Here’s what I made:

First, I used Gina’s recipe for calabacitas and used that to stuff the corn tortillas.  I also added beans.  I foolishly did not buy enough corn tortillas to roll each individual enchilada, but I think it worked out better to do the tortillas flat.  That way, there were more veggies/beans per serving.

I ended up making extra servings of this dish.  The second time, I roasted the veggies on a cookie sheet with a lip.  I recommend that method rather than using a deep Pyrex-type dish because the water evaporates better.  Water enchiladas = no bueno.

For a dress rehearsal, I made the enchiladas for dinner to make sure they’d be good.  I sometimes take a chance and try out new recipes on guests, but I’ve been burned a few times.  Above are cheeseless enchiladas.

Cheesey enchiladas for the church peeps.  I had plenty of corn tortillas the night before, so my dish looked like this:

I amped up the amount of veggies and added some homemade guacamole to the mix.  I used Gina’s guacamole recipe.  Good thing I have you bloggers or I couldn’t cook!  I got a lot of compliments on this.

I also made my own enchilada sauce using this recipe:

It was disappointing at first.  It tasted exactly like slightly spicy Campbell’s Tomato Soup.  Ew.  I simmered some dry chilis in the sauce, caramelized some onions and garlic to add… I even added some dashes of spicy pepper sauce (like Tabasco, but TJ’s version).  It was all very meh until the next morning.  I was trying to decide if I should throw it out and just go by some sauce filled with hydrolized corn protein or whatever else they dump in there.  By the morning, it tasted like enchilada sauce!  So if you use that recipe to make homemade sauce, you really need to make it the night before.  Unless you like tomato soup enchiladas, in which case… I really can’t help you.

Then I made ANOTHER blogger recipe… Jena’s Vegan Carrot Cake.  I thought I took a pic of the finished product, but I don’t see it on my camera.  Maybe my camera got hungry and ate it?  All I have is a pic of one (of many) piece of cake:

I pretty much ate nothing but carrot cake all day yesterday.  It was SO good.  The frosting was a little runny because I’m using a new brand of coconut milk that just isn’t as thick as other brands I’ve used that have been almost like butter.  Somewhere else on my site I mention makeing Polly’s Oaty Cakes with thickened coconut milk (I’m too lazy to search for it).  I think you have to make sure you have very fatty, thick and creamy coconut milk if you’re using it in frosting-y or yogurt-y type ways.  Just be warned, it’s one of the consternations of cooking with coconut.

I got a lot of compliments on the carrot cake as well, but there were so many desserts that I had a lot left over (there were a lot of the other desserts left over too, so it wasn’t a slight on the carrot cake).  This is a problem as it is seriously addicting.  I will only be making it if people promise to eat lots of it or take the leftovers home.

Now for some random dinners I never got around to posting:

That’s raw pasta (spiralized beets, squash and zucchini) with marinara, nutritional yeast and grilled portobella mushrooms.

Breakfast tostada:  Black beans, salsa, tofu and nutritional yeast on a ‘zeke tortilla.  Unfortunately, adding nutritional yeast tends to make all my meals look the same.

Tonight’s din will be baked tofu marinated in this delicious sauce with salad:

Shalom,

E.

Does anyone else love to look at other people’s bookshelves and do you get really excited when you find that you have books in common with someone else?  I do.  Super excited.  The people who hosted us for dinner had the absolute cutest, sweetest little boy and had great books.  I scored a couple to borrow, which also accounts for my absenteeism.  Right now I’m reading “Marriage to a Difficult Man:  The Uncommon Union between Jonathan & Sarah Edwards” and I borrowed “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.”  I now have about 22,465 books in my “to-read” stack, most of them borrowed.

Today, I experimented with some energy pudding inspired by Miss Gina’s efforts over at her blog and also going from memory from Brendan Brazier’s Thrive. I lent my copy of Thrive to a kick-ass tri-athlete friend of mine (she’s the one who got me into running and she rocks.  And makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever) and vaguely remembered maca being a good thing for training recovery.  As a practice for my 5k run tomorrow (oh yeah, I’m also running a 5k!  How about that?) I made some pudding for my pre-Zumba snack with chia seeds, hemp nuts and coconut milk.  I also dumped in a scoop of maca for good measure.

NEVER, ever, EVER do that.  It will make you gag.  Possibly barf.  This is the strong taste I sometimes catch in Amazing Grass or Vega products.  I never knew what it was before, but now that I have the taste isolated, I know.

I googled around for it to make sure maca really does taste that awful and I didn’t buy a bad batch.  Kristen over at Kristen’s Raw thinks maca usually taste like feet.  I think that’s an insult to feet — I think it tastes like dirt in a sweaty butt crack.  Sorry to be graphic, but that’s the only way you can understand the horror.  Blended with 32 ounces of smoothie, the pudding was tolerable.

That globby stuff in the middle is the pudding. I would totally make this again WITHOUT maca. It's kinda tapioca like.

I have a lot of catching up to do on the ol’ blog! I mentioned last week about a hip-releasing yoga vid I wanted to review, I took a step that might will change my life, I bought one of those Body Bugg things (I call it my Body Buddy) and I wanted to tell ya’ll about my experience with it this past week (hint:  my boss is about to buy one now!) and there’s more to come!!  Sheesh!

Peace (and thanks for sticking around!)

E.

In any case, last Saturday, the number of cookies wasn’t pretty.  Or vegan.

This week has been an effort to largely get back on track with my eating habits, but I have been HUNGRY.  I’m not sure if it’s the workouts or what.  So I’ve upped the food a bit.  But it was time for me to take a little break from the PB Loco.  I’ve been putting it on the side of bananas and apples.  I’ve been putting it on toast.  I’ve been depositing it directly into ma mouf via spoon.  I’ve been doing this multiple times a day.  I strongly suspect the combo of sugar, salt and oils (all of which are additives in PB Loco) are just too much for my taste buds to resist.

So these bad boys are going to have to be hidden away in my freezer:

In the freezer, sorry guys

I think I’ll try and make some of Tina’s Peanut Buttery Bars with the White Chocolate Peanut Butter just to get it out of the house.  I’ve had enough of it .  I wish I was the type of person who could eat one cookie or one teaspoon of PB and be satisfied.

As soon as I’m done with these, I’ll be switching back to my regular TJ’s raw almond butter and peanut butter — I still eat it quite enthusiastically, but it’s not quite such a compulsion.  I think because it doesn’t have the added sugar/salt/fat.  Has anyone read The End of Overeating?  He makes the point that companies know the proper balance of sweet/salty/fatty that triggers our brain’s reward center and they engineer their junk food so that it is virtually irresistible to mere mortals.  That certainly has been my experience, so I think avoiding engineered foods sounds like a good idea for me.

Moving on to some yummy drinks:

Hemp-a-licious

That’s cooled coffee shaken with some hemp milk, a few drops of Vanilla Stevia, and ice.  I also made some coffee ice cream using coffee, maple syrup, coconut milk, dates and a bit of carageenan.  It was delicious.  Unfortunately, I meant to take a picture but it was gone before I knew it.  My one trouble with making homemade ice cream is that it freezes too hard in the freezer.  Directly out of the ice cream maker it’s wonderful.  But any leftovers turn out rock-y.  I added carageenan hoping that would keep it slippery, but no luck.

Oh well, it’s probably a good idea to learn patience and let it defrost.  :-)

I made this GM (I think it was this one, it’s the only pic I have left on my camera of a GM) with a frozen banana.  All other things were equal (strawberries, almond milk, etc).  The frozen banana really made it extra delicious — creamier and sweeter.  I recommend freezing your bananas before blending them.  Oh, and you have to peel them first.  I learned this the hard way.  Same goes for avocados.  Peel them and take the pits out.  That may be obvious to everyone, but it wasn’t to me.

Have a great weekend!  Happy Independence Day to my US readers.  And I hope my non-US readers enjoy their July 4th.

Peace!

E.

Leaving my Monster behind. In the freezer.  Which did me absolutely no good at work. I really, really missed the GM today.  I defrosted it and drank it tonight, but I was kinda full from dinner and am now a bit sloshy and poochy feeling.  I also ended up quite hungry at my evening Zumba class but soldiered through and shook-it, shook-it vigorously.  I managed to bruise one of my finger joints during a too-enthusiastic grapevine.

Sigh.

Eats:

Banana, apple, cinnamon and raw and wriggling almond butter

That was supposed to be my pre-Zumba fuel since the class starts at 5:30, which is right around when I likes to eat.  Instead, it replaced my Green Monster at the 10:30 am feeding.

Hey!  I found these random snacks on my camera, I think I forgot to post them yesterday:

'Zeke tortilla with banana and cinnamon

Almost empty Sun Dried Tomato Sabra (not as good as the pine nut flavor, in my opinion, but evidently I had no trouble eating it)

My "chip" to dip into the hummus

Chip & Hummus: Come to mama

Dinner tonight has become a favorite of mine:

Broco, yaller squash, zucchini, red bell peps stir fried.

With the star of the show:

Baked tofu

I had no idea that you didn’t need to fry tofu to get that nice crust on the top.  You can bake it after lightly brushing on some oil with a high smoke point.  Righteous!  I love this.  It has such a nice firm texture when you bake it this way.  I broiled this one a bit to get that nice brown-ness.

For dessert, I broke into this bad boy:

Sweet lusciousness!

I was so pleasantly surprised by this.  It was like… dessert.  I could eat it like a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.  I tried a little spoonful of it and promptly dove in while doing my best Homer Simpson impression.

Stop the presses! This was INCREDIBLE!

Yeah, I couldn’t even take the paper off all the way before diving in.  You wanna start something!?!  Actually, that stupid paper seal is a big complaint about these Peanut Butters.  It’s hard to peel off all the way, and this jar was sitting upside down in my cabinet and some of the oil leaked out before I even peeled the paper off.  That doesn’t seem too tightly sealed.

Anyway, this stuff rocks.  I love it so.  That’s all I can say.  I was afraid there would be a raspberry syrup or something in there.  I honestly couldn’t taste any raspberries, which is hunky dory by me because I find adding raspberry to desserts significantly decreases my enjoyment of said dessert.

Then I realized that white chocolate tends not to be vegan, read the label and confirmed that yep, for the second time* today I am a doofus and, as a result, broke my vegan vow.

The end.

*If you count bruising my own finger in Zumba while performing a grapevine as my second doofus act of the day**, cheerfully devouring white chocolate peanut butter while thinking it is vegan but not actually reading the label is actually the third doofus act of the day.  Depends on how you’re counting.  But I think grapevine injuries occur all the time, so I didn’t count that.

**  Obviously, forgetting another part of my lunch is the first doofus act of the day.  I feel like I did in the third grade when my mom decided I was old enough to get my own breakfast, collect my school stuff and get out the door without her help. I was a complete mess for a week. But that was, like, sometime in the mid 80s and I’m like 30 now.

Whatever, my footnotes are getting out of control.

Peace.

-E.

Nalgene of green monster, Cranberry Lime Polar Seltzer water, Split Pea soup from TJ's, and a slice of zeke bread with PB Loco Sumatra Cinnamon and Raisin Peanut Butter

Notice anything missing?  Like… a canopener?  I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and saving myself spending NINE DOLLARS on, like, a cup of vegetables over in Burlington.  I assumed there would be a can opener in the office kitchen, but it is evidently true what they say about assuming things.  Except I didn’t make an ass out of you or me, I just was hungry and couldn’t eat all my lunch.  So I googled around for about 45 minutes (yeah, I know, I’m productive) trying to find a vegetarian joint nearby.  I gave up, waded through traffic to Whole Foods (seriously, can we put some left turn lights on Cambridge Street through Burlington into Woburn?  That area is a mess) and bought THEIR vegan split pea soup from their hot bar.  When I wants the peas, I wants the peas.  It was a little over $5, which would have bought my 2.5 cans of my stuff from Trader’s.  Oh well.

About PB Loco’s Raisin and Cinnamon PB:

Hello Peanut Butter Addiction!

When I opened this jar, I grabbed myself a spoon and sampled a nice big gob.  Immediately, I was disappointed because there was a weird, chemical-y aftertaste.  Almost like a pesticide.  I couldn’t quite place the aftertaste, but Husband tried it and agreed that he could taste something.  He wondered if it was the alcohol-free vanilla they use.  Maybe.  I was super bummed because I had high hopes for this PB — cinnamon and raisins are things I add in anyway, so all in one jar saved me a lot of steps!

I thought this would just languish in my fridge, but I find myself drawn to it more and more and the pesticide taste is less and less noticeable to me.  Maybe I’m used to it?  Maybe I needed to stir it better?  It did arrive on a hot day and was liquid, so maybe one of the flavors was just very concentrated at the top?

Anyway, I still can’t say I LOVE this PB and will buy it always.  The highest review I can give it is “It grows on you,” and honestly?  For $7 PB (not including shipping)?  It darn well better rock my socks off.

Peace (and peanut butter!)

-E.

Vegan Pea and Herb Soup

The Vivian Wrap: Squash, beets, spinach, hummus, sundried tomatoes, broccoli. It was delicious. I ate the chips too, even though I don't really care for chips. These are really good.

Another view of the delicousness.

Later, I went to the store because I’d cleaned out the fridge before we left for Colorado and we had no food!  I picked up a tea latte — I really like the Earl Grey Latte at Bucky’s, but I got the Vanilla Rooibus this time.  Rooibus is a great tummy soother and nursing mothers who drink it can pass on the soothing benefits to their colicky babies.

I wasn’t a fan of this latte though, even though I love vanilla and I love rooibus.  This tasted like straight vanilla extract with a strong alcohol aftertaste.

Later, I had some canned lentil soup with toast (unpictured) and had the husband attack a Thai young coconut for me so I could drink the juice:

Butchered thai young coconut

This was my first Thai young coconut and I have to tell you, it was incredible.  The flesh is very soft and fresh and more delicately flavored than older coconuts.  The water is unbelievable.  It was incredibly toasty and rich tasting and there was so much of it!  It was a completely different taste than what you get in the packaged coconut water containers or in the old brown coconuts.

And that was that!  Tonight I’m finishing up my continuing legal education requirements (UGH) and I’m off to bed.  I am SO SO SO excited about the Healthy Living Summit coming up in Boston!  How cool is that?  Right in my own backyard!  I hope I get a ticket and I hope to meet you bloggies!

Peace,

E.

I’ve had good luck with soaked oatmeal (although I haven’t had it in awhile because I was going a bit crazy with it).  And Polly’s Oaty Cakes were heaven, obv.

This morning I went back to my eggs and toast roots, vegan style:

Tofu Scramble, 2 sprouted grain toasts with coconut oil

I made my own Tofu Scramble seasoning, although Husband tells me he grew up eating Tofu Scramble made with an official, store-bought packed of seasoning.  I googled for their recipe and just spiced mine with some cumin, paprika, turmeric and a seasoning blend that kind of has a rich, umami taste to it.  Husband smelled it when he got out of the shower and thought I actually went to the store and bought the packet of seasonings, so I guess it was pretty close to the real thing.  It tasted good.  Real good.

I’ve also had luck with these:

Trader Joe's High Fiber O's with Hemp Milk and a droplet of Vanilla Stevia

This is one of the most satisfying cereals I’ve ever tried.  Cereal burns right up when I eat it, I’m starving like an hour later.  Husband has the same prob.  This stuff sticks with you longer though.  It’s nice to be able to have a quick, roll-out of bed breakfast that doesn’t involve dirtying pans or soaking the night before.

This box is your friend.

Can you read this? It might be too small. It's respectable though, take my word for it.

Always a perfect addition to any breakfast - hemp milk, bananas, kale, spinach, watercress, strawberries, Amazing Grass Superfood powder and a wee bit of Vanilla Stevia. My capitalization of proper nouns is getting out of control.

I’ve decided to switch from using hemp milk to unsweetened vanilla almond milk as my regular dairy replacer.  It’s like a $2 difference and if I’m going to be buying enough peanut butter to fill my bathtub, I should save money where I can.  I’ll try and use the hemp milk sparingly because the nutrition is so rockin’, but for things like cereal I will be using the Blue Diamond Almond Breeze because it turns out money really does not grow on trees.   Who knew?

Peace!

Elizabeth

Husband and I LOVE the Korean food and Sushi at Shira Kiku in Nashua.  Of the two of us, only Husband has been to Korea.  He dug the stone pots with rice and veggies and the little dishes of pickled goodness.  If he hadn’t tried it, I don’t know if I ever would have been brave enough to try kimchi.  I’m so glad I did!

The lady who runs Shira Kiku is so sweet.  Every time we wolf down the kimchi she brings us, she seems so pleased and surprised that we did. Tonight was date night and, partly because of some work-related digestive issues, I was craving Korean food.  Kimchi is fermented so it is rife with healthy bacteria for your digestive system. In addition to all the little mini dishes of kimchi, scallion pancakces, tofu, potatoes, and sweet radishes, I ordered the Kimchi stew with pork, veggies, and tofu but asked for no pork.  Meanwhile, Husband got a spicy pork dish.  No pictures, sorry, we forgot the camera.  BUT!  Later on, the already great meal got even better so Husband busted out his iPhone for posterity.

After we were full of cabbage and rice and spice and other good things, the chef stopped by our table to ask how we liked the food.  He kidded me about not liking pork (last time we were there, he kidded me about ordering an extra dish of his mom’s spicy kimchi) and I explained to him that I’m a vegan.  THAT was when the fun began!  Rob, the chef, is a terrific guy. He immediately told me that I should have told him I was a vegan because he could do any dish I wanted vegan-style.  I thanked him and thought we would definitely be back next week to put his offer to the test.  Little did we know while we were finishing up our tea and paying our bill, Rob had a treat in store for us:

Sweet Potato Sushi

This was incredible!  I’ve never had vegan sushi before (I think the only veggie sushi I’ve had are California rolls, but those have cream cheese in them and I think they’re kind of icky).  Rob proceeded to sit down with us and go over the entire menu and listed the different vegan sushi selections already featured on the menu and the modifications he could make to the Korean dishes for me.  He mentioned one of the other people dining in the restaurant was gluten-sensitive, so he makes special dishes for her all the time. He even knew her by name.

For awesome service, for incredible food and for being so willing to make wonderful food for vegans and no-gluten peeps, I encourage everyone to try Shira Kiku.  If you’re nervous about the more exotic dishes, there are plenty of stir fries and Pad Thai type dishes to try that aren’t intimidating.  In my pre-vegan days, I had the sashimi and fish sushi and it’s super fresh and delicious. I asked Rob how he learned all of his sushi skillz and he told me he got it all from his Dad — a sushi chef of 47 years who works in Boston. It’s a family gig for sure! Meat lovers will certainly find amazing morsels of animal here as well — Korean’s ain’t famous for their barbeque for nuthin’.

I was sort of sad I was so full of Kimchi stew, because I wanted to giddy-up on some of that vegan sushi.  Oh well, the next date night is just a week away!

Peace,

E.

PS.  The kimchi?  Took care of what ailed me.  Bless the Koreans for this magical tummy elixr!

It was 4 miles round trip and it was so nice to be out in the sights, smells and sounds of the real world instead of in my car.  I sometimes will catch a faint whiff of something unidentifiable… a mix of exhaust and hot brick pavement and funky gas smells and it will remind me of the hot summer I lived in Europe.  I think it’s probably a smell common to all cities, I just never notice it at home because I only walk when I’m in foreign countries.  Here’s what I saw and ate:

A really nice, stone public bathroom. A mama lets her baby dabble in the fountain.

Shady trees and a swinging park bench

Here’s Polly’s directions with my changes:

1 cup quick oats + 1 cup plain greek yogurt I used homemade coconut milk yogurt (directions to follow) but I think soy or any other non-dairy yogurt would work… mix well.

stir in…

1 egg 2 tbsps ground flax seeds soaked in 1/4 cup water until it forms a gel, 2 tbsp canola oil 2 tbsp apple sauce, 1/4 cup ww flour, 1 tbsp brown sugar maple syrup, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp cinnamon… mix well.

The batter

To make homemade coconut milk yogurt, do the following:  Open can of coconut milk (read the label for preservatives, a lot of companies like to dump in sulfites).  Pour into airtight container.  Place container in fridge and forget it it is there for 1-2 weeks.  Open container, notice how the coconut milk has become thick and puffy (don’t worry, it still tastes like coconut milk, it’s just puffier).  Or you can try a variation of Ange’s homemade soy yogurt, which I would have tried but I don’t have a microwave.

So my first attempt at cooking these cakes up massively failed.  Check it out:

Off to a good start, right?

OH NO!!! They stuck majorly. I don't know if it was the pan or because I used coconut oil. The pie server was not my original pancake flipping tool, I just needed something to scrape up the stuck cakes.

Never fear!  This is a good recipe and was quickly saved:

Cooked in grapeseed oil in a calphalon pan, they are nicely browned and crispy.

My pretty plate:

Bananas, salvaged oaty cake (the ones that stuck in the other pan) and pure maple syrup from our family's maple syrup farm in Canada.

These were delicious — even the ones I saved from the sticky mess I made in the first pan.  Too good to let go to waste!  I would make these again and again.  I had a glass of green lemonade with them to make sure I got my morning greens in.

(Haha, notice the classy shredded to-do list/ grocery list in the background.  Definitely am not a perfectionist!)

Thanks Polly!

Peace,

E.