Birthday Dinner

My birthday dinner went great. My mom bought me my favourite flowers, lilies and some pink roses...they smell so good! Billy bought me the book Skinny Bitch, its like a diet book that promotes the vegan lifestyle! Woot! And I got some cash and gift certificates, just what I needed! For dinner, I made penne all'arrabiatta (a recipe I got from FatFree Vegan Kitchen http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/). We served it with some garlic toast and green/yellow beans. Everyone really enjoyed the meal, although everyone but me covered their pasta with cheese :P...oh well, its a step!













Then for dessert, we had banana split cake from Sinfully Vegan. Awesome!! It was so yummy! The cake was like really moist banana bread with pineapple in it. It was topped with cherry filling, some vanilla tofu whipped topping, banana and chocolate sauce. It was like heaven! There's not even any leftovers. I was very pleased with how the evening went.














I made a tofu omelet for breakfast today. Tofu omelets rock, they're probably one of my favourite breakfast foods. I got the recipe from Garden of Vegan. I made a tomato basil one but I didn't have any fresh basil, so I used some dried basil instead. If you've never made an omelet before, you should! Its pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Mine seared a little too much on the bottom, I got distracted :P














Billy and I finished watching Season 2 of the OC yesterday...I don't know what to do now! I have to wait for Lord knows how long for Season 3 to come out on DVD, because I've already missed half of it. Oh well, I guess I'll have to find something else to obsess about for now.

I don't know, but I've been told...

Someone here is gettin' old! I don't feel 21, but I am...wow the last few years have gone by so fast! I barely got to enjoy being 20. I just want to say thanks to all you goveganers, for all the warm birthday wishes :). OK, I haven't been posting much this week, and that's because I haven't been cooking much. But I will be starting up again! I made the roasted tomato bean stew from Vive le Vegan yesterday for dinner. Mmmm mmmm, it was perfect with some garlic toast. Sorry, my photography was a little off yesterday!














So my family is actually still agreeing to eat my food tonite...its a miracle! I'm making a simple pasta dish with tomato sauce...should be good. I just took the cake out of the oven. I made the banana split cake from Sinfully Vegan. I'll post pictures from tonite later on. I can't wait to eat the cake haha.

PMS

Well I figured out what caused my mishap weekend! You got it, the monthly friend we all know and love! I couldn't figure out why I wanted to eat so much and felt so blah and lazy. Well now I know, and hopefully am better equipped for next month, so that this doesn't have to happen. I made some yummy food, I just ate too much of it! I didn't blog my meals as I went along, I wanted to spend a lot of time with Billy without worrying about that stuff for a few days. We really needed some time together, and it was so much fun! We had an OC marathon, and I got him hooked. Now he wants to watch season 2 with me tonite and tomorrow! Woot! ...but don't tell anyone, or they'll "question his manliness" ;)

Anyways, on Saturday I wanted to use up the lentils I had sitting in my fridge so I made some whole wheat spaghetti and made a really simple and easy sauce using a jar of sauce, some sauteed onions and peppers and the lentils. It made for a good meal.














I also made Mama Mayhem's Perfectly Easy No Bake Cookies from La Dolce Vegan. Yum! I love cookies like this! My brother liked them too, we ate them while watching, yes, the OC. I ate too many, but I think that if you were to have them in small amounts, ie. 1 or 2 cookies, they're really not that bad. I mean, they're made with quick oats!














Yesterday, Billy and I made our own pizzas. I made the Joint's Cheeseburger pizza again from La Dolce Vegan. I sooooo wish I had taken a picture! It was so yum! And this time I had cheese to put on it. It sounds really weird but its an awesome pizza. Its pizza sauce, onions, pickles, ground round, mustard and cheese. Mmmmm I ate way too much of that one too lol.
Well now that I'm back on track, I should be making some more meals to blog about soon. I think I'm going to stick to a lot of soup this week. Except on Thursday, my birthday...that'll be cake and pasta haha. I've got my student teaching placement today, so I better go get ready!

Wolffie's Taco Salad

This salad is from La Dolce Vegan, and is another gem from Shirley Wolff. Its actually called leftover taco salad, in which you use leftover chili. I didn't actually have leftovers, I used President's choice vegetarian chili. Billy and I both ate this for dinner yesterday. I love it! Its so perfect when you don't feel like cooking but still want something that's tasty. Billy had his with ranch dressing (can't win 'em all!) and I used an oil and vinegar dressing I had sitting in the fridge. The lettuce and chili is topped with tomato and crushed tortilla chips, the best part! I didn't have green onions, the recipe calls for them, and they'd go well. Mmm what a delicious, filling meal. It was nice to just quickly throw it together and eat before work.














I'm working this morning, so I wanted a quick breakfast. I made the orange mango smoothie from Vive le Vegan. Its really good. I love smoothies! I should've used my food processor instead of the crappy blender. I've got chunks of mango in the smoothie, and I'm sure if it had been blended well, it would've added way more to the drink. Oh well, another refreshing smoothie from Vive!















The paper in the background has one of our city's Olympians, Jeffrey Buttle who won bronze in Men's figure skating. I was shocked he won. He's a great skater, but he was in sixth after his first skate. Our second Olympian....Todd Bertuzzi. Go Canada! :P

I weighed in this morning. Two more pounds! That brings me to a total of 10 pounds lost! Woot! That in itself is inspiration for the coming week!!! As a treat, I bought myself Jorge Cruise's 8 Minutes in the Morning kit. Its got index cards, with two moves a day, that you do in the morning, and you're supposed to lose 2 pounds a week. I don't know about that...especially if you're building muscle. But at the very least, its a good way to fit in some exercise! And I'm going to restart with the whole weight lifting thing, I'm pretty sure the whole reason I ended up practically paralyzed in the neck and back was because of the weights I was doing.

Thursday night indulgence

I made perogies for dinner tonite. I served it with what was probably too much sour cream for my own good. But it was worth it! These were potato cheese perogies from How It All Vegan. And they were yummy! The sour cream and salsa went perfectly with it. I had a bunch of leftover stuffing though, so I'll have to figure out a way to use it up. Normally I'd have fun with a recipe like this that takes some preparation but half way through it, I could barely stand anymore (because of my neck and back pain) so I had Billy help to make it go faster. Billy enjoyed them too! I used brown spelt flour for the dough, which makes everything okay ;).

Anyways, although this dinner wasn't too unhealthy, I'm feeling pretty crummy. Mostly because I can't get any exercise in, and I'm super tired. I ate a healthy breakfast and a very light lunch though, so I guess that makes up for dinner. But I shouldn't have had those 4 mini samosas as a snack!...greasy!














I think I'll make a bunch of soup for the weekend, easy and low key :). I'll have to keep eating light til I can exercise again.

Sigh...

I feel so yucky. I think its because I haven't been able to work out that much this week. I've only done a weight lifing session (cut short) on Monday, and a workout on Tuesday. Then yesterday I woke up with that neck problem and could barely sit up for 5 minutes at a time, let alone exercise. Its better today, I was able to walk longer, and it doesn't hurt to sit anymore, but my neck is still hurting. I can't really turn it to the left, so when I turn to talk to people its like I'm wearing a neck brace!

I really want to get some exercise but don't want to push it too hard, so I'll either just go for a walk or go slowly on the elliptical trainer. Despite the fact that I feel so cruddy, I love that exercise is having such an effect on my mood and wellbeing! I hope I can at least still lose some weight this week, I've been eating well.

Just needed to get this off my chest.

Oh and I don't think I did too well on my Infectious Diseases midterm :(. I had to lie down to study yesterday, and got sooooo tired.

Stuffed Squash

Hope everyone is having a nice Valentines. Mine was spent tonite in a boring, useless ethnobotany labs. Oh well, I got in some girl talk with my lab partners ;) We even discussed veganism and such! One girl mentioned something called lectins(??) that are in raw veggies and such that are bad for you!?!? She said the prof said it in her Food and Disease prevention course. Now I've learned to not believe everything the prof says, so I'll definitely be doing some research tonite, but I did not want to hear that!

Anyways, dinner tonite was stuffed spaghetti squash. I've never had this kind of squash before and was pleasantly surprised! It shreds when you eat it, like spaghetti strands, but to me it was like hash potatoes. It was so yummy with the lentil stuffing. The recipe is from How It All Vegan. Its super easy to do. You just have to saute the stuffing for a few minutes, stuff the squash and stick it in the oven for 30 minutes. And thats dinner! I can't wait for the leftovers tomorrow. I definitely prefer spag. squash over butternut squash, at least when its cooked in the oven. Its such a comforting, winter-y meal!














I entered all the food I was going to be eating today into fitday.com's food log to see the rough gist of how many calories, etc I was getting. I got more than enough of all the nutrients except Vitamin K. So I added 1 cup of cooked broccoli to the list, and my intake of Vitamin K shot up to over 200%! I didn't know broccoli was such a great source! I love the internet....

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made another carrot cake yesterday, to use up the rest of the cream cheese icing. And then I went overboard ;) My brother ate some while I was at school and my mom asked for a few pieces to bring to work, so that left just under half to give to Billy...so he got a half heart ;). It was apparently very busy at work yesterday (the day before V day!) and he had to work from 9:30 am non stop til 11 pm! He couldn't get a lunch break, so he had his leftover burrito pie and cupcake at night when we got home. He got the cutest little boy smile when he saw his cake too, lol, its so easy to please him. I didn't eat any of course ;)













For dinner yesterday I made the chickpea toss with curry from Garden of Vegan, one of my favourites. I threw in half a tomato at the end of cooking to add some veggies. I served it over brown rice garnished with flax oil, Braggs and gomashio. Mmmm mmm it hit the spot. Of course, with a side of edamame, my new favourite food!














I had leftover pinto peans from the burrito pie, so for lunch today, I'm having a pinto bean "mash" with salsa, sour cream and lettuce in a whole wheat tortilla. I would've taken a picture but I'm not assembling it til I'm ready to eat, so it doesn't get soggy.
For dinner, I think I'll make the Stuffed Spaghetti Squash from How It All Vegan. I'll post the picture later tonight if there's time.

Mexican Burrito Pie

Billy and I made this recipe from La Dolce Vegan last night. Well, he made the salad and then helped me assemble the pie :P. It was very delicious. It tasted like a burrito, a spicy one, but was a bit easier to eat, and just looks so cool! The Vegan brand cheese didn't melt at all, but that's okay. And I finally found something I like that has avocado in it! I would definitely make this one again! I sent Billy to work with some leftover pie for lunch, along with a carrot cupcake. He will be a very happy boy ;). The layers are alternating layers of a pinto bean mixture and an avocado/sour cream mixture.














Mmmm, I'm having the leftovers for lunch too. Can't wait!

Cupcakes!

I had half a carrot cupcake (without icing) yesterday after dinner, and someone, I don't know who, had one last nite too. So that left 7.5 cupcakes, and Billy ate 2.5 for breakfast, so that left me five to put icing on. So now I have a whole whackload of cream cheese icing leftover and I don't want to throw it out. I hate wasting food! So I thought I might make the pineapple coconut cake from La Dolce Vegan, but I don't know if anyone but me might eat that, so I'd end up eating it all. I figure I'll just make another carrot cake for Billy, he'll eat that. Anyways, the cupcakes look gaw-geous, and I hope they taste just as great tonight!














I wanted a quick breakfast this morning so I whipped up the hemp power smoothie from Vive le Vegan. Yum! It was just vanilla soymilk, 1/4 cup hemp seeds and a frozen banana. I've never had hemp before. It was a great smoothie, simple and sweet, just the way I like it. I think the hemp seeds gave it a very slight nutty taste (kind of like pb) and they provide omega 3's and 6's. I had that with some very ripe, cubed mango.














I made my lunch this morning, I have to eat it at work. Its a stirfry with carrots, celery, green pepper, onion, peas, chickpeas, basil, oregano, a dash of Braggs, garlic, ginger and some Asian 5 spice sauce, served over a bed of brown rice. I can't wait. Oh and some edamame too, I love it!














We're making that Mexican Burrito pie tonite, so I'll post some pics of that later. Speaking of work, last night was crazy busy at the restaurant. I was running around for 5 straight hours! I was bummed I couldn't work on Valentine's day but I actually made more money than I do on V-day. I made almost 160$! Now I can get some gas, pay my credit card, and go buy some Yves Rocher makeup (My 5 lb. weight loss treat).

xoxo

Fantastic French Toast

I made this recipe from Vive le Vegan!. It looked, smelled and tasted just like non-vegan french toast. It was such a treat! I halved the recipe and it made enough for me to have two and three for Billy. Yes, Billy ate them! He said they tasted just like the ones he used to make. I was so happy he liked it. It warms my heart when he enjoys vegan food. This was an awesome weekend "treat" breakfast.













Then for lunch I made celery cream soup from Vegan Cooking for One. It was good, but the author tends to be a little bland in terms of seasoning, I had to add a lot of salt and pepper. But it was still tasty. My mom even had a bowl of it and liked it! I ate the soup with multigrain rice crackers and some edamame.














This afternoon, after my workout, I made Wolffie's cream cheese icing from La Dolce Vegan to ice the carrot cake cupcakes I made from How It All Vegan. I sampled the icing, and it is delicious! I hope it firms up a bit by tomorrow though so I can decorate the cakes all pretty :). The cupcakes look great. I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to try them. I'm sure Billy will love them, carrot cake is his favourite. I can't wait til tomorrow, we're celebrating Valentines Day by cooking in his apartment together and enjoying dessert :).















Oh, I weighed myself a day early..I couldn't resist. I lost three more pounds! :) That brings me to a total of seven so far :D.

Well, I'd better go finish off the last of the lentil sunflower pie for dinner before work. Have a great saturday!

New Try

Today for lunch, with leftover mac and cheese, I had edamame beans for the first time. I had no idea how to eat them at first, so I admit, I chewed on the pod...but I figured it out after the first one. Yum! These babies rock, and they're good for you. They will for sure become a snack food of mine :). The mac and cheese actually tastes better the next day. And Billy asked me to share the leftovers with him! That is hot. He actually ate it, and liked it. He said the cheese had a kind of aftertaste but it was still good. Tasted beautiful to me :D.

We're making a mexican burritopie from La Dolce Vegan on Sunday for Valentine's day, now that we have some cheese. Can't wait! I might be cooking later today...we'll see.

Mac' and Cheeze!

This has really been my week. First I discover that my grocery store now carries Silk soymilk, so I don't have to go to a different store just to buy it! Then today, I see that the health store is carrying Vegan brand block cheese! I was worried, because their singles are really gross, but I bought it anyways. I wasn't expecting it to taste like real cheese, or even like soy cheese with casein, so I think that played a big part. On its own, its not great but its not bad. And in this macaroni and cheese recipe from La Dolce Vegan, it was really good! The sauce was so creamy and cheesy. I threw in some sauteed broccoli and served it all over whole wheat macaroni. This is so good. I've made cheese sauces with nutritional yeast before, and while they're good, they can't beat the creaminess that the cheese and soymilk gave to this dish. Drool....













The cheese doesn't have any saturated fat in it, but it does have other fat, so I'm going to have to eat really well for dinner, and low-fat to make up for it. Half way through cooking lunch I realised I probably shouldn't be making mac and cheese when I'm trying to lose weight, but I can't deprive myself of this great chance ;)

Plus I ate one bowl, instead of going back for seconds, like I normally would :D

I also bought the cream cheese and icing sugar I needed to make the carrot cake cupcakes for V day, so I should be making those on Saturday, if all goes according to plan! Billy and I are doing Valentines Day on Sunday night, because he's working on Tuesday and I have a night lab. Well I have to work out extra hard now, but I just had to share this with you! I know many of you are lucky enough to have vegan cheese available regularly, but I never have. I better tell the store to keep carrying it! I do believe I'm the reason they kept the Tofutti sour cream and cream cheese there too.

Don't judge a book...

Pudding! Glorious pudding. This coconut banana pudding from La Dolce Vegan might not be the prettiest pudding in the world, but it sure is delicious! I made it on Monday I think, and let it sit overnight hoping it would firm up. And it did! I had to use up the almost full can of coconut milk I had from making the pancakes. The pudding has coconut milk, bananas, a bit of sugar, salt and cardamom. It makes for a great dessert. I just finished the last bowl. I probably ate a gazillion grams of fat from the coconut milk, but meh.















A few weeks ago, out of curiosity, I ordered the book Slimming for Vegetarians by Leah Leneman (author of Vegan Cooking for One) and it came today. Little did I know its from the 80's, first published before I was born. I was hoping it would have weight loss tips and the likes but its actually just a bunch of recipes. I'm sure I'll try them, but I won't be following the daily menu plans anytime soon. She recommends only eating 1000 calories a day! And many days, there aren't enough grains or fruits. I know that eating 1000 calories a day is not enough, and if anything, will only make it worse (ie. feeling deprived, slower metabolism). But the meals are healthy in themselves. It was only 20 cents from amazon so its not a big deal. If anything, I've got one more cookbook with recipes that make single portion sizes!

The lentil-sunflower pie keeps getting better! For dinner, I put half a slice of it in a sandwich, mixed with some vegenaise and mustard, with lettuce and tomato, and served the other half with the tahini sauce. Both ways were awesome!

I didn't cook anything new today, but within the next few days, I'll be making a stuffed spaghetti squash recipe from How It All Vegan, and a cream of celery soup from Vegan Cooking for One.

My birthday is on the 23rd. My mom was asking me what I wanted and this is what I told her: I want to cook a nice vegan meal and a vegan birthday cake and I want the whole family to sit down at the table and eat it with me, and not complain. You don't have to cook and you don't have to buy me anything. I think I convinced them to do it, as long as I make a "normal" meal, like penne with a tomato sauce or something. Sigh...I can't wait to make the cake! I can't decide which one to make :)

Kookoo for Coco!

I haven't been able to post in a few days. My wireless network at home is being kind of kooky. Anyways, Sunday I made Coconut Pie Pancakes from La Dolce Vegan for breakfast. Yummers! I kind of burned one of them, but other than that, they were so tasty! Great served with maple syrup and a little coconut for garnish. I had almost a whole can of coconut milk left from this, so I whipped up the banana coconut pudding from La Dolce Vegan. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow.















For lunch I had leftover barley mushroom stew from How It All Vegan. I love barley and I love stew so this was a perfect combo! Plus with the weekend dumping 40+ cm of snow on us, it was very warming and comforting.















Dinner was vegetable and millet stew from Vegan Cooking for One. It made enough for two people, in my opinion, but I still ended up eating it all. It wasn't really stew, per se, more like a veggie stirfry on a bed of millet. It was good for what it was, I just found it a little bland. It had brussels sprouts in it though, so that's a bonus. :D I'm not giving up on the cookbook though, I'll keep trying recipes, hopefully I'll find a winner! I had it with some broiled french bread brushed with some olive oil and a little salt. Yum!















Today, in the supermarket, I found these PC tamari corn and rice chips. When I opened the bag and smelled them, they literally smelled like vomit. But...they tasted good! I can't believe I even dared try them after the smell! They are super spicy. They remind me of nachos, and are a good snack.














For dinner I made the sunflower-lentil pie from Vive le Vegan! accompanied by a tahini mustard sauce (also from Vive!), a salad and sweet baby corn. The pie is so good! And the sauce turned out beautifully, it really compliments the dish.















I bought a spaghetti squash today, so I think I'll be making stuffed squash soon, as soon as I get all these leftovers eaten!

I weighed myself this weekend. I didn't gain or lose any more. I was actually relieved about this, because I didn't eat so well on Thursday and Friday (ramen noodles, nachos, the likes) but I got back on track and I've been exercising more lately :). Hopefully I see some results next weekend. I've discovered that if I exercise on our elliptical trainer while watching the O.C on DVD, a whole episode goes by so fast, and I get in 40 minutes of cardio!

Oh yeah, I got 98% on my animal histology midterm! Woot!!

I'm ba-ack!

It feels like forever since I've posted anything! This week was a little hectic. I had an essay due for Roman Civilization (which I mailed today) and a midterm today for Animal Histology. It was pretty easy, thank God, because I didn't study all that much! Oh, I also cleaned my room and moved everything around, so everything is finally organized! I also got hooked on the OC somehow (My brother was watching the DVD and I couldn't stop watching!)
Anyways, its been pretty much a week of leftovers (the mushroom casserole and squash soup). I had a few chickpea sandwiches. They are the best...if you've never made them before, do it! I usually mash up half a cup of chickpeas with some Vegenaise, salt, pepper and paprika. You can dice up some carrots to put in it too if you like. I served mine on whole wheat bread with mustard and some baby spinach. I also tried making it like a grilled cheese sandwich, where instead of cheese slices I put the chickpea spread. It was pretty good.

The good news about my hectic week is that I haven't had time to really pig out and when I did feel like it, Billy reminded me of my "no eating after 8" rule...he's a great supporter!

I went grocery shopping today. Once my leftovers are gone, I'm making a millet veggie stew from Vegan Cooking for One, a mushroom and barley stew from How It All Vegan and on Saturday I'm finally going to make the coconut pie pancakes from La Dolce Vegan! I can't wait! Unless my weigh-in shows that I gained weight...then it'll be fruit :P
I bought two new kinds of tea today. Rooibos vanilla and chamomile lemon. I'm drinking the Rooibos vanilla one right now. It smells soooooo good, but it doesn't taste as good as it smells. Its not bad though. I just prefer teas where I don't have to add anything to them to make them taste good. I might have steeped it a bit too long too. :P

I bought a diet magazine today, and they actually have an article on the goodness of tofu and a bunch of recipes! Kudos to them for finally realising what we've known all along! At least it'll raise some awareness amongst the masses.
I wish I had some food pictures for you guys...I just haven't been cooking. I'll post some tomorrow or Saturday!

By the way...have you checked out the Vive le Vegan blog? If you never have, do it! Its a great site, and there's contest right now to win one of Dreena Burton's cookbooks. Don't just enter the contest though, read the posts, they are filled with pictures of yummy food and great advice!