Cooking ahead for cheaper!

Happy weekend everyone! Today I did something I always want to do but can never seem to find the time, cook ahead of time and freeze things! I made 8 burritos for my parents and froze them so that they wouldn't have to pay a ton of money for Amy’s enchiladas at the health food store. Normally they get them at Walmart (I know, I know Walmart) but they didn't have them! In our local health food store they were about $5.50 verses about $3 in Walmart. Long and short of it, I bought several products and created burritos for them to freeze! The following ingredients were in the burritos:

Trader Joe’s whole wheat tortillas

Eden Organic refried beans

Green chilies 

Onions

Garlic

Pinch of pink Himalayan salt

Daiya Mozzarella (on sale otherwise I would have used cheddar)

Olives

Basically you cook all the ingredients and combine them! Roll them up, roll them into the foil and freeze! See pictures below for step by step instructions and the finished product. Sorry for the out of order pictures but you get the idea!

My best friend aka my vitamix

 Refried beans being heated

 Yves 'ground beef', brown rice, green chilies, garlic and onions

 Brown rice, green chilies, garlic, onion and a little bit of tofu

 All of the ingredients for my homemade burritos!

 Brown rice, tofu, Yves 'ground beef', green chilies, onion and garlic

 Refried beans on whole wheat tortilla

 Love to my daiya cheese that melts!

 Black olives

 Two of the burritos wrapped

 Yves meatless ground 'beef'

Turning people...pause for gasp....VEGAN

Now let me just say this has only happened maybe a couple of times, mostly I think I've helped people think more about what they eat, not always turning vegan or vegetarian but at least encouraging them to be more conscious. When speaking to people about my personal food choices, I'm never 'out there to turn em!' but just want to share this amazingly exciting journey I'm on of discovering super healthy cruelty free AMAZING food!. One person I always secretly wish was vegan but 99.9% won't be is my wonderful boyfriend Brad. As far as non vegan boyfriends go he's fantastic as he eats whatever I cook and will go to any vegan restaurant I drag him to, always enjoying it of course. I typically believe that he doesn't lie about liking the food I ask him to try, so I take his word for it when he says he really likes something. Let's say he was going to go vegan, just for fun, there are are several blogs I would recommend for him, to ease him into a transition. I will list them for you below, maybe these will help you think more about what you're eating, and just how easy vegan food can be to make!

http://www.laziestvegans.com/
http://theveganstoner.blogspot.com/
http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/
http://www.itseasybeingvegan.com/

These are just a few as the list I would include could be pages and pages long! Either way these blogs inspire some super exciting food to be tried! Happy eating!

Brad's Birthday Dinner

Well today was the day we decided to celebrate Brad’s 31^st birthday this year. We started with the spy museum in Times Square that was really interesting and exciting, and Brad seemed to like it which was great. Next up was me making Brad’s favorite meal and favorite dessert, turkey tetrazzini and pumpkin Reese’s peanut butter cups.  Obviously all these things were going to be vegan! I am not a vegan that can touch meat anymore, it’s too much thinking about what’s really in it! As they say; ‘raw chicken is dirtier and more germ ridden than a toilet seat’. So attached are the amazing pictures of this culinary amazingness, Brad was a huge fan.  Here is the recipe for the Turkey' Tetrazzini and of course a shout out to my favorite dessert resource! for the pumpkin Reese's. My pumpkin peanut butter Reese's were a little different as I ended up adding too much of the pumpkin spice-oh well people loved it!

Cubed seitan with mushrooms, red bell pepper, onion and garlic. 

Cream sauce! This was veggie broth with whole wheat flour (only a 1/4 cup) and 4 oz. of vegan cream cheese melted in.

Whole wheat spaghetti with soy mozzarella and vegan parmesan cheese 

Whole wheat spaghetti mixed with the cream sauce 

Only a little bit eat so far.....a half hour later-GONE!

Chocolate pumpkin peanut butter cups!

Mom's amazing results

Good morning everyone! I have some super exciting news! On the way to work this morning my mom called me, as soon as I saw her pop up on the caller ID I thought, “who is in the hospital?!” (negative thinking I know)  But she was calling with good news! Her A1C blood test results (more on what this test is exactly but know it’s a diabetes/glucose indicator test) were the lowest they've ever been!!! Her results showed a 6, she used to be at a 7.3 and normal is a 5.  Isn't that amazing?! So by eating a largely plant based diet she's loosing weight, eating less sugar and getting amazing results!  Not only were the results fabulous from her A1C but her cholesterol was fantastic as well. Now more about the A1C:

The A1C test measures your average blood glucose control for the past 2 to 3 months and is determined by measuring the percentage of glycated hemoglobin, or HbA1c, in the blood.

My favorite analogy: “In some ways, the A1C test is like a baseball player's season batting average; it tells you about a person's overall success. Neither a single day's blood test results nor a single game's batting record gives the same big picture” (American Diabetes Association)

So bottom line people, the small changes my parents made have helped them live a longer, happier and healthier life! Change is always possible, you just have to be open to it.

4th of July!

Happy 4^th of July everyone! Or as I see it, ‘let’s eat really unhealthy food and drink a lot in celebration of our country’. I am sure in my younger years I had a turkey burger or two to celebrate and more than enough beer to intoxicate a horse but truly times have changed and so have I.  I came to realize 2 years ago that meat was just not a sustainable thing to consume. It was mostly about what I’d read that is truly in our food and in our nation’s meat. I couldn’t handle it; it had to stop for me. A couple of weeks before July 4^th 2010 I stopped eating meat. I never felt better! I was skinnier, happier and excited for my new journey as a vegetarian! Apparently I had never ate that much meat to begin with, a fact I would realize later when people asked me, ‘don’t I miss it?’ well no I don’t because I really didn’t have that much of it to begin with, some grilled chicken here or there but nothing crazy. I had always been weight conscious and knew that eating ‘heavy’ meats would cause me to gain weight, something I did NOT want to do. The amount of times I have had a cow burger I could most likely count on one hand, it just wasn’t for me. I will never forget the 4^th of July BBQ I went to at my boyfriend’s family’s house, a beautiful pool and buckets of meat. There were of course other things but I was proud of my choice and excited for the next step, learning more about meatless recipes!

Anyway this blog is mostly to commemorate my choice to go vegetarian, to stop eating the animals I loved. At first it never was about the animal cruelty or the environment; I started purely for selfish reasons, to be skinny! In fact Skinny Bitch was the book that finally pushed me over the edge into vegetarianism, and for good reason! It is a fantastic, skinny (hehe) book that outlines what’s really in the food we eat every day! I had read it a couple years before this and thought, ‘f this, I still want my splenda and chicken, who cares about this stuff! The government endorses it, it can’t be that bad’. Oh how silly a thought process that was! However, the second time around reading my Skinny Bitch book I realized what I needed to do, give up meat. As I said it was a pretty easy thing for me to do, every once and awhile I’d notice it but nothing I didn’t combat with, ‘I’m skinnier, happier and saving myself and the animals!’ People did not understand my choice and many still don’t (to be vegan). For me this is hard, something I struggle with every day when there is SO MUCH evidence out there as to why America needs to cut its meat consumption. Even the UN suggested meatless Mondays would prevent a whole host of global warming problems! But let’s not get political right now, I hate confrontation and people will come to their own choices in their own time, just like I did. No vegan or vegetarian was breathing down my neck about my choices and I try SO HARD not to do that to others. So in the spirit of freedom, which we do have quite a bit of in this country, enjoy your 4^th of July! (maybe meat free?! J)

Today is Friday-#1 positive of the moment! I am finding so many people around me that are looking to eat better and take care of themselves; it is truly uplifting and exciting! As I continue to use Myfitnesspal.com I feel myself getting healthier, whether that’s true or not who knows but at least I am conscious of the calories I have been consuming. The next step is to get back to exercising-because as we all know that is not always easy to keep up. So I’m writing today because I felt like jotting down my thoughts on current situations not because I have any profound information J I received a recipe today in my email from Kathy Freston, she’s lovely and an inspiration to all the wanna be healthy eaters out there. She is all about leaning into a healthy lifestyle so if you don’t think going anywhere near plant based is for you she talks about how to do it, one step at a time. The recipe she sent is below; I am determined to make this in the next few weeks as it sounds AMAZING. Let me know if anyone makes it and what they think!

French Toast with Fruit Compote   

Makes 4 servings

For the French Toast:

1 cup soy milk

2 Tbsp. whole wheat flour

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. vegan butter

8 slices of whole grain bread

Veggie sausage

Maple syrup to taste

·  Whisk together the soy milk, flour, cinnamon, and vanilla.

·  Dip the bread into the soy milk mixture and soak for a few seconds until some of the liquid is absorbed but not mushy.

·  Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a skillet. Cook the bread until golden on both sides. Serve with the compote and a side of veggie sausage.

For the Compote:

2 cups strawberries, sliced

1 cup raspberries

1 cup blueberries

2 Tbsp. orange juice or 2 Tbsp agave nectar (optional)

·  Cook the berries in juice over medium-low heat until soft and warm. Season with agave to taste.

Food!

My my my isn’t food just the most complicated thing out there? Besides love, war and you know other assorted things, but really how much does food rule your world? I think about it all the time, I think about what I’m going to eat, what I’m eating, what I should eat, what I shouldn’t eat, why can’t I eat that and all three pounds of it? Over and over throughout the day food circles my mind and takes over any rational thought. I am one of those people that can rationalize any food at any time of day, if I want it, it’s ‘oh I need that, I’ve had a rough week’ or really just a few won’t matter’ or ‘whatever I just WANT it’. This makes keeping my weight in check a very very very difficult thing to do. It does not help that I am often around those that do not eat small portions and therefore I think, ‘well if they can eat it, why can’t I?’ and the answer to that is, I care too much about what goes into my body to be overly cruel to it. I have a love hate relationship with my body as most of us do. I love it for all that it does everyday, all of the breaths I am able to take, all of the different movements I can do, it is a truly magnificent machine. But there are times I don’t understand it, why on earth can’t it behave itself and not gain weight or help me out a little with loosing weight.  But overall like any machine it needs the right fuel and sometimes the mind and the body just don’t agree on what I should be eating! So I started a different approach, an online approach, http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ , it is so helpful! I used to write down my calories before but this is awesome because you can have friends on it, you can log your calories, your workouts and it gives you goals, it’s great. So hopefully with the help of this online program I can get my eating and life back in control!

What inspires us?

I have decided, based on a wonderful friend's recommendation, to write what I am inspired by. I had to think about this though, because unfortunately it's not every day that I am inspired by something. I think it would be great to live a life where something inspires you every single day, maybe that will be my new goal. For now, today what has inspired me are the great workouts I have been having and the idea of Israeli breakfasts twice a month at work! I shall explain.

Well the workouts part is pretty self explanatory; I have been back on track! Not only working out every day as I should be but actually running more than a mile! It is hard to believe that last year at this time I had just run a half marathon, but never mind that, I’m working my way back and training for the 4 mile race I have on June 3^rd and the 10K I have on June 9^th! I can and will run these races!  

As for the Israeli breakfasts twice a month, this was a great idea thought up by my co-worker who has a sister in Tel Aviv (AMAZING!) and brought in this morning Israeli pita straight from the holy land! We were discussing how much we missed the food in Israel, especially the breakfasts! For breakfast it’s usually Israeli salad (pictured below), hummus, pita, other assorted vegetables, chopped salads, shashuka (although that is eggs so I will not be having any of that), Israeli Nutella (can’t remember that name) and other amazing things. So those are my two inspiring things for today, hopefully as the day goes on I will find more and more things to be inspired by.

I should actually post my Passover Seder recipes and of course pictures of the finished products, I will try next week!

Hag Samech! (Happy Holiday)