Two delicious meals & a beach getaway

Lots of great meals (and some terrible ones) in the last week or so! The first one was made by Brian and it was a simple sesame-teriyaki stir fry. We cooked up some udon noodles and Brian had been marinating some tofu for a couple of days, so he threw those in a wok with snow peas, carrots, daikon radish & mushrooms. Very simple, fast, delicious, and perfect when finished off with some sake! I just have to brag for a minute about how lucky I am to have a boyfriend who loves meat but still enjoys cooking vegan meals for us!! He has been really supportive of me since I started eating this way and has drastically cut back on his meat intake (all his choice, I swear!). When you're feeling lazy and don't want to make a teriyaki sauce or a marinade for your veggies you can just use a jarred one- that's what he did this time, although usually we like to make them from scratch. Asian food is popular at our place because it's so quick and we just throw whatever we have in the fridge into a wok. :)

The next day I left for a beach trip with some girlfriends. We meant to camp near Cannon Beach, OR, but because we got a much later start than we wanted and were just dying to get to the beach, we ended up driving to Manzanita and renting a beachfront room. It was such a gorgeous weekend and we mostly just lazed around on the beach in the sun. SO nice to have a weekend away from work for once! The downside was the food on this trip... we started from Olympia and grabbed some bagels to take on the road, but they accidentally messed up my order and put meat and cheese on mine, so I just had to snack on pita chips instead. That night for dinner we found an "Asian-fusion" restaurant to eat at which I thought should have some offerings for me, but what we ordered looked like prison food. I had tofu "curry" which was a grey gravy-like consistency over rice and frozen veggies. After pushing our food around on our plates for awhile we gave up. There were other food mishaps but I chalked it up to small towns and the lack of research I did beforehand. That night I did had my first deliberate cheat on veganism by roasting marshmallows, which have gelatin in them- a big vegan no-no. Next time I'll bring vegan marshmallows, dark chocolate, and graham crackers so I can have my own s'mores at the fire :) Here's a photo of the Manzanita sunset.

I forgot all about my bad food weekend when I got home on Sunday and went to a friend's place for dinner with girlfriends... she whipped up the most amazing Middle-Eastern themed feast for us! I am still dreaming of this meal, and ALL of it was vegan. Below is a (kind of lousy) pic of some of the delights... Israeli cous-cous salad, falafel, two kinds of hummus, lentils, dolmas, whole wheat pita, and my favorite of the night, roasted beets with raw slivered red onions in a balsalmic reduction. the meal was finished off with both a blackberry and a pear-rosemary tartlet. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh my gosh I want to eat this every single day. Thank you to my wonderful friends for being so talented in the kitchen and so generous to those of us who are a little cooking-challenged!

So go cook up a big meal with your friends and enjoy it with some wine, a movie, or just good conversation. And take a trip to the beach if you can, even if it's just for the day! But learn from my mistake and bring lots of food with you that you can eat so you don't end up picking a dud for a dinner-spot :)

Smoothies & Juice

Spring is finally here! Actually I think it's almost summer, technically, but it's JUST NOW starting to feel like spring in Seattle... which means berries and fruit are growing and I am eating my weight in cherries & strawberries (so far). I'm also trying to use my blender more, even though it kind of sucks. I have horrible luck with blenders. If I weren't moving out of the country in 3 and a half months I would give in and spend a pretty penny for good one, but for now I guess I'll just have to make do.

Here are some things I've been putting in my smoothies lately:

frozen bananas

spinach

rolled oats

flax oil

strawberries

blueberries

almond milk

Bananas, spinach, almond milk, oats and a dash of flax oil are especially good. I made a really yummy one, and it looked totally gross because when I added blueberries it kind of turned grey, but I got past the color and it was perfect.

And now a word on juicing... I have mixed feelings about this. Casey lent me her Jack LeLanne juicer and it works really well and the juice I've made is absolutely delectable. But juicing can be really wasteful, when you see how much pulp comes out of the back of the machine. An entire apple (core and all) only yields a few ounces of juice, and think of all great nutrients being lost in that pulp. Most of the vitamins in fruit and veggies are in the skins, and when you extract the juice I feel like a lot of that value is lost. On the other hand, juicing can be the opposite of wasteful, like when you use wilty greens and browning/bruised apples that you were just going to throw away. So I decided to try to make juice with mainly what I have that's going bad or would be wasted. That way you get the best of both worlds! My absolute favorite juice to make is apple, carrot, ginger & kale. So spicy and healthy tasting, with just a little sweetness from the apple.

This gorgeous juice came from the Vortex Cafe on Lopez Island. Best enjoyed on a sunny patio with someone you love :)

Savory pancakes

A few weeks ago I had a DIY brunch with two of my favorite ladies, Celia and Kristina. We had roasted carrots, caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms and... chickpea "pancakes." THE BEST! First off, let me say how wonderful and refreshing it is every time I get together with my girlfriends for a meal, especially homemade. It is so therapeutic to chat and catch up over delicious food that you cooked together. Celia spent time in France not too long ago, and brought back this wonderful, easy treat to make. The best part is that it's SUPER easy! I'm not even going to include a recipe because there really wasn't any measuring, I'll just tell you what I did. I have never been much of a pancake person because I'm so much more a fan of the savory breakfast foods, so this was perfect for me!

The pancakes are just equal parts chickpea flour and water. I added a dash of salt. I used 3/4 cups of flour and it made 6 small pancakes. I ate 3 of them and that was a perfect breakfast.

All you do is whisk the flour and water together and then let it sit for a few minutes (I'm not sure how important this is, but this is what Celia instructed me to do. I just let it sit while I cooked the veggies so it was probably 10 min or so). I used a tiny pan and cooked them one at a time, but if you have a skillet or a large pan you could definitely cook more at the same time. Use a high-heat oil (I used sunflower) to oil the pan (spray oil would be ideal here, but I didn't have any) and pour a bit of the batter into the pan. The pancakes I made were small and thin so they cooked quickly, just check to see if the bottom is browning and flip! Easy as pie (easier!).

As for what you put on top... go wild! For non-vegans I think you could sweeten it up with whip cream and fresh berries. I think green onions and goat cheese or cream cheese would be awesome with these pancakes as well. I chose to saute whatever veggies I had in the fridge, which were: portabello mushroom, a tiny bit of asparagus, and onion. I cooked those up with some oil, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes and there you have it. It was the perfect easy breakfast! You really should try these babies.

2 months in

Happy sunny Monday! I wanted to start a blog to track my exploration in veganism and compare stories/recipes/discussion with other like-minded people. I started my vegan diet on April 1st, so it's been just over 2 months now. I have already collected a few amazing cookbooks and found tons of blogs that I love to read.

One of the most important goals I have with this blog and my lifestyle in general is to show (others AND myself) how delicious an animal-free diet can really be. It seems that so many people think vegans eat nothing but vegetables and must be sorely lacking in protein. Untrue! From a nutrition standpoint, the average American gets WAY more protein in their diet than they need anyway. Plants like beans, soy and nuts all have plenty of protein for your daily intake and they are delicious when incorporated into your daily diet.

More than anything, though, I just wanted to keep a blog to write down my thoughts and discoveries as I go along this journey. I'm still very new at this and by no means perfect, nor do I know what my diet will be like in the future. I can only say that I am enjoying these changes now and I hope I can continue with them for a long time. I have been dealing with many digestive issues for several years and I finally decided once and for all I needed to clean up my diet to figure out how to prevent some of these issues. Veganism is helping a lot; I have felt a lot better with the elimination of dairy (cheese addict here!!), not to mention that I've added a lot of healthy things into my diet that I wasn't eating enough of before.

Welcome to my blog, and please feel free to share your thoughts and insights along the way!

The photo is a roasted portobello burger I've been making a lot these days :)