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!