Morning Mocha Coffee and Customer Service Week Food

I started my morning off with an iced mocha coffee.  This is basically the same one that I made here.  The only changes that I made was that I used 1 cup of coffee and 1/2 cup almond milk this time.  I also only used 1 frozen banana and added 5 ice cubes.  I think I like this version better.  More coffee allows for a better morning drink!  :o)

About an hour after I got to work I toasted a slice of bread and spread some Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and strawberry jam on it.  I used the bread that Tony's sister gave us, which reminds me that I still haven't found out what kind it is.  I know this isn't anything special, but what it about cream cheese and jam that just makes for a lot of yumminess?  I could eat this every morning.

This week is Customer Service week where I work, so they are catering lunch to us everyday this week.  Yesterday was Mexican.  We got to order our own personal meal yesterday, so I ordered the Veggie Fajitas.  The food came from Los Portales, which isn't one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, but this turned out to be very good.  They did put cheese on my beans, but it was easy to scrape off.

Here's a closer look at the veggies.

 
Today was Chinese day, so they ordered up several main dishes from Peking, which involved meat....yuck and boo!  To my surprise though, they let me order my own personal meal....yay!  I ordered the Fried Bean Curd (tofu) with chili sauce, which came with Chinese veggies, and was supposed to have come with white rice, but for some reason they didn't send it.   That's okay though.  I was just happy that they ordered something for me to eat.  It was still good without the rice.  :o)  Everytime I see these mini corn on the cobs, I think of the movie "Big" with Tom Hanks. 

I didn't take any pictures of my supper last night, because it was leftover stuffed peppers and meat loaf, which is now gone!

~Peace~

HOT Spaghetti and Awesome Tea....

Have you ever made something that you make all the time, but something totally goes wrong with it? Well, that's what happened to us last night. As usual, we used some canned fire roasted tomatoes to make some spaghetti sauce last night. We haven't had regular ole spaghetti in several weeks, so we decided it would be good for supper. Tony made himself some meat balls, and I decided to use some Tofurky Italian Sausage in my spaghetti. Tony opened two cans of fire roasted tomatoes and one can of plain diced tomatoes to make the sauce. He added a few spices to it and then let it simmer. As the whole wheat pasta was cooking Tony added some of the sauce to his meat balls, and I added some of the sauce to my Tofurky, so they could marinate in the sauce for a bit. Tony thought I should sample the sauce to see if it needed anything else added to it. OMG....it was HOT....I mean spicy hot! It was the spicy hot that burns your throat when it goes down. I have no idea what made it so hot this time. The only thing that I can possibly think of is that one can of the fire roasted tomatoes was a generic brand and maybe it was fired up with extra peppers? Not quite sure what happened, but it was so hot that I could only eat half of what I put on my plate. Of course, I'm sure the spices in the Tofurkey didn't help matters much either. My mouth was on FIRE.....

Last night, I also made some green tea with juice in it. I found a recipe on the Vegetarian Times website for a Green Tea with Pomegranate Juice that sounded very good. I drink water all of the time and sometimes I just don't drink anything because I am so tired of water....I guess that's weird...huh? Anyway, I didn't have plain pomegranate juice, but I did have some pomegranate/cranberry juice, so I used that in place of the straight pomegranate. For whatever reason, I made this after we ate supper last night, so I put it in the frig for today. I poured some in a bottle this morning to bring for my lunch today and guess what....it is fantastic! Since I tweaked the recipe a little, here it is.

7 bags of green tea

6 cups water

3 cups pomegranate/cranberry juice

1/2 cup orange juice (I used OJ with pulp in it)

2 tbs honey (yes, I did use honey this time)

Bring the water to a boil in a large pot and add the tea bags. Once the water has started to boil, remove it from the heat and let steep for about 10 minutes.

Remove the tea bags and add the juices and honey. Transfer to a pitcher. You can serve this hot and add orange slices to make it pretty if you would like, or you can put it in the refrigerator overnight and drink it cold the next day like I did. It's yummy either way!

Oh yeah...I ordered some of the Amazing Grass Green Super Food (chocolate) from Amazon.com last week, and it came in yesterday. I'm sure you can guess what I had for breakfast. I couldn't wait to try it. I put one scoop of Amazing Grass in a blender with 8 ounces of rice milk, and a frozen banana. It was yummy and it's 100% vegan! Here's the goods on the powder.

The Chocolate Green SuperFood is a delicious chocolate drink powder to help you achieve your 5 to 9 daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

A full spectrum of alkalizing green superfoods, antioxidant rich fruits, and support herbs unite with organic Acai, Maca and Cacao to provide a powerful dose of whole food nutrition with a delicious dark chocolate taste. Complete with pre & probiotics and digestive enzymes to ensure rapid nutrient absorption and healthy digestion.

Chocolate Green SuperFood: All natural and organic ingredients include organic wheat grass, organic barley grass, organic alfalfa, organic spirulina, organic spinach, organic chlorella (cracked cell-wall), organic broccoli, organic dutch cocoa, organic redwood cocoa, organic cacao, natural chocolate flavoring, organic acai from Sambazon, organic maca, organic carrot, organic beet, raspberry, organic rose hips, pineapple, green tea, acerola cherry, organic flax seed powder, organic oat fiber, apple pectin fiber, F.O.S. (from chicory root), L. acidophilus, alpha and beta amylase, protease, lipase, lactase, cellulase, siberian eleuthero root, peppermint and organic sea salt.

~Peace~

Out of the Loop

It's Tuesday and where have the last 6 days gone? I have been so busy...I feel like I am out of the loop since I haven't been blogging and haven't been able to read many of your posts. It's a three day work week for me, so I plan on doing alot of catching up toward the end of the week.

I want to say thank you so much for all the Thanksgiving suggestions that you have given me. I was asked to bring a salad, but now I need to decide what to take along with that. I like the idea of some sort of casserole. I will let you know after Thanksgiving what I end up making.

I've been so busy that I haven't had time to make anything new and exciting. The other night I cooked some crowder peas (which is about the only pea that Tony likes). I decided to add some of my homemade green tomato salsa to them and WOW....that was it and ever so tasty! Tony also cut up some sweet potatoes and fried them in a non stick skillet with some vegan butter, cinnamon, Red Robin seasoning, and a tad bit of brown sugar. That turned out amazing too. We also took some fresh corn out of the freezer and warmed that up along with a couple of vegan sausage patties. This was a fast yummy supper.



Sunday I was craving fruit, so I whipped up a simple smoothie that consisted of a frozen fruit mixture of strawberries, peaches, pineapples and mangoes. I added a tablespoon of wheat germ and used almond milk. It was so good that I had to make another one Monday morning. I find myself now that it is cooler not eating as much fruit. I guess my body is needing fruit, because I have really been craving it lately. Smoothies seem to be the easiest fix for me. How do you make sure you eat enough fruits in the winter time?

I have found some hot tea that we just love. My new favorite is the Papaya and Passion Fruit Green Tea. Have you ever tried The Tea Nation teas? I haven't tried many hot teas, but out of the few brands that I have tried, this is my favorite so far. I've never been much of a hot tea drinker, but these teas have turned me into one. Tony has never like hot teas either, but he loves the Raspberry Green Tea. What's your favorite brand of hot tea?

I hope everyone is having a great week so far!

~Peace~

CSN

TGIF..... :O) It has been one crazy week, so I'm glad the weekend is here! My morning started out with an iced mocha. I wasn't really in the mood for a fruit smoothie this morning, and for some reason I was wanting something chocolatey.


A few weeks ago I won the CSN give away from veganandsoforth. I won a $40 gift certificate, and finally decided what I wanted to get with it about a week ago. I had planned on getting a new cutting board if I won, but I bought one while I was on vacation in August. We haven't been very happy with our dinnerware that we've had for about a year and a half, so we decided that we wanted some new ones. We found alot of really cool, colorful ones....some looked like Mexico, some like Italy and some like Spain. Tony is all about checking reviews on everything, so it was time to check out what others had to say about them. Well, it was good that he did. He found that most of the ones that we liked, (well, most of them period) had high amounts of lead. They were made in places that didn't have very strict guidelines. We started looking into potters in America and found Fiesta Ware which is made by The Homer Laughlin China Co. They're in West Virginia and have been making lead free china since 1871. We really liked the idea of buying American. This past weekend, Macy's had their Fiesta Ware on sale, so we went and got two place settings from them and then ordered two from CSN. We bought Paprika and Lemongrass colors from Macy's and Peacock and Sunflower from CSN. Below are the two that we got from CSN. We love our new dishes!!!

This one is called Peacock and is my favorite!

This one is Sunflower.

We got the dishes in yesterday, so of course I had to use the peacock one last night. Last night for dinner I cooked some yellow squash and zucchini in a little olive oil with some garlic powder, salt, and pepper. I also cooked some asparagus in a little olive oil with some garlic powder, Herbamare, pepper and then added a pinch of tarragon a few minutes before it was done. I also made some seasoned potatoes that had salt, pepper and paprika sprinkled on them before they were put into the oven. My chick patties that I've had in the freezer for the past couple of weeks have been screamin my name the last few days, so I decided on them to go along with the veggies. :O)



Here's my new favorite quick frozen treat. Kroger had their Almond Dream ice cream on sale last week, and of course I had to try it. I've been keeping my eye on it for some time now, waiting for it to go on sale. It's too expensive to buy not on sale. Anyway, I got the vanilla, because I can add whatever I want to it. Well, Wednesday night I was craving something sweet, so I pulled out the ice cream. I crumbled up a couple of oreos and drizzled some almond peanut butter over it, and it was awesome!

Hopefully I will be trying out some new recipes this weekend! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

~Peace~

Cashew Cheese Pizza and another Carrot Juice

Last night for supper I made a Cashew Cheese Pizza. I found a recipe on choosingraw.com for some cashew cheese that sounded delish. Well, I thought it did anyway. I've never attempted to make any thing from raw cashews. Let's just say, I was hoping it would taste as good as I wanted it to. Here's her recipe. Oh, I did make one addition to it though. I added some roasted red peppers. Here ya go....

1 cup raw cashews, soaked for two hours or more
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white miso (optional) I left this out because I didn't have any, and I also don't know what it is.
4 sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup basil
I also added about 3 tbs of roasted red pepper from a jar (chopped)

Throw the nuts in a food processor and process until ground well. Add salt, lemon juice, and miso if using. Scrape sides of bowl and run processor again, this time drizzling some water in. Keep doing this until the cheese reaches the consistency you like. Add tomatoes, basil and red peppers and pulse until they are well combined.


For the pizza, I took a wheat tortilla and spread some of the cashew cheese on it. I topped that off with some cooked spinach, sauteed onions and peppers and then added a few slices of roma tomatoes. I put that in the oven on 350 for 10 minutes. I have to admit...I thought I was in heaven after I took a bite. It tasted so good! The cashew cheese was WAY better than I thought it would be. :o) It sure made for a great pizza!

This morning for breakfast I decided to juice again. I tried a different mixture this time. I used 3 carrots, 1 apple, 1 celery stalk, 1/2 a lemon and about 1/4 of a cucumber. I'm not a big fan of raw cucumbers, so I went easy on it for the first go round. I was surprised that I didn't taste it at all and was really surprised at what the lemon did for the taste. I like this juice much better than the first one that I made which was with carrots, celery and an apple. It was pretty funny though. After I drank the juice I went to brush my teeth and I had orange around my lips. No one told me that the carrot juice stained...ha I got it brushed off though. :o) The next time there will be a straw involved. The only part I don't like about juicing is the clean up. To me it takes twice as long to clean up the juicer as it does to prep the fruit/veggies and make the juice. It's worth it though...at least on the weekends when I'm not rushed. :o)

~Peace~

Carrot Juice / Soap

My throat is better today...YAY! I still have some sinus drainage going on, but hopefully that will go away very soon! I appreciate the well wishes. Maybe it was the fresh carrot juice that I had yesterday and today that is making me better. :o) I haven't used my juicer in a VERY long time, so I thought I would pull it out and start using it again. I really wanted to make some beet/ carrot juice, but if you can believe this....the grocery store was all out of beets Saturday. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was very disappointed. My carrot juice consisted of 4 carrots, 1 stalk of celery, and half of an apple.

I have always heard and read that you should drink the juice right after you have juiced it. Well, the other day I read somewhere that you can actually juice enough to last a couple of days in the refrigerator. There is a trick to keeping all the nutrients in it and keeping it fresh though. I'm still not 100% sold on this, but I tried it anyway. I made enough servings for 3 servings. The instructions are to fill a jar up to the very top. So full, that when you put the lid on the jar, juice will pour out from under the lid. That is supposed to get all the air out and keep it fresh. I did exactly that, and this morning it tasted the same as yesterday...yummy! I just wonder if it lost any of it nutrients. What are your thoughts on this?

Oh, check out our cute tomatoes that we got out of our garden. Can you find our heart shaped Roma? The banana pepper and a few of the tomatoes came out of my in-laws' garden. You should have seen the two huge cucumbers that we got from their garden. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of them. They were gone on vacation and we just happened to stop by there to see how her veggies were doing. Now to just figure out what to do with the cucumbers. I'm not a big fan of cucumbers, but love dill pickles. I know....crazy. Maybe I will juice them...hmmmm

Here is another quick product review. I've been on the hunt for a good organic/vegan soap. I read a lot of reviews on Dr. Bronner's magic soap. It had a 5 star review, so I thought I would try it out. My local grocery store (Kroger) just happened to have it and had it on sale when I went Saturday. I bought two scents, the lavender and peppermint. I've tried the lavender the past two days and absolutely love it. It cleans great. It doesn't leave your skin with a film on it and it doesn't leave your skin feeling all oily. I have very sensitive skin and so far this has been a great find for me. If anything changes, I will be sure to let you know. So far, this is my favorite soap!

Well, that's all for today. I hope everyone has a great week!

~Peace~

Iced Mocha Coffee

For supper last night it was one of those meals where you just pick foods out to cook and hope it goes well together. No new recipes for last night, but here’s what I had. I had fresh silver queen corn (the best sweet corn), fried zucchini and yellow squash, sauerkraut, and herb roasted potatoes from the "Vegan with a Vengeance" cook book. Tony had the exact same thing except he had to put Kielbasa in his sauerkraut (shame on him…ha). Yes, all my food has it’s own little spot on my plate. I’m a little weird in that area. I don’t really like for my foods to touch each other. Yes, I know they all end up in the same place, but that’s just one of my little quirks. :o)

This morning I decided to make a change from my normal fruit smoothie to a coffee drink. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making a cold coffee drink, so I decided that this morning was the day to try it. I really miss iced mochas, so that’s what I tried making this morning. It turned out great too. It was refreshing to be able to have an iced mocha. Now, I know it didn’t have all the nutrition that my fruit smoothies have, but I did try to add a little more protein into it. I could easily live off these, but I won’t. :o)

Here’s what I did to make this great tasting iced mocha.

8 ounces of rice milk
6-7 ounces of cold brewed coffee
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
½ teaspoon of cocoa
a pinch of salt
1 frozen banana
1 heaping tablespoon of peanut butter

Put all the above ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. I poured mine in a glass over a couple of ice cubes, because I like mine super cold (hence the iced mocha).
I think in the future I want to try it with chocolate soy milk and add some ice in the blender…maybe leave out the banana. I need to buy some crushed ice though. All I have are huge ice cubes and my blender does NOT like to crush them. Don’t get me wrong, this was delicious, but I have to continue to experiment…right?

For lunch I had everything but the kitchen sink rice! My rice consisted of long grain brown rice, frozen mixed vegetables, fresh carrots, edamame, cherry tomatoes, a little soy sauce, some curry powder, salt and pepper. I think that’s all that I put in this batch. I really enjoy having a meal like this. I feel like I am getting a little of everything I need.

cell phone picture...not the best

~Peace~