Obsessed With Vegan Food

The title of my post refers to a comment made by Cami to me today. She asked if she could borrow my sprouts, and after telling her that she could I proceeded to inform her about how much I love sprouts because of their texture blah blah blah. She looked at me oddly and said "sprouts are just sprouts, you are just obsessed with vegan food"- duh only I would lecture about the yumminess of sprouts. My love of vegan food went a little above and beyond today.

Brekkie started with the LAST of my banana bread & coffee in this hilarious cup.

After breakfast I had to drive to UCLA to get my blood drawn. I am currently on Coumadin for blood clots that I have in my lungs which I found out about during a stay in the ICU for 9 days in December. I was in ICU because of complications resulting from a simple surgery that I had performed. Although my health is much better now, the medication I am on means that I have to moderate the amount of vitamin K that I take in (which is in a lot of veggies)- this is another reason why I keep track of what I eat everyday. My blood results were great though today and I don't have to go back for another 3 weeks, yey! Afterwards I visited a friend that goes to UCLA and then drove back to Malibu for advanced stats : / raging I know.

Lunch consisted of lots of greens & vitamin K!

Packed lunch for the day-leftovers from yesterday's meal (garbanzo & pea quinoa), TJ's herb mix salad w/ 1/2 small avocado, TJ's spicy peanut vinaigrette.

This lunch did not hold me over at all. Less than an hour later my stomach was growling. I went into the Cafe at school and picked up an enormous diet coke and Odwalla sweet and salty bar. These are the only bar options in the Cafe, but they are pretty tasty.

For dinner I knew I was going to need something to really fill me up, and what is a better option for filling your tummy than lots of carbs? Generally speaking I try to veer away from pasta, but tonight I was desperately craving fettucini alfredo. For the pasta I used whole wheat spaghetti and for the sauce I used a variation of this recipe. It ended up like this:

A little less than 1/2 package silken tofu
2 tablespoon Smart Balance
1/4 cup vegan soy shredded cheese mix
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 cup veggie broth

2 cups peas

Salt & Pepa

While i cooked the pasta I blended everything but the peas in a blender. After it was thoroughly mixed together I poured the mixture in a sauce pan, added the peas, and then cooked on low until everything was warmed. I then poured the sauce on top of the pasta. It was insanely delicious and very creamy, like it contained real butter and cheese.

I was still in munching mode so I nuked up some TJ's meatless meatballs and finished off the last of the sauce.

After dinner I was debating whether or not to go out to Taco Tuesday with friends but decided not to because I had to write a tribute speech. I ended up compromising and stayed in and wrote a tribute speech to the 60's while drinking some Yellowtail Chardonnay, my favorite ; )

Lastly, does anyone know of anyone who is selling their Coachella tickets? I was super bummed to find out that they were sold out yesterday, I've been planning to go for my friend's 21st : ( If I don't find any I may have to either try and scalp some or sneak in.... Should be interesting, i'll keep you updated.

Monkeying Around

My late nap yesterday totally threw me off, so at 1 am I was wide awake and decided to put some browning bananas I had to use and made banana bread. Sounds sensible right? Not really the banana bread did not finish until 2:30 a.m. I found this recipe on postpunkkitchen. I altered it a bit mostly because I didn't want to go to the store and get more ingredients and because I wanted it to have less calories and be a bit healthier. Here are my ingredients:

1 cup Splenda brown sugar

1/2 cup Earth Balance, at room temp
4 very ripe bananas, mashed well
2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

I followed the same directions as they recommended to in the recipe and baked it for about 1 hr and 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I held off until I woke up this morning to try some. This is how it looked in the end-

This morning for breakfast I had some heated up with Smart Balance on top along with some coffee. It was really delicious, very moist and not too sweet.

I wasn't too hungry at lunch time and decided to have 1/2 of a sandwich consisting of a piece of toasted ezekiel bread, lots of sprouts, hummus, and Tofurky.

Almost every time my mom comes to visit me up at school we eat lunch in Santa Monica at Real Food Daily which has amazing vegan food. My mom was nice enough to buy me Real Food Daily cookbook which tells you how to cook every item on the menu. It includes appetizers, sauces, entrees, deserts- basically every yummy vegan meal you can think of.

I decided to make the caesar salad with blackened tempeh which I have had many times at the restaurant. I am actually not a fan of non vegan caesar salad, but this vegan recipe was delicious. I won't include the recipe because I think it would be better if you bought the book.

These are the pieces of blackened tempeh that were coated in spices, olive oil and whole wheat flour. They had quite a kick to them & were packed with flavor.

Below are the croutons which were super crunchy and very rosemaryish (not a word real word I know, but the best one I could think of).

Here is the finished product. The best part was the dressing which was simple to make and very salty and creamy.

Close up.

There was enough to feed all three of my roommates, who even though they are not vegan said that my version was better than regular caesar salad! I felt quite accomplished : )

I had sorority stuff to do tonight but grabbed a soy chai tea misto w/ 2 splendas before hand to keep me awake through Chapter.

All this talk of food has made me hungry! May have to go grab a slice of banana bread....