Tag Archives: vegan

I Love Green Monsters So Much I Want to Marry Them

by

I’ll get back to the title in a moment.  First, did you read my last post?  It explains all about the situation with my half marathon.  Please do read it, I would love some input from my wise readers.

This morning I stretched breakfast and lunch out and together across 3 small snack-meals.  First things first, a lemon poppyseed cookie.

Then a small bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch with plain skim soy milk.

Finally, my new love – I made my first green monster!

I blended 1 frozen banana with a squeeze of honey, 1cup frozen spinach, and 1cup oj.  Holy yum!  This was tangy and healthy and awesome.

I’ve got to run now to go pick up Adam on my way to school.  He needs the car but he is going to sit in on Anthro with me this afternoon first and I am so excited!  I’m probably going to be late at school waiting for Adam and we have some may-jor cleaning planned for this evening so don’t get to anxious for an evening post 🙂

Have you tried gms yet?  What do you think?

I’m a Chickpea Kind of Chick

by

I did go to the Spot as planned, but first I had a few other things on the agenda.  Like eat a lemon poppyseed cookie –

And do the quickest gym trip ever: 11minutes (1.14miles) on the treadmill followed by 10minutes of strength training.  I was on a tight schedule and I didn’t want to do much anyways because I’ve got the strangest interval session ever planned for tomorrow morning.

My study session went very well, and while I was there I ended up accidentally ordering a FEAST.

The diet coke was obvious, but the roasted red pepper hummus sounded tasty so I ordered that as well.  I had no idea it was going to be so big!

I ate 3 breadsticks and ~2-3T of hummus, thankfully Adam showed up later to finish off the rest.

I enjoyed a cara cara orange when I got home,

and then I made a delicious dinner, officially checking off all my to-do’s for today, yay!  We had the 2nd half of this box of falafel mix to use up,

but this time we fried the falafels.  Which was hella fun because it meant we got to use our tongs for the first time.

Frying produced such better results than when we baked them.  Our side dish was delicious too, against all odds.  I made Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, and Olives from Cooking Light, but I realized to late that my olives were not pitted.  I went ahead with the dish, sans olives, but I cooked it for about twice as long as the recipe recommended.

All total dinner was a raging success!

Pretty good for a Monday 🙂

What is your favorite way to eat chick peas? I like falafel the best, then hummus, but I want to experiment more with roasted.  That method is taking blogworld by storm and I think if I slow-roast it could become a favorite.

Death and Taxes

by

Hey guys!  Sorry for rushing out on you last night, I managed to get to the hospital just in time so that neither the husband nor I had to wait.

This morning I went with a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast before volunteering.

I topped 1/3 cup oats with a splash of soymilk, a big shake of cinnamon, 1t maple syrup, and natural peanut butter.

Delish!  The mix of flavors in this was great.  I usually am not the biggest oats fan (especially without banana) but lately it’s been tasting so good to me.

Volunteering went well today, they kept me super busy for a change.  There’s another volunteer on my same shift now and we get along really well so it makes the time pass all the more quickly.  On my way out I used my lunch voucher to fill up a little container of pineapple.

Then for lunch lunch I made a big plate of roasted veggies.

Okra fries,

and kale crisps with garlic powder on them.

Sadly my tasty lunch was ruined by the fact that I was on hold for 15+ minutes trying to get my W-2 form.  I still just can’t quite get myself away from the soul-crush that is the NYC DOE.

I have plans for a study date this afternoon at the Spot and then a quick but fun dinner.  Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Have you started your taxes yet?  Do you go it alone or have someone/a service help you out?  We are using H&R Block this year.  Our goal was to finish them weeks ago but the lack of w-2 forms is really gumming up the works.

When Life Hands You Lemons

by

It’s been a packed (but great) day and I have to leave the house in exactly 15minutes to pick up the husband from a hospital shift so I’ll make this speedy.

Our last night of family time was a lot of fun.  We watched “Zombieland” which was actually pretty fantastic.  I did some pretty serious damage on these chips and salsa (2-2.5servings) before I told the husband to take them away from me.

Then I switched to a much more munchable baby carrots.

For breakfast the boys hit up McDonalds, I want to call their food greasy but it’s hard to judge when you ask for a diet coke before 10am.

I was starving so I made up 2packets of oats.

Mmmn!

We streeeeeeetched out our goodbyes but finally got on the road around 11, our trip was an easy 4hours.  When it was my turn to drive I ate a medium french fry from Wendys.

Really quick – the point of the vegan challenge is sooo not to eat french fries but my only options were fast food that I could eat while driving and I was starving.

I can’t even tell you how proud I am of the dinner I pulled together with our empty fridge.

It was so healthy and tasty, rocked my socks!

Quick quick – while the husband cooked some balsmatti rice I marinated 1/2 a package of chopped tempeh in apple cider vinegar and tamari.  Then I sautéed an onion on the stove, and added in a can of collard greens.  Finally I poured the tempeh and marinade into the skillet, added a pinch of cornstarch and cooked.  The bowls were rice, greens, tempeh, + your choice of seasonings.  I did a big dollop of chilli garlic paste.

Perfection!

I had to drop off the husband at his shift and then I did some restocking at the grocery store.  On my drive home I grabbed a  Simply Lemonade.

For $1.50 I was pretty darn impressed with this.

And it was the perfect match with the baking I did when I got home!

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies from Eat Drink and Be Vegan.

I had two and was, as usual, blown away by the awesomeness of the recipes in that book.  Sweet and tangy and yummy.

Now I’ve got to split, I hope y’all had a great weekend!!!

Packed Snacks Save the Day

by

It’s been a great day of family fun.  Bowling was great; especially because we had the bumpers up so I scored more than a 40 for a change!

While at the alley I snacked on a Buddy Fruit pouch.

Mushed fruit pouches are kind of my favorite thing but I never buy them because of the packaging waste.  However, the road trip seemed like a good excuse and it was a nice treat.

I tried to eat this Chocolate Green Superfood bar.

Eeeeeeyuck!  I had a bite, and I regretted it, the flavor tasted way off to me.

Unfortunately the superfood bar had been my main plan for the evening and I was starving by the time we made it to dinner.  I had a slice of bread (x2).

I’m not 100% that this was vegan but I was starting to feel faint by the time we sat down.

For my meal I ordered a plain veggie wrap.

Another failure; the wrap was chunks of cold lettuce with cooked peppers, which I hate.  I demolished the fries but couldn’t even choke down half of the sandwich.

Thankfully I had a better back up plan for dinner.  I’ve been eyeing these Allergaroo packages for months and I was glad to have an excuse to buy one.

The nutritional stats were pretty impressive and the meal was super tasty and ready in under a minute.  It would be super easy to stir in some veggies to this too.

All total this was probably my hardest day of the vegan challenge.  I am still pretty hungry (starving actually) and will definitely do some snacking this evening.  We are heading home tomorrow so I’ve got to soak in some family time but I’ll do a snack recap in the morning.  Good night!

What “for kids” foods are you a fan of?  I kind of love them all 😉

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

by

Good evening everyone!  I feel exhausted and gross (still?!?!) so I’m keeping this quick in the hopes that I get to bed soon.  I always say that, it never happens, and still I keep on hoping.  It’d be like not clapping for fairies to admit I’m an “early to bed early to rise” loser.

Our grocery trip went well.  The communal coin jar was full and Coin-Starring it paid for our groceries 🙂

This afternoon Adam and did all sorts of healthy stuff like take a long nap and split this Jokerz bar (i.e. a vegan Snickers).

It was good but not great, I’m not sure why they went with mockolate instead of just dark chocolate, I had about 1/3.

For dinner I made Tomato, Dill, Lentil Soup from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan.  It had a 60minute simmer time though so I had a small bowl of cereal while I waited.

1/2 cup Kashi Go Lean Crunch with plain, reduced fat soymilk.  Two notes here – 1. I know Kashi has honey in it; honey and gelatine are still on the menu here, even during the vegan challenge.  2. Always measure your cereal.  You guys know I am not any sort of dieter, but I always measure my cereal.  Many (healthy) varieties are still calorie dense and it is such an easy item to overeat.

Followed by a small serving (1/2cup) of the aforementioned soup.

I’m not gonna lie, I was saving myself for dessert.

Thank You Angela!  To Die For Cocoa, from Oh She Glows

·         Ingredients:

  •  
    • 3/4 cup coconut milk (full strength, not light!)
    • 3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (or any milk)  I used plain, fat free soy
    • 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
    • Pinch of sea salt to bring out the sweetness
    • 3 tablespoons of maple syrup
    • marshmallows and cacao nibs/chocolate chips to garnish (optional)

Directions: Throw all ingredients into a pot and whisk like crazy. Bring to a boil and then simmer on low for several minutes while whisking to remove clumps.

I poured it in one big mug but I’ll probably drink 1/2 – 3/4 and then put it in the fridge for the husband.  A perfect (super) sweet note to end the day! 

What do you do with your lose change?

Mini Explosions

by

I did not have another mimosa last night, but did make a decidedly Northern dessert.

Mmmn.  However, today was NOT feeling as romantic.  It seemed like everything I touched today exploded!  I was cleaning up messes and putting out (metaphorical) fires all over the place.

For starters I was running late for volunteering so I made my breakfast smoothie a bit smaller than usual.

1cup frozen mixed berries + 1cup plain fat free soy milk + 1T fat free sugar free jello powder.

It was super tasty, but I spilled 1/3 of it all over the counter 😦

I managed to clean up the mess and get to the hospital on time though.  And they actually had a lot for me to do at volunteering which was nice.  Not nice, was 30minutes after my shift when I was still there and I started panicking about getting home in time to make my important phone calls.  No worries though, it’s President’s Day, no one was open.  Boo 😦

And I was supposed to submit my college application today but since there was no one to help me override the system I have to wait until tomorrow to imput my Caribbean high school into the online form.  I did some major damage on this bag of chips during the whole 2hours of failure.

At least they were vegan!  Next I tried to recreate last night’s dessert, only to have it explode all over my microwave.

On the plus side, now my microwave is sparkling, and I put it to good use on a late lunch.

Tandoor Chef Vegetarian Pad Thai is seriously my favorite frozen meal of all time and it’s super awesome that it’s vegan too.  If you see it at your grocery store, buy it!

I had hoped to go to the gym today finally but I’m feeling just under the weather enough still that it seemed like a bad idea.  I would kill for a diet soda so maybe I’ll at least get in another walk (I walk to/from volunteering).  Other than that the plan is dinner and bed.  See you then.

Anything explode on you today?  I’m all ears if you want to gripe about it?

A Tropical Getaway

by

I may be stuck in Buffalo until spring break but tonight’s meal felt like a tropical getaway!  And what better day to celebrate the sunny Caribbean than a day that’s all about romantic getaways?!

Every single aspect of tonight’s meal was tropical and tasty.  We started with a Uniq fruit as our appetizer.

We have tried Ugli fruits before, but this was our first Unique.  It was a little too bitter/sour for me.  We each ate 2-3slices from the mound and the rest got packed away.

Dinner was much more successful.

Lime Ponzu broccoli with walnuts,

and my Coco Loco Tofu.

Everything together was delicious.

Coco Loco Tofu is my favorite tofu recipe, it is the perfect blend of savory and sweet.  For the side dish I sautéed a big bag of frozen brocoli in clementine olive oil, then added a few walnuts and some Kikoman Lime Ponzu Sauce.

The sauce came from the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program and was the perfect addition to our Caribbean night.

Even our drinks were tropical!  We made hibiscus mimosas.

I’ve carried this hibiscus juice from Brooklyn and I was almost sad to open it.

For the mimosas we used a little extra oj because the champagne (from our wedding!) wasn’t cooled, with a splash of hibiscus juice.

Wonderful!

I’ve got to work on my lab before we head to bed, but I’ll probably be pouring a 2nd mimosa!  Have a great night lovers!

How did you celebrate Valentine’s today?