New cookbook!

Viva Vegan! arrived yesterday! I pre-ordered it so long ago that I had forgotten I even did it!

One glance was all I needed to know that I need to cook my way through this book. 200 recipes for things like arepas, salteñas, empanadas, feijoada, alfajores, batidos, arroz con leche, flan, bread pudding made with mango and guava! Oh man, I am in heaven!

Most of you may know this already, but I spend my real life immersed in all things Latin American. In my travels to the region, I often have a hard time finding food I can eat. Saying "I'm a vegetarian" will get you fish or chicken at dinner. "I'm sorry, I don't eat meat or eggs" just gets you puzzled looks that say "How is that possible??" at breakfast. I once ate papaya for breakfast and arepas and rice for lunch for an entire week in Venezuela. May sound delicious to you, but after day 3, I was dying for something else! One night on that same trip I went to a meal catered by a 5 star restaurant. I explained to the chef that I don't eat meat and he said it was not a problem to make something special for me. He returned with raviolis that were filled with something strange. When I asked what it was, he said, without batting an eyelash, "We made a special vegetarian dish for you. The raviolis have cazón". Yes, that would be baby shark! And in Cuba, EVERYTHING is covered in pork, even the rice and beans. I spent most of that trip hungry and grumpy. Guatemala and Mexico were a little bit easier, but mostly because I was with locals that knew where I should eat.

This book gives me a ton of options and will actually let me try things I haven't been able to try due to their ingredients. For example, Bolivian salteñas pretty much always have beef in them and often use gelatin to coagulate all of the ingredients. Yuck!

A lot of these recipes look like they will require a little work, so I think cooking my way through will need to wait at least until I finish my final paper for grad school, or maybe even until late May when I move. At that point I'll have a Latin grocery store a few blocks from my apartment and a captive audience as I force Jesse to try out my latest creations!

Eating my words.

Go ahead....do it. Call me a hypocrite. Because I am.

Back in July I ranted against the Kindle in a big way. I thought they were pointless and only added more technology to take care of and worry about to our lives. I thought they were destroying the relationship between book and reader. I shuddered at the mere thought of buying books of the paperless variety.

And so I continued and continued to buy books. I hate library books, if I haven't yet shared that quirk with you. And just when I thought I had no more space to put them, I bought some more books and made the room.

And then Jesse and I got an apartment together. And that apartment does not have the space for all of my books to come live with us. We would seriously look like an episode of "Hoarders" if I tried to make the space for them. So I went through and separated the "I want to have this for my collection" and the "This was signed by the author" books from the "I read this in two hours by the pool" and the "WHAT was I thinking when I bought this?!" books. I donated the latter two categories. I got rid of (so far) SIX bags of books. And I still have multiple bookshelves full.

Then I won a gift card to Amazon. My first thought was, "Man, there are lot of books on my wish list that I could buy with that!". Then I realized that was the addict speaking. So I sucked it up and got a Kindle. I'm not sure how much I like it just yet. It's light and I love being able to get books in 60 seconds but it's definitely not the same. It will be useful for travel for sure, especially when I finish a book and I am not near a bookstore, but also for chick lit, current events books, newspapers, etc. that I don't want to have forever. It will definitely save trees. And it will save a little bit of money since e-books are cheaper than the real deal.

But mostly it will save Jesse and I from drowning in paperbacks.

Shacking Up.

Jesse and I are moving in together!

I've spent much of the last week searching for and seeing a few apartments for rent in the area. Many emails and phone calls later, we have a place! It's cute, updated, near a metro and perfect for our first home together. It's especially wonderful because we've been long distance for quite some time. So that means that in the next month and a half, Jesse will finish his school program, move back to the DC area and start a new job, I will complete my master's degree, my office is changing locations AND we will be moving in together in a new apartment. Whew, that's a lot of change in 45 days. I'm excited and nervous and, frankly, tired, just thinking about it! I'm excited to have someone to come home to and to cook with on a regular basis.

So my questions are the following: For those of you that do or have lived with a significant other, or even if you've just thought about it for the future, what are some things you see as important to work out beforehand or that you wish you had talked about before moving in together? What things surprised you, either about yourself, your significant other, or you both as a couple, that you only noticed after living together? What adjustments did you have to make to your routine? Any general advice for us as we start this new chapter in our lives?

Posting here may be sporadic for the next month. My apologies in advance!

{Photo credit: modomatic}

Happy April!

And just like that....it's April! I feel like I was just bundled up in my house as snowed literally poured down on the DC area. Now the sun is shining, everything is in bloom (my allergies can attest to this!), including the beautiful cherry blossom trees, and we've smacked into Springtime with full force.

So how was my month? Here were my March intentions:

1. Complete the 21 Day Vegan Kickstart Success! And it was great.

2. Try out at least 5 new recipes Yes! I made spicy tomato chickpea soup, sweet chili-lime tofu and crispy sesame kale from Vegan Yum Yum, banana chocolate chip muffins from The Joy of Vegan Baking, cran-apple muffins from 1,000 Vegan Recipes and last night I made the Happy Herbivore's chickpea tacos! I've also made about 10 different variations of a green smoothie over the course of the past month.

3. Get back into a gym/yoga routine This was going pretty well for the brief period there before I fell at Whole Foods and messed up my knee/hip/back. Just the thought of twisting into a yoga pose or making it through a spin class these past few weeks has been painful! I'm getting back on track this week (more to come on this in a later post).

4. Write in my paper journal on a regular basis Giant fail. I say I want to do this nearly every month and it's the first thing to go out the window when I run out of time. Any thoughts for making this more of an automatic habit?

5. Get a head start on my big research paper that is due May 3rd Hmm, on the one hand, I did write a three page paper proposal that helped me to consolidate my ideas. I also gathered a bunch of research. However, that research is sitting in a giant pile in my bedroom and I only have an introduction written, so that's not much of a head start. My goal is to read and get through writing 10 pages this coming weekend and then 10 more the following weekend. Then I will just need to add a few more pages, edit it and voila! My last grad school paper ever will be complete!

My April goals:

1. Finish my last class and paper for graduate school (preferably without going insane).

2. Get back into journaling!

3. Eat well/work out lots/lose some weight. I don't want to put strict parameters on this one but I do intend to get back on a healthy track. More on this in a later post!

4. Let go. There are a lot of things in my life that have the potential to change in the next two months or so. My type-A personality has me making list after list, over planning and trying to guess and/or control the outcome of all of those things. None of that is good for one's stress levels! Right now I feel on the verge of potentially an entire new life. It's scary and refreshing at the same time.

I wish you all a wonderful April full of flowers, time spent basking in the sun and fantastic new beginnings!



{Photo credit: *yasuhiro}

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

I know I am a little late to the Jamie Oliver party, but last night I finally got around to watching Jamie Oliver's TED Prize speech. After that I immediately went to Hulu to watch the first pre-season episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, his new show on ABC. The season is set to premiere with a two hour episode tomorrow night and I CAN'T WAIT!

To those who haven't seen it, Jamie goes to a town in West Virginia that has been deemed by the government to be the fattest in America in order to change their food culture, primarily focusing on their schools. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I thought of his approach at first. He comes on a little strong and it was more than clear that the school lunch ladies did not like him poking around on their turf. In fact, other than a pastor that is also concerned with the health of the town's residents, many others also seemed angered with Jamie and he even winds up on the front page of the town paper.

However, what struck a chord with me was the family that Jamie begins working with to change their eating habits. All of the children are overweight and the Mom serves them things like freshly fried donuts dipped in chocolate as their breakfast. She cries when Jamie tells her she is killing her children. This hit home because I was raised in much the same way. The food culture where I grew up was similar (so it is no surpise that Philadelphia and the surrounding area also ranks right up there on the fattest in America list). I grew up eating Entemann's donuts and Cocoa Krispies for breakfast. Lunch was either American cheese on white bread or whatever unidentifiable object they served in the cafeteria. Dinner was chicken nuggets with french fries or macaroni and cheese. We rarely had a salad, but if we did you can bet it was iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing. To be fair, we often had some green stuff, like cooked frozen spinach, canned string beans or asparagus (cooked in butter!). Sometimes we had salmon (in a dill cream sauce) or tuna (covered in parmesan cheese and fried in olive oil). We had dessert pretty much every night: double-stuffed Oreos, Chips Ahoy cookies, a piece of cake with 6 inches of icing or some other pre-packaged nightmare. You might think I had awful parents or something but they were feeding us exactly what every other family in my area was feeding their kids. It's no wonder I got so fat and have food issues to this day....and that I had my gall bladder removed at 23 years old!

If you can believe it, the following is a list of food that I either did not ever eat or didn't know existed until coming to college or, in some cases, even just a year or two ago: whole wheat bread, lentils, almond milk, brown rice, soy milk, quinoa, sushi, bulgur wheat, tofu, tempeh, seitan, falafel, any cuisine from India, Ethiopia, Japan and Thailand, brussel sprouts, kale, chard, beets, mixed greens, jicama, avocado, bamboo shoots, baby spinach, feta cheese, carrots (unless they were in a canned soup), artichokes, Greek yogurt, mung beans/mung bean sprouts, steel cut oats, polenta, brie cheese, couscous, almond butter, okra, whole wheat pasta, cannelini beans, butternut squash, chickpeas, arugula, whole wheat pizza, pesto, black beans, green tea, guacamole, hummus, dolma, blackberries, Asian pears, black grapes, chai, guava, papaya, collard greens and yuca. I am sure there are more. The good news is that most of those things make up the large majority of my diet at this point, so there's hope for others who grew up on foods similar to me.

Jamie's show is premiering at the same time that First Lady Michelle Obama has started her new Let's Move Campaign. In fact, you can sign his petition for healthier food in our schools, which he plans to take to the White House after the show airs. For all of the kids like me who were served slushies, Doritos, frozen pizza and breadsticks covered in cheese (as a main course!) in their cafeterias, I sincerely hope a change is on the horizon. I can't wait to watch and see what tomorrow night brings!

Are you watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? What do you think? What types of food did you grow up eating?

Vegan Kickstart: The Conclusion

Well, my friends, the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart has come to a close! What, you might ask, have I learned over the past three weeks?

New Foods

Even though I was already a vegetarian, over the course of these 21 days I have tried or cooked with several new-to-me foods. Those include: nutritional yeast, dairy-free cheese, radishes, Earth Balance, vegan-friendly marshmallows (you HAVE to try Sweet & Sara's--way better than normal marshmallows!), tahini, black lentils, arugula, coconut milk yogurt and ice cream, bulgur wheat, hemp protein powder, cheese-free pizza, brussel sprouts and tempeh. Heck, I've even made peace with kale!

New Recipes from New Cookbooks

A HUGE benefit of doing this program has been getting myself back into the kitchen. I've cooked from Vegan Yum Yum, Veganomicon, 1,000 Vegan Recipes, The Vegan Table, The Joy of Vegan Baking, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Vegan Soul Kitchen and Vegan with a Vengeance. I already owned most of those cookbooks but the Kickstart got me actually using them! I also found a great recipe for Sweet Potato Quinoa Black Bean burgers on the web and made that too!

New Ideas

Every since watching "Earthlings" sometime in February, I have been on a quest to learn as much as possible. Through several vegan resource books, VegNews magazine, internet searches and other films, I've soaked up SO much new information on the agriculture industry and the way animals are treated. As much as I didn't want to learn this stuff, I am so glad I did. Ignorance is not bliss. Educating myself has been an invaluable experience.

New Habits

-I cook for myself way, way, way more than I previously did. I actually left the mall early the other day because I didn't want to eat fast food and wanted to come home and make something yummy!

-Even though I still have them from time to time, my cravings for sweets have significantly decreased.

-I read more labels.

-I'm more adventurous and more sure of myself in the kitchen.

-I eat more vegetables and whole grains.

-I've tried out cruelty-free lip balm and bought a vegan purse.

-I am WAY more conscious of what I am putting into my body.

-I've developed a green smoothie habit.

-I sought out vegan-friendly restaurants and bakeries in the area.

-I do feel lighter and like my mind is clearer.

-The sense that I could actually do this has empowered me in other areas of my life. I'm back at the gym and yoga on a regular basis.

The Downside

Unlike vegetarianism, there were a few times where I felt like veganism was pretty isolating. There was a friend's birthday where I couldn't partake of her favorite birthday cake, a work lunch where my Thai dish came covered in eggs, a work celebration I couldn't enjoy and all of my out-to-dinner experiences have been at Indian, Thai or Chinese restaurants, which is fine for 21 days but I don't know about a whole lifetime. Often a restaurant will have one or maybe two vegetarian dishes and they likely aren't vegan. It can be stressful to eat out of the house sometimes.

The other downside is that I have found that I don't like the label "vegan" and that some vegans themselves have been militant on the subject. I'm not going to toss out all of the leather shoes I currently own. I may use lip balm with honey in it. Someone may eat a vegan diet for health or environmental reasons and not just animal rights reasons and I refuse to judge them for that. I'm just not okay with people getting worked up about a label and what is or is not "going far enough" with someone else's diet.

...But will I keep it up?

Maybe. I think I will likely continue the way I was always eating. That is to say, no meat at all, no eggs except maybe in a baked good here or there, and avoiding dairy where possible since I shouldn't really have it due to not having a gall bladder and a lactose intolerance. However, I think being so strict about my diet has brought about flashbacks of other diets. I don't like feeling restricted and I don't like labels. I just want to eat fruits, veggies and whole grains 95% of the time (and maybe the occasional piece of pizza or grilled cheese) and leave it at that.

That being said, this was a great experience and I will always be thankful for what I've learned, what I've cooked and the new habits I've acquired.

{Photo credit: AuntieP}

Vegan Kickstart: Days 19-21

It's official: I have a green smoothie obsession. I try to have one for breakfast. That way I get in a LOT of veggies and fruits and sometimes protein (yay hemp powder) before I even leave the house in the morning. It's decreased my cravings for sweets and boosted my energy levels.

I've promised myself that sometime very soon I will branch out from spinach and start adding more adventurous greens to my smoothies. I have recently been thinking I would really like to have a juicer too so that I don't have to have icy smoothies all the time.

I recently read Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko. It's full of great information on nutrition, the benefits of chlorophyll, recipes for green smoothies, etc. Looks like an updated version is on its way out-- I highly recommend it!

Vegan Kickstart: Days 17 & 18

I have a confession: for the most part, I hate vegan substitutes for meat products. I absolutely will not eat faux meat. I never ate burgers or sausage to begin with so I really don't want to eat something that looks like one. It's a total mental hurdle that I just can't seem to get over. I can't wrap my brain around mock seafood and I can't imagine eating fake lunch meat. I haven't even been able to bring myself to eat seitan (it looks too much like meat!) or soy crumbles. I'm a regular tofu, lentils and veggie kind of girl.

However, non-existent gall bladder beware, I do like the occasional cheese item. I thought that it would be very difficult to completely give up but the good news is that it hasn't been at all. It's especially good news because I haven't liked the two dairy-free cheeses I have tried, Sheese and Daiya. I opened the Sheese package and, based on color, odor and consistency, couldn't even bring myself to try it. I know, I'm the world's pickiest eater! The Daiya was a little bit better, but the cheddar style, which I had on nachos, was pretty darn salty. I still have the Italian blend in my freezer, just waiting for the time when I am craving cheesy pizza and feeling adventurous. Sometime soon I would also like to try a cream cheese substitute.

For the most part, however, I don't want to eat substitutes. I want veggies and whole grains. I do, however, worry what might happen when the time comes that I have bad cravings for a grilled cheese or a melty slice of pizza and dairy-free cheeses just won't cut it.

Words to Grow By

"Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,

Listen to the DON'TS,

Listen to the SHOULDN'TS,

The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS,

Listen to the NEVER HAVES,

Then listen close to me--

Anything can happen, child,

Anything can be."

~Shel Silverstein

{Photo credit: jared}

Vegan Kickstart: Day 16

Today I stocked up on some groceries (including hemp protein powder and Gerb's Pumpkin Seeds, which I had seen on VegNews' blog). When I got home, I made the cran-apple muffins from Robin Robertson's 1,000 Vegan Recipes. They were pretty darn good, though not nearly as moist and tasty as Colleen's banana chocolate chip muffins. I also made steel cut oats for the very first time so that I would have something new and interesting for breakfast these next few days. I am so glad that the Kickstart has been able to get me back in the kitchen. It's something I've been wanting to get back into for awhile now and this gives me a good excuse to finally just do it!