A Year Already.....

Happy hump day! I realized something today, and I don't know how it snuck up on me. I have now been a vegan for a year....woohoo! I feel so much better with out all those stomach problems that I used to have in my prevegan days. I look back to when I first became a vegan and I have come a long way, but still have a long way to go. It seems like I learn something new every day, and I want to thank all of you for that. I don't know what I would have done with out your help and knowledge. Reading your blogs and having you to comment on mine has really opened my eyes and taste buds to a whole new world that I love. So....thank you all my blogger friends for all the help and support! Onto the food.... I started my morning off with the usual smoothie. This one had a banana (not frozen), frozen blueberries and mango chunks, a cup of water, 2 kale leaves, a little honey, 1 tsp flax seeds, 1 tbs chia seeds, and some pea protein powder in it. I forgot all about having chia seeds until I spotted them the other day while cleaning out my cabinets. They just miraculously appeared. :o) Yesterday was my nephews 13th birthday, so last night I went over to my sister-n-law's house for his party. I had no idea what they were cooking for supper, but I suspected that they were grilling. When I got there John (brother-n-law) pulled out a couple of portabellas and asked me how I wanted to doctor them up. They had bought me a couple of mushrooms, so I would have something to eat...wasn't that sweet? For supper I had a portabella burger while everyone else had regular burgers. :o) There was a mushroom left over, so they told me to take it home with me. I couldn't believe no one else ate it. They were so good! I rubbed a little olive oil on the caps and sprinkled some kind of pineapple seasoning on them that they had....yum! For lunch today I had a kale salad with the left over mushroom cut up on top. I also added some broccoli and avocado. I'm running low on veggies, that’s why my salad isn't very colorful. Okay, this may sound weird, but I'm about to tell you what kind of dressing I made this morning. I had a small handful of grape tomatoes left, so I threw them in the blender. I added a little olive oil, a little lemon juice, some dried basil (didn’t' have fresh), salt and pepper. I blended all that up ad then poured it over the kale and massaged it in. The kale marinated in that all morning until lunch. I wasn't sure if it would be good or not, but I wanted something different. To my amazement, it was very good. Believe it or not, everything mixed well....very good! You can barely see the tomato dressing in the picture, but you can get glimpses of some red here and there. :o)

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Veggies....Veggies...Veggies

Happy hump day! I'm trying to be happy today, but it's a little hard for me today. I am still dwelling on something that I was told yesterday. Have you ever been ridiculed for your lifestyle (being a vegan)? Have you ever been told that your lifestyle was an inconvenience to others and that you were selfish for being that way? I was pretty much told that yesterday, and I can't seem to let it go. I've never tried to push my diet on anyone and I've never meant to inconvenience anyone. I have always told people to not worry about me. I can always find something to eat where ever we go. When we go to a party or a family get together, I have always told people to not cook for me. I have always been more than willing to bring my own food. I don't know if I am still mad or just hurt. The main reason I became a vegan was for health reasons. Shortly after that, and I mean very shortly after that, I learned how animals were treated and slaughtered. That was the icing on the cake for me. I stand true to my decision in becoming a vegan, and I will not turn back to eating meat for any reason or for any one person. It's who I am now and I have never felt better. I almost felt like I was being told that it was better to be sick than to be healthy. Being ridiculed for being a vegan is one reason why I had rather not tell people, but then again it's who I am, and I am not ashamed of it. I'm just wondering if anyone else ever has to deal with these type of situations? If so, how do you handle it? I did defend myself and I will continue to do so!

Sorry for that rant, but I just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. I'm not the type of person to normally gripe in my blog, but this has really left me in a way that I don't like.

Anyway.....on to supper last night. I had a salad with some mango couscous on top, which was very good. A very easy couscous recipe. You take 1/2 cup orange juice and 1/3 cup of water and bring that to a boil in a sauce pan. Once the liquid starts to boil, remove from the heat and add 3/4 cup couscous. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes. After the couscous has absorbed all the liquid, put the couscous into a bowl and let cool for about 10 minutes. After the couscous has cooled add 1 cup cubed mango, 2 tablespoons of lime and 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and there ya go. I started to add some peppers and onion, but decided not to this time. I massaged a little olive oil and lime juice into the greens before I added the veggies and couscous. Yum.....

For lunch I had Chinese take out....veggies and rice...Yum! :o) I have to admit to something here. It totally weirds me out to eat the stalks of the broccoli. I bite of the tops and throw out the stalks. I know....that's weird, but the stalks just give me the hibbie jibbies. :o) I don't know why I just shared that, but since I did, do you have any weird quirks like that?

Oh, did anyone watch cupcake wars last night? Another vegan won....woohoo. I was watching it because Kim from C'est La Vegan was going to be on there. Sadly she was the first to go. :( Doron Petersan, who owns Sticky Fingers Sweets and Eats in Washington DC did win though. I had never heard of her, but it was cool to see another vegan win, since chef Chloe Coscarelli won last year.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

2 Year Anniversay and Peanut Butter Cookies

Hello everyone! Yesterday was mine and Tony's 2 year anniversary...woohoo. It doesn't seem like we have been married that long....time sure does fly! Anyway, since it was our anniversary, we went to Memphis (about an hour away) and went to Whole Foods. Don't laugh...that's where I wanted to go, because I don't get there very often. :o) As you can see from the picture below, I bought quite a bit of stuff. Those are purple sweet potatoes. Has anyone ever had them? We had never seen them before, so needless to say, we had to get a couple. Now we just need to figure out the best way to cook them. Any suggestions?

As we were in whole foods I came across some Kombucha. Okay, so that stuff is a little on the expensive side, but I had to try it. I've seen several bloggers drinking it, so I wanted to try it. The funny part about this is that I didn't read everything on the bottle before opening it.

See where it says "Do NOT Shake"? Well apparently it says that for a reason. It had stuff sitting in the bottom of the bottle, so my inner self told me to shake it up, so that's what I did. Big mistake! As we were leaving Whole Foods, I shook it up (pretty hard) and decided to open it....in the car. Oh my, talk about an eruption. Thank goodness I was fast to twist the top back on tight, or I would have been in serious trouble for making a mess in Tony's car. It took like 15 minutes of slowly trying to open it back up to be able to drink it without it wanting to spew everywhere. The lesson learned here is to read about new products before trying to consume them. On the very positive side of this.... the Kombucha tasted awesome....I want more! Tony even drank half of it. :o)

We had planned on staying in Memphis to eat, but when we left Whole Foods neither one of us was hungry, so we decided to just head back to Jackson. When we got back to Jackson, we decided to go eat at the Old Town Spaghetti Store. I don't think I have been there in almost a year. I know I hadn't been since I became a vegan. I had a "make your own" pasta dinner. I ordered some whole wheat angel hair pasta with a mushroom sauce and added some spinach. It was fantastic! I didn't have my camera, so I took a picture of it with Tony's phone. What you see in this picture is about how much I brought home. I ate and ate, but didn't seem to get anywhere. I had enough leftovers to make two more meals. :o)

I'm going to rewind a bit more to the weekend. Friday night I had leftover veggie pot pie, sweet potatoes and some roasted corn that Tony made. I'm going to hold off on giving you that recipe because it needs a little tweaking. It was still good though. Those are two sweet pickles(gherkins) on my plate also. I do NOT like sweet pickles and my lovely husband put them on my plate and told me to eat them with my other food. He did this because that's what I do to him....lol

Saturday night we had Mexican. I sauteed an onion, red and green bell pepper, and a couple of cloves of garlic (minced) in some olive oil to go on top of my bean tostada. Tony cooked some Mexican rice, while I tried to salvage as much of an over ripe avocado as I could, so I could make some guacamole. The guacamole that you see on my plate is all that I was able to make, because most of my avocado had ruined. Have you ever gotten a tree to grow from the avocado pit? We keep trying, but we haven't had any luck yet. We stuck 3 toothpicks into the fattest part of the pit and filled a glass with water. We then let the tooth picks rest on the rim of the glass with the bottom of the pit sitting in water...about an inch deep. I'm wondering if maybe it's not getting enough sunshine.

Saturday afternoon I made some peanut butter cookies, which turned out very good. I liked the ones with chocolate chips in them the best. :o) Tony requested that I put a pecan on top of a few for him.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup brown rice syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup safflower oil

1/4 cup almond milk

turbinado sugar, for sprinkling before baking

Preheat over to 350. In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a larger bowl combine the peanut butter, syrup, oil, and vanilla. Stir until combined and pour the four mixture over the peanut butter mixture and mix well. Shape cookie dough into balls and then place on a nonstick cookie sheet. Press down on the dough balls with a fork making a criss cross design. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar and bake for 10-12 minutes at 350. Let cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

Just Fun

Friday night we went to the Thai Cafe for dinner. I have to admit, this was my first time to eat Thia food, and I loved it! It is now one of my top 3 places that I like to go out to eat. I ordered the Buddha's Delight, which had all the veggies and tofu in it. It was delicious. I took a picture of it with my phone. Not the greatest quality, but at least you get the idea. I'm sure most of you have have Thia food quite often. I am steadily trying new things and finding that I like most everything that I have tried so far.

Do you ever make a dish and then forget what all you put in it? I threw different veggies in a skillet last night to make a stir fry and now have forgotten exactly what spices I used. It was so good. I took a picture of my lunch, which is what I made last night. Next time I will remember to write down everything that I am putting into my dish...ha Oh, for the first time ever I added some cauliflower. I never really cared for cauliflower, but decided I would try it cooked. I have to admit that I like it cooked.... not quite there on eating it raw though.. It's amazing at how our taste buds change, or maybe it just how we look at things differently when you make a big change in your life. Now that I am vegan I eat and try things that I would not have touched when I was eating meat. It is so amazing!

Okay off of food for a minute. I had to share these two pictures of the Alpacas. These belong to my brother-n-law. The brown one is Alice and the white ones is Al. Alice was a little more brave than Al. She was the first to come eat out of my hand. After Al saw that it was okay and that I was not going to hurt him, he decided to come up. Of course no one was around with a camera to take a picture of me feeding them. :o( Aren't they cute!! I heard the story of how they are sheared this weekend also...didn't like that story! I know they need to be sheared, so they can stay cool, but there has to be a nicer way to do it.....

Again, sorry for the picture quality. I took all these pictures with my phone, which does not have the best camera on it.

~Peace~

My journey started February 21st, 2010 when my church decided to do a 21 day fast. They gave everyone, who wanted to participate in the fast, the option to fast whatever they wanted. My husband and I decided we were going to go on the Daniel fast for the full 21 days, which was the best thing I could have ever done. The first week was terrible. I was going through withdrawals from chocolate, all kinds of sugars, the greasy hamburgers and all the processed foods that I was so used to eating. I didn’t think I was EVER going to get past craving all that junk. During the second week, I could not believe how I was beginning to feel. I was feeling better than I ever had before! I had tons of energy and didn’t feel bloated and sick anymore! I have had stomach problems for years, but during the fast, all my stomach problems seemed to disappear. After our fast was over, we headed out to our favorite hamburger joint. I got my favorite double cheeseburger and onion rings with sweet tea. Yum…right? Wrong!!! I was only half finished with my burger and I was beginning to feel so bloated and sick. Needless to say, the greasy food that I so used to love, did not love me or my stomach anymore. It was at that moment, when I decided that I was finished with meat, and that is when I decided to become a vegetarian.

I have to tell you....toward the end of our fast, my husband told me about seeing Alicia Silverstone on Oprah and about her new book called “The Kind Diet” . I looked up Alicia and her book on Oprah’s website and I knew that I must have this book. Her words of "flirting" with becoming vegan, and how bad the meat that we buy, really is, really got my curiosity up. So, I got her book for my birthday, and that is when my vegan journey began. So far, it has been great and the thought of meat…well, let’s just say…I do NOT want it anymore! I do not want all that processed food and sugar that I once so loved. I was also so amazed at the cruelty that the animals are put through just to provide food for humans. It is so sad!!! No animal deserves to be treated that way!

Being a vegan goes far beyond food for me. It is a new way of life. I will be posting some tasty vegan recipes, as I find my way in this new way of living. I will also be sharing things I'm learning about other animal free products as well. You may not be vegan, but maybe you will find some of my postings interesting. Vegan or not, the food is fantastic and I know that I'm getting much healthier!

So, I invite you to follow me on my new journey. Who knows…you may just decide to make some changes in your own life. So, here we go...

~lovin...livin...vegan~