Grrrrrrrains!

I’m getting busy with the whole grains!

Quinoa with apples, agave, spices and soy milk- where have you been all my life?

I had some cooked quinoa in the freezer (it held up quite well) that I wanted to use up. I also wanted something quick to put together last night to take with me to work this morning for breakfast. So I put about 1 cup of quinoa in a pyrex bowl, added a giant chopped Jonagold apple, about a ½ cup unsweetened soy milk, about 3 Tbsp Agave syrup ( I went a little crazy with this on accident- but it was nice and sweet!), and some ground cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. When I got to work this morning I heated it in the microwave and the apples got nice and soft. It was seriously good!

 you can always click on the photos to see a close up

For lunch I got inspired by The Kind Diet’s ‘Clean Mean Burritos’. I had some simple black bean soup leftover from lunch a couple days ago, so I strained a ½ cup of the beans, added a ½ cup brown rice, and then some chopped veggies- romaine, jicama, red pepper, radish sprouts. I drizzled all of this with some of my sesame vinaigrette and wrapped it up in a warmed Ezekiel tortilla. Hearty, filling, yum. I don’t know if I could ever get tired of rice and beans and their infinite possibilities!

 The beans are there in the middle and the rice is at the bottom.

Usin' up the leftovers and last bits!

Seriously delicious food day today. My meals today were a combination of food inspired by The Kind Diet (lots of whole grains, veggies, non-processed foods) and leftovers (which is also very 'kind diet-ish' as Alicia advocates using up everything and getting creative with leftovers!).

I started my morning with some oolong tea. Coffee just sounded icky to me today. But the oolong has just enough caffeine since it is a mixture of green and black teas.

For breakfast I had brown rice and a mashed sweet potato. I put a tiny bit of Earth Balance and cinnamon on the potato. I cooked the rice using the 'excess water' method, where you cook it like pasta and drain when it's done. Turned out awesome and it only took 30 minutes instead of 45! I added a tiny bit of soy milk to the rice and kind of mixed the two as I ate. This was so delicious! I also had a cup of Morning Thunder tea after breakfast. This had a good amount of caffeine and I still wasn't ready for any coffee. It was also my last bag of Morning Thunder.

For lunch I had a sandwich with the last of the mock tuna salad I made last week on Ezekiel bread, and a yummy salad of romaine, purple cabbage, jicama, red bell pepper, radish sprouts and zucchini, with a sesame vinagrette I whipped up last night (olive oil, sesame oil, rice vinegar, dijon, agave, salt).

I didn't eat all the salad and later I got hungry and used the leftovers to make a wrap with an Ezekiel tortilla as my afternoon snack. I had a third cup of tea this afternoon- Tummy Mint. (keeping with the theme, it was my last bag of Tummy Mint, too.)

not wrapped up yet

wrapped up 

After hitting the gym for some light cardio and a stint in the sauna (still 'detoxing' :)), and to bring the day to a close, I had the last of the Pumpkin Pasta from last week (cannot wait to make it again!!) with some cubed extra firm tofu and cubed zucchini thrown in. I added these items at the last minute so they would heat through, but so that the zucchini would stay mostly raw and crunchy. Yowza- it is still sooooo good!

 there is a hunk of ginger root in the background... 

I think I have finally fully recovered from my rowdy weekend!

I'm too old for this... ;)

Oy Vey did I have a doozy of a weekend (but it sure was fun!). I overindulged on Friday night and also stayed up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime. I paid for it the rest of the weekend. I just “had” to compensate with greasy food all weekend and lots of lying around doing nothing but recovering this old bod.

Last night I decided that I just needed to ‘detox’. Now, there is nothing about my ‘detox’ that is scientific in anyway, it is simply things that I’ve always done that make me feel better when I’m hungover, ill, or generally icky feeling.

I started with a dry brush full body scrub. Starting at my toes with a dry sisal brush and using short, firm strokes toward my heart I brushed my entire body. That always feels good. I do this a couple times a week anyway. Then I did something called a Hot Body Scrub that I read about in Alicia Silverstone’s new book, The Kind Diet. It is essentially scrubbing your body from head to toe with a hot, wet washcloth. It felt really nice and invigorating. I’m going to incorporate this into my grooming routine now.

After the double body scrub actions I took a nice steamy shower. I closed the door in my little bathroom to let the steam build up. I took lots of nice deep breaths and just relaxed and ‘detoxed’.  Afterwards, I applied some antioxidant serum to my face, moisturizer to the rest of me and put on my nightie and fuzzy slippers. I made some hot lemon-ginger water with agave syrup and sat on the couch while I soothed myself.

Finally, getting to bed at a decent hour, I woke up mucho refreshed and back to normal this morning! Yay. Just in time to start incorporating Alicia’s ideas from The Kind Diet, which I will talk about more this week.

Veggie-ism Saves Lives!

I'm taking a break from blogging specifically about food I eat to talk about some AMAZING news I got from my mom today.

Although she is a beautiful 62 year old lady, with gorgeous silvery-platinum hair and hipster glasses, she has struggled with some health problems for a long time. She has suffered from very high (like dangerously high) cholesterol and the medicine she was prescribed for it made her feel like she was "dying". She is also diabetic and has to take medication for that. (those are the two main problems, but there are others...) My grandma died pretty young of diabetes/heart disease related complications, and my mom did not want to end up that way. I think five out of the seven of my mom and her bros and sisses have diabetes.

My mom has experimented with vegetarianism a few times in her life, but never really put her heart into it. Earlier this year she read Eat Right for Your Type, and her type (as is mine) is recommended to eat a nearly vegan diet. She decided to try it and became a vegetarian with vegan aspirations (like me!). She started feeling better. As I started to transition further into veganism, I'd share recipes with her and we also started going to lunch at our (one and only) local vegan restaurant about once a week or so. (she even got my 'very omni' dad to go to their weekend brunch and he's met us there for lunch during the week!)

Then I read Dr. Barnard's Reversing Diabetes, which advocates a vegan diet for reversing diabetes (obviously) and also pretty much every other health condition. After I read it my mom read it. She was convinced even more that she should be completely vegan. (she's not quite there yet, but probably about 90-95%)

So today she had a doctor appointment with her long time doctor- its been about 6-9 months since she last saw him- and guess what??? Her cholesterol is 148!!!!! That is nearly perfect! And before it was so high, even with the medication that her doctor was afraid she was going to die! Her blood sugar levels are very good, not quite 'normal' but better than they have been in years, and she has lost 10 pounds! Way to go MOM!! And all of this is with only about 6 months of a vegetarian diet and about 3 months of a nearly vegan diet.

If my mom isn't proof that eliminating animal products isn't amazing for your health, I don't know what is.