Haul, Meal Prep and A Few Meals

Hey everyone! I hope you are all well. I just wanted to start off this post by saying thank you so much for your supportive and kind comments that you left on my last post where I spoke a little more candidly about my mental illness. As I mentioned, I always felt the need to separate the mental illness discussion from the vegan food but I know that I don't have to do that any more. I really appreciate this community that we have here and your interest in me and my story beyond the food that I share here. I can't describe how much that means to me 💜

I'm still feeling blah, particularly because last week was very difficult for me physically. Every day I have a headache and every day I'm in pain. The pain over the last week has been particularly intense and I've never really experienced anything like it before.

Due to this I don't have a ton to share with you but I did take pictures where I could. I have a small Trader Joe's haul, some basic food prep and a few meals I ate.

So here is the small Trader Joe's haul. For some reason I was craving those delicious Cornbread Crisps, asparagus, basil, Opal Apples, potatoes, pears, soft pretzels, veggie spring rolls and some carrots.

I made another half batch of Isa's Hummus for Bagels (if you are looking for the recipe it is on the second page of the Hummus recipe in Veganomicon in a little box).

I roasted up some potatoes to heat up during the week. These potatoes nearly caused a meltdown. I was trying to cut them and I just couldn't do it. My arm muscles were in so much pain and I couldn't grip the knife correctly and it was incredibly upsetting that a task as simple as sitting and cutting a few potatoes was so difficult and painful. I struggled through it and now I have these beautiful roasted potatoes to eat but it was pretty upsetting.

I had my second giant honeycrisp apple with my favorite blueberry grape kombucha. I need to try and stockpile of the kombucha because I need more probiotics in my life.

Finally, I made another one of my favorite bagel sandwiches with the hummus and tons of fresh basil and some sun dried tomatoes. It was a perfect meal and very low maintenance and minimal effort. Also as a side note, I rarely like my bagels toasted if they are fresh (which this was) but toasting is essential for this sandwich 😉

So that is what I have for you today. I'll be back on Friday. I'm playing around with a few ideas of what to post so I guess we'll see what I come up with. 

I hope you all have a great week and I'll see you back here on Friday!

Stuff I Ate

Hey everyone! I hope that all is well. I feel a little better after the weekend and particularly after my therapy session for this week. It's still a struggle but I'm doing the best I can to get through it and every day is a new day. I don't have a ton of meals to share with you today but the ones I have are damn good. I finally made something I've been craving for a long time and it's so freaking delicious.

I mentioned that I have been craving fruit like crazy lately so I had some pineapple over the past few days and it was freaking delicious. It's not mango but it did satisfy the juicy fruit craving.

This is what I've been wanting to make for a long time now. It's a boring as picture but this is the glorious Hummus For Bagels from Veganomicon. This is my favorite hummus recipe because it is PERFECT as a spread for bagel. This is only a half recipe because one of my cans of chickpeas was just not right (even though the expiration date was12/2020) and I didn't want to chance it. This is probably for the best thought because I don't know if I'd get through a whole batch before it was past its prime. Anyway, I like to top my hummus bagels a little differently from most.

Here is my most glorious meal of the weekend. A toasted plain bagel with a thick spread of hummus topped with fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes. I know it seems like an unlikely combination but it is freaking delicious and I would eat it every day if I could.

I have also been wanting some comforting ramen and remembered that I had some of these gluten free ramen noodles in the house so I made a steamy bowl of ramen for dinner one night.

It was really delicious. I added a heaping cup of the green veggie foursome from Trader Joe's and it was perfect with the added veggies. 

So, that's what I have to share! I almost got some bubble tea yesterday as a treat since it's been a little warmer lately but I just didn't feel like trekking over there so maybe this weekend I'll treat myself. I hope that you all had a great weekend and I'll see you on Friday!

So. Many. Hauls. (And Some Meals!)

Hey you guys! I hope that you are well and that you had a great weekend! Mine was good except I apparently can't get my shit together to just stop and relax. On Sunday I went out and ran so many errands which included FOUR grocery stores (WTF!?). I have hauls for three of them (one was just the Turkish market for my favorite hummus) and I am really excited to share them with you. I was not able to get to H-Mart because I just didn't have it in me at the end of that but I am hoping to go tomorrow after work. I figured three hauls is still good enough (😂) and I have a few meals and things to share at the end!

So up first we have Whole Foods. I rarely ever go there but there were a few things I wanted and knew I could only get there so I made the trek. Before I get into the haul I have to say I'm so proud of my restraint. I wanted EVERYTHING and only brought these few items home so yay! Anyway, I got a container of roasted mushrooms and eggplant to have with my hummus (sometimes you make concessions when you know you won't have the energy to cook), some Teeccino to try (maybe I can kick the coffee for good), some carrots because Whole Foods has THE BEST CARROTS, Earth Balance sticks to keep in the freezer if I need to bake at any point, Kite Hill yogurt (on sale 4/$5) and some Mother In Law's white kimchi. As you know I'm not a fan of most vegan yogurts and I actually find Kite Hill to be way too sweet but I really wanted yogurt so I got the plain to have with fruit and granola and the vanilla and key lime for other specific things 😉

Next I went to Trader Joe's and got just a few things. I got some honey crisp apples for the first recipe test for my e-book, some dolmas, coconut oil, pears, Mango Kombucha to try, cucumbers, tomatoes and frozen mango. Can you tell I've been craving mango lately?

Finally I have a small haul from the Israeli Market!! I go there for their amazing soup and their cashews and the other stuff was a bonus. I grabbed some vegetable barley soup (which I brought with me for lunch today), some potato leek soup (it was frozen but it is my favorite soup they make so I am giving it a try out of the freezer) some Date bars which just have dates and nuts and stuff, a point of the most delicious cashews and a big ass container of tahini.

This gorgeousness is my first recipe test for my e-book! I made a breakfast apple crisp which is essentially baked apples with a granola type topping.

I had some for breakfast and it was really good! There are a few tweaks I need to make but I love it and I'm excited! I drizzled some vanilla yogurt on top to mimic the creaminess of vanilla ice cream or vegan whipped cream on a traditional apple crisp and it was amazing.

Finally I thought I'd share a Mediterranean plate I made! It's been a long time since I've shared one and this one was really good. The roasted veggies are SO GOOD with the hummus, I highly recommend it.

So that's what I have for you today! I hope you enjoyed the post and that you have a great week! I'll see you back here on Friday! 💜

Stuff I'm Into

Hey guys! I hope that you are well and had a good week! I am getting back into my normal routine and trying to catch up on sleep. I should be back to regular food posts next week and I'm looking forward to it! For today, I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I've been loving lately. I would love to hear about the things you've been enjoying as well!

Netflix

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It shouldn't be a surprise that I love The Great British Bake Off because I've mentioned it before in another favorites post. However, I took a break for a few season when Mary Berry and the two hosts left the show. Paul is entertaining but I tried watching with all the new people and I just wasn't able to get into it. I heard that there was an all vegan episode on the latest season to hit Netflix so I decided to give it another try. Naturally this leads to a 2 season binge and I can't get enough. I still miss Mel and Sue and Mary but the new crew has grown on me and the baking is as inspiring as always.

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Do you guys have that movie that you keep checking for on Netflix? My movie was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I love this movie and I have been wanting to watch it for so long but I was never able to find it on Netflix. I decided to try searching for it a week or two ago and it was there! If you have never seen this movie I highly recommend watching it! It's really good and I thought Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were amazing in it. It also made me hate Elijah Wood and I didn't think that was possible 😂

Disney/Pixar

Over New Year's there were Disney movie marathons all over the place. Thanks to this I was able to watch a movie that I hadn't seen yet. In addition, Netflix added another movie I hadn't seen and both of them were incredible so I wanted to share!

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Tangled was a Disney movie that I had somehow never seen but always wanted to watch. It hasn't been on Netflix since I've had the service and it was never on TV during these marathons. FINALLY it was on and I caught it during a Disney movie marathon and I FREAKING LOVED IT. It quickly became one of my new favorite Disney movies. I love the story and I love Rapunzel and it was beautiful and I just loved it.

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Over Christmas I was asked if I had watched Coco and I said no. I was told it was incredible and I would cry like a baby. Truthfully I didn't have high hopes because I felt it started out a little slow but OH. MY. GOODNESS. It lived up to the hype and it was so good you guys. Of course I cried like a baby and I'm so glad it was recommended to me. It just happened to be added to Netflix so it was perfect timing and I highly recommend checking it out if you can!

Cookbook

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This book has also come up before on this blog when I mentioned some cookbooks that were on my radar. I was lucky enough to receive NYC Vegan for the holidays and I am SO EXCITED!!! I haven't made anything from it yet but all of the recipes look delicious and I can't wait to dive in. Of course some of them will be once in a while treats because they don't quite fit into my nutrition goals for chronic illness management but there are also plenty of recipes that do! I'm so excited to give it a try and I can't wait to do a proper review once I've tried a few recipes!

Food

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I have been seeing Tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes) EVERYWHERE lately and they sound so freaking good. It is my intention to run over to H-Mart this weekend to pick up some rice cakes and gochujang so I can try making them myself. I found a recipe from The Viet Vegan (pictured above from her site) that I am going to try and I can't wait!

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Technically this is a meme but it contains food and is hilarious so I had to share it with you. I can't stop laughing every time I look at it 😂

As you can see I've been catching up on my Netflix/movie watching a lot lately. I have not been feeling great (chronic illness acting up and not sleeping much makes you not want to do much) so I've been giving my body the rest it needs and relaxing and catching up on Netflix. I rarely ever watch TV and I don't really use my Netflix a ton so it was nice to just relax and catch up. What have you been watching on Netflix lately?

That's all I have for you today! I hope that you have a great weekend and I'll be back Tuesday hopefully with a ton of hauls to share with you!! 

Fun Friday: Stuff I'm Into!

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well and ready for the weekend. I have something a little different today and I'm going to be doing a "Stuff I'm Into" post with some things I've been enjoying lately and some things that I'm really excited to try as well. I hope you all like it and let me know what kinds of things you are enjoying!

Books

So up first I have a few books that I'm really excited to get into. The first book is called The Great Big Book of Amazing Creative Lettering and I got it because I'm obsessed with watching YouTube videos of people working on their bullet journals and I get so jealous of their amazing lettering skills. I really want to practice lettering and while I definitely want to learn calligraphy and brush lettering I also thought it would be fun to learn some different and unique types of letting. I picked up this book from 5 Below and I'm really excited to try it out.

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The second book I'm really excited to get into is this new cookbook I got! It's The Simply Vegan Cookbook by Dustin Harder. I have been getting really bored with my meals and wanted a new cookbook to shake things up. I wanted something fuss free and healthy and this book kept coming up in recommendations. I checked out what kinds of recipes were included and I was really pleased to see that the book was arranged by main ingredient and I really love that. I just received it so I haven't really had a chance to try anything but I plan on doing a few review once I get to go through it more and try some of the recipes.

Netflix

So I'll give the head's up now that I have decided to take a break from True Crime content for a little while basically for my mental health BUT I will be sharing some recommendations in this post based on what I've watched and listened to in the past few months. First, I binge watched the second season of Making A Murderer within a 24 hour period of time. I couldn't stop watching but I was forced to because of work and adulting. If you watched the first season and found it interesting I would definitely recommend watching the second season. It was absolutely riveting.

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I have been re-watching the first two seasons of Queer Eye because I love them and I love this show. I remember the original one and loved it as well. They are so adorable and fun and this show always freaking makes me cry. It's so good.

Podcast

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Yes, I know that this is another true crime recommendation but I found this podcast and binge listened until I caught up. I really like the hosts and their friendship and I like how they present the information as well as their commentary. The inject a little humor but it isn't forced like other podcasts and it isn't really graphic at all. I really like it and while I'm going to be staying away from True Crime content for a little while I do highly recommend this podcast.

Food

As you may have guessed from my last few posts I've been really enjoying soup as the weather cools down. My favorite has been my No Chick'n Noodle Soup which is gluten free and obviously vegan. It's so delicious and perfect comfort food for a cool autumn day.

You'll also notice that I've been loving my tots and salads. I've been trying to eat a salad a day and the tots are fun to have on the side. Super yummy meal.

Finally, I've been loving my fruit with peanut butter! I really want to find some good gluten free bread so I can have some toast with peanut butter and banana. I've been craving that so much!

So those are some things that I've been enjoying lately and some things I'm looking forward to getting into as well. Hopefully I'll be able to update you on my fun lettering and I would like to give a proper review of the cookbook once I get to try some recipes from it.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! ❤

Fun Friday! New Cookbooks

Happy Friday everyone!! I hope your week has treated you well! So far I'm liking this new posting schedule and I'm really excited about my Fun Friday post for this week! I've been feeling a bit crappy mood wise over the past few weeks and decided to do some retail therapy. And of course even though I've been downsizing my cookbook collection there are a few that I still have my heart set on. I decided to go for it and I'm really excited to be the proud owner of two new GORGEOUS cookbooks and I'm going to share them with you today!

Just as a note before I get into it, I haven't had a chance to actually make anything yet but I am going to share a few pics and some things I'm looking forward to :)

How stunning is this book?! The Elements of Pizza is written by the same author as Flour Water Salt Yeast, another gorgeous cookbook I have about the art of making bread. This one is all about pizza. It has tons of different crusts and different styles. The idea of making my own pizza crust has always been appealing but I never knew how and I'm quite picky. This book is large and hardcover and seriously beautiful. I will probably be saving this more for the fall since it is still too hot to be using the oven a lot but I'm really excited to give it a try!

This book, Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking is fucking stunning. It is HUGE. And it is packed with gorgeous photos, amazing recipes and beautiful stories. This book was obviously appealing to me because it contains a lot of recipes for some of my favorite things and also a lot of new and easily veganizable recipes. The first section is devoted to Tehina (tahini) and the second is devoted to hummus!! You definitely can't go wrong with that! 

These amazing flaky pillows of deliciousness are called Borekas. They are basically a puff pastry stuffed with all kinds of amazing savory fillings. I know they are a popular breakfast food in Israel and I haven't had them in a long time but I know that they are amazing. They can be stuffed with feta (which was of course the best but I will be making a vegan feta for it!), potato, mushrooms, spinach… anything you want! I've never made them myself but I'm really excited to give it a try!

There is a huge section of salads in the book as well. Israelis are big on salads. They eat salads with every meal. I need to get on that train because my veggie consumption has been weak. Luckily this is offering up some major inspiration!

This gorgeous salad is Green Beans and Mushrooms with Tehina, Lentils and Garlic Chips. Um, yes. Please. 

Something to note about these books is that they are obviously not vegan cookbooks. The great thing is that most of these recipes are easy to veganize. There are some hardcore meat recipes in the Israeli book but honestly it's not a lot. I haven't really looked at those because they are not my priority but maybe I can make some great tofu or seitan dishes from them. It is very easy to be a vegan in Israel though which is why I knew that this book would be really great. The pizza book is VERY easy to veganize as well. Obviously I'll be using vegan cheese and I don't really like "meat" pizza anyway so mine will be packed with veggies.

You can definitely look forward to future Fun Friday posts where I'll share what I made from the books! have you picked up any cool cookbooks lately? I have one more on my list of "Must Haves" and it is the NYC Vegan cookbook. One day it will be mine! :)

What are your plans for the weekend?! I don't know what's going on here yet because I still have 2 more days of work to get through but I know I'll be babysitting on Monday. Inspire me with your plans!

<3

More Randomness

Hey guys! Happy weekend! I'm excited to join you there in a few hours :) In stark contrast to last week, this week has been really great. I feel really good emotionally and really proud of the accomplishments I've made in therapy over the past almost 6 months. I've been doing a lot of reflecting and I feel like I'm in a good place for the first time in a really long time. It's exciting and leaves me even more optimistic and hopeful for my future.

Anyway, on to today's post. I just have a few more meals to share with you today. I'm hoping to get into the kitchen to test out some recipes to share with you guys. I love expressing my creativity in the kitchen and I hope that I'll be able to share some more of that with you in the future.

Here are some meals I've enjoyed this week:

I picked up this big beautiful salad earlier in the week to have for lunch one day. I really love the texture that the cranberries and almonds add to it. I'm definitely going to have to start adding them to my salads in the future.

I also had some of my favorite veggie rolls. Can't beat them.

Here is another bento box meal I had. On the left is some stuffed grape leaves, tomatoes and hummus. On the right is a wrap with hummus, tofurkey, pickles, tomato and lettuce. Another really good meal.

For dinner last night I had a Chick'n Ranch wrap that I made using Gardein Crispy Tenders, tomato, lettuce and Just Ranch on a lavash wrap. It was way too big, I could only eat half. I had a few veggie chips on the side.

As I mentioned in my last post, watching the Great British Bake Off on Netflix has really inspired me to get back in the kitchen and really have some fun with my baking. It's also one way that I've seen the change that has occurred regarding my self esteem. Before I would watch baking shows and get incredibly jealous that I couldn't do the things that they did or that their ideas were so creative and unique. It always bummed me out. Now I'm inspired. I'm inspired to test my own capabilities and to push my creativity. I feel really excited that I finally feel that freedom of being able to go into the kitchen and be ok with a failure. It's ok if things don't turn out the way that I want them to. It's part of the process. I just didn't realize that until now.

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I promise there was a point to all of that :) As I mentioned in my last post, the bread episodes were always my favorite in the Great British Bake Off. I've always wanted to bake my own bread. Now I have been inspired to not just bake bread, but to really learn about it. The science behind it, the proper technique, etc. I ordered the book Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza to start that education. I'm expecting it to arrive on Monday and I can't wait to start reading it!

So there you have it, my ramblings for the day! It was really beautiful here for a few days, definitely very spring like. Then the temperature dropped from 60 degrees to 30 degrees overnight and it snowed yesterday. I think we are expecting a nor'easter on Tuesday too. Mother Nature needs to stop teasing us! I was enjoying getting outside in the sunshine and soaking up the warm(ish) weather.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend! Do you have any fun plans? If so let me know, I want to live vicariously through you!