vegan week recap

Well, vegan week is over. I promise I meant to update sooner than this, but vegan week also turned out to be sick week and crazy work week. C'est la vie.

breakfast veggie hash

Let's get straight to it, shall we? I liked vegan week. Really liked it. I didn't miss meat at all, and I barely missed cheese and milk, thanks to the presence of the So Delicious coconut milk in my fridge, as well as the Earth Balance vanilla soymilk that made morning lattes a pleasure to drink. But wait, it's not like I normally hate drinking them. But nevermind.

vegan carrot cherry breakfast cookies

I actually didn't get around to making all the recipes I picked out, due to the aforementioned sick/work thing, so that was a little disappointing. I still want to try them. The one thing about eating this way is that it takes a bit of effort. It's not as easy to just heat something up or order something when you're trying to eat a fresh, plant-based diet.

carrot cake oatmeal

It feels really great though. It feels like you're doing yourself a favor. It's something I want to keep in mind from here on out. I'm not going to be a vegan or even a vegetarian, but I think I'll cut a lot of meat and some dairy from my diet, simply because I don't feel like I need them as much as I thought I would. Especially meat. (Bacon isn't meat, right?) Cheese may be another story.

vegetarian burrito bowl

Recap of the week's eats:
Some breakfasts:  Carrot Cake oatmeal, veggie hash, vegan carrot cherry cookies
Some dinners: Quinoa and black bean burgers and butternut squash fries with chipotle BBQ sauce, homemade vegetarian chipotle-style burrito bowls, spicy sweet potato and coconut soup with detox salad, colorful quinoa salad

detox salad

Favorites:
-The carrot cake oatmeal, which I made twice.
-The butternut squash fries with the chipotle BBQ sauce, which I didn't get a picture of because they were devoured in about 3 minutes flat.
-The sweet potato soup
-The quinoa salad, cause it was so easy and delicious.

-Husband's fave was the burrito bowl, which I put too many onions in for my taste, so my perception of it was skewed. I would make them again, with less onions.

 colorful quinoa salad

spicy sweet potato and coconut soup

colorful quinoa salad

You know those weeks days when you just don't feel like doing anything?

Saturday was that day.

I'll spare you the not-so-exciting details and just tell you that the highlights of the day included a lengthy Starbucks visit and this salad. That should give you an idea. It's a shame that Saturday was such an absolutely perfect day and the most I made of the weather was an hour spent in Starbucks' courtyard. It was a nice hour though.

I was so hungry for dinner but felt so lazy but still wanted something so delicious and so good for me. I think I may have used the word 'so' enough in that sentence but I'm not sure. Maybe one more would have been good.

But this salad was just the thing. It was super easy, especially since I found a container of already-cooked plain quinoa leftover from earlier in the week. I wouldn't have wanted to like actually get out a pan and boil something, so that was fortunate.

This is goood stuff, and also, conveniently, good-for-you stuff. Everyone knows that quinoa is the ultimate health food right? And then you have things like mangoes for sweetness, black beans for delicious protein, pomegranates for a nice crunch and some antioxidants, avocado for healthy fat and because they are basically the best food/fruit/vegetable ever.

Your stomach will thank you.

Colorful Quinoa and Black Bean salad 
Serves 1-2

1/2 cup cooked quinoa
1/2 cup black beans
1/2 cup mango, diced
2 T. cilantro, chopped
2 T. pomegranate seeds
1/2 an avocado, diced

Dressing:
1 T. red wine vinegar
1 T. olive oil (I used lemon-infused)
1 tsp. agave nectar (or sugar)
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. pepper or lemon pepper

Add salad ingredients to a bowl except for the avocado. Add dressing ingredients and toss. Adjust seasonings and ingredients to taste. Add avocado and toss gently. If you will be storing some of the salad for later, I'd suggest leaving the avocado out until just before serving.

(You'll notice that I accidently left the avocado out for most of the photos anyway...got it in this last one though.)

spicy sweet potato and coconut soup

Last week I didn't cook...or at least I don't remember cooking anything. It was one of those weeks.

We had frozen pizza, we went out to eat, we ate at people's houses (by invitation)...

I just wasn't in the mood for it. Does that happen to you? The thought of making a mess in the kitchen (usually something that makes me pretty happy) sounded hugely unappealing. I didn't have anything I really wanted to make. I was completely uninspired. (violins)

This week was looking like it was going to be another one of those weeks. Monday was busy and I didn't get to the store to stock our empty-from-last-week fridge, so we got fried chicken for dinner. Yup. We even did a fried chicken tasting: KFC vs. Popeye's, just because we thought we'd better figure out once and for all where we need to be getting all of our future fried chicken. (In case you're wondering, KFC won for chicken, but Popeye's had the better mashed potatoes. Biscuits were a toss up, but I think it goes to Popeye's as well.)

high-qual iphone pic

 So Monday night, after our fried feast, as I sitting on the couch doing whatever it is that I do on the computer, my husband started this movie. I was all, "what are we watching?" as I looked up from the computer. Then suddenly I became completely engrossed in the movie. I think I even put my computer down. Watched the whole thing.

It was called Forks over Knives. Maybe you've heard of it. It's a documentary about our meat-and-dairy saturated culture and how so many of our health problems can likely be treated by a plant-centered diet.

Okay. Normally I find these things interesting at best, I give them a listen, maybe a smile and a nod, an "I-appreciate-your-point-of-view" eyebrow raise, but inside I know that I couldn't give up juicy hamburgers and milkshakes for quinoa and green beans. I don't like to get too radical or extreme about these things, and I most certainly don't like limitations.



But suddenly veganism had never seemed so appealing. Naturally a movie like that will make meat look horrible, and it did it's job.

After the movie, I asked my husband what he thought about trying a plant-centered diet, just for a week. (Who am I?) He agreed. (What a guy!)

Apparently that was what I needed to be inspired to cook again. I stayed up for another hour or so, researching vegan recipes to make for the week and assembling my grocery list. I was PUMPED.

So we embark on this mini adventure...emphasis on mini. We're doing this for fun/experimentation, to see how we feel and to see how it works for us. We're not going to be strict about it. If some feta finds it's way into my vegetarian sandwich, I'm not going to kick it out. If hub needs an egg for breakfast, I ain't gon stop him. It's the only way I could do something like this anyway. If I were to adopt it as a lifestyle choice, it would be more of a guideline than a rule. I told you how I feel about limitations. Same goes for deprivation. Is that the same thing?

I'm pretty excited about it though. Highlights so far include: some absolutely killer butternut squash fries, marvelous carrot cake oatmeal, and this sweet potato and coconut soup. I just realized those are all orange foods. Weird.

Anyway. This soup is so so good. (I seem to have run out of adjectives at this time. Forgive me.) It's creamy and a little sweet with a nice kick to it from the ginger and red curry paste. I would make it any day, vegan diet or not.

Stay tuned for more vegan-week adventures and a recap. And less-wordy posts.

Spicy Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup 
Recipe lightly adapted from here

Serves 6

1 1/2 pounds orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2-inch chunks
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 (2 inch) piece fresh ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon red curry paste
1 (15 ounce) can unsweetened coconut milk
3 cups vegetable broth
3 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon sea salt (or more, to taste)
Fresh ground pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro 

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and ginger; cook and stir until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and heat for 1 minute, then whisk in the coconut milk and vegetable broth. Add the potatoes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer until potatoes are soft, about 20-25 minutes, or longer if necessary. 

Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth. (Or transfer the soup to a normal blender, in batches, then return it to the pot when blended.)

Stir in the lemon juice, salt and pepper. Adjust seasonings to taste. Ladle into bowls and garnish with a drizzle of the sesame oil and some cilantro.

cucumber, tomato and avocado salad

 

 You guys.

I have made my husband fall in love with vegetables.

Three vegetables, to be exact. And only in this dressing.

It's a conditional love, but love nonetheless.

 

Seriously he asked for this two nights in a row. He even went to the store the second night just to get a tomato and an avocado so I could make it. Actions speak louder than words. And the words were speaking pretty loud.

 

This is a perfect, perfect summer salad. It's incredibly light and fresh-tasting, with just enough depth of flavor from the oil and vinegar.
Take it to a picnic, have it on the patio, eat it in the car with the top down. So hood.

Cucumber, Tomato and Avocado Salad

Serves 2

1/2 Cucumber, peeled and sliced, with the slices then cut in half

1/2 Tomato, coarsely chopped

1/2 Avocado, coarsely chopped

1 T. olive oil (I use lemon-infused)

1 T. red wine vinegar

1/2 T. sugar

1 tsp. lemon pepper

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Add cucumber and tomato to a bowl and sprinkle with all of the ingredients except the avocado. Toss well to coat. Add avocado and toss gently.

You may need to play with the amounts of things for the flavor you want. I actually didn't measure things so these are estimations.