Raw Challenge: Day 1

I've decided to try to follow a raw diet for a month (who know if I'll even last that long), hence the blender and dehydrator.  Today was day 1.  I succeeded!  I ate a smoothie with coconut milk for breakfast, a Waldorf sans dressing for lunch, lightly dehydrated mushrooms tossed with olive oil, garlic, celery, lemon juice, and topped with a raw marinara sauce for dinner.  I snacked on almonds, raisins, a banana, an apple, and coconut milk.  I'm sooooo hungry.  And I really really want some bread or cheese, or a pizza, or a burger or juicy stake...mmm...stake....

Kale with rice and lentil soup

I made another kale dish, kale with rice and lentil soup, tonight.  Super unbelievably easy to make and really yummy!  Here's the recipe:

Cook 2 cups white rice (use 1 cup water to 1 cup rice)
Steam kale (about 7 min. or to taste)
Heat 2 cans of lentil soup, *add water to the soup or let the water evaporate to taste* (optional: add sausage cut in thin rounds, I added garlic and herb chicken sausage from Trader Joe's), add minced or pressed garlic, add kale last if you want it to be a little crunchy
Serve the rice and pour the soup over it

If you have a rice cooker, this dish becomes even easier to make, because you can just set it and forget it until the rice is done; heating the soup doesn't take long.

Here's a link to the recipe:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/lentil-soup-with-kielbasa_n_1056848.html

Kale

I bought a lot of kale yesterday because I want to make kale chips and to start using it more in cooking.  Today I found 25 recipes for kale and tried out a couple of them (below).  I think I'll try to cook one kale dish every night this week.  Here is what I made tonight, both are super easy and quick to make:

Kale chips:
Preheat oven to 350ºF
Wash, cut, and dry the kale as best you can
Toss the kale in a bit of olive oil (add salt, etc to taste)
Place on a backing sheet
Bake at 350ºF for 10min on each side or until done

Serving suggestion: sprinkle on some nutritional yeast after serving

Fried rice and kale:
Cook brown rice (1.5 cups water to 1 cup brown rice)
Steam kale (about 7 min or to your liking)
Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan and add minced garlic, stir for a couple min.
Add the kale to the pan, stir four a couple min.
Add the to the pan, stir for a couple min.
Add soy sauce to taste, stir for 30sec.
Serve
Serving suggestion: sprinkle on some nutritional yeast after serving

The above recipes, and more can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/kale-chips-recipe-baked_n_2398474.html#slide=2139358

Nom nom

New vegan favorite food: toast, earth balance, and nutritional yeast. Best thing ever!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was surprisingly not that bad this year...
Also, I tried making vegan and gluten side dishes, they were really tasty! Except for the vegan mac and cheese...fake cheese just doesn't have the same good taste as really cheese.  I really liked the sweet potatoes.  Here are the recipes I used:

Olive oil mashed potatoes, I added roasted garlic and dried tarragon.  I like some skin in my mashed potatoes, so I didn't peel all of the potatoes:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Olive-Oil-Mashed-Potatoes-107604

Green bean casserole:
http://delectablyfree.com/2010/12/gluten-free-vegan-green-bean-casserole/

Sweet Potatoes, I didn't puree the sweet potatoes, I cut them into rounds:
http://www.marthastewart.com/945631/sweet-potato-coconut-casserole

Gravy, I ran out of almond milk, so I used half almond milk and half coconut milk:
http://vegansaurus.com/post/5835727636/gluten-free-vegan-biscuits-and-gravy

Re-balancing

Traveling, even in the same time-zone, always throws off my circadian rhythm and eating habits.  It didn't help that I had to hear drunken Halloween revelers returning from the bars and clubs until 4 AM. Anyway, I've been feeling low on energy and just not myself in general, I know that part of that is due to being really stressed in the weeks leading up to the conference and partly due to not sleeping enough.  But I feel a great deal of it has to do with not eating right in the days leading up to and the days of the conference.  To remedy that, I decided to not go to campus today and just work from home.  Additionally, I'm going to put together a meal plan for this week and next, sticking to my 18+ vegan meals a week.  I need to really find some recipes that are cheap and can be made in bulk and frozen.  If I find any good links I'll post them here.

The egg to apple sauce baking soda conversation factor

I went to another Grubwithus meal (yes, two in a row, it just happened that way!).  This one was amazing!  Not because of the food or the conversation per se, but because of the wealth of information I got on gluten free vegan foods!!!  I'm so excited!!  There is an egg to apple sauce and baking soda conversation formula!!  I don't remember what it is, but I sent an e-mail to the person you mentioned.  I can buy gluten free Bisquick and make pancakes and biscuits using this conversation factor!  I'm so excited!!!!!!!!!! 

My baloney has a first name...

So I've been trying to have most of my meals be vegan but I do eat vegetarian or meat dishes on the weekends, 2-4 meals a week out of 21.  And what I've noticed is that I don't really care for meat, or animal products in general, anymore.  I eat them because I don't know what else to get, but they don't really taste as good as they used to.  I don't see how my tastes could have changed in such a short amount of time.

You don't win friends with fake meat

Vegan restaurants, stop it.  Just stop trying to make fake meats.  You will not be able to imitate the taste and texture of meat, so just stop trying.  Accept that fact, and move on, embrace your animal-product-less cuisine.  Explore a little.  Be adventurous.  Plenty of cultures have naturally vegan dishes without having to resort to fake meats.  One of the problems is that as Americans, we have lost touch with the way we used to eat, when people kept their own chickens and cows and keeping a cow or chicken alive for its milk or eggs, respectively, was your only choice.  Better to have milk and eggs everyday than to have one chicken dinner.  The other problem is that vegan places think they will be able to ease people into their diet by offering them something slightly familiar.  Give people more credit!  If an omnivore is willing to try a vegan place then they are open to having something they are not used to, something new, something exotic, so to speak.  So give them that!  Don't have a vegan chicken ranch burger or a bacon cheese burger (BTW, why the two fake meats??!).  Learn from other cultures and try to make vegan dishes American style, not American dishes vegan style.  I've learned my lesson at that place, stick to the gluten free vegan mac and cheese, soups, and salads, and steer clear of the fake meats!



And one of my favourite Homer moments, although there are so many it's really hard to choose:


Wow, three days of Simpsons clips.