Friday, December 31, 2010

Tofu Scramble and Herbed Wheat Drop Biscuits

Making the last breakfast of 2010 the best one yet!



(You can find both of these in Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch!)

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Vegan Paninis and Nachos!

Veggie burger panini on fresh-baked Italian bread!


Nachos with black beans, spices, Daiya, lime juice, and hot sauce!





Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Baked Sweet Potato "Fries"

Sprayed with olive oil (via my new air pump sprayer!) and baked on parchment paper at 425 for what seemed like forever, then sprinkled with Mexican adobo seasoning!


Also pictured: lentil burgers that I didn't love. I used too much fresh thyme and oregano.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Chocolate Cookie Dough Ice Cream!

So about a week ago, I put cashews, water, maple syrup, agave, and cocoa powder into a blender. Then I added frozen balls of vegan cookie dough and put it into an ice cream maker, and here's what came out! It's amazing! (And I know I've been posting nothing but junk food lately... I swear I've been eating much better than it looks!)




Vegan chocolate chip cookie dough (I modified it to use less liquid): http://www.theppk.com/2008/11/chocolate-chip-cookies/

Vegan chocolate ice cream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn0p7gkiDg8

If you make this, I would suggest freezing the cookie dough overnight, then adding it in when the ice cream is almost done, because my dough kind of disappeared into the ice cream. It still tasted really good, but it froze really hard in the freezer!

Soaps and Stuff!

Do you know the one thing that's even more difficult than EATING natural & vegan? Getting clean!

I like to use ONE bar of soap in the shower. No body wash, no face wash... just soap! Did you know that there's beef fat in a lot of soaps? Like my old favorite, Ivory... gross! Here are my two new favorites:


Trader Joe's Oatmeal Ginger Almond Soap













Dr. Bronner's Pure Castile Peppermint Soap














Shampoo and conditioner have been the toughest thing yet. I'm used to salon shampoos (Bed Head, Paul Mitchell, Matrix, etc.) so I'm probably pretty picky about these. Burt's Bees didn't cut it (greasy!) Aveeno had more crap in it than I expected, and is made by Johnson & Johnson, who test on animals. The only thing I've found so far that makes my hair look and feel nice AND seems to have good ingredients/business practices is Yes to Tomatoes. But honestly, it makes my scalp itchy!



















And deodorant... that's a huge one. I was wearing clinical strength stuff before, and now I'm only wearing Tom's deodorant. It's a huge change, and I didn't smell too great for a while, but I think it's been getting better. The only time it has really failed me so far is during our xmas visit to Dustin's parent's house, because they had their heat set to 85! I nearly died... and I smelled pretty bad! I really don't want to use anti-antiperspirants anymore unless I really have to. Unfortunately, I'm going to need a replacement for this at some point, because Tom's was purchased by Colgate. Sad, because I wanted to try the apricot scented stuff! :(






Finding an acceptable toothpaste was a nearly IMPOSSIBLE task. I was ready to start brushing my teeth with plain baking soda! (Okay, so I've actually done that before and wouldn't recommend doing that straight from regular toothpaste.) This kind from Trader Joe's seemed like it would be gross (fennel? And WTF ARE propolis and myrrh, anyway?) but it wasn't at all! The peppermint oil mostly overpowers everything else, and I love it!









Face lotion was also a tough one. I have really sensitive skin, so I live in fear for 24-48 hours after putting anything new on my face. I'm also the kind of girl who laughs at women who spend $50 on a tiny pot of cream that they hope will make their skin look like that of an airbrushed model. I even scoffed at the $15 per 1-1.5 oz. jars of Burt's Bees, Yes to ___, etc. at Target. I figured I'd find something before I used up the last of my Aveeno, and I did! A huge 4 oz. pump bottle for $4.99 at Trader Joe's! It smells a bit strong, but it didn't irritate my skin at all and the smell is GOOD. It's not greasy or anything and I am sooo happy with the price!
















My body lotion was kind of an impulse buy while xmas shopping at the mall. I'm not sure if this is completely safe.

Introduction Part II

Thank you so much to everyone who has shown interest in my blog! It's good to know that I'm not just rambling to myself here (although I'd probably still be doing it even if I was.) I got a few questions on my introduction post that I want to address. I guess I didn't really go too deep with my explanation about exactly why I'm doing this, so here it goes!

1. I've always admired people who are vegan. I LOVE animals, and it always felt sort of hypocritical to me to say that, yet still be a part of an industry that is a direct cause of their suffering. I've never liked to cook meat at home, but I've been so lazy that I just ate whatever fast food joints made available. That needed to change anyway, so I figured "why not just make vegan stuff if I'm going to be cooking all the time?" In my opinion, animal products like milk and eggs are worse than the flesh itself, because of the extra crap the animals endure while we obtain those things from them. Being vegetarian (but not vegan) because you care about animals never made much sense to me.

2. I watched a bunch of documentaries about the food industry and read some books by Michael Pollan (Food Rules and In Defense of Food,) and I feel like they really opened my eyes. I hate to be one of those people who reads/watches something and then acts/feels "so enlightened," and preaches about it to everyone else, but I can't help it. I thought I knew a fair amount about the subjects, but I was completely ignorant to a LOT of things about the food industry and nutrition. I feel kind of stupid now for admitting that I never really put that much thought into something as important as what I put into my body multiple times a day and where it comes from.

3. I've struggled with my weight as far back as I can remember. My mom says it started when we got a McDonald's in town, but I don't know if things would have been different if we hadn't. I grew up in a pretty stressful environment, and I've always used food to comfort myself. For years, I had little to no coping skills. To me, "stress management" involved a LOT of pizza and chocolate. Sometimes I considered it a success just to get out of bed and go to work... so what if it came at the cost of a 60 pound weight gain?
I've lost weight and gained it back more times than I care to think about. I really thought the last time would be the last. I got active by playing roller derby, and it was so much fun until I let other things in life (a job I hated) consume me. Everything became stressful... especially playing a sport that I wasn't naturally good at in a very competitive league. I gained back everything I lost PLUS 5 pounds, and playing at this weight would just be dangerous and stupid for me.

4. My current weight is where it gets very scary for me. Everything bad already seems to be hereditary (although a lot of these things *could* be the result of crap diets, so what I'm doing will be helpful either way.) My mom and dad both have high blood pressure, and at least one of them has high cholesterol. My dad had a near fatal stroke at age 56 and will never fully recover. My mom has had various other health problems that I'm sure she hides from me to keep me from worrying. My maternal grandmother has diabetes and has had at least one heart attack that required like 5 stents to be put into her heart. My maternal grandfather died from complications of a brain tumor when I was very young (I think?) My paternal grandfather died of leukemia when he was fairly young. And I'm more overweight and less active than ANY of them were at my age, and I also have access to more "convenience foods" chock full of deadly crap, courtesy of food science. Yikes.


So yeah, there are my reasons for doing this. I know there are multiple diets out there that people argue are the best for your health, but I really think that this is the best one for me. (Did I mention that I have REALLY bad allergies and dairy products make my sinus problems worse?) Like I said before, I don't want to be TOO strict about it, because I am a total foodie at heart and would miss certain things way too much, but the transition so far has been a LOT easier than I ever expected (stomach issues aside... haha.) I guess I also see vegan cooking as sort of a challenge, too. It's like, "What surprising thing can I veganize next?"

Monday, December 27, 2010

Breads!

Banana walnut slices!



Apple cinnamon loaf!






Yeah, some of this is probably going to have to go to my office so I don't end up eating a ton!

Vegan Xmas in WV? Yeah... right...

Xmas was pretty tough. We brought vegan no-bake and chocolate chip cookies, but no one was impressed (even though they were REALLY good!) and our families sent us home with all kinds of unhealthy, non-vegan food. :( I'm going to have to find a good way to deal with this in the future. Fortunately, even though deep fried turkey was one of my "exceptions" for eating meat, I only ate a tiny bit of it before the texture made me sick.

On the bright side, for xmas, I got or bought myself the following kitchen stuff:
mortar and pestle
OXO digital food scale
Cuisinart bread machine
Cuisinart panini press
Cuinsinart electric can opener
Olive oil sprayer
Counter-height stool for the kitchen
Lick It! vegan ice cream cookbook
Vegan Brunch cookbook
Vegan substitutions cookbook
various cookbooks from my mom and Jane, for which I will need the above book to convert to vegan!

For dinner tonight, I made a vegan lasagna (tofu and roasted cauliflower instead of ricotta!) It was an extra that I assembled and froze last week while I was making another for dinner. That worked pretty well! So well, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures! Maybe I will remember tomorrow when we reheat it. We also had fresh baked Italian bread... my first use of the delay timer on the bread machine!

Now, I am making a loaf of banana walnut bread and a loaf of dutch apple bread. If there's a ton, I'll probably take it to work tomorrow, because one of my coworkers seems very interested in vegan cooking! Maybe I'll remember to take pictures when they're done. :)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Italian Bread!






Technology!

Tonight, I realized how much technology totally affects how much I enjoy being in the kitchen. Right now, I am baking a loaf of vegan banana nut bread (my first in my new Cuisinart convection bread machine!) while watching TV and blogging. Oh, and I also used my iPhone to take the photos! Geez!

Here's my setup at the moment. (I really need some blinds or curtains, shelves for my spice jars, and some trim around the backsplash, but that'll happen soon!)



I LOVE my kitchen... and I probably should, since we pretty much built it from scratch! Here's what that area looked like when we bought the house... and that was BEFORE we saw what was underneath all of that paneling!



Update: The banana nut bread is great! The middle sunk a bit, but that could have been because I didn't read the manual before trying to use the machine. It's not really photo-worthy, but here's the recipe I used anyway!

http://www.recipes-recipies.com/banana-bread-recipe/Vegan-banana-bread-recipe.shtm

And now a loaf of french bread is baking!

Baked Mac and "Cheese" Cupcakes

For dinner tonight, I made baked vegan mac and cheese cupcakes and chili (the chili wasn't too special looking, but I was happy that it turned out well with no real onion or garlic- just a little powder of each!)

These things were amazing!





You can find the recipe here: http://www.toliveandeatinla.com/2009/vegan-macaroni-cheese-cupcakes/

The Angry Stomach Mystery

So... about two months ago, I started getting really sick after eating sometimes. (This was part of the reason I decided to cut out meat and eggs... it happened for the first time right after I ate a frittata.) The only things I can eat when this happens are really bland things, like crackers or bread. I've joked that it was my body rebelling against healthy foods because it was easier to digest the packing material from McDonald's that I was eating before, but I think I may have figured out the culprit(s.)

Apparently, there's such a thing as an "intolerance" to food, which is slightly different from an allergy. Onions and garlic are in the same family (Allium,) and a person can be intolerant to both, or one more than the other. It can be worse if you eat them raw. Well, I've been eating a LOT of onions and garlic, and I think the garlic is the main offender. I ate sauteed onions, a clove of pre-minced garlic, and a whole clove of raw garlic in my portion of the edamame pesto last night, and I ended up curled up in the fetal position from around 6:30 until 10 when I decided to go up to the bed. Then I slept until it was time to get up for work, and I felt mostly better when I woke up. I'm guessing it's because I was done digesting. I've noticed that when I get the digestion pains, they're coupled with shortness of breath and what feels like a racing heart. I found this site, and now it seems to all make sense: http://tribes.tribe.net/onion-free/thread/1a0fb816-d54c-48dd-8e38-b94f9c4a424e.

Anyhow, here is the offending dish, which is from Isa Chandra Moskowtiz's low-fat vegan cookbook, Appetite for Reduction. It was EXCELLENT, despite what my digestive system thought of it. :)

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Introduction

I've always wished that I had the "self restraint" to eat less crap food. Recently, I realized that it's not about having self restraint at all- it's about caring enough about your body to learn what you're putting into it. And believe me, there's a lot to learn. We trust the government (FDA, USDA, etc.) to tell us what's safe, because they have our best interests in mind, right? They wouldn't let Taco Bell serve things that would kill us, would they? The answer to that is seemingly obvious, yet we eat it anyway. We buy hot cocoa packets with trans fat. Our coffee creamer is laced with partially hydrogenated oils. Why? Well my excuse was always laziness (and frugality, but I'll address why I was wrong on that one later.) Seriously, you'd be hard-pressed to meet a reasonably successful person who is as lazy as I am.

So why did I start this blog? Because I haven't found any others that address the fact that caring a lot about what you eat and/or cooking vegan is HARD WORK! They all make it look so easy. Maybe they're people who never got enjoyment out of eating a sandwich piled hilariously high with different meats... or maybe their day doesn't revolve around what they're going to eat later. Well, mine does. Please don't be offended by my seemingly self-deprecating use of the word "fat" when referring to myself. I have gained a lot of weight recently, but I've always been fat at heart, even at my smallest size. It's the only way I can think to describe someone who plans her life around food... someone who saves the best bite for last because she already knows she's going to eat the whole thing.

I hope you enjoy my stories and photos about my journey through eating healthy through vegan cooking. (I also want to note that there are certain non-vegan foods that I refuse to cut out of my life forever (like Vincent's Pizza,) but I'll only be eating them occasionally! At this point, I don't even want to think about making ALL of my own food and only eating out at 2 places ever!)