Tag Archives: tofu

Hunger Monster

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I have a test tomorrow morning (and you know I haven’t studied!) so I’ve got to keep this quick.  I didn’t eat anything that exciting today anyways.  Mostly I just at a LOT.  I was a hunger monster today.

For breakfast I made the husband and myself smoothies with silken tofu, frozen strawberries, honey, and So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk.

How awesome is that color?

During my 2.5mile incidental exercise walk home I snacked on a vegan chocolate chip cookie.

And when I got home I tried something new to me – Rutabaga Fries!

The husband peeled and sliced a big rutabega up for me yesterday and today I baked it for 30minutes at 400*.

I’ve seen this all over blogworld recently but I wasn’t sure I’d like it so I only used part of the rutebega.  Well one bite in I hopped up and put the rest of it into the oven!

It was amazing.  The flavor and texture are a lot like oven baked potato fries but they had this awesome nutty aftertaste.  I highly recommend that you go out and get a rutabega and try this for yourself.

I’d been wanting popcorn all day long so I finally caved and bought a bag.

I tossed the lame bag popcorn in some melted Smart Balance Light and 2T sugar to make some homemade vegan kettle corn.  Mmmmmmn!

I was still hungry so I made some homemade pizza dippers.

I sliced up a mini pizza crust and sprinkled it with garlic salt before baking.  Dipped in marinara.

And for the second half of “dinner” I ate a serving of Van’s Homestyle Pancakes with maple syrup.

Not my healthiest day by far, but a very very tasty one.

And I’m out.  See you after my test tomorrow.  Don’t forget to enter my yogurt maker giveway!

Noteworthy Nibbles

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Most of today was spent at the nearby amusement park, Darien Lake.  We had a fabulous time (and season passes, so we’ll be back soon!) but it was raining when we left so I didn’t bring my camera.  Since I don’t have pictures of everything I’m going to take a page from Cait’s plate book and just do the highlights.

(1) Breakfast = Van’s Homestyle Pancakes with homemade Banana Roux and a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar.

The pancakes were good, but the Banana Roux might just  be my most genius idea of all time.  You can click the title for the recipe page, but this batch used Smart Balance Light and Silk Almond Milk.

Note – yesterday’s Berry Breakfast Topper has its own recipe page as well.

(2) Dessert, homemade milkless milkshake.

Genius + more genius = holy frick this is amazing!  I took Diana’s maple slushie idea and made it into a milkshake.  Into my blender went 1serving silken tofu, half a tray of ice-cubes, 1cup So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk, and 1/3cup maple syrup.

 Yum!

What were some of the highlights from your weekend?

Ecstasy and Irony

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I haven’t been all that impressed with my Sociology class.  I like the content a lot because it’s so similar to Anthropology, but my classmates aren’t exactly honor students.  Therefore, I’m always kind of torn about what to wear to class because I don’t like “wasting” a cute outfit.  Sometimes I just go with it though –

Looking spiffy just for me (and the husband during our carpool time) is worth it because it puts a smile on my face.  Today’s awesomeness went far beyond the outfit though ….. Note – this post is filled with bragging and over-excitement; you’ve been warned.

Perhaps today was extra awesome because breakfast was so tasty.  This combo rocks my socks off –

I topped my bowl of Kashi Strawberry Fields and Silk Pure Almond milk with a big handful of blueberries.

Gaaah!  This is the best almond milk on earth.  It is thick and creamy and has none of the nasty aftertaste I’ve found with other brands.  This is also the best Kashi variety in the solar system.  The crispy flakes have achieved a level of perfection in the sweetness and the freeze-dried berries get the best consistency when they start to get soggy.

After I dropped the husband off (and he told me how cute I looked) I headed to school early to get my study on.  I like the subject matter, but apparently not enough to study for my test the night before.  And I really wanted to study in the hour before class, but mostly I just daydreamed about what I’m making for breakfast this weekend.  (It is important to my bragging that you note here that I didn’t exactly break a sweat studying for this test)

I also snacked on a serving of Apple Cinnamon Kathy’s Krackers.

Class went well.  We talked about deviancy and, oh yeah, I scored a 47/50 on my test.  Highest score in the class (most of the other grades were below a 30/50), go me!

After class I had some errands to run so I decided to combine grocery shopping and studying into one.  I picked up some Wegman’s hot bar and sat and read.

I tried to keep my portions pretty small to save $.  Asian bbq tofu and wok seared veggies.

The tofu was not awesome.  More like inedible; here’s what I ended up leaving on my plate –

Thank goodness I had a pack of Banan-a-peel Peeled Snacks in my purse.

They were super chewy and took me awhile to eat so I had time to feel full before I started shopping.

On the way home I developed a new workout plan: 1. Move to a neighborhood with terrible parking.  2. Purchase a humongous watermelon because it’s on sale for $3.99.  3. Trek from your parking space to your apartment carrying said watermelon.  Repeat as necessary 🙂

When I finally got myself home I discovered the other awesome excitement –

I think this wins for most ironic moment of vegan month!  A few months ago I submitted a recipe in a Foodbuzz contest and I won a year’s worth of free eggs!  I think that qualifies for a 2nd go me!!!!!  Our budget has been severely restricted for next year and this will definitely help our grocery bills.

Go ahead and brag, tell me why YOU are awesome!

No Sesame, Soba, or Savoy

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The plan for dinner tonight comes from an old (like, September old) issue of Health magazine: Miso-Marinated Tofu and Eggplant Over Soba Noodles.  You can click here to see the original recipe.  However, make the original recipe we did not.  Apparently the husband and I are both stupid.  Like, seriously.  And cheap.  So to recap; click above for the original recipe and read below for our changes.

  • I used 14oz of extra firm tofu
  • I skipped the garlic
  • I used evoo instead of peanut oil
  • I skipped the sesame oil (I would not recommend this, I’m sure it imparted a great deal of flavor.  We are too poor for nut oils though)
  • I used 10 oz of bok choy instead of Napa cabbage (because that is what the husband bought when sent for cabbage ….. he’s going to be a doctor folks!)
  • I used buckwheat noodles instead of soba noodles

Here’s what we ended up with –

It was actually quite tasty, although I can see how the sesame oil would take it over the top.  I loved the stickiness of the buckwheat noodles!

For dessert I stuck a spoon into the last serving of Biscoff spread.

Just, yum!

Do you own sesame oil?  What sort of dishes do you use it in?

A New York Kind of Day

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Today was perfectly fantastic!  I ate all sorts of great food and we ended up walking more than 5 miles; basically it was my favorite kind of day.  It just felt like a Saturday in the city.  Perhaps because I dressed like I was in New York?

I’ve been trying to drink less (less, not no!) diet soda this month.  If vegan month means I’ll be eating no dairy – bone building – then it needs to also mean I’m eating no less chemicals – bone leaching.  I think iced tea is the answer, especially because it well help me to drink more water too.  Last night I mixed 5 cups of water and 7 bags of Eggnog’n in my new pitcher,

and this morning I made myself a big gulp.

FYI – Eggnog’n totally works just as well better cold!  The husband loved it too, and he usually drinks his iced tea with tons of sugar.

Other things the husband is currently loving?

S.S. Sea Salt Somersaults.  He made himself a big baggie to carry around all day.

Our first stop of the day was the farmers’ market.  It was pretty picked over by the time we got there, but Adam got some great homemade maple candy and shared a piece with me.

Wegmans – our next stop – was apparently where all the local goods were at –

We also got some hibiscus iced tea lemonade.

Once we got home and had all the groceries safely shelved we headed back out, this time on foot.  Our original destination was the Greek Festival,

but there was an admission fee and the food tent was mostly meat.  We trekked on (and on) until we came to Mezza, a brand new Mediterranean place that just opened yesterday.

At that point it had been more than 16hours since I’d eaten any solid food so pretty much anything would have sounded good!  Thankfully Mezza was just good, period!

I got Baba Ghanouj,

and stuffed grape leaves.

Picture lots of pita with that too.  Everything was ridiculously fresh tasting.  Usually Baba Ghanouj tends to be kind of greasy and heavy but this was totally light.  The husband thought he only liked falafel, but he loved everything he tasted today.  He inhaled more than half of my orders!

I probably shouldn’t have been quite so generous, because we’d barely made it down the block before I realized that I was actually still pretty hungry!  When we walked past the co-op we made a hot bar stop.

Vegan cheesy noodles and Pad Thai, Hunan tofu with broccoli, and 2 pieces of Southern-style tofu.  I ate while I walked which was messy but fun.  By the time we reached our apartment we’d covered more than 5miles, love that incidental exercise!

Later in the afternoon I found it totally necessary to inhale this coconut milk tapioca pudding.

It gave me a tummy ache but was soooo worth it!

I have to get up early because we have fun plans tomorrow and lots of studying to do (my first soc exam is on Monday).  In the interest of time and laziness we are going to eat popcorn for dinner and cuddle on the couch before bed.  Peace out!

What is your favorite Mediterranean offering?  Mine is stuffed grape leaves, the texture and taste of the leaves is just so interesting.

Successful Sunday

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Finally, some productivity!  Actually doing something today was a nice change from Saturday’s pace.  Although I did sleep in still 🙂

Lunch was very, very orange.  An everything Bagel Thin with extra sharp cheddar and a honey tangerine.

With a serving of Guylian chocolate shells for dessert.

Followed by a run.  In today’s workout one bad turn deserved another; I ended up running further than planned once I realized how stupid it was to have gone without sunblock.  I really do have to stick to my pace plan and up my time gradually, but it did feel great.

  • 5minutes walking
  • 10minutes jogging
  • 5minutes walking
  • 3minutes jogging
  • 3minutes jogging

2.6miles in 26minutes.

Afterwards a trip to the mall with Katie was in order.  I wish I could tell you I was excited about my purchases, but basically I had to buy clothes for summer school because my pants don’t fit.  Woot.  More on that in tomorrow’s post.

The mall trip took longer than anticipated (why the frick are all the pants at BR/J.Crew/Gap so cheap and thin looking right now?!) and it was easy for Adam to talk me into hot bar for dinner.

Grilled broccoli,

wok seared veggies,

vegetarian meatballs = yums,

curried tofu salad,

and chick pea salad.

It turns out I went a little too vegetarian because this wasn’t all that filling.  I ate a cookie dough Balance Bar when I got home to finish filling up.

And I’ve been working on my binder project ever since.  I’m going back to immerse myself in blissful filing, hope everyone else had a great weekend!

Sheetz Envy

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The weekend is coming to an end, and it’s been a long but fun day.  I have a lot to do before bed so I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet.

As predicted I did some snacking last night; the boys were eating jalopeno poppers and they sounded to good to resist.

It was 1am though and I wasn’t even really hungry.  All of which is yet another testament to why I should stop doing things like staying up until 2:30 in the morning!

This morning I got off to a healthy start with some from-home-food; 1cup Kashi h2h with skim milk.

We slept in, and my almost 5 year old niece of course did not, so lunch came very soon after breakfast.  Her choice was Arby’s, so I went with a turkey bacon ranch sandwich.

I wasn’t all that hungry so I ate half of my food and gave the rest away.

We went out in the yard for a game of catch and some bubble blowing and by the time Adam on I were on the road at 2:30 I was finally feeling my lunch hunger.  I did some nutritional sleuthing online before we left and found that my brunch (cereal + sandwich) had ~400 calories so I aimed for a 500ish calorie car snack.  I do NOT count calories, but I do think they are usefull data for abnormal eating situations.

Can I just say, I am sooooo jealous of anyone who lives near a Sheetz!  I managed to cobble together an amazing, healthy meal for the car.  A Naked coconut juice box.

A Sabra hummus and pretzel pack.

And a small fruit and cheese plate.

I can’t even explain how thrilling it was to find this type of food at a gas station.

By the time we rolled back into Buffalo it was after 7pm so we stopped in at Moe’s to pick up dinner.

Jr sized burrito with pino beans, a smidge of rice, cheese, pico, guacamole, and cilantro.

The texture was good, but this was actually a little bland 😦  I’m feeling hungry still and I’m going to be up late so I’ll almost definitely eat something else later.  My camera needs to charge so no pictures, but I’m eyeing my CF spicy chicken leftovers.  Hope everyone else’s weekends got wrapped up nicely!

New York, New York

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My apologies that this post is delayed, but I knew it was going to be a loooooong one.  On Monday, after a weekend in PA with my in-laws, Adam and I traveled “home” for a day in New York City.  I grew up in St. Thomas, went to college in Miami, and currently live in Buffalo, but the 2 years and I spent teaching in East New York and living in Park Slope are the ones I am always homesick for.

It rained, hard, all day but nothing was able to dim our spirits.  We ended up not being able to do the trip we had originally planned – on the agenda was a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge – but it was a fabulous day nonetheless.  We skipped all of the tourist stuff, and instead did all most of our favorite things to do when we lived in the city. 

Physically it probably wasn’t the healthiest day: we walked too much on my hurt leg and ate way too much sugar.  But mentally it was just what I needed.  I Love New York.  All of the reasons people complain about the city – the crowds, the noise, people walk too fast, you can’t drive – are all of things I love best about it.  I adore the crowds of people, and it helps that I’m naturally a fast walker and a walk lover.  I think New Yorkers are friendlier than the rest America and the ‘concrete jungle’ is my definition of beauty.  I was obviously raised to love the beach, and I can see the magical quality of the dessert and the allure of the fairy-like sense of the forest, but the city is where I feel most with serene.  I love the buildings, the gardens, the graffiti.

Adam and I got into the city around 10am.  As soon as we hit the Verrazano Bridge we both started to smile.

We actually parked the car in ‘our spot’ in our old neighborhood for the day.  We didn’t have a car until we moved to Buffalo so when we lived in Park Slope we did a lot of walking.  Most days when I got home after school I would walk the 8+ blocks from my subway, then the 8+ blocks the other direction to Adam’s subway, and then back home, in addition to the walk in the morning and making at least one trip out at night.  7th Ave feels more like home to me than our apartment did!  So our first item one the itinerary was a long walk down 7th Avenue.

We stopped at Pinos pretty much the second we got out of the car.

Pinos used to be our spot for pizza, we had it at least once a week for two years.  In fact, it was such an institution that I mentioned watching Scrubs and eating pizza in my wedding vows!  I split a plain slice with the husband.

And he saved me his crusts to dip in my diet coke.

Delicious!

I think Park Slope is one of the most beautiful spots in the city.  There are so many interesting and beautiful things to look at.

Just to give you an idea of how much we walked, we covered 2.5miles before we even left our neighborhood!  All that walking made us thirsty, so we headed to ‘Snice, our favorite vegan spot.

We split a vegan malted milk-less shake before we headed to the B Train.

Then we headed uptown for a walk in Central Park.

We were statues for a little bit,

before we headed inside Whole Foods for a break from the weather.

I managed to resist the pull of the salad bar but we did a little sampling.  I had about 4 shot glasses worth of food, but was told I couldn’t use my camera in the store?!

Next we headed to Delancy.  We cut the ambling a bit here because we had a mission – Sugar, Sweet, Sunshine!  SSS is our favorite spot in the city.  They have cupcakes – delicious, crumbling, innovative, wonderful cupcakes, for a $1.50, unheard of in the land of Magnolia Bakery.  We always used to bring our visitors here.

Honestly I could not decide on my flavor, I ended up getting two!  It took a lot of willpower, but I cut them in half and shared with Adam, ultimately eating only one full cupcake.

Strawberry with cream cheese frosting.

This was a seasonal flavor that I’d never tried before and I am so glad I decided not to skip it.  Cream cheese frosting is always a favorite, but what made this was the actual chunks of strawberry in the cake.

Pistachio.

This.  This cupcake is my favorite thing on earth.  I don’t even really like cake, usually I lick the icing off of cupcakes and am done with it, but the cake part of this is even better than the icing.  It is pistachio perfection.

In an absolute sugar/love cloud we hopped on the F Train and headed down to Cobble Hill, an artsy little area of Brooklyn.

As we walked around we spotted a bar with an Abita sign (my favorite) so we stopped in for a beer.

I drank most of my Christmas Ale, then switched with Adam and polished off his Turbo Dog.

Our real destination in the The Hill was Trader Joe’s.  My parents requested 10gagillion #s of unsulphered dried fruit and we picked up a few staples for ourselves as well.

Carrying multiple jars of TJ’s Sun Butter = so worth it!  I also bought a honey Greek yogurt to get a little protein into my day.

And we stopped in at Starbucks for some calorie-free rehydrating.

Our final stop was back to Park Slope for dinner with Lana, one of my oldest friends.  We hit up Beet.  If you read my old blog and saw all the Thai food we ate at Mango, Beet is its brother restaurant.  I love how funky all of the restaurants are in the city.

And Beet was totally artistic; my diet coke had a straw wrapper rose in it and Adam’s scallop fried rice came in the shape of a star.

I ordered the Pad See Eiw with veggies and tofu.

Buffalo has been totally unable to satisfy my Thai cravings, but this hit the spot!  The Pad See Eiw I’ve had since we moved can’t even compare to how good this is!

We were sad to say our goodbyes to Lana, but it was 9pm and we had a 7+ hour drive ahead of us.  You know how that turned out already, but I will add in the fact that Adam drove the entire way home and basically deserves ‘Best Husband of the Year.’

All in all, it was a fabulous day in the city.  The husband and I both gave it a 100%.  The rain might have been frustrating, but the temperature was perfect and we were comfortable all day.  It sucked that my leg hurts, but I managed to walk a TON.  We did exactly what we wanted to do and came home feeling invigorated.

Have you ever been to NYC?  Love it or is it not for you?