, why those foods?

What is it about them that even creates an emotional connection?

There has to be some chemical connection ultimately, because when you get right down to it, we are a massive stew of electro-chemical reactions.

So anyway, something to mull over.

Oh, "mull" makes me want wine. I still have no idea if the wine I have in my cabinet is even vegan. I'd say it probably isn't. I guess I'll stick to water for today.

Day: 19 "What do you mean he don't eat no MEAT?"

2009-06-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

A very funny scene starting at the 5:09 mark in this clip.

"Oh that's ok. That's ok. I make lamb."

*wild cheers"

It cracks me up every time.

Day 18: Unsteady, But Getting Back on My Feet

2009-06-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

Wow, did that post-migraine trip really screw me up! During my post-migraine phase, I craved coffee, chocolate and cheese. I managed to resist the cheese and chocolate, but overindulged in caffeine. I ate no fruit and very few veggies. Instead, I had two peanut butter sandwiches and later on two vegan burritos on whole wheat tortillas.

I was up very late last night because I went to my figure drawing group, which is a g0od thing, but I was so wired after it ended I ended up going to the movies by myself to see Star Trek. At 10:35 pm.

Now this morning I have had 3/4 of a pot of strong coffee and feel as though I am just one minor mental breakdown away from making myself an omelette, which would fill me with even more self-loathing.

*sigh*

So, what can I take away from all of this?

When I am stressed, whether it's from having a hard time with the girls, running around like crazy, or the physical rigors of the after-effects of a migraine or suffering from a lack of sleep, my food issues come to the fore. Those are the times that cravings set in hard, and when I would most likely binge.

Ok, I know what triggers this "behavior" or yearning, but how the hell do I stop it? Can I stop it? Is dealing with an eating disorder basically a lifetime of managing the cravings and obsessions? Is it like with alcoholics in which they are just one drink away from a relapse?

How frustrating, disappointing and downright scary.

Perhaps I need to find a strategy to deal with the stressful situations so that it does not reach the point of triggering a desire to binge or eat non-vegan foods, or once I reach that level of stress, redirecting my energies elsewhere in a helpful and healthy way.

God, this sucks.

On a related note, I saw a neurologist yesterday and have a brand-spanking new prescription for a migraine med, the sides effects of which are weight loss. Naturally, I all but got up and tap-danced around the exam room.

I ought to be more concerned about the health aspects of the drug that any dietetic side effect. I am wondering where my head is on all of this. I really think I have to start a solid meditation regimen to find my center and strenghten it. I am beginning to feel as though I am spinning around, being flown to bits, if that makes any sense.

Day 17: First Migraine Since I Made the Switch

2009-06-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

I had a migraine yesterday. I was wondering when and if this would happen.

I get a few of them every year, and most of them are doozies. They always start off with visual aurae, sometimes spots in my vision or an increased number of "floaters"; other times I'll get black patches or dead spots in my visual field. One time it was so bad I'd lost a significant portion of my peripheral vision in one side and had fiery arcs zigzagging through the middle portion of my visual field in the same eye.

That's just how they begin. Usually within an hour of the onset of the aurae, the photosensitivity kicks in. I have to turn out the lights, and preferably lie down in a darkened room. I am sensitive to sounds as well, and can't even really tolerate physical contact. My whole body is like a bristling, sensitive, hurting organism.

Then the nausea strikes right before the headache hits and boy does it ever hit.

I had an acquaintance whole told me once that all migraines are triggered by food, and she went on to give me a list of known migraine triggers: alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, cheese, chocolate, coffee... basically anything that might give some joy to life. I'm surprised that orgasms weren't on the damned list. She told me that I must have eaten or drunk something off the list, more than usual and presto, migraine.

Now I've never noticed a common food denominator, and tried to tell her, but she said I must have been mistaken, because this was never wrong. ("this," or SHE?) Anyway, I've always found that my migraines seem to cluster around monthly fluctuations in hormone levels, especially if those are accompanied with a funky weather system (those sudden summer storms do a number on me). If you add stress to the mix, then BANG, the worst of the worst migraines.

Then there are those which defy calculation or prediction. They just seem to appear with no apparent trigger.

Since this switch to a vegan diet, I have eliminated just about all of those common food triggers, God, I haven't even had any chocolate since I started this! I really believe that food is not the source of my migraines. I did have pretty regular garden variety stress headaches for the past 6 months, and they disappeared pretty quickly once I cut the meat and dairy from my diet. Those horrendous caffeine-withdrawal headaches would set in rather quickly if I didn't start infusing the coffee almost immediately after I got up, and once those puppies strike, there is nothing you can do to ease the pain. I have cut out the daily caffeine ritual, but gradually, and have not had one of those skull-crushing headaches yet.

I was astounded that it all had happened so quickly. I guess I was hoping for a miracle that this would also rid me of migraines forever. I don't want to seem optimistically simplistic by pinning all of my hopes on this dietary change

Coincidentally enough, I have an appointment today with a Neurologist, so I'll mention the migraines.

And here's a recipe since I am moving to too much talk and not enough cook:

Homemade Falafel
Ingredients:
2 cups of dried chickpeas, soaked in water for 8 hours overnight*
1/4 cup of bulgur or quinoa
5 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 t cumin
1/2 t turmeric
1/2 t coriander
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
Salt, pepper
1 Tb of sesame seeds
1/4 cup of breadcrumbs
2 t baking soda

Directions:
Put the bulgur or quinoa in a bowl and add enough very hot water (just short of boiling) until it's about an inch higher than the layer of grain. Let sit 30 minutes until softened. Drain well.

Rinse the soaked chickpeas and put them in a food processor with the bulgur/quinoa, garlic, onion and spices. Pulse until you get a rough texture; you can add a little water if needed. Be careful you don't pulse too much. You don't want a soupy paste. We're not making hummus here. We still want some texture.

Move the mixture into a large bowl, add the sesame seeds and breadcrumbs and put in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, for 30-60 minutes.

Add the baking soda to the mixture and knead a little.

Shape the mixture into little balls. Pan-fry until you get a deep brown shade. I have also baked these to make them healthier.

I like to serve them in a pita or folded in a flatbread with saffron basmati rice, baby spinach leaves, chopped tomato and cucumber and a tahini sauce or a tzatziki sauce.

*You can do a quick soak for the chickpeas. Put them in a pot with about twice as much water, cover it, bring to a boil and let boil for 2 minutes, the turn off the heat and, leaving the lid on the pot, let them sit for an hour and a half. Then rinse and proceed with the recipe.

Or if you're super lazy just use canned chickpeas. :) But make sure you rinse them very well. I've always thought that the thick gel-like fluid in the can with the chickpeas is gross.

Also, in case you didn't know and are having a difficult time finding chickpeas, they are also called garbanzo beans or ceci.

In the days when I first started making these I had no food processor. I used to put the chickpeas on a large plate a small mound at a time and mash them with a fork. Once they were mashed, I'd add some more. After they were all smashed up pretty well (the mixture still has some texture to it) I'd dump it into a large bowl and add finely diced onion, minced garlic, the bulgur (I prefer quinoa now, but bulgur was nice too), breadcrumbs and the spices. It was incredibly time-consuming, but also very satisfying and peaceful sitting there at the kitchen table in our dumpy little apartment over Mrs. Robb's store looking out the window occasionally to see what was going on.

The ex used to say, when we still lived there, that someday we'd look back at that time as "the time we lived in that dumpy little apartment over Mrs. Robb's store and were poor and happy and in love."

A self-fulfilling prophecy, but for once not MY negativity. Maybe he always assumed it would always fail and set us up for the eventual separation and divorce. Hmmm.

Anyway, try the falafel, they're awesome!

Day 16: There's Animal By-Product in My Chewing Gum!

2009-06-02T04:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I was sitting in my studio, working on my book when I absent-mindedly grabbed a piece of chewing gum, my fourth that day. When I flipped the package back over, I saw a tiny line of red text that stopped me in my tracks:

What? A milk-derived ingredient? In my gum?! They're certainly not making it easy to be a vegan.

A little Google-exploration brought me to the official website for this gum where I found this:

What is Recaldent^®?

Recaldent^® is an ingredient derived from casein (pronounced kay-seen), part of the protein found in cow's milk. Its technical name is casein phosphopeptides-amorphous calcium phosphate, or CPP-ACP.

Yum. That sounds awesome. Reading further:

I can't eat dairy products, can I chew Trident Xtra Care®?

If you are allergic to milk proteins, then you should not chew Trident Xtra Care®. However, if you are lactose intolerant, which means you have difficulty digesting milk sugar (lactose), then Trident Xtra Care® is fully digestible and safe to consume.

My taste for this stuff has suddenly disappeared.

I started wondering where the other hidden animal products were. I already knew about gelatin being made from the connective tissue, skin and bones of animals and about the pigment cochineal (carmine coloring) made from crushed up beetles and used in paints as well as a "natural food coloring." Where else were animal by-products lurking?

Let's find out!

Guinness stout: They use isinglass (from the swimbladders of fish) to clarify their beers.
Worcestershire sauce: Basically soy sauce plus anchovies and tamarind marinated in a brine with molasses and spices
Starburst: The candy contains gelatin. Hell, it's not even Kosher (not that I care, really).
Snickers. Well it may be Kosher but it's not remotely vegan with skim milk, milk fat, and egg whites.
Wine: This is trickier. Some wines are vegan, others aren't, using any one of several substances to clarify or refine the wine, from isinglass, gelatin, casein or albumin from egg whites. Before I buy wine next time I should do some research into which wines are listed as vegan.

Those are just a few of the consumables. The list* of cosmetics and clothing items that use some sort of animal product range from the expected wool sweaters and leather shoes to the bone china handed down from my great-grandmother to pearl necklaces, silk shirts, exfoliating cream, cold cream and toothpaste.

Toothpaste?

Even here in my studio bits of former animals pop up, from the cochineal in my carmine lake paint to the bristle brushes I use for oils (made from hog bristles) to my treasured kolinsky sable watercolor brushes ( made from the Siberian Mountain Weasel).

I suppose this is evidence of how it takes conscious effort to maintain a vegan diet.

*Note about the list: the source is PETA, and one of the ingredients they listed as non-vegan was benzoic acid. I did some more research and did not find anything to support the idea that animals are used as a source for this. Historically, it seems to have been derived from a plant; now, it is synthesized in the laboratory. Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't found any indication that animals are a source of this chemical.

Day 15: Feeling Comfortable

2009-06-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

It's weird, I am not a sweets for breakfast type of girl; I was always the one who'd rather choke down a monster omelette and a mountain of hash browns than devour a stack of pancakes dripping with melted butter and sticky syrup, but this morning I had the most insane craving for pancakes.

I blame this, in part, on a Facebook discussion I had with a friend yesterday about Denny's Pancake Puppies. I had never heard of them before and assumed that they were some mutant crossbreed of pancakes and hush-puppies: basically, deep-fried globules of thick, sweet pancake batter.

A little Google exploration yielded this:

There are so many levels of wrong with Denny's Pancake Puppy dessert. The mutant cross between a pancake, beignet, and hush puppy, this delectable treat is addictive in its delicious, oh-so-bad for you simplicity. Crusty, humble fried pancake bites, coated in cinammon sugar and served with warm syrup for dipping, these may indeed be the cruelest thing to come out of a Denny's since...the Denny's.

Damn you, late night diners, and your evil, evil temptations!- From Foodie (see restrictions)

Sure enough, deep-fried pancake batter. A little more searching and I found this on RecipeZaar:

They appear to be dollops of pancake batter deep-fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar, served with syrup for dipping. They're described as a cross between a pancake, a beignet and a hush puppy (thus the name). -From RecipeZaar

Oh My God. These really are a good example of what's wrong with the Standard American Diet (SAD). Sugar, more sugar (white flour), eggs and milk, fried in the same bubbling oil they no doubt used for their shrimp platters and onion rings, then dipped in more sugar and served with maple-flavored sugar. This should come with a vial of insulin on a doily too.

Holy shit.

So anyway, back to my pancake craving this morning. :/

From reading my copy of Vegan with a Vengeance this other day I saw that Isa Moskowitz provided a bunch of vegan adaptations of standard favorites. I thought I remembered a pancake recipe or two, and I was right.

The Banana-Pecan Pancakes were very tempting, but I had neither the pecans nor the bananas, so I opted for the regular old pancakes. Yum. It was so worth it, however, I'm bothered a little bit by my sudden cravings for some of these comfort foods dishes.

That was really the only "bad" thing I've had today. I've gone on to eat about 7 servings of fruits and vegetables combined (all raw), and was sparing of the fats and sugar (other than the pancakes topped with real maple sugar), but I made the switch to a vegan diet in part because I wanted to eat healthier and make better choices for foods. Now, that's not going to happen if I just substitute some vegan fake-meat version of a SAD item or just omit the eggs in waffles, cookies and cakes.

My goal is to start with the fresh fruit and vegetables first before launching myself headlong into a loaf of bread even if it is a hearty multi-grain loaf.

Day 14: Doing Great

2009-05-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

I'm still chugging along just great. The cheese-lust has subsided a bit.

I have fallen back into the trap of eating a diet heavy in bread though. I need to remember to start with raw fruits and vegetables first. Yesteday I had an open-faced avocado and cashew cheese sandwich with sprouts and tomato. It was so good, but I probably didn't need quite that much fat even though those are the so-called "good fats" in nuts and avocado.

I read through Vegan With a Vengeance yesterday and got inspired by the tempting recipes. She believes in desserts, bless her, and they look really, really good. I'm also looking forward to making my own seitan at some point. I bet if I simmer that in fake chicken broth it'll taste "just like chicken." heh

Another recipe that immediately caught my eye was for the vegan Pad Thai. Oh yeah. THAT looked good. So did the Thai Green Curry. We have a few Thai restaurants here, though I don't know how vegan-friendly they are.

My favorite local restaurant is Tokyo-Seoul, a Korean/Japanese place. Even though one of my favorite dishes, Tol Sot Bi-Bim-Bap (stone bowl bi-bim-bap) does come in a vegetarian version substituting tofu for the meat, I know that there aren't a lot of vegan dishes there. Very often even the tofu and rice cake dishes use some meat product. Some of the soups use a beef broth as the base, plus there are anchovies lurking everywhere. I think that even many of the kimchees and other vegetable side dishes use anchovies or anchovy paste.

I recall that when I was in Korea, the vegetarians on our teaching staff complained that it was very difficult for them to find anything that was meat-free. Ironically, the best vegan food I've ever had in my life was in Seoul at a place run by Buddhist monks. The Sanchon Temple is in In-sa Dong, a very arty district in Seoul. There you're served traditional vegetarian dishes by the monks and can watch performances.

Oh now I am craving kimchee-fried rice, one of the ultimates in Koren comfort food. :)

Day 13: Behold, the Power of Casomorphins!

2009-05-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

I really am not having a difficult time forgoing meat or even eggs. Milk? Eh. I'm good with the vanilla soymilk in my coffee, and the Earth Balance vegan butter substitute is pretty damned good.

But cheese, oh my good, how I miss cheese!

One of my fervent beliefs is that a life without pizza is not a life worth living, so I am doing my best to make tasty, vegan adaptations of this staple. Thus far, I have tried a soy-and-gluten-free, rice-based faux-mozzarella from Galaxy Foods called Rice shreds. It tasted pretty good, and melted better than other brands of non-dairy, vegan cheeses, but it still did not come close to the gooey, melty heaven of real mozzarella.

For last night's pizza night, I tried out a recipe for cashew cheese for my own pizza; the girls got the real mozz because right before I made this switch to veganism, I had bought a huge 5-lb block of the stuff. At $20 a pop, I am not about to throw it out. Not only is that a waste of money, but I abhor throwing out perfectly good food. My goal is to not buy any more animal products, but as for the ones that I still have hanging about my fridge and my lingering in my shelves, I plan on using them up or donating them to a food pantry.

But back to the cashew cheese.

I typed "cashew cheese on pizza" into Google and found this: Vegan Cashew Cheese.

Vegan Cashew Cheese

Ingredients:
2/3 cup cashews (raw is best, roasted is still great, and try flavored cashews too)

1/2 cup water (or slightly more)

1/4 cup red bell pepper (raw or roasted)

1/4 small red onion (if you're cooking for a date, or more otherwise!)

1/4 cup yeast flakes

2 garlic cloves (see "red onion")

3 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp Bragg's Liquid Aminos (on the health food isle everywhere, or use lite soy sauce)

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp sea salt (optional) if the cashews are unsalted

Put everything in a food processor and blend it until it's creamy. If it's too thick, add more water. If it's too watery, add more cashews. It should have a Cream of Wheat-like consistency, or just a bit thicker. For a pizza, spread it thinly over pizza sauce (it's very rich, so a little bit goes a long way), top it off with your favorite vegetables, and pop it in the oven. If the cashew cheese becomes golden-brown more than a few minutes before the pizza crust is done, cover the top of the pizza with foil.

My analysis:

I had to add more cashews (about another 1/3 of a cup) because the mixture as it resulted was just too soupy for me.
The addition of the nutritional yeast adds a somewhat cheese-like flavor, which leads me to wonder what role yeasts and fermentation play in standard cheese-making.
When baked in a pretty hot oven, it didn't soften, melt and spread on the pizza like mozzarella does, but it didn't burn to a crisp either.
The texture was quite pleasing on the tongue: smooth, rather creamy. It'd have been even creamier if I blended the nuts even more, I think.
The garlic, onion and lemon juice added a nice sharpness of flavor.
Perhaps next time I'll add my "pizza herbs" right to the cheese.
It'll be interesting to see how sitting in the fridge overnight has affected the texture: did it consolidate, did it separate etc?

All told, it made a delicious, healthy pizza.

Still, I have found several other vegan cashew cheese recipes, some of them using agar-agar (similar to gelatin but made from seaweed instead of collagen from animals) to "set" the cheese. I imagine I'll try them all at some point.

The perfect vegan cheese is like a new Holy Grail for me.

I know that a lot of people would read this and say, "Just eat the damned cheese already, Babs! Jesus!" I've already had people say, "Oh I could never live without cheese!"

Trust me, I know. (soapbox time)

I am motivated to cut out all dairy because by doing so, I'm eliminating a huge source of pretty unhealthy fats. For all the dairy industry tries to tout dairy products as a great source of protein, really, they're a larger source of saturated fat than anythng else. Legumes and grains provide better-quality protein than cheese and butter do, sorry folks.

That's just one health aspect. There are also reputable reports of how water contaminated with ammonium perchlorate (solid rocket propellant, aka jet fuel) has found its way not only into general drinking water supplies, but also the milk supply. If we are what we eat, then we are also what they ate. If they feed cattle crap, what does that make us?

Then there are the ethical reasons. Looking into the practices of agribusiness, which include many dairies, it's difficult to argue that the way our milk is produced is humane. If you want some real shockers, look into how dairy cows are treated and what end they come to. If you have illusions of happy, placid, retired milkers grazing on a sunny hillside, then I have a few books you could read.

For all of you hard-core, I-could-never-give-up-my-cheese, lovers of all things dairy, those of us lucky enough to live in dairy country dotted with mom-and-pop dairy farms ought to take advantage of fresh home deliveries. Supporting small farms is one of the ways we consumers can begin to take down the insane, unethical and corrupt agribusiness industry. (end soapbox)

Day 11: An Old Demon Raises its Head

2009-05-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

The bulimic mindset is a difficult demon to exorcise. I'll leave it at that for now. :(

Also, very, very strange dreams last night including one in which I was pregnant, but had no idea who the father could be since I hadn't had sex for a year. Also, it was Thanksgiving and I kept inviting people to dinner at my house until I realized that I was the only vegan and I had no turkey. I sent someone out to get a turkey, more people kept coming and I was running around the kitchen, frantic, because I had overextended myself.

Breakfast:

1 banana
1 cup of coffee with soymilk and stevia

Morning Snack:

leftover vegan pizza
1 glass of water

Notes:

Day 10: New Recipes Coming

2009-05-27T04:45:00.000-07:00

I went to the grocery store yesterday and got some more veggies, fruit and a few vegetarian specialty stuff: vegan cheeses, non-dairy frozen dessert, tempeh, nutritional yeast, raw organic cashews. I've found some great-looking vegan recipes that I am dying to try out, like cashew cheese.

For today's lunch, I'd like to make a vegan cream of broccoli soup. We'll see how it goes. Also, finally, the last of the flatbread is gone. Thank god. I am totally powerless against it. The next time I make it I may have to freeze half the batch immediately so I won't be tempted to inhale it all at once.

Breakfast:

1 banana
1 cup of coffee with soymilk and stevia
1 glass of water

Morning Snack#1:

Green Smoothie
1 banana
1 mango
1 handful of baby spinach
1 cup of water
1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense food powder

8 almonds
small handful of raw sunflower seeds
1 glass of water

Morning Snack#2:

1 glass of water
8 grape tomatoes

Lunch:

roasted red pepper and garlic hummus and sprouts with tomato on whole grain bread
warm carob drink
1 glass of water
1/2 a tomato with hummus

Dinner:

homemade pizza with vegan cheese
3 glasses of water

Notes:

Recipes coming up for testing: vegan creamy brocooli soup; cashew cheese

I'll be making that carrot salad again soon.

I've ordered laptop lunch boxes for the girls' lunches. These are basically bento boxes. The girls are excited about all the things we can put in them. My younger daughter has really wanted a Dora lunchbox, so I thought that we could personalize her by decorating the top of the box with Dora pictures.

I wanted to test out the meltiness of the vegan cheese I bought the other day. It melted pretty well; it wasn't indistinguishable from regular mozz, but it actually looked like a typical frozen pizza when you take it out of the oven. You can still see the shape of some of the shreds. It browed well and tastes pretty good. I've heard good things about cashew cheese. Apparently it melts very well and can taste as cheesy as you want by manipulating the ingredients. Nutritional yeast is supposed to add a very realistic cheese taste.

Day 9: I think I've come down with something

2009-05-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

I think that the stomach thing from the other day may have been viral. I feel a bit better than I did yesterday afternoon, but my throat is still sore. I am going to keep a focus on fruits, vegetables and lots of water today and see if that does anything.

Also, I am re-reading Fast Food Nation before I start the companion book to Food, Inc. The Food, Inc movie is coming to a city not far from me in July and I'd love to see it. When I was at the bookstore yesterday I also bought Vegan With a Vengeance and Diet for a Dead Planet. I can't wait to get into those too. There's nothing better than some good, old-fashioned muck-raking journalism!

Also on my eventual reading list are: In Defense of Food, Stolen Harvest, the Hijacking of Our Food Supply, and Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatments inside the US Meat Industry.

My reading wish-list includes several more books by Shiva Vandana and Peter Singer's writings on ethics. There's also a book on raising vegan kids that I'd like to get my hands on: That's Why We Don't eat Animals.

I've started up my subscription to Vegetarian Times and Yoga Journal. I used to get both of them a few years ago, but dropped them. I think it's time to start them up again. I'm breaking out one of my yoga tapes too.

Breakfast:

1 banana
1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack:

Green Smoothie:
1 banana
2 rings of pineapple
1 oz baby spinach
1/4 cup of pineapple juice
1 cup water
1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food

Lunch:

2 flatbreads with crunchy peanut butter and sunflower seeds

Snack:

1 fresh apricot

Dinner:

1 garlic portobello veggie burger
1 tomato, 1/3 English cucumber
sprouts
gucamaole
1 glass of water

Notes:

I really have to get back to drinking more water.

Day 8: 3 lbs lost in week 1

2009-05-25T03:12:00.000-07:00

3 lbs gone in a week, not bad. It's not as fast as when I was on the South Beach Diet a few years ago, but this works for me too. I'm betting that it's healthier.

I was thinking some more about why I got sick yesterday, and remembered that I found an old baggie of nutritional yeast and tasted a bit to see if it was still good. I honestly couldn't tell if it had gone bad - can nutritional yeast even go bad?- but it was the only thing I'd done differently, if my stomach problem was a food poisoning issue. I remember hearing a doctor say once that the vast majority of sudden-onset stomach problems are because of some sort of food poisoning. This was nothing close to the times I had serious food poisoning when I was overseas, but it made for an unpleasant half hour last night.

Breakfast:

1 flat bread with peanut butter
1 glass of water
1 cup coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack:

Green Smoothie
2 bananas
3 rings of pineapple
2 oz baby spinach leaves
1/2 cup pineapple juice
3/4 cup water
2 T flaxseed meal

Lunch:

popcorn and water <--I went to the movies again, this time by myself :)

Afternoon Snack:

1 flatbread with guacamole, sprouts and sunflower seeds
2 glasses of water

Dinner:

2 flatbreads with peanut butter
3 glasses of water

Notes:

I noticed when I came out of the movie theater that my throat was sore. At first I thogt it might just be from the air conditioning. A few hours later at home I realized that the glands in the roof of my mouth and my throat were all swollen hard. I began wondering if maybe the stomach upset from the previous day wasn't a viral thing that was now making its way through my system. I went to bed early.

Day 7: A whole week in!

2009-05-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

7 days in and I've only had one serious craving for non-vegan food, and that was totally a stress-related craving, not a hunger one. I'm still struggling with what the best choice is for breakfast to set the stage for a good blood sugar level. Also, I think I could probably drop that one cup of coffee in the morning now if I really wanted to, going to every other day and then none at all. But I like my morning cuppa, so it stays for now until I find something better to replace it with. Yerba mate maybe.

Breakfast:

1 banana
1 glass of water
1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack#1:

1 flatbread with crunchy peanut butter
1 glass of water

Morning Snack:#2

1 jonagold apple
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello veggie burger (I seriously have to come up with a recipe for these...)
melange of roasted vegetables with avocado lime sauce*
2 glasses of water
2 handfuls of sunflower seeds

Afternoon Snack:

1 flatbread with 1T guacamole, sunflower seeds and sprouts
1 glass of water

Dinner:

1 flatbread
This was small because I got hit with an upset stomach. I can't imagine what could have caused it because I wasn't eating anything terribly different. The veggies are all fresh, and washed well.

Notes:

I think for the next few days I will try just a single piece of fruit for breakfast and then something a bit more substantial for the morning snack.
I am going to keep a sharp eye on carbs like bread and rice. I think that too much of even the whole wheat breads can throw my blood sugar off and start the cravings.
I am really annoyed at Blogger lately. It's screwing up my templates. I switched to the basic one until they work out the kinks or until I can figure it out on my own.
Ok, I think I've got the template problem squared away. We'll see.
Unsolicited comments about the diet piss me off. If people think that they ought to be free to poke at vegetarians, then the fat-asses out there ought to be prepared for criticism of every snack cake bite that they take. Really, just mind your own business, will you?
The other thing I've noticed just in one week as that all of a sudden people feel as though they have to justify their choice to eat meat and dairy.

I'll say it again: I don't fucking care what you eat. There's no need to say, "Oh, I only eat meat occasionally. I eat mostly chicken or fish anyway."

Good for you. I'm not your mom or your wife; I don't have to cook for you, you're an adult. I'm not judging you for your food choices, really. We're each of us only responsible for ourselves. When I say, "I don't care what you eat," I really, really mean it. No, really. No sarcasm at all; rare for me, I know, but there ya go. :)

*Melange of roasted vegetables with avocado lime sauce

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower, broken into large florets
2 onions, sliced thickly
5 large cloves of garlic, peeled, but left whole
1/3 red bell pepper, chopped
8 cherry tomatoes

1 avocado
3 cloves of garlic
juice of one lime
3 T olive oil
1 T sunflower seeds
cumin
chili powder
salt and pepper
water

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400.
Spray a roasting pan with olive oil (I use a Misto pump).
Put the cauliflower florets in the pan and top with onion slices and garlic cloves Roast for 10 minutes.
Take out and add the bell pepper and cherry tomatoes. Roast for an additional 20 minutes.
Make the sauce by combining the avocado, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, sunflower seeds and spices in a food processor. Pulse until smooth, then add the water until you get the consistency you like.
Serve the sauce over the roasted vegetables.

Note on recipe: Next time I may reduce the amount of garlic or use roasted garlic instead. Also I think I'll increase the amount of sunflower seeds.

Whole wheat flatbreads

2009-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

These are great, satisfying flatbreads that go well with falafel, hummus, peanut butter, curried dishes, just about anything.

Whole wheat flatbread

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons dry active yeast
2 1/2 cps warm water
5 to 6 cups of whole wheat flour (or a combination of whole wheat and bread flour)
1 T salt
1 T olive oil

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix together yeast and warm water. Let sit for 10 minutes in a warm place until the yeast mixture is foamy.
Add 3 cups of the whole wheat flour, one cup at a time, mixing well until you have a rough, shaggy dough that starts to drag on the sides of the bowl. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
Add the salt and oil, mix well and then add the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time until you have a nice stiff dough.
Turn out onto a floured surface and knead well for 8-10 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic.
Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, and let it rise int a warm spot for 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and divide in half. Section it into 8 pieces. Roll out each ball of dough to about 1/4 inch thickness.
Lightly coat the griddle with cooking spray.
Place a round on the griddle (mine can hold two at a time). Let it cook for 15 second, then flip it. Let it cook for about a minute until bubbles start to form, then flip it back over and let cook another minute.
Repeat with remaining dough.
Wrap the breads in a tea towel to keep warm.

Note: This will smoke the hell out of your house, so have the windows open and the fans cranked, but it is so worth it.

Day 6 : Refreshed

2009-05-23T06:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was cranky and irritable after the stressful meltdown I had with my kids. We had some long heart-to-hearts last night about behavior and why we act the way we do. We each pinky-swore that we were going to do out best to think about what's right. *sigh*

For me, I have to count to 10 before losing my shit. The girls though. OMG do they fight with each other over the littlest thing. They still seem to be in competition for my attention.

Anyway, I woke up feeling refreshed. We all did. I made sure we went to bed a bit earlier. I got a fan for each of us to have in our rooms, and I opened the windows. This morning everyone was more cheerful. I wasn't starving. It was like starting over with a clean slate. :)

Breakfast:

1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia
1 glass of water
6 almonds
1 banana

Morning Snack #1:

Green smoothie
2 bananas
1 mango
4 oz baby spinach
1 cup of water
3 ice cubes

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello burger
1 tomato
1/2 zucchini
1/3 large English cucumber
2 T hummus
pumpkin seeds
crunchy sprouts
alfalfa sprouts
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack#1:

3 small spoonfuls of pb straight out of the jar
6 almonds
10 peanuts
8 dried blueberries
2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack#2

6 peanut butter energy bites*
3 small whole wheat flatbreads
2 glasses of water

Dinner:

1 flatbread
1 glass of water

Notes:

I sat down with the girls and watched Supersize Me with them. What they managed to understand of the movie amazed them. I'm glad. I think that they're beginning to understand why I don't want them eating fast food. I hope that they remember this movie and see why I'll say "No," to cruising through the drive through.
I think that the next time I have them overnight, I'll suggest the next morning that we do a yoga or a workout video together. They really like it when we do something all together, and this is a good opportunity to get all three of us active together. Lucy is always picking my Turbo Jam videos and asking to do them. I keep saying no because I feel as though I'll look like a fat pig. How stupid is that?! I feel guilty for discouraging her because of some sort of pride or vanity or something. I need a bitch-slap to the head.
I'll look into the local mega-YMCA too and see how much a family membership is and what facilities and lessons they offer.
I got really hungry at about noon. I decided to make my homemade falafel and flatbread for dinner, but while I was waiting for the bread to rise I was craving peanut butter and whipped up the PB energy bites. Then, of course, when I was making the flatbreads, I scarfed down three right as they came off the griddle. I may do something lighter for dinner and save the falafel for tomorrow.
Maybe I should have had the green smoothie first thing instead of waiting to eat breakfast.
Carbs are my downfall, bread especially. A lot of fruit and vegetables tomorrow.

*Peanut Butter Energy Bites

I whipped up this recipe on the spur of the moment. Not bad.

1/4 cup peanut butter
1 T agave nectar
2 T sesame seeds
1/4 cup wheat germ
3 T flaxseed meal

Mix all ingredients well with a spoon and then shape them into balls and and roll them in a mixture of additional flaxseed meal and wheat germ.

Day 5: Energetic Bordering on Manic

2009-05-22T05:16:00.001-07:00

Last night, I don't know if it was because it was a bit warmer or what, but it took forever for me to fall asleep. When I was lying in bed, wide awake at 2 am, staring at the ceiling I thought, "Oh boy am I going to be hurting tomorrow morning."

But no. I woke up at 5:30 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not ravenous, not dying for caffeine.

I don't get it. I'm either on the verge of a hypo-manic episode or eating healthy for 5 days has had a significant effect already!

I'll be making that carrot salad again. My older daughter requested it. I am very pleased that the girls are taking an interest in what I'm doing and deciding to give it a try themselves. They fell in love with soy milk yesterday. We'll see if a few weeks of no milk might not improve my younger daughter's stomach issues.

Breakfast:

1 slice whole-grain toast with peanut butter
1 glass of water
1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack#1:

1/4 cup diced jicama* (see Notes)
1/2 tomato hollowed out filled with 1 T hummus
12 almonds
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello burger
1/3 of red bell pepper
1 tomato
1 zucchini
crunchy sprouts
1/4 cup hummus
2 glasses water

Noon Snack:

apple
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack:

popcorn (no butter)
1 glass of water

Dinner:

2 slices whole grain toast with pb
3 glasses of water

Late Snack:

banana

Notes:

Man, I am hungry today! I didn't sleep very long last night, and I'm not tired, but I am hungry.
I am also craving salt.
About jicama. This has been touted as the "Mexican potato," probably thanks to the popularity of low-carb diets. I've read in several places that we can replace our craving for french fries and other potatoes with jicama. It's got a very low glycemic load, so it doesn't have the carbs to spike our blood sugar. They say you just slice it up, sprinkle a little seasoning on it and presto! Guilt-free fries!

Bullshit.

Now I actually like jicama; it provides a satisfactory crunch and has a light taste, but it is in no way potato-like despite its appearance. It is juicy and slightly sweet. The best way to describe it is as a cross between a water chestnut and a pear. It makes a lovely snack, but if you bite into one expecting the lovely, greasy mouth-feel and tongue-dancing saltiness that you get from fries, you'll be seriously disappointed.
OK I know I said this earlier, but oh my GOD, I'm hungry. It's 10:50 am and I'm having my second morning snack. I wonder if this is tied to the pb toast I had for breakfast. I've also noticed that I need to keep up my water consumption.
I have noticed that the nights I have my kids here it's a little more difficult. I get scattered and distracted when I'm running around taking care of them. The stress level is higher, and I've long known that one of my responses to stress is to cope with food.
(6 pm)Wow, do I ever react to stress with food and food cravings. We had a busy afternoon. I took the kids to the movies and we shared a plain popcorn and had bottled water instead of soda. Everything was fine until the ride home, when they started fighting. I started yelling and immediately I craved nachos. Salty, cheesy, crunchy, greasy carb-heaven. And soda. Sweet, sweet liquid Satan. Even as I made my dinner of peanut butter toast, I knew I should be eating a salad of fresh raw veggies.
(8 pm)I am sitting here, tired, cranky and irritable. I have that itchy feeling I get when I don't want anyone near me. I'm snappish still because I will get no break from the kids until tomorrow. If I were married, I could leave the room and go off by myself while my spouse took a turn with them. I have no escape. Hell, I told the kids that before I was going to make supper was going to to take a nice calming shower, and the younger kid had to come in and pester me because "I just want to be with you always, Mommy." Yes, even while I am shaving my pits. Jesus I need some locks on these doors.
The thing is, I am not hungry at all, the craving came about as a knee-jerk reflex to my stress level going up.
My energy level has tanked because I got so ticked off earlier.

Skeptics and Haters

2009-05-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, there's nothing that brings the skeptics and haters out of the woodwork like saying the word "Vegan." Why is that?

I think that it's because people's knee-jerk reflex to "Vegetarian" or "Vegan" is the apparition of a militant, proselytizing neo-Hippie who's not happy unless everyone else is perpetually unwashed, wearing hemp and reeking of patchouli. Also, lots of people invariably think that Vegetarians and Vegans are going to start attacking everyone else for their food choices.

So I say to the haters and skeptics, "If you have that urge to Poke a Vegetarian, think first and then shove it."

*deep cleansing breath* Ah, I needed that.

I'm only on day 4 and already I've been hit with some of the predictable responses. Let's take a look:

"Oh, you'll never be able to do it."

This phrase is flipped out smugly with that knowing smirk.

You know, when people imply that they know me better than I know myself, that pisses me off and makes me more determined to show them that they're presumptive assholes.

"Next thing you know, you'll turn into one of those dirty hippies who smells like fenugreek and cabbage farts."

Ok, sure. Trust me I won't eat enough cabbage to smell like cabbage farts, ever. I ate so much cabbage when I was living in Estonia to cure me of that forever. Also, I don't particularly care for fenugreek.

"Great. So that means you're going to criticize every bite I take?"

Don't flatter yourself.

This may sound crazy, but I believe in an individual's right to choose, whether it's to eat meat, soy or both; drink water, booze or absinthe; smoke tobacco, sage or reefer. Unlike some more militant Vegetarians, I don't give a damn what other people eat, so really, why the hell should they care what I eat? I am not doing this to preach and be holier than thou while others dine on meat.

"Are you crazy? Vegans all look sickly, pale and too thin!"

Sure, like in anything, there are Vegans who go too far and are too thin and malnourished. I have seen plenty of fit and healthy vegetarians though. I think that keeping nutrition uppermost in mind will help. We'll see. :)

"I just don't want you to over do it and get sick."

This is from the same person who has told me repeatedly through my life, "Oh, you'd be so pretty/so much prettier if you only just lost some weight!"
I swear, it doesn't matter what I do, this person has some way to put a negative spin on it. Talk about mixed signals! So I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't. So screw it. I plan on ignoring it.

"You're going to lose too much weight!"

Trust me, even with a limb amputation, a breast reduction and a hair cut, I will never be "too thin."

According to the CDC, 66% of American adults (aged 20-74) are overweight or obese; broken down further, 34% are obese and 32% are overweight. For the first time, those who are obese have overtaken those who are merely overweight. Only 32% of adult Americans are of a healthy weight.

Granted, a lot of this is from our sedentary lifestyle. A lot of the weight and health problems would go away if folks (me included) got up off their lazy asses and worked out 30 minutes a day.

I think that people's perceptions of thin and too thin are skewed because the environment has gotten fatter. The norm is not a healthy one, so if I want to lose weight by eating fresh fruits and vegetables while eschewing meat and dairy, it seems to be a healthy way to go at it rather than overtaxing my heart and kidneys with high-fat, high-protein diet plans.

"You're going to become some sort of eco-terrorist freak like those PETA people."

Yes, the ethics of veganism do appeal to me, but no, I don't see myself tossing buckets of pig's blood or ketchup at people wearing fur or leather. I've always struggled with the thoughts of the once-alive animals as I was tearing into my burgers. I'd always been able to rationalize it for various reasons, like how damned yummy it was.

I don't think I want to do it anymore, but I'm not going to tell other people what they can or can't eat.

That's not bad for only 3 full days under my belt!

It's weird, there's nothing like food issues to bring out vicious criticism and prejudicial attitude, whether it's looking on in smug satisfaction at the obese woman in line in front of you in the checkout aisle whose cart is full of snack cakes, chips and family packs of meat; in exasperation at the hordes of people at the end of the month using WIC to pay for their multiple carts laden with name-brand food; or revulsion at the neo-Hippies smelling of fenugreek and cabbage farts wheeling their carts stuffed with produce and soy products, right?

Why do people care so much? There seems to be an immediate reaction that other people's food choices reflect on their own. Someone may see the obese woman's cart filled with crap and think, "Well, it's no mystery how she got that way." Then, after seeing the health freak vegetarians cruise past, maybe those same people feel that the tables have been turned and the vegetarians are looking at them as if they are the fat woman in the muu-muu, so they go on the attack with "sickly," "freaky," and "crazy."

*sigh*

This will be a great opportunity for me to grow a thick skin.

Day 4 : 2 lbs gone

2009-05-21T04:23:00.001-07:00

I stepped on the scale and I've lost a solid 2 lbs. Yay!

Ok, I can hear you now. I know it's "just water weight," people, but really, 2 lbs is 2 lbs whether it's fat from my ass or bloat from my waist. I'll take it. Don't be such a hater.

Breakfast:

Green Smoothie
1 1/2 bananas
1 medium apple
1 cup water
2 handfuls baby spinach

2 glasses water
1 multivit, 1 Evening Pr Oil, 1 flax oil, 1 fish oil

Morning Snack#1:

15 almonds
1 glass of water
1 cup of coffee with soymilk and stevia

Morning Snack#2:

Sweet and Spicy Carrot Salad Oh my, this is a good recipe!
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic and portobello veggie burger (I know, I've had these like 3 days in a row, but they're really good)
sesame and soy roasted asparagus and green onion
2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack:

1 large apple (Jonagold) w/ peanut butter
2 glasses of water

Dinner:

Brown basmati rice & curried red lentils with cucumber and tomato (Still. What can I say? I made a bigger batch this weekend than I'd anticipated) <--I know that some carbs are trigger foods for spiking my blood sugar, but I wanted to test this out again with the rice. I ate less than I did before and got full quicker. Go figure. I did feel as though I was in a good blood sugar state today. No cravings.
1 glass of water

Notes:

No headaches at all anymore, and the brain fog in the morning has dissipated and I've only had one cup of coffee per day for the past two days. That's a huge improvement over where I was last week!

There's more of a spring in my step now. I don't feel that lead weight dragging me down anymore. I know that that is probably mostly mental, since I've only lost two pounds, but the enhanced energy has got to be from eating better foods

I find that I am visualizing more. For example, my water consumption is way up, and with each glass, I imagine that it is flooding my system and washing out toxins. Now, who knows if it's actually doing anything, but I've always noticed that visualization has a huge affect on my state of mind.

Sweet and Spicy Carrot Salad

2009-05-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a recipe I'm planning on trying out soon. I'm not sure how much agave nectar I'll need because I've never used it before. I've read that it's a common replacer for honey, but it's not as viscous as honey. I'm planning on starting with a tablespoon of it and then moving on from there.

Sweet and Spicy Carrot salad

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons ground flax seeds
2 tablespoons hot water
juice of ½ lime
minced, fresh ginger
agave nectar
1/4 teaspoon of smoked Spanish paprika
dash of cumin
salt and pepper to taste
2 large carrots, grated
mandarin orange segments
1/4 cup walnuts, whole or chopped

Directions:

Put the ground flax seeds in a small bowl and add the hot water. Stir and allow to sit 10 minutes until thickened.

Add lime juice, ginger, agave nectar, smoked paprika, cumin and s&p. Taste and adjust seasoning

Put the grated carrots in a bowl.

Add the dressing and mix well.

Fold in the mandarin oranges and walnuts.

Serve chilled or at room temperature.

High protein energy bars

2009-05-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

I love to cook. I enjoy using tried-and-true recipes and tinkering with them to see how far I can go. I also love creating my own recipes from nothing more than the vague idea that "Gee, I bet that would taste good!"

I have a recipe from the bag of Bob's Red Mill Wheat Germ. I made these once and gave them to my kids, who loved them. I'll include the original recipe and add my comments on how I plan to adapt it.

High Protein Energy Bars

Ingredients:

12 oz carob chips
8 oz peanut butter
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup sunflower seeds (raw, shelled)
1 cup coconut, fine macaroon
1/2 cup sesame seeds (natural brown)
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup finely chopped walnuts

Directions:

1. Melt together carob chips, peanut butter and margarine, then pour over and mix well with sunflower seeds, fine coconut, wheat germ, nuts and sesame seeds.
2. Press into buttered 9x13 inch pan.
3. Chill and cut.

Yields 24 bars

These were tasty, reminiscent of peanut butter-chocolate bars.

I made the recipe pretty much as-is with the exception of using butter instead of margarine. I never, ever use margarine. Also, I used finely shredded unsweetened, unsulphured coconut instead of the sweetened shreds.

My one complaint was about the texture of the whole sunflower seeds in there. I decided that the next time I'd make them I'd pulse all the seeds and nuts in the food processor to get a smoother texture.

Vegan adaptation:

I am thinking of eliminating the margarine/butter altogether. I have never tried vegan margarine, and don't think that oil would be good in this recipe. We'll see.

I will try melting the carob chips alone in the microwave in 30-second increments and then adding the peanut butter. If the texture isn't melty enough, I may add a light-flavored oil, but the peanut butter I like is Teddie all natural peanut butter, with the oil floating right there on the top, so I imagine that there's enough oil in there to get the right texture. If not, I may give a vegan margarine a try.

I am definitely going to grind the nuts and seeds finely. I may substitute almonds for the walnuts though, just because I have a ton of them. I'm even wondering how essential that whole cup of nuts even is. I may reduce the amount by 1/2.

I will probably line the pan with parchment paper or waxed paper so I don't have to butter it, because frankly, the idea of coating it with cooking spray isn't appealing.

When I do make these, today or tomorrow, I'll post a picture. :)

Day 3: Weird dreams & thoughts on my kids

2009-05-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

Oh my God, my dreams last night! I had a ton of food-related dreams; some people were tempting me with bags of chips. Another time, I broke down and bought a bag of potato chips, but the cashier and bagger withheld them from me since my account was flagged as a raw foodist. Weird. There were also 2 erotic dreams in there. Holy smokes.

I first woke up at 5:30 to drag the trash out to the curb, then I laid down on the couch and fell right back into the weird dreams. Then I woke up craving peanut butter and toast. No headaches today and I'm doing great on just 1 cup of coffee.

Note: 10 am: Ok. I just got back from picking up Kid#2 from school because her "tummy hurts." She said that she doesn't feel pukey, just that her stomach hurts. This kids is more of a puker than her sister. She's a huge milk drinker and a grazer, eating smaller meals, but quite often. I asked her what she'd had to eat since I saw her last and she said that they had McDonald's last night and cereal with milk this morning. I have to say I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I am tempted to pull her off drinking so much milk and see if her stomach issues don't improve. Since this is a split-household, it's hard to keep track of what the kids are eating, and I don't want this to turn into some parenting contest either, but the eating habits we have when we are kids set the stage for the rest of our lives. *sigh*

Breakfast:

1 slice whole grain toast with 1 T crunchy peanut butter
2 glasses of water
1 large cup coffee with soymilk and stevia

another glass of water

Morning Snack:

1 large apple (Jonagold, yum!) with peanut butter
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello veggie burger
1 small zucchini, diced
1 medium tomato, diced
2 T hummus
1/4 cup crunchy sprouts
2 glasses water

Afternoon Snack:

2/3 of an apple
1 T peanut butter
1 glass of water

Dinner:

brown basmati rice with curried red lentils, chopped cherry tomatoes and chopped cucumber
2 glasses of water

Snack:

30 pistachios
1 glass of water

Snack:

small handful of trail mix
4 cherry tomatoes
1 glass of water

Notes:

My hunger has leveled out, and my body has adjusted to the increase in water; I'm not running to the bathroom every 20 minutes like I was on Monday.
I'm taking my time eating, not inhaling my food and having at least one full glass of water (10 -12 oz) with each meal.
With the increased amount of raw vegetables and fruits, the food is bulkier, higher in fiber, I really feel fuller, longer.
No headaches at all today, which is a nice change; I've had constant headaches for the past 6 months
Ugh, me and carbs. It's only 3/4 of an hour since I finished eating the rice dish for dinner and already I am craving something. I think that the brown basmati rice is too much of a trigger for me. I need to re-read the glycemic index charts and keep choosing foods with lower GI numbers. I even added way more raw veggies than rice, but still feel the cravings. I did ok with the peanut butter toast this morning. I have eliminated all pasta from my diet; I may have to do the same with rice.

Day 2: Thirsty and Hungry

2009-05-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it through the first day and it wasn't hard. I didn't have the insane carb-cravings I usually get at the beginning of the South Beach Diet, and to be honest, I didn't even have many carbs yesterday. The carob drink was a lovely surprise.

I also felt some spring in my step when I was out at the store. I didn't have that lead-weight feeling that has been plaguing me the past year.

I do have the headaches from detoxing as all the shit in my systems leaches out. I even had dreams about detoxing on a juice fast!

Breakfast:

Green smoothie-
3 bananas
2 rings of pineapple
3 oz baby spinach
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup water
Put it all in a blender and mix well.
Drink!
I drank about 2/3 of that and put the rest in the fridge
This was delicious. The pineapple-banana flavor took center stage. There was no hint of the spinach's bitterness, though it was most certainly green!
1 glass water
1 multivitamin, 1 fish oil, 1 flax oil, 1 EPO
1 cup coffee, soymilk and stevia

Morning Snack#1:

Babs's Warm Carob Drink (I was really cold and wanted something warming)

Morning Snack#2:

small apple with peanut butter
1 glass water

Morning Snack#3:

1 avocado, diced
1 can Rotel tomatoes and chilies, drained
juice of 1/2 lime,
salt, pepper and chili powder
2 glasses water

Note:(10 am) I am really hungry today. Maybe I need to have something with the green smoothie, or maybe I'm doing ok eating every 1 1/2hours or so. We'll see how this plays out.

Lunch:

garlic portobello veggie burger (from Veggie Patch)
1/2 English cucumber, diced
1/3 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup crunchy sprouts
1 medium tomato, diced
1/4 cup of hummus

1 glass water
1 cup ginger tea

Snack:

2 TB crunchy peanut butter straight from the jar
1 glass water

Snack:

remaining 1/3 of the green smoothie

Dinner:

garlic portobello veggie burger
1/2 English cucumber, diced
1/3 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup crunchy sprouts
1 medium tomato, diced
1/4 cup of hummus
2 glasses water
1 Evening primrose oil capsule, 1 flax oil, 1 fish oil

Snack:

2 glasses water
1 tomato, chopped
1/4 cup of jarred salsa
1 Tb fresh lime juice

homemade corn and red pepper tortillas/crackers<--recipe still in flux
1 cup coarse corn meal
1 T salt
1 1/2 t chili powder
1/4 cup corn kernels
1/3 of a red bell pepper, sliced
1 T olive oil
appr 3/4 to 1 cup very hot (near boiling) water
Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Put corn and bell pepper in food processor, pulse until coarsely smashed.
Add the corn and pepper mixture to the dry ingredients, drizzle the olive oil and mix well.
Slowly pour the water and mix until it is all incorporated. Spread mixture onto a greased cookie sheet and flatten with a spatula.
Spray the top with olive oil (I have mine in a Misto pump bottle) and sprinkle with sea salt
Cook in a preheated 425° oven for 12 minutes, then flip it, respraying and salting. Put it back in the oven for 5-7 minutes.
Take out and enjoy.

Ok, these were very, very tasty, but not quite dry and crisp. The next time I make this I may have to see if I can flatten them more, or perhaps add more dry ingredients, like more cornmeal or flaxseed meal for a drier dough. I could knead the dough with the extra meal. Perhaps I'll let them cook longer or even drop them by spoonfuls and flatten them that way instead of one large piece. The edges were browning nicely, so maybe smaller is the way to go.

Notes:

I was quite thirsty all day
I woke up earlier than I have been the past 8 months and I did not wake up ravenous
My headaches were much less noticeable
There were times that I'd get up and move around, and I felt the absence of that heavy weight tied to my waist. I actually felt lighter.
I started out really hungry, but it leveled off by the end of the day.
Also, I meditated for a half hour. It felt good to start that up again.

Day 1 : Holy Detox Hell!

2009-05-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

I am going to post my food journal here for now as a means to keep myself motivated. I kept an online weight loss journal when I was on South Beach, and it really helped me to focus.

Breakfast:

1 medium apple with natural peanut butter
1 glass of water
1 multivitamin, fish oil, flax oil, evening primrose oil
2 cups coffee with Splenda and Silk Very Vanilla Soymilk

Morning Snack#1:

pumpkin seeds and roasted salted sunflower seeds
1 glass water
1 cup Vanilla Strawberry Rose tea, unsweetened

Morning Snack#2:

2 tomatoes, cut in half and hollowed out, filled with hummus
1 glass water

Lunch:

brown basmati rice and curried red lentils with chopped cherry tomato
1 glass water

Afternoon Snack#1:

roasted almonds and dried blueberries
1 glass water

Dinner:

2 tomatoes, hollowed out with hummus and sprouts
1 glass water

Snack:

Babs's warm carob drink (see Notes)

Late Snack:

bowl of sweet corn with herbs
1 glass water

Notes:

I went grocery shopping today and got a ton of great produce.
I also dug out my food dehydrator and juicer. I'd love to try some of the raw food recipes for the dehydrator like the veggie and flax seed crackers. I've also found several green smoothie and juice recipes that would make a good drink for breakfast.
I'm looking forward to making my favorite cleansing juice: apple, beet, carrot, greens & ginger. It's truly delicious.
I'd like to find recipes for the fruit and veggie pulp too. It's a shame to just toss it, such a good source of fiber.
I had a slight headache when I woke up this morning. Yesterday I didn't have the usual amount of caffeine, so I think that's where the headache came from.
I had another headache a bit later on and I remember getting them on the first day of the juice fast I did a few years ago, so that could be the body's natural response. Ironically, I did feel peppy today when I was out and about, so I think I can bear the occasional detox headache. :)
I may try making a warm drink with soymilk and carob powder. It might make a nice pre-bedtime snack.**

**I did make it and it's very tasty!

Babs's Warm Nighttime Drink

Heat up some vanilla soymilk in the microwave for 90 seconds.
Take it out and add carob powder and 1 packet of stevia.
Stir well, mixing all carob powder thoroughly.
Pop it back in the microwave for 30 seconds.
Stir and enjoy. :)

The Future of Food

2009-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America -- a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

We all should watch The Future of Food.

I watched it this weekend immediately after re-watching Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, and it made me even more conscious of the fact that most people don't think a great deal about what they are putting into their bodies. Eating has, by and large, become a mindless, automatic activity, and food preparation even more so with the preponderance of boxed mixes and frozen meals. I've always enjoyed cooking from scratch, and although I am a lousy gardener, I appreciate the flavors and benefits of the freshest produce possible.

After watching The Future of Food, I am even more determined to be mindful of what I am using as fuel for my body and why. Vegetarianism & veganism have always interested me both for health reason as well as ethical ones. In my love of meat, I have been able to eat it even though with each bite I have felt guilty about all the nameless cattle who walked into the abbatoirs to provide us with those delicious steaks.

For some reason, I have an easier time of it if I tell myself that I am doing this for health reasons. I guess you could say that I take my health more seriously than animals' health. For now, anyway.

Vegan Again

2009-05-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

22 years ago I became a Vegan briefly.

Since that time I have run the gamut of diets and eating philosophies: South Beach, Ornish, full-fledged omnivore, but I've always come back to thinking about Vegetarian/Veganism.

Recently I've been feeling fatigued and cold all the time, have had problems with hair breakage and unexplained weight gain. I thought for sure that it was my thyroid, so I scheduled an appointment to see my doctor for my yearly physical. Many blood tests and one step on the scale later, we found that my thyroid was not the culprit, but that my cholesterol and other results were really quite good.

We guessed that my being a lazy-ass was the culprit. I resolved to start exercising, perhaps to take up morning yoga again. I thought that this might be a good chance to drop the meat and dairy from my diet. When I'd adopted a vegetarian diet back when I was 18, I lost a ton of weight fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I had not read a lot about how to maintain a vegan diet in a healthy way, and was unable to sustain it.

I've read a lot more since then, and with the powerful search tool of the internet handy, finding new recipes to test and like-minded people for support is easier than it ever was.

Here's to my journey. :)