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Here was our Sunday fare! Curried lentils with carrots, sweet potatoes and kale (SO yummy - my new favorite lentils!). Served over brown rice with a spinach salad - YUM! I think it would be great with butternut squash too! Also, vegan (of course vegan - I should stop saying it's vegan because that should be obvious now!) chocolate chip cookies! Our usual vegan chocolate was out of stock and we tried this one - but it wasn't great 😑. But cookies are cookies so yum!

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This is what 3 weeks of groceries looks like! (Most of the produce is hidden). $113! (And we ate it ALL)

Prepping to cook

The steps of vegan golden tofu veggie curry

Cauliflower tofu korma with spinach on the side

Vegan pho! (Mostly carrots, mushrooms and broccoli with like 4 ramen noodles haha - I didn’t realize we were out of ramen noodles!)

The beginnings of tempeh bacon crumbles - yum! (It does end up looking like bacon!)

Lentil soup about to simmer!

Blueberry banana muffins (vegan of course!)

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Homemade granola bars (super easy!) made of oatmeal, puffed rice, dried fruit, nuts and seeds & a bit of maple syrup

Apple cinnamon oatmeal bake! This was pre-bake.  Only 2 tablespoons of sugar, and the rest is apples, nuts, seeds, spices and steel cut oats!

Blueberry coconut smoothie bowl! A smoothie bowl is a smoothie that is too thick to drink with a straw, so you eat it with a spoon! Made with frozen bananas, blueberries, almond milk, kale, spinach, coconut flakes and then topped with toppings (including homemade granola, not pictured here) My new FAVORITE breakfast - so yummy!

Homemade granola! This is pre-crumbled granola - SO YUMMY! On oatmeal, smoothie bowls, with almond milk, by itself - YUM-O!

Smoothie bowl with granola toppings

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Mickey Mouse Marinara So, the ugly food pictures commence! But rest assured, while it might be ugly on Tumblr, it sure isn't ugly in the tummy! Last night we made vegan eggplant Parmesan with Kristy Turner's pepita Parmesan "cheese." The eggplant (which you all have had) turned out great, and I was just finishing up cooking the linguini when I made a startling realization - the Tupperware that I thought had held my frozen marinara sauce actually held...PUMPKIN PIE FILLING!! 😱 The filling had already had the milk & spices added to it, so it was no longer orange and at first glance (and when frozen) had appeared red to me. But now I had a dilemma: how can I have eggplant parm & linguini with no marinara?? So, I Mickey Mouse'd it. I hear from Wally that that is the term used with cars when you fix it with duct tape and bubble gum. I dug through the entire pantry and found a very small jar of Trader Joe's bruschetta sauce which had tomatoes but was very salty. And small. And I found a tiny (8oz) can of tomato sauce. So I added those together and added some spices and vegetable broth to thin it out. Then I wanted to make it more chunky & give it more protein, so I found a lone can of garbanzo beans, added it to a blender with more veggie broth, and pulsed it until it looked like the consistency of ground beef. Then I added that in, simmered it up, and voila! Mickey Mouse Marinara! Honestly, I didn't care for the garbanzo bean texture. But Wally LOVED it and ate the sauce with a spoon which was hilarious. But regardless, it worked great as "marinara sauce" and saved the dinner. I have also included a gif of the pepita Parmesan whirling around in the food processor for your enjoyment. As a bonus, Wally was craving dessert, and I discovered that though we did not plan to make it this week, we had (almost) everything in our pantry to make the Chocolate Fudge Cake from the Oh She Glows Cookbook. We subbed what we didn't have, like whole wheat pastry flour, and made it work. We made cupcakes instead of cakes and also managed to make a vegan chocolate buttercream icing. These cupcakes have surprisingly little sugar (even the chocolate is unsweetened cocoa powder) and used simple ingredients and methods, but yielded a soft and moist cupcake I couldn't believe was vegan! I had mine with a small side of my homemade vegan java chip ice cream, and YUM we we were in vegan heaven last night. Until I started working out my sore body, then it was less heavenly, but hey, still good I guess 😄. Anyways, wish you could come and have a bite of cake or eggplant. Or cake AND eggplant. Thanks for reading, and enjoy my ugly pics!

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As promised, here's last night's bounty! Vegan chili made from black beans, onions, tomatoes, bell peppers and a whole lot of spices, plus left over cinnamon rolls and vegan Mexican hot chocolate. Our $54.42 sure is stretchy! And I hear Santa is sending us a belated gift of groceries & other items! Thank you Santa!

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A very sad discovery this morning.  Please join us as we mourn the 25-lb bag of rice that we have somehow managed to consume in six months.  No more rice ‘till next week!

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Friday, January 6

I am officially labeling Fridays “Fun Food Fridays”! Because today was a FUN FOOD FRIDAY! For breakfast this morning, we had the last of the lentil soup over white rice, topped with tempeh bacon bits from Turner’s book (my first of 125 recipes!) AND vegan vanilla french toast with strawberries, also from her book (2/125 recipes done!).  I didn’t think one could really make French toast properly without eggs but WOW! I didn’t even miss the eggs!! I couldn’t even tell they were egg-less.  And, using my vegan challah bread that we defrosted a few days ago was definitely a great choice.  Tonight might find some vegan chili being made, as well as some leftover cinnamon rolls from Wednesday, so stay tuned! I’m also looking forward to tomorrow’s after-church eggplant parmesan with linguini and marinara sauce with pepita parmesan cheese. Happy Sabbath, and may your tummy & soul be fed during the Sabbath rest.

p.s. We have both decided to take on a 21-day fitness challenge that includes walking in the morning and weights in the evening.  Shiloh has decided to be very unhelpful by trying to sit on my when I am doing floor exercises.  Today finds us a little sore, but hey, we need to get our parka-bodies ready! (Not exactly beach bod weather after all).

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January 4, 2017 - Thursday

The only photo I have to share for Thursday’s meal is this bowl of oatmeal. Steel cut oats with trail mix, apples and almond milk.  This, plus a peanut butter and wild honey sandwich, along with leftover lentil soup, an apple, and a banana, is what we ate yesterday, as most of the day was spent running around the seminary.  Good thing a bowl of steel cut oats is good fuel! (And don’t forget the Nespresso hazelnut latte with almond milk! :)).

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As you can see, I have no business starting an actual food blog as, it turns out, I take ugly food pictures.  I also forget to take them while I’m actually cooking, and again, as it turns out, my food is a little bit ugly right now.  Which is to be expected as I am a novice.  BUT I have to say - WOW WOW WOW these dishes turned out AMAZING! The lentils were out of this world, and I baked cinnamon rolls for the first time (vegan of course, and not too much sugar! Just 1/4th cup and 1 tsp of sugar for TWO pans of cinnamon rolls - only one pan pictured here - plus some powdered sugar to make the icing).  And WOWSERS those rolls turned out AMAZING!!!! I couldn’t believe they were vegan! Light, fluffy, not heavy or greasy or overly sweet, and at 186 calories a pop (I made smaller rolls than the recipe calls for so we can enjoy it longer), WAY better than Cinnabon’s 880-1080 calories per roll.  I cannot say enough good things about these vegan cinnamon rolls! Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the pre-rise dough, the proofed dough, the 2nd rise of the rolls before baking, etc.  But here they are! Wish I could send some over the screen!

Enjoy the view (of my ugly food pics) and may your cinnamon roll dough stretch as far as your $54.42!

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What Can You Do With $54.42?

Happy Three Kings Day, and welcome to the first edition of “This Vegan Life,” my journey with food (and by connection, finances, faith & fitness) in 2017.  What can you do with $54.42? This is the amount that we spent for our groceries for the next seven days, which, if we are able to utilize these groceries as well as our bare-bones pantry items (our refrigerator and freezer were almost completely empty when we arrived on Tuesday night, though we did have canned food and spices in the pantry), we will have eaten vegan AND spent only $1.29 per person per meal (less if you factor in snacks & desserts) AND have tried three recipes out of my goal of 125 recipes in 365 days from Kristy Turner’s But My Family Would Never Eat Vegan! cookbook (thank you, Ate, for the gift!).

It turns out $54.42 can go a pretty long distance, as long as the bulk of the purchases are non-dairy, non-meat, non-processed food items! Dairy, meat and processed/packaged foods are pretty pricey, so poor grad students had better stick to the healthy stuff! I posted some pictures so you can see what types of foods we purchased for $54.42 from Aldi’s, a discount organic market, and Whole Foods, the mother of all grocery stories.  Our grocery list included: Pumpkin seeds (for Turner’s “Pepita Parmesan” in BMFWNEV), tempeh (for Turners “Quick ‘Bacon’ Crumbles”), trail mix for oatmeal, bags of spinach for smoothies, soup and salads, eggplant for vegan eggplant part, peanut butter (a splurge at $5.99/pound but made right in front of you at whole foods and so yummy!), almond milk for a thousand uses including lattes, baking and oatmeal, bell pepper for chili, carrots, lemons, apples, canned tomatoes, strawberries, lentils, steel cut oats, whole grain bread, spices and packets of active dry yeast.

My plan is to turn these groceries into spiced lentil soup with spinach http://cookieandkate.com/2015/vegan-lentil-soup-recipe/, chili & cornbread (made from leftover corn meal and recipe from Veganomicon cookbook, chili recipe here: http://cookieandkate.com/2015/vegetarian-chili-recipe/), vegan eggplant parmesan with pepita parmesan cheese & linguini with marinara sauce (http://minimalistbaker.com/vegan-eggplant-parmesan/, which I serve with linguini I have left over from another recipe plus leftover marinara sauce I froze a while back), everyone’s favorite oatmeal (using Turner’s oatmeal recipe from her book), and vegan vanilla french toast with strawberry sauce (from Turner’s book) which I will use my leftover vegan homemade challah bread that I froze several months ago (Isa Chandra’s recipe here: http://www.jvs.org.uk/vegan-challah-isa-chandra-moskowitz/), quick bacon crumbles from Turner’s book, AND the world’s easiest vegan cinnamon rolls from Minimalist Baker (http://minimalistbaker.com/the-worlds-easiest-cinnamon-rolls/).  In addition, I have ingredient for vegan waffles, corn tortillas made by Wally, black beans and red rice, and smoothies if I get bored.

Well, I better get to cooking! Lots of fun cooking to do, and walking in freezing temperatures with Shiloh, who has come to love his snow boots & wags when he sees them (thank you Dad!).  I will post pictures of my vegan foods as they are made :). Hopefully this week, I will knock out FOUR of 125 recipes in 365 days: 1) Pepita parmesan cheese, 2) Vegan vanilla french toast with strawberry sauce, 3) Everyone’s Favorite Oatmeal, 4) Quick bacon crumbles.

Stay tuned, and may your $54.42 stretch to the moon!

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Some of the underwater reef

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Wally driving our speedboat!

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Us snorkling at Punta Nizuc (we got to keep the snorkel but not the goggles), us sitting on the front of our speedboat, me snorkeling, me being a scary sea monster.