Tasty Meals and Some Whole Foods Treats

 Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing well. I'm thinking that I may try to stick to posting once a week. It feels manageable and I definitely think I'll have some better content after the craziness of the holidays passes. I had taken off this past Friday and tomorrow (Monday) to give myself a little break and a long weekend to set me up to some short weeks and long weekends to close out the year. This year has been very stressful, I've taken minimal time off (two days the entire year I've been working there so far) and the new year is the busiest time of year for me. It has been really nice to have some time to breathe before it gets really busy. 

On Friday I decided to head over to That Pizza Place in Levittown, NY to grab some vegan pizza slices. I have been there a few times since the plague started and would typically get there at night when options were limited. This time I got there for lunch and had lots of options to choose from! Above you'll see a fresh tomato and garlic slice and a broccoli rabe and sausage (!!!) slice. OMG they were both DELICIOUS. I was so stuffed after I ate them I couldn't eat for the rest of the day but it was so worth it. I also got a mac n cheese slice and a grandma slice tucked away in the freezer for a lazy night when I need a quick meal. In the few instances I have ordered food I always do takeout, always change packaging from the original and always reheat. I know that places are being careful but it gives me some peace of mind.

This is just some random sushi I had at some point last week. The rolls were super fresh and delicious. 

Today I decided to have a treat yo self moment on my self care weekend and headed over to Whole Foods. I decided not to photograph my whole haul but wanted to share some of the more exciting stuff that you haven't seen a million times on this blog. I did get some veggies for stir fry, some Just Egg (on sale for $3.99 so I decided it's finally time to try it!) and some Chao slices and Violife Mozzarella shreds.

OMG you guys. I have not had a chocolate chip muffin in YEARS and I loved chocolate chip muffins in my pre-vegan days. Obviously I had to try these when I saw them. Clearly I couldn't wait and ate one before I remembered I wanted to take a photo 😂 They are DELICIOUS. They are not super sweet but they are very yummy and were definitely worth every penny.

YOU. GUYS. This right here is the biggest win of my shopping trip. Inari rolls are my favorite sushi ever and for whatever reason I can not find them anywhere! I have looked at every sushi menu in my area and they just aren't offered. The one place I found there I ordered it and I got one piece and it was literally a tablespoon of rice in a tofu skin for $3. It was so disappointing. As you can see these are properly stuffed Inari rolls and I can't wait to eat them!

I haven't had vegan chick'n nuggets in a little while and decided to try the 365 brand since it is less expensive than the Gardein ones. Hopefully they are good! I will definitely let you know.

You guys. Ice cream! I LOVE mochi and I have not really found vegan mochi outside of Trader Joe's (and I haven't been to TJ's since the plague started because it's just too crowded and I'm not waiting 2 hours to get in). I had tried these mochi the last time I went to WFs and loved them. The chocolate flavor is delicious and the mochi texture is so nice. I highly recommend them. They are very pricey but for a treat they are worth it. I also found these vegan cookie ice cream sandwiches! I definitely had to try one too. I'll let you know how that is as well!

I love popcorn and this looked so good on the shelf. It is just popcorn, some oil, salt and nooch if I remember correctly. I'm sure it'll be delicious for a snack!

Finally, some chocolate! This was on sale 2/$5 so I grabbed 2. I love dark chocolate with espresso beans and I thought the crispy rice bar would  be nostalgic and fun to try. Definitely looking forward to these as well.

All in all, this was definitely a splurge and will be a rare treat. It's nice to treat yourself to some fun stuff and try new things sometimes though. 

I hope that you are all well! I can't believe Christmas is this week again. I hope that you are all staying warm and safe. We had our first snow storm and I'm already over it, ha! What are some fun new things you've tried lately?

Grocery Haul, Meal Prep and Meals... Oh My!

Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing well, had a great weekend and are staying cool. I really enjoyed this weekend as I was able to see one of my best friends for the first time since December. We've been friends for almost 20 years and she is one of my favorite people on earth and I miss her all the time. We were also joined by her husband who is also wonderful and we had a great time. I'll share a little more on this later.

Today's post has a lot going on! Of course I have my (small) Trader Joe's grocery haul to share. I also got some meal prep done as well as some meals I ate over the past week to share with you. I also have the delicious meal I enjoyed with my friends to share as well.

Let's get into it!

First is the produce portion of my grocery haul. I got two bags of butter lettuce, some shredded carrots, asparagus, portabella mushroom caps, grape tomatoes, an avocado and an onion.

My grocery portion of the haul was quite small and contained two delicious treats: Crunchy Curls and Soy Creamy mini ice cream sandwiches.

Next up we have some minimal meal prep:

The timing could not have been more perfect to make these banana muffins. I have been craving banana muffins for a while and I happened to have some very ripe bananas that needed to be used so I got to work using my very favorite recipe: Chocolate Covered Katie's Fat Free Banana Bread recipe. Instead of strawberries I used walnuts and chocolate chips and I made them into muffins. Of course it can't be a Sarah muffin making experience without some sort of issue (seriously, why can't I just make a batch of muffins without incident?). This one was minor but I completely forgot that since these are fat free they would stick to the paper... seriously that's amateur hour on my part. Luckily it's not too bad and I was able to rescue my muffin from the paper (in a few pieces) but next time I'll just make the loaf like I normally would.

Of course I made a batch of my favorite pasta salad for the week. I usually get 3-4 servings from the batch (I usually use a half of a bag of pasta at a time and add tons of veggies) so lunches are pretty well set for the week.

And here is some stuff I ate:

Of course you know I have to have my watermelon!

This was a lazy yet delicious meal of mini Field Roast corn dogs with some roasted potatoes and obviously a lot of ketchup... because I love ketchup on everything.

A quick lunch of rice and beans and broccoli. Very delicious.

This was the amazing meal I enjoyed when I went out for lunch with my friends on Sunday! We had Thai food and I enjoyed this dish of spicy eggplant, tofu, broccoli, onion and green beans with a spring roll and some rice. So so delicious and the leftovers were devoured the next day.

We also went for some bubble tea and I had my usual Peach Pulp tea with boba. I thought I'd take a picture of the top before I punctured it with my straw because I thought it was so cute! You know I love my skulls so combine them with bubble tea and I'm a happy girl.

So there you have it! A little bit of everything to start off the week :) I hope that you all have a great week and I'll be back here on Friday with another post to welcome the weekend (well for you guys, not for me since I still work Saturdays). I hope that you are all enjoying your summer! What fun summer things have you been up to? 

Grocery Haul and Meal Prep

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are easing back into another week. I feel like I've been on the hot mess express for the last week and I'm ready for my stop so I can get off this train ;) I made a really conscious effort to be as prepared for the week as possible as you'll see in the grocery haul and the meal prep that I did this weekend. I have a really bad habit of not being able to decide on anything in terms of meals (or anything really) because I never know what I want so I figured if I made the effort to plan and prep it'll make my life and the decisions much easier. It literally took me three hours to decide to eat cereal for dinner the other night. It's so ridiculous, haha!

Anyway, I made a trip to Trader Joe's on Sunday and figured I'd share the haul with you!

For produce I got some romaine lettuce, baby spinach, potatoes, broccoli, baby carrots, diced onion (lazy as fuck) and grape tomatoes.

I picked up a few grocery items as well. I got some of the Lavash, the high protein tofu, some soy creamy cherry chocolate chip ice cream, mediterranean hummus (still the best store bought hummus in my opinion) and some frozen blueberries.

After Trader Joe's I decided to do a little meal prep for the week. Here's what I made:

I made a HUGE tofu scramble with the high protein tofu, onion, broccoli and spinach. I seasoned it with Trader Joe's onion salt and some black pepper. It's so good you guys. I had the onions in there the longest and they got all brown and caramelized and they made the whole thing taste amazing! I'll be able to get a ton of meals out of this too.

I really wanted some redemption after my last muffin fail so I decided to make some blueberry corn muffins. They are better than the last muffins I made (I mean they aren't green yet so that's a step in the right direction) but they are so dense and pretty dry. They are edible and it's nothing a little Earth Balance and maple syrup can't fix but they aren't amazing. At least they look pretty. The blueberries gave them a pretty purple swirl and I'm not mad at it.

As I mentioned I'm really trying to be better about planning my meals to make my life and decision making a lot easier for myself. I got this new insert for my planner and it is great because you can plan your meals and write your grocery list in the same spot. I'm just hoping that I'll actually use it!

Are you a meal planner? How far in advance do you plan? What happens if you don't want to eat what you've planned. That tends to be my biggest problem.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I'll see you on Friday with another post! <3

PinterTest 1: Breakfast Edition

Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing well! I'm excited to bring you my first PinterTest post! This is where I finally go through some of my pins and test them out. For today's post I decided to try out two breakfast recipes. One was amazing and one was an epic fail and it was probably my fault, haha. Anyway, I'll show you the original picture and link to the pins and I'll show you how mine came out and what I thought of it!

Mexican Avocado Toast

Original Image: Source

The first recipe or meal idea that I wanted to try was the beautiful Mexican Avocado Toast pictured and linked above from Veganosity. It's a beautiful, simple, hearty breakfast and comes together really quickly so it's a great way to get you going before work or school and to sustain you for a while. Let's see how my version came out!

So let's be honest my picture is a little sad. Certainly not as beautiful as theirs but you guys. This toast is fucking good. I left off the hot sauce (that acid reflux ya'll) and the cilantro (because that shit tastes like soap) so my version had the core ingredients of toast, refried beans (I used the Trader Joe's fat free refried beans), some perfectly ripe avocado and some cherry tomatoes cut into quarters. It is seasoned simply with salt and pepper and I am definitely loving this simple but delicious breakfast. I definitely recommend trying it. Two thumbs up for this and I will certainly be making it again in the future.

Sooooooooo now we move on to my epic fail…

Morning Glory Muffins

Original Image: Source

So my second venture was the Morning Glory Muffins from Baker By Nature. Let's be honest, that picture is gorgeous, how could I resist?! The muffins are packed with amazing ingredients like apples, carrots, raisins, walnuts and coconut. It sounded so delicious. And then I made one change that probably ruined the whole batch for me. 

Let's take a look at my images:

So they look fine, right? They actually look freaking delicious. I made only 1 change to the recipe. I used oat flour instead of whole wheat flour. I've done this with many recipes in the past and have never had a problem. I don't know if that is the culprit but these did not come out great. The texture was really strange. They were really dense but also super crumbly at the same time. They weren't dry but still just really crumbly. The other thing that I noticed about the flavor was that it was A LOT of cinnamon. I would definitely recommend cutting back on the cinnamon. I am a huge cinnamon fan but this was still a lot for me. I still love the idea of the recipe but if I were to try it again I would try it using the whole wheat flour and cutting the cinnamon down. I love the combination of flavors and ingredients, I think I just failed on execution. Live and learn!

Oh and side note, I don't know what the hell happened but when I came home from work the carrots on the top of the muffins had turned GREEN. What. The. Fuck?! It was maybe 10 hours after they came out of the oven. I have a feeling it was the way I stored them and maybe not cooling all the way before putting them in the container but it was really weird. Obviously I had to trash them which I HATE doing but I'm not eating green carrots.

So there is my first PinterTest! I hope you all enjoyed reading it! I certainly enjoyed finally getting to test these recipes. I'll have to start perusing my Pins again to pick some out for my next PinterTest!

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!