Lasagna!

I found a few recipes for lasagna and blended them together to make this!  It's quinoa black bean lasagna with my pasta sauce I canned last week, (premade) ricotta with mozzarella cheeze and cashew alfredo sauce on top.  It turned out DELICIOUS!  The only things I would do different is make my own ricotta and add the broccoli to the inside of the lasagna.  I would also like to make it with zucchini noodles instead of pasta so I can eat it and not feel guilty.  Braden even ate it and didnt complain once.  He had an epic meltdown for over an hour about the cheeze nachos I made the night before (which are his fav), but he didn't complain once about this and ate it three meals in a row.

Baby it's cold outside... chili time!

I wanted some chili sooooo bad yesterday!!  I have always loved Wick Fowler's 2 Alarm chili but never made it veganized.  So I decided I was up for the challenge.  

I used a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes with green chili flavor (I dont remember seeing any actual green chilis but didn't really look.  It was organic, a brand name Muir i think), 2 8 oz cans of tomato sauce and about 2-4 cups of water.  I cooked it in the crockpot for 2 hours then added 3 cans of RINSED kidney beans for another 1 1/2 hours. DELICIOUS!!!  I usually cook dried beans but didn't start them in time to use. Luckily I had a few cans of kidney beans.  I read to rinse the canned beans real good to help reduce gas/stomach issues.  It rinses the skin or something like that off.  I could look it up but I'm tired and unmotivated.  Regardless, me and Braden both ate it and for the first time, the chili didn't upset my stomach!!!  I was worried because it usually does.  Even Amy's vegan canned chili makes me sick.  Crazy sick actually.  So maybe I just got lucky.  Maybe it's the lack of grease, I don't know.  

I'm rambling and exhausted. I'm calling it a night!

Can he get any cuter??!!

Stinky's lunches

When Braden stays with his dad, he eats lunch at school (or I bring it to him).  I was up there one day bringing his lunch but he had beat me to it and gotten the school "lunch".  I use parenthesis because I don't think it should even qualify as food!!  This is what he got - an applesauce cup (fruit), cold and soooo disgusting french fries, a "burger" (meat), and celery w/ranch (vegetable) with chocolate milk to drink (dairy).  Water wasn't even an option.  I sat there so upset that children are eating this garbage!  I"m pretty sure I could take him to evil McDonald's and it would be more nutritious than this.  DEFINITELY tastier.  YUCK!

So, after that I got even more determined to make him good meals for lunch.  

This is what I brought the day he was eating what can only be described as a mutant hamburger meal. It's Nachos with black beans, Daiya cheese, corn, and my taco seasonings in meatless ground beef (soy free, pea protein is used.  Beyond Meat is the brand).  With of course my salsa, guac and veg sour cream.  One of our favorite meals around here!!

This was a basic sammich lunch.  Chicpea sammich with cheese (I probably used real sliced cheese since I don't want him eating soy products too much and I think that's all I had at the time was soy sliced cheeze or reg).  Some cooked sweet potatoes and blueberries.  

The same day as the chicpea sandwich, I joined him for lunch with my usual nachos. Except I used potatoes instead of chips.  Delish as always

Can't forget the pearsauce!!! That kid sat there and ate the entire jar of it!  Everyone thought I was crazy making 40 lbs of pearsauce.  Braden loves it and so do I.  I yummy treat with nothing in it but PEARS!

PB&J with pearsauce and grapes.  He's since seemed to develop an issue with PB so gone are the days of easy PB&J lunches  =(

This is an "outside the box" kinda lunch.  Mama was feeling creative the night before.  I made hummus nugguts with sweet potato fries and some pasta with broccoli and cauliflower.  The pasta was a sauce I made myself - oil, lemon, etc sprinkled with veg parm (cashew, nutritional yeast).  

He ate the nuggets the night I made them, but none at lunch.  Can't win em all!

Veg "meatballs" with my homeade spaghetti sauce (best yet!), olives, salad and grapes.  He would eat olives with every meal if I could afford em!

So these are some of the lunches I send with him.  They're usually just the previous night's leftovers.  The weird thing is, they come back usually all the way eaten EXCEPT when I've had my lazy days and sent junk!! I've sent fish sticks, hot dogs and they come back uneaten!  I guess that tells me what to do!

He still loves to eat the garbage at school of course.  Just like I prefer eating a big hunk of bread or bowl of noodles.  We always want what's bad!  For the most part, he gets to eat up there on days his daddy takes him to school unless the food on the menu is so bad I'd feel guilty letting him eat it.  Then I just take something up there.  It's been a fun journey with him.  A journey I didn't expect him to be a part of, but he loves it!

Pasghetti

I made this a week or two into my journey and decided to post this as a reminder to ALWAYS CHECK INGREDIENTS!!!  I bought these meatballs that were delicious!!  But then I realized they had egg whites in them.  BOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  It was a good lesson to me on how sneaky these premade companies are with sticking egg products in these vegetarian labeled meals.  I now know to make sure I only buy pure vegan stated brands for my lazy meals.  I forget that vegetarian means eggs and cheeses!  Since coming to this realization I've found that a good portion of the things I stocked up on that first (and very expensive) trip to the store is not vegan.  But you gotta live and learn!  I've since discovered Natural Grocers and don't have to worry about it much anymore.  This store should just be called Vegan's heaven.  for every regular item, there are 5 vegan options.  It's pretty ridiculous.  I just want to buy a cot and live there.  Seriously.  I'm in love.  But moving on, my recipe for that spaghetti sauce is one I want to remember because I've never added mushrooms before and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I started with a premade sauce (short on time and lazy that day) chopped up about 4 plain jane white mushrooms as finely as I could, added my dried oregeno and basil from the garden, garlic, salt, pepper, and some fire roasted tomatoes.  Let it simmer for 30-45 mins while I had Stinky take a bath and did random things around the kitchen.  Then I boiled my quinoa spaghetti noodles for about 4 minutes, drained them and returned them to the pot with spaghetti sauce to finish cooking them (approx 4 minutes)  I learned this trick from Anthony Bourdain.  Finishing your noodles in the sauce helps them soak up that sauce.  

I really love these quinoa noodles but am still learning how to cook spaghetti with them.  One thing I notice is it seems to take more to make the same amount it would with regular pasta.  I'm not sure if they shrink up or part of them get drawn out in the water.  I have no scientific explanation for this but everytime I make them, I end up making a second batch because it's never enough.   

 

WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME???

Dilemmas in veganism...

I guess this is a good problem to have.  But my fridge and pantry are overloaded!!!!!  It looks so purty though.  All those colors....

catching up

A few recipes from the slacker....

Here are a few recipes from my first few weeks.  

This was my alfredo made with zucchini noodles and vegan (cauliflower) alfredo sauce.  I actually made Braden a traditional spaghetti but he wanted to eat all my "cchini noodles" and alfredo. A month later and he still prefers zucchini noodles over regular.  What did I do right with this kid??!!

 I try to only use sweet potatoes when cooking but had a ton of red potatoes on this occasion and no tortilla chips, so I used the taters as my chips.  They were of course delicious! How can you go wrong with potatoes?!!  Words from a true carb addict.  I used Quorn grilled chicken (NOT a fan!), corn, black beans, Daiya cheese and my own mexican seasoning.  It turned out DELICIOUS!!!!

Asparagus - baked at 350 with coconut oil and lemon.  Plain and simple.  As long as I take it out when I'm supposed to instead of finishing that glass of wine.  

Yet another failed attempt to be a nice mom and give my kid real pasta.  He retaliated and ate all my "chinni noodles".  I also gave him sugar snap peas, asparagus, tomato sauce and salad.  He not only ate his cheese free salad, but proceeded to eat mine before I could get to it.  Once again I wonder what the heck I did to have a kid that loves this food.  He must be a born vegan!!

lunch randomness

I didn't know what I wanted for lunch so I threw together a little of everything that sounded good. Except chinese food.  I really wanted my pad thai/lo mein but I'll save that for another meal.

  So I decided to go with a chipotle black bean burger with mustard, veganaise, pickles and 2 different cheeses.  I'd never had Daiya's havarti jalepeno cheese and was skeptical, but OMG! It gets all ooey and gooey and delicious!!!!  The other thing I had was a leftover trash taco.  That's what I'm calling it from now on.  I use my regular ingredients plus anything else that I have leftover and want to add!  This one has quinoa, corn, black beans, sweet potatoes, carrot strips and avocado.  I'm thinking I'll have this again tonight.  My addiction to these tacos is borderline crazy.  But I'm ok with that....

salad nachostravaganza

Well after my last post about the tacos, I was craving them but gave B a choice.  And he asked for nachos!  So YAY!!  Here we go with yet another vegexican meal.  That's my new word.  Or maybe Vexican.  Or Mexigen.  Vegan.  Mexican.  You get it.

 So I have been anti salad lately.  Me and Braden ate them every meal for 2 months and burned ourselves out.  But I splurged the other day and went to Jason's Deli AND Mooyah with stinky.  But never ate what we got, so I was determined to eat it tonight. Braden devoured the salad, but was too full and way too cranky for very much of the main course.  He had played outside for hours and was so worn out after his bath.  The second picture perfectly depicts his mood!!!

I did put real cheese on his nachos.  I enjoy the fake stuff, but try to limit it (especially for Braden).  I'm still convinced it's what caused the migraines I started getting when I went vegetarian 7 years ago and filled my diet with nothing but unhealthy foods and soy based "fake" meats.  So I really don't want to fill my baby or myself with that.  I havent used any cheese (real or fake) this week and thought he might enjoy it. I try to keep it to once every few meals I use soy cheese and as far as the real stuff with B, this is the first time I've used it since I started. I've been blessed with a pretty awesome kid that prefers the healthy food.  I'm a lucky mama...


Later today I'll post what all I put in the nachos. Off to get the bubs!!

Sweet potato tacos

This is the first thing I made after breaking my fast.  It's sweet potatoes, corn and beans that I cooked with my taco seasoning (mex chili powder, paprika, cayenne, cumin and salt)  Then I added avocado and low carb tortillas.  Simple and delicious.  It was so good, I was literally thinking about it until I made it again the next day and have had it at least 8 more times in the 3 weeks since I broke the fast.  A few times I've added vegan sour cream.  Yummy either way.  The crazy part is I'm such a picky eater!  I don't even like sweet potatoes and I've NEVER been able to go without cheese.  Now I'm obsessed with sweet potatoes and am completely happy with avocados as a cheese sub.  Ok, now I want these again.  yummmmmmmmmmmm

Post numero uno

Well here it is, the blog I've been thinking about making since I started this journey.  After the suggestion of several friends that loved my Facebook pictures of recipes I was playing around with, I decided maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Against my own judgment, I'm going to keep this blog public.  I don't like feeling like a bunch of people are reading my mindless ramblings, but I'll run with it for a while.

Sooooooo...... it all began with a fast.  A 24 hour fast at that.  I ate a small meal on a Tuesday, planned on fasting until wed. night.  Wednesday night came and went and I didn't feel hungry so I figured "what's one more day?".  Well!!!  Thursday was AWFUL.  I mean so bad that I couldnt stray from home longer than the time it took to get my boy to and from school (which took 4 minutes max).  And even that time was sketchy.  Of course I chose to do that the first day of his soccer practice I was helping coach.  Luckily it was only 45 minutes.  But I was so sick.  Stomach flu, wanted to die sick.  I had this feeling deep down that it wasn't a sickness like a virus but a sickness like I had been poisoning my body for years with over processed garbage, dairy and horrible sodas/coffee.  So I stuck it out that day.  The next morning I woke up with more energy than I'd had in YEARS!!!  I was ready to go!!!  I ran around and did errands, cleaned the house, went walking, then napped!  The thing with fasting is you get exhausted so quickly. Especially when it's 100+ out. But luckily you're much more in tune with your body at this point and just need to listen.  Listen when to drink water.  Listen when to lay down.  Listen when your body says enough is enough.

 I'll keep this short - I stuck with this fast for 10 days.  I DID juice as well.  Not until the third day and  not a ton of juice, just enough to sustain me and reduce the dizziness and only when my body felt it needed more than water.  I might come back and add more on the fast later.  I kept a journal but don't want to put it out in cyberspace right now.

I knew I needed a lifestyle change and researched different diets for when I started eating again.  I kept going back to plant based, but refused to entertain that thought. Who in their right mind lives without cheese???? Then I made myself watch Forks Over Knives.  At that point I decided to challenge myself with plant based eating for just 2 weeks.  I never had been able to go without dairy before. Meat was easy, cheese not so much.  Which is ridiculous because dairy makes me so sick!! But hey, I'd already gone 10 days so what's 14 more?!  A few days before ending my fast I started to look up recipes (which I should say is torture when fasting but cooking is my life and cooking is what I missed most in the fast.  NOT eating!  There are even a few times during the fast I cooked for when I assumed I would break it!  But then I kept continuing and had to trash it, but still worth it - as stupid as that sounds.  I realize now how much cooking/eating is purely social).  I committed to the "challenge" and drove all the way out to central market 3 days prior to ending the fast.  I honestly could've kept going with it, but I was so dang excited to try all these new recipes, that's the reason I broke it.  Stupid I know.  We all have our level of crazy  =)

ANYWAYS- 3 weeks later and I'm still a plant eater.  I'm starting to think I might just be an herbivore the rest of my life.  My son loves it.  And "loves" is an understatement!  I send purely plant based for his lunch and he comes back with nothing but crumbs.  When I try to hide flavors of veggies or meat alternatives I make (such as tonight's hummus nuggets), he wants them plain.  He's embraced it more than me and his 5 year old self doesn't even realize what he's doing!!

One of the strange things I've noticed is how much more I taste artificial things - when I drink the same tap water I've drank for 4 years now, all I can taste is the plastic from the water bottle. When I drink it out of a glass (NOT PLASTIC), it's delicious! It's like I'm suddenly sensitive to all the unnatural chemicals!!  I'm definitely more sensitive to tastes that never bothered me before.  And, as silly as it sounds, it's a slap to my ego because I've always made fun of those people that insisted on water filters.  I might just have to swallow that pride and get one!!!

Onto the fun stuff - RECIPES!!!!  I'm going to post what I've been feeding bubs and myself.  I started  by using lots of the fake cheeses and processed vegan foods but in the past week have made an effort to do without.  What's the point of eating no cheese but substituting "fake" cheese that's just as bad, if not worse for you? (Ahem horrible, no good soy)   So I'll save that for the cheat days, if needed.  The weird thing is I dont feel the need for cheat days because this doesnt feel like a diet!!! I love what I eat.  I love cooking these foods. And mainly - I never feel sick or that gross heavy feeling from tons of meat and cheeses!!!

It's late (and by late I mean 10:15), so I'm calling it a night.  I'll start posting pics of what we've eaten the last few weeks in the morning!!!!