A Delicious, Nutritious Day!

It's a little slow at work today, so I have a moment to create a post!  

I think about food a lot, not constantly, but quite often, when I'm not eating and when I am!   Sometimes, even while in the middle of a delicious, satisfying meal, I start contemplating the next one!  I'm not proud of that, but it's the truth.  :)

So as you may have guessed, I'm thinking about food right now.  :)  I am hungry.  (The organic grapefruit I had at 7 a.m. is long gone now!)  But I'm also looking forward to certain edible plans I made for the rest of the day...  Marcy and I are going out to eat for lunch!  Yay!  I love spending time with my sister.  But a Cutler's veggie sandwich is also a treat in it's own right!

classic Cutler's goodness...

Later, for dinner, I think I'll whip up Fantastic brand's falafel mix and a large kale salad.  I've been craving leafy greens lately, and for this I am grateful.  It's rather refreshing!  But this will be my first time trying falafel.  I'm excited!
 

I just peeled an organic banana and am now typing one-handed so I can hold it with the other and munch...  mmmm...  nom-nom...  This makes for extremely inefficient blogging, but it's a setback I'm willing to take!  :)

(These apricots look like a sunset!)

I also brought along some local, hand-picked-by-me, apricots and plums.  The apricots are from my generous neighbors, Blake and Nancy.  The plums, a gift from my dear childhood friend, Marinda, and her husband, Jamey.  (Thank you!  Thank you!)  I'll make a dent in these morsels when I get done with my banana.  Even though my breakfast is sort-of spread out, it is filling nonetheless.

Straight from the tree...

...a polished plum...

...is now a bitten plum!  :D

Looks like it's turning out to be a delicious, even nutritious, day, if I may say so myself, and I can't help but feel giddy about it!   

Yum-YUM!  :D

Happy Vegan Valentine's Dinner!

It was a very enjoyable Valentine's Day!  Jordan and I didn't have the funds available to go out to a restaurant or fundraiser this year.  But we more than made up for any imagined loss. 

Before stuffing our bellies we went on a four mile walk together.  It was such a nice day; it seemed a pity to spend all of it being indoors!  And I must say, it was a good thing we did burn a few extra calories, because we ate far too much later on!  :)

It took us hours to get our holiday dinner on the table; we went all out, tonight!  But it finally came together beautifully... 

I prepared an organic tossed salad of red leaf, red kale, and baby spinach, and all the organic trimmings: tomatoes, avocados, red cabbage, cucumber, carrots.  Oh and I can't forget the dressing of equal parts organic flaxseed oil and fresh-squeezed lemon juice, with a dash of Bragg's Liquid Aminos.  It was a dense salad, yet so sweet, flavorful, and refreshing! 

Days before, we concluded that a whole-wheat spaghetti dish would be dinner's main course.  But what kind of sauce would we choose? While cruising the blogosphere many weeks earlier, I chanced upon a tantalizing Alfredo recipe, courtesy of Matt at "My Veggie Kitchen".  And tonight seemed like the perfect setting for Pasta Alfredo!  The only problem was I'd never made this before!  We decided to give it a try anyway.  I quickly pulled up the recipe for easy reference.  It was then I belatedly realized that we didn't have half of the listed ingredients.  Oh well.  We forged ahead without them, forced to make some adjustments on the journey.  Matt's recipe called for cashews, but all we had was walnuts or hazelnuts.  We picked walnuts.  We didn't have shallots, but we an ordinary onion, which we utilized.  We didn't have unsweetened soymilk, but we did have the "original" variety, so we used that.  Lastly, we didn't have the wine.  We didn't sub anything for that.  After all our changes to the actual recipe, it's doubtful that our version tasted anything like Matt's!  But we still liked it!  We did note that it was missing something in it's flavor and texture.  But it WAS missing something--a lot of somethings!  :)  Yet it was warm, creamy, and fun to eat; a buttery, saucy dish, completely out of the ordinary for us! 

We hardly ever bake breadsticks.  But tonight was special so we did!  We followed my sister, Marcy's recipe.  It was fun!  We took turns kneading the dough, and stood at the counter together rolling it into traditional snakelike shapes.  But then I had a brilliant idea...  Bend the breadsticks into hearts!  I pinched them in just the right places and Voila! Breadstick Hearts!  They looked so cute!  Unfortunately, that's about as great as they got.  The recipe originally called for white flour and we used all whole-wheat.  And since we don't bake bread very often, we have little understanding of the repercussions of swapping one flour for another.  In hindsight, we probably should have added more liquid to the dough and slightly shortened the cooking time.  Maybe the yeast never activated.  Still, I'm still not sure that any of these ideas would have been the correct solutions.  Sadly, the end result turned out to be quite heavy instead of light and fluffy; they never really did rise properly.  And they were much drier than we'd have liked.  But we managed to enjoy them.  I remarked to Jordan that they would have made far better pretzels than breadsticks!  At least they looked appealing!  :)

We also added "Wagon Wheels" to the fare!  Jordan peeled and cut the carrots, and set them on the stove to cook.  They almost met a sorry demise, as we did not add adequate water to steam them for the allotted ten minutes; the "wheels" started scalding to the sides of the pan!  Luckily, Jordan smelled smoke and we managed to rescue them before the whole pot of carrots turned black!  Gratefully they still tasted yummy, even after that extra dash of drama! 

To top everything off, with no help from me, Jordan whipped up his specialty dessert, "Jordan's Chocolate Cake"!  Yummy!  He actually baked the cake before our walk.  He frosted it after we got back.  He works so efficiently!  (Unlike me!) 

After working in the kitchen for nearly three hours, the meal was at last ready!  I took pictures, Jordan lit candles, we said a prayer, and then finally,

...we stuffed ourselves silly!  

It was a long time coming, but it was worth it!  Good food and good company!  What more could we ask for?! 

I was so happy to be spending the evening with my very own Valentine!  Jordan always works on Sunday night, so it was extra special of him to take work off to be home with me!  And even though he didn't buy me a sparkly Hallmark card or boxes of chocolates or even flowers, none of that was what I really wanted--just him.  His presence made the very best present!  With Jordan by my side, walking and talking, cooking and eating, my evening was complete! Thank you, My Goo! I love you! 

I hope your holiday, at home or abroad, was just as grand, or more so, than ours! 

 Happy Vegan Valentine's Dinner! 

Dinosaur Salad

Occasionally, I eat healthy!  :)  So I thought for a fun change of pace, I'd post about something fresh and wholesome.  I present you with Dinosaur Salad!  I call it this because it features some produce I don't think many people know about or else fail to utilize very often: Lacinato Kale (or Dinosaur Kale, as it is playfully called).  This unusual vegetable appears to be a close relative of wild cabbage, and is also related to broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens, and brussels sprouts.  The leaves are dense and have a strong flavor, like that of cabbage or broccoli.  But Dino Kale sports more of all the good stuff, like vitamins, antioxidants, fiber, etc, than other members of it's Brassica oleracea family.  Well, it looked mighty charming at the grocery store one evening, and I'd heard good things about it, so I purchased some.  Even though I think most people probably cook the life out of the poor plant before they eat it, I decided to enjoy mine raw, in a salad.  I don't have exact amounts for this recipe, mostly just a list of ingredients.  But that's the beauty of green salads; they're a work of art--different every time!

Dinosaur Salad

Organic Ingredients:

Vegetables:
dino kale leaves, remove stems and chop
red leaf lettuce, remove stems and chop
carrots, shredded
red cabbage, chopped
sweet onion, diced
avocado, sliced
tomato, sliced

Dressing:
a squeeze of flaxseed oil
a squeeze of fresh lemon
a dash of sea salt
a dash of pepper

If you make a huge bowlful, be sure to add the dressing to your individual serving only.  Plus, what you don't eat makes a healthy leftover to store in your fridge; you CAN get great nutrition while indulging those uncontrollable munching urges!  How's that for a change?!    

Be brave--try something new!  Enjoy!