Potatoes Are a Snack Food

Side note: I'm watching Man vs. Food and it's making me gag a little big. This guy is eating 5 pounds of nachos.  Who does that?!

This afternoon on Day 3 of the Vegan Challenge, after a particularly stressful situation at work in which I worked through 'lunch', I realized that I had only eaten the first part of my lunch (a salad with a black bean burger if you care) and was hungry about 2 hours later. 

Luckily I had more food with me in my enormous bag of food but my typical poor planning left me with a sweet potato.  I'm sure my Eastern European ancestors were proud of me for eating a potato for a snack, but I just went for it and it was really good, unconventional but good.  It was sweet, salty, filling, and warm.  Kind of like a chocolate chip cookie, but in potato form ;)

Onto other things- I wanted to share another grain with you- buckwheat.  Does anyone else think of The Little Rascals when they hear 'buckwheat'? (picture source)

Buckwheat (the grain) is a great source of manganese, fiber (~5 grams per cup), and flavanoids, making it really good for the heart.  It also helps to prevent diabetes and gallstones, and is great for those avoiding wheat or gluten.  It's also a fruit seed, rather than a grain and is eaten throughout the world.  (picture source)

I've been cooking up the fruit seed (?) for the last 3 weeks for hubby's breakfast.  He heats it up and drowns it in almond milk- a twist on the traditional serving of buckwheat in Russia minus the full fat milk.  It can also be eaten as a savory food in place of rice or quinoa.


Do you ever have unconventional snacks?  I think a sweet potato tops my list.

Black Bean Burgers

I really enjoyed reading your comments to my last post.  There were a lot of thoughtful responses (which I love) and a lot of great food rules.  I encourage you to read the comments here.  While the jury is still out on the mystery cheese (vegan cheddar) I am still enjoying my vegan eats.  I can't really say that I have felt limited since I live in my own bubble. I bring my lunch to work daily and most of our friends and family already know that we have made some modifications in our foods, and the others just know that the food I eat is 'weird and healthy' and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Given my fear of mystery meat, I still wanted to make something that incorporated some protein that I could eat.  This week I cooked up a ton of black beans and I made my first attempt at Black Bean and Millet Burgers.

Serving suggestion ;)

Here is the recipe- it can use a few tweaks like more spice, but it worked for me and is a great base recipe.

Black Bean and Millet Burgers:

• 1 cup cooked black beans
• 1/2 cup cooked millet
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• 2 Tbsp coconut milk
• Cumin
• Salt
• Pepper

*Place all ingredients in food processor and whirl until ingredients are combined
*Scoop the 'burgers' onto sprayed cookie sheet (my recipe made 5 large burgers)and bake at 370 degrees for 20 minutes
*Enjoy with your choice of sides

I baked these while I made my husband some baked chicken and some other sides.  I also popped in my Shape Pilates DVD and did a quick workout while my food baked- multi-tasking at its best!  While I was doing my DVD I was thinking about Melissa's post today about blog comparisons and how long people generally work out.  I used to work out for hours but now I keep my workouts to 60-90 minutes for yoga classes, or 30-40 minutes for cardio.  I know some bloggers spend a lot more time than this and a lot of 'real life' people spend a lot less than this and either extreme can create a triggering reaction.  It took a while, but when I read people's routines I think 'well that's nice' and love to read the variety and people's goals, but I don't internalize it.  Most of the time workout posts motivate me to try harder but I know my bad knees won't let me run a marathon, so I move on to the next delicious cookie post.

Question for you: Do you ever make your own burgers?  What kinds?

I Like A Challenge

If you missed yesterday's guest post from my hubby, please check it out here. 
What I'm here to blabber about today is the Vegan Challenge that is going on right now in the little ole blog world.  While I have never wanted to label my eating style, I think it's safe to say I don't usually eat a lot of animal products.  I'm not sure why, but I have never been overly carnivorous and I tend to not eat some animals because I think they are cute.  My perception of dairy is usually pretty passive, unless ice cream is involved- then we're talking.  So when the challenge came up, I decided that one of the richest and most powerful women in the world could do it, this challenge was my next step to ruling the world. 

Challenge accepted. But I would have my own rules:
1. I would eat whole foods including fruits, veggies, and grains
2. I would be soy free
3. I would still maintain my gluten free and food combining as much as I could
4. No fake meat
5. Limit of 2 substitute products (described below)

The reason behind all my rules is that I wanted to see how normal people did it, without relying on Whole Foods and other specialty markets or frankenfoods that don't make any sense in my head.

I did choose to experiment with a couple of items that I have been wanting to try and had fairly recognizable ingredient lists.  I purchased both of these items with my own money and these opinions are my own.
SO Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt

Loved it!  With 12 grams of sugar and 90 calories per serving, this was a perfect afternoon snack.  It was a lot thinner than regular yogurt and I bet it would be delicious in a smoothie. 

The other product I tried was Daiya Vegan cheese.  The ingredients in it are below:
Filtered water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and /or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil, pea protein, salt, inactive yeast, vegan natural flavours, vegetable glycerin, xanthan gum, citric acid (for flavor), annatto.

I was honestly freaked out by this 'cheese', but it melted.  Not that I didn't believe other people, or the package, but I had my doubts. 

Before:

After:

I gave my husband a bite and he said it was good, but didn't taste like cheese.  I agreed.  It was OK and I'll finish it, but it tasted like some other substance that I couldn't describe.


I think that by trying these two substances early in my challenge, it will be much easier to just eat real food.  I honestly enjoyed the roasted veggies I made today much more than the specialty products I tried.

Roasted butternut squash and zucchini
 

I think the rest of my week will be filled with some of my favorite real foods and that's just how I like it.

Question for you: Are you doing the vegan challenge?  If not, what are your personal food rules?

Guest Post: Hubby's Crash Course-Photography Lesson 101

I hope you guys enjoyed your weekend!  I sure have- I had the whole weekend off, even from blogging.  The post below is another guest post from the hubby.  I am incredibly biased, but I love when he steps in and shows things from his own perspective.  This post is another recap from our recent trip and I love his new skill of photography and am so happy to share it with you.  I hope you enjoy this post.
 
Hello Friends! While One Healthy Apple has already done a great job recapping our recent vacation to Australia and New Zealand, there is one other dimension to the trip that is worth sharing. This dimension is our (well, mostly mine) evolution in photography skills. The trip provided a great opportunity to familiarize myself with the new and relatively advanced camera, the Canon Rebel we recently purchased (after standing out at the recent Foodbuzz conference as what seemed like the only couple not taking food photos with a professional camera).  In addition to breaking in the camera, I also brought several photography books with us that I tried to draw upon throughout our trip.  After taking more than 800 photos on the trip, it is still unclear whether I have learned anything and whether I have any artistic ability when it comes to photography.  However, given the beauty of some of the places I was able to capture (please don't judge HOW they are captured - I'm still a beginner), good photographs were not difficult to take (or at least trying to take). I started with these in Sydney.

These photos made me question if I am better at capturing certain elements more than others. Am I a nature photographer? Do I have an eye for an urban theme? In New Zealand I tested my skills with nature shots.  I was especially impressed by sky and water.  New Zealand sky had a lot of character - dynamic, with clouds reflecting sun light and colors constantly changing, mirroring the diverse landscape of the island. Clouds were very low hanging and provided a dramatic look, covering the peaks of various mountains and hill tops. The sunsets sparking the New Zealand sky were even more beautiful. The views were so stunning that the photos (at least my photos) do not tell half the story, but here are a few anyway.

Water impressed us the most in New Zealand.  Whether in the ocean, inner lakes, or glaciers, its color was striking turquoise, one of the brightest colors on the island.  Its clarity allowed great reflections of the landscape around it, which I tried to capture.

I also tried taking artistic photos of One Healthy Apple or photos of us together.

On our trip, I learned as much about using light, exposure, and aperture, as I did about the two countries' history, culture, and culinary landscape.  But even after taking 800+ photos, the one lesson I learned, is that I have some stiff competition with One Healthy Apple's artistic photography level, and have admired her photos the most. Here are some of my favorites.

 

It's me again- see you later this week for some more regular posts.  I am participating in the Vegan For A Week Challenge, hosted by Morgan of Life After Bagels.  I'm excited to see how living the vegan lifestyle will work!

Food Flops

I'm so excited for another weekend- no big plans but the Superbowl, weekend yoga, and spending time at home will be fun. 

3 Week Lifestyle Update
This week marks week 3 of my new lifestyle and I'm still doing fine.  I can't say I love it 100% but I seem to be craving sugary treats a lot less since I know I would have to try to make them myself or spend a ton of money on packaged treats and that kind of misses the whole point.  I have screwed up food combining a couple of times with food order (see example of eats below) but I still say as long as I do it most of the time, my head won't spontaneously combust.  My big milestone is February 28 and I'll probably have a big chunk of chocolate that day.  A BIG chunk of chocolate.  My coworkers are probably more excited about this than I am.  At this point, I think I may implement this permanently and live happily ever after as long as it includes some occasional treats, just ask me again in a couple more weeks.

Food Flops
Not everything I have been eating is fabulous.  I made amaranth and found the texture absolutely foul.  It tasted like something people eat in jail, so I had to camouflage it a LOT to not throw it all out.  I am guessing I did something wrong when cooking it.  Here is how I ended up eating it:

Amaranth in a jar- amaranth mixed with goat milk yogurt, chia seeds, squirt of agave nectar, almond butter, and raspberries.  Between the presentation, the actual food substance, and the combination, it wasn't bad, but very mediocre.

The other flop is the juice I bought from Safeway's Organics line.  There is nothing wrong with fruit juice, but the label said it was a pomegranate juice- apparently it's a pomegranate juice blend.  It tasted like grape juice and that is just wrong.  When I see a picture of a pomegranate I expect it to kinda taste like the juice it needs to be.  This one was my fault for not reading the label more carefully.  I still drank it, but diluted it with a gallon of water.

Things I Love
Enough whining on a Friday!  Here are the things I am loving right now:

Artisana Raw Organic Coconut Butter (picture source)

White watches (picture source)

Millet Bread from Food For Life (picture source)

What are you loving right now?

I'm Not Perfect: The Hummus Course

The Hummus Course
Not that I have you guys fooled, but I think we can all agree the healthy living blog community likes to keep things beautifully edited and styled- from food pictures to meal posts.  I like to keep things positive because I love the uplifting community and the motivation I get from interacting with you guys.  However, I think sometimes we perpetuate a life of perfection.  It's 9:30 PM and I just settled in after my workout, bringing stuff in from the car, cooking buckwheat for tomorrow (you're welcome, hubby), and packing lunches.

In case you ever had a fleeting thought that I have my stuff together, I present you with my typical weeknight culinary delight- the hummus course.  I really, really like having this and eat something more filling along with it.  The sharp objects in the background are optional.

Instructions:
1. Fill bowl with veggies
2. Dip in hummus
3. Refill bowl and repeat
4. Find a nice snack to eat after, like millet toast with almond butter and coconut butter

I did make something last night that was true perfection.  We all know Gena's banana soft serve, yes?  Since I'm not eating chocolate or other fun stuff like ice cream, I made my own soft serve and added some raspberries and it was fabulous. I ate it out of order in food combining rules, but it was perfect according to my rules.

Adapted Soft Serve:
Adapted from Choosing Raw

*1 frozen banana
*1 cup of frozen raspberries
*little bit almond milk.
*Blend, blend, blend!
*Optional: coconut butter topping

 

 I loved this and I'm definitely going to be making this more often.

Question for you: Tell me your quick 5 minute go-to meal. Go!

Some New Staples

One of the things I was afraid of in cutting gluten from our shopping list was missing out on food- really good food.  I'm not even going to think about things like chocolate chip cookies, chocolate bars, ice cream, or CAKE since those items were usually for the hubby and I broke into the stash when I was extra munchy.  I'm talking about my obsession with pita chips, regular yogurt, and whole wheat bread.

I had to make adjustments and of course my other boyfriend Trader Joe's came through.  Each of these items is affordable and delicious- tested by all the members of my household. Both of us.

Going from left to right, here is my breakdown and description of our new favorites:

Rice and beans chips- these are adzuki and rice flour chips and have just a little bit of bite to them and are perfect dipped in guacamole.

Grade A Goat Milk Yogurt- tangy like regular plain yogurt but with a decidedly different taste.  I add a little bit of honey to mine and stir in some chia seeds.

Savory Mini Edamame Crackers- crunchy, salty, made with soy flour and good with dips. 

Roasted Seaweed- good as a salad topping or on its own.  Just make sure you brush your teeth after eating this.

Brown Rice Tortillas- I found these much harder than regular tortillas so these are best heated.  I top them with almond butter, eat, and then repeat.

Brown Rice Cakes- I know these have a bad reputation as a 'diet food' but these are really good.  The brown rice makes these more hearty and a little nuttier.

Organic Red Quinoa- I love the protein content, the texture, and the color.  You can have this savory or sweet and if you are food combining (or trying to), then you can eat it with protein...which is good!

Another new staple is the gigantor salad that makes its way into my belly at least one meal a day.  I add a little of everything to it- mainly the produce that I buy on a weekly basis and a few fun items.

Arugula, spinach, red quinoa, sugar snap peas, butternut squash, kale and onions roasted in coconut oil, and fresh cilantro on top.

I topped it with some guacamole and it was a filling, delicious meal.

Question for you: What are some new products you have tried recently? 

P.S. I'm adding some pages to try to make this site a little less chaotic.  If you haven't found it hidden in the mess, check out my 'About Me' page.  Also, please let me know if you are not on my Blogroll yet and I will add you as long as you leave your URL.