Tag: Vegan

Catching Up

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Hey all!  I hope you’re all doing well!  I’m home and it’s 73 degrees out!  Yesterday when I got home I was so tired!  So I was in bed by 9:30pm!  But before I jumped into bed, I managed to consumer this:

Guatemalan sweet bread.  My house generally has two things: some sort of Guatemalan bread and a ton of bananas.

Case in point… Yes, we are half monkey…

This morning I was up by 6:00am (time change and early to bed did it I guess).  I lounged around (aka watched trash TV like The Sex and the City E! True Hollywood Story) and by the time everyone left for work, I took over the living room and did Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred!  It was intense!  I’m going to try to do it 4-5 times a week the whole time I’m home.  Anyone else want to try this with me?

Then I took a shower and made a tasty lunch! Sandwich and Salad:

1 Boca Burger, half on the sandwich and half on the salad.  The sandwich has about a tablespoon of hummus as my condiment, a bunch of spinach and few tomato slices.

My salad had romaine, tomato, half a boca burger and a bit of BBQ sauce as dressing.

Yum!

Now I’m off to get ready for my super secret event/post that is taking place tomorrow night!  Here’s a hint:

Have a great day!

Knock Off Moosewood Dressing

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Remember when I went to Moosewood and fell in love with the lemon-tahini dressing??  Well I decided to recreate it today.

After a trip to the Salvation Army all the way in Cortland (because the Ithaca one simply would not do) to shop for our ugly sweater/Liz’s B-Day party (My sweater is fantastic! I can’t wait to show you all!), we stopped by Ludgate Farms a local farm/store.  I bought a lovely Fingerlakes Salad bouquet!

I ran home and started making my salad with: Fingerlake Lettuce, Carrots, and left over lentil burgers chopped into pieces.  Then I added my knock off Moosewood Lemon Tahini dressing:

Knock Off Moosewood Lemon Tahini Dressing:

1/2 cup tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp cumin
few shakes for cayenne
salt and pepper
enough water to make it the right consistency

These are all estimate measurements as I started with a certain amount and added more as needed.  So if you try it making it you’ll have to try it occassionally and add more or less until you get it to be fantastic!

This made kind of a lot of dressing, so it’ll probably last a long time.  But the final product was pretty tasty!

Now off to write my statistics paper and work on my fitness (Fergie anyone?)

Moosewood

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Since the lovely fella is leaving tomorrow 😦 we decided to go on a “hot date.”  So in a foodie’s life that means go out to a great restaurant.  We decided on Moosewood because I’ve been obsessing over it heard it’s delicious.  You may have heard of Moosewood because of their cookbooks.  Moosewood is a collectively-owned, vegetarian restaurant and pretty much an Ithaca landmark.  Their menu changes daily and most items have the option of being vegan as well (i.e. omitting cheese)

Dinner was pretty delicious.

I started with a glass of wine, the lovely fella got an Ithaca Pale Ale while perusing the menu.  Both were delicious

Then came the house salads.  Oh my goodness.  This salad was probably the best part of the entire meal!  I got the Lemon-Tahini dressing.  It was fantastic!  I’m going to try to recreate it ASAP!  The lovely fella got the house dressing, which was a creamy spinach-basil dressing.  It was equally delicious.  I can’t decide which one I liked better.

As my entree, I got the Savannah Stew (Sweet potatoes, kale, green beans, celery, bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes simmered with Old Bay seasoning, lemon and thyme, topped with cheddar cheese (opt.) and  served with freshly baked scallion cornbread (v))  That is the menu description.  The (v) means vegan.  I got the cheese on top so it was not completely vegan.

Oh man!  This was one of the best stews I’ve ever had!  It was so flavorful and hearty!

The lovely fella got the Roasted Vegetable Lasagna (Layers of lasagna noodles, roasted portabello and white mushrooms, eggplant and zucchini, whipped (local organic Ithaca Soy) tofu “ricotta”, baked in a savory tomato-basil wine sauce;
topped with mozzarella cheese (opt.)).  He liked his, but I wasn’t a fan.  The tofu was really bland (as tofu generally is) and slightly bitter.  Sure glad he liked it!  The lasagna minus the tofu was great!  Here he is with his dinner 🙂

Then of course came dessert.  The menu said there was carrot cake, so we ordered that.  However, the waiter let us know this is was actually banana cake!  I was instantly sold, as I am a banana fiend.

Honestly, it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had (on that note, the best Banana Cake I’ve ever had was in the Azores, Portuguese Islands, I studied abroad in Portugal and seriously I still dream about that cake).  The frosting was a little too sweet and the cake was kind of dense.

That being said it was still tasty and greatly appreciated!

Overall, Moosewood was pretty good and I recommend it to anyone in the Ithaca area.

Also, tonight was the first time I felt like a food blogger haha.  I took pictures of everything.  I lugged the big camera.  It was less nerve wracking than I thought it would be and now I’m glad to have the pictures.  So if you hesitate at all to take pictures in public, don’t!

Now I’m stuffed and off to either work on a project or watch a movie.  I can’t decide… I have a feeling it’ll be the movie since the lovely fella is leaving tomorrow 😦

Goodnight!

Raw vs Roasted

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Almond Butter

It’s pretty delicious.  Last week, I was talking to a friend about almond butter, our favorite brands, cost, deliciousness, etc. He said he prefers raw almond butter.  So when I stopped by Trader Joe’s on my way home from Thanksgiving, I got a jar of raw almond butter to see which one I liked better.

VS

I think I like the regular roasted Almond Butter better.  I mean they both obviously taste like almonds but the roasted one is smoother and has a more distinct taste. 

Are there any health benefits to eating it raw vs roasted?  Which do you prefer?

December Recipe Challenge Update:

Anna at Newly Wed, Newly Veg joined the December Recipe Challenge!  Check out her recipe for Barley with Mushrooms!

If you have a fun/exciting/healthy recipe, don’t forget to e-mail me so I can link you here!

P.S. This is my life for the next week…

Have a fantastic day!

Vegan for a Day Continued…

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Today was ridiculously busy so I really didn’t even have time to think of food.  I had class from 9am until 3pm then I stayed in the computer lab and worked on my statistics stuff (I probably ran 67892038666 regressions today! Ahh!)  Luckily my lunch and snacks held me over pretty well and it was all vegan!

Then I came home and raided the fridge for something to have for dinner.  In my desperation, I didn’t get too creative tonight 😦  I had left over Coconut Curry from a few nights ago (didn’t realize then that it was in fact vegan) with some quinoa and broccolli.

As I was waiting for the quinoa to cook (only 15 minutes!  Woo!), I had a little bit of an appetizer: some artichoke hearts

I love artichokes!  Whenever I walk past the artichoke/pickle/olive section of any super market, I instantly start to salivate!  Weird, right?  Does that happen to anyone else?

The quinoa really was the star of my meal this evening.

It really is delicious and nutritious.    The only thing I hate is having to rinse it.  I have an itty bitty strainer so I can only do about 2 tbsp at a time.  It’s a pain in the butt… I guess I could invest in a larger strainer right?…

Dinner was pretty darn delicious. I’m thinking maybe I’ll have a baked apple for dessert 🙂

Overall, I think my one day vegan experience has been good.  However, I think a lot of this was that I had an extremely busy day.  Things could have potentially gone the other way had I been sitting home all day (since I usually get the munchies when I’m home for too long trying to get work done).  I definitely think I’d like to try this again.  I’m not saying I’m ready to become a vegan but it’s definitely something I could consider transitioning in to.

Did anyone else try the Vegan for a Day Challenge?  Or are you vegan?  Your thoughts?

Anyway, I’m off to finish my self evaluation, start a paper, work on stats project and formulate my next post about food security!  If there’s anything you’d like to know about in particular, please let me know!  Have a great night everyone!

Vegan For A Day

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After a little bit of thought, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and do the vegan for a day challenge.  At first I was a bit apprehensive because well, I’m a planner… (not just a city planner) but I like to make sure I’m fully prepared for this.  The thought that I wasn’t prepared for a day full of vegan meals made me uneasy.  However, after some thought, I realized that going at it unprepared could make the challenge more fun.

That being said, Breakfast was a DELICIOUS Green Monster.

My green monster contains: 2 handfuls of spinach, 1/2 a frozen banana, about 5 frozen strawberries, 1 tbsp of almond butter, and some water. Some was enjoyed at home while writing this post, the rest will be enjoyed in class in my travel mug 🙂

For lunch, I’m packing some garbanzo beans and vegetables with Wegman’s Asian Style BBQ Sauce.

I was looking at the ingredients then realized it told me it was vegan right on the side of the container! I love these labels that Wegman’s puts on it’s products.

Then while making lunch there was a slight disaster with my frozen vegetables

Spilled all over the counter!  Yes, my vegan meal will be eaten out of a cottage cheese container.  I’m a ridiculously broke grad student environmentally conscious and recycling plastic containers…

Have a fantastic day!