Exciting Plants

After all of my sister's lectures, books, and scientific articles, I'm not sure if I can fully convert to veganism or even vegetarianism (bacon srsly), but I have become fascinated by vegan baking and meals, just because I do agree that reducing meat intake is important and I don't know, it's just interesting to see how many "normal" foods can taste delicious with some veggie substitutions.

First of all, the green smoothie! Yes, I'm one of those people who drinks strange tasting GREEN concoctions and gets excited over them.

But honestly, why would you not be excited? This is a way to eat those veggies (and eat them raw, which is even better) and even some ground flax seeds and hardly notice. Also I might be alone in this, but I actually like the green coloring- it's very fresh and energizing, just like the actual smoothie. To hear about this more elonquently, check out Green Smoothie Revolution and Oh, She Glows, for starters.

Yes, I have heard about oxalates causing kidney stones, but I put literally obscene amounts of spinach in my sandwiches and ate them five days a week for almost all of my senior year in high school, so blending them into smoothies doesn't dramatically increase my intake. However, I'm not a health practitioner and I don't drink these smoothies every day (just because I'm lazy/don't feel like it/don't have spinach), so I'm not the expert. And obviously if you have a history of kidney stones be wary with these.

There are lots of recipes floating around on the internet, but for this particular smoothie, I just used one banana, one orange, one very large handful of spinach, and some ground flax seeds, almond milk, and ice. This is pretty much my go-to recipe because we almost always have bananas and oranges at home.

Secondly, I made some amazing, almost vegan, faux-Magnums (once again, I failed at being completely vegan because I used regular chocolate to make the coating, but this was extremely exciting regardless).

These are honestly one of the most amazing things I've made this summer. They don't taste vegan or healthy at all, and they taste like an indulgent treat but are pretty healthy, even by non-ice cream standards. Admittedly they're not quite low-fat because of the almond butter, but since most of almond fat is mono- or polyunsaturated, I don't count it as fat (for the record, I am not a dieter, I just don't like unhealthy fats. If you're on a diet, don't immediately listen to me when I talk about how healthy a desert is, because I don't pay attention to calorie counts). The coating was much easier to cover the ice-cream with than I expected, and it hardened enough to hold its shape upon contact with the ice-cream (although I did put it in the freezer for a few minutes to let it properly re-solidify). You wouldn't even know that the "ice-cream" was only made of bananas, almond butter, and cocoa powder. I know I'm gushing about these a lot and that my picture doesn't show off just how amazing it is (I really need a new popsicle mold), but check out the original recipe and picture and MAKE THESE. You won't regret it.

Catch up time

In writing this blog, I've realized how much I enjoy writing to an (imaginary) audience, even though as of yet I haven't really had much interaction with the "blogosphere" as a whole; however I have a lot of trouble posting frequently, due to laziness (it's always easier to waste time online than doing things I actually enjoy) and I guess the whole novelty of having a blog. Even though this blog isn't exactly new anymore.

But anyway, the point of that excessively long introduction is that I never get around to posting about things in a timely fashion, and as a result I have a build-up of food posts.

1) Quick lunch: nothing special, but lunch from leftover pasta, canned salmon, spinach, avocado, and tomato.  Simple and fresh, perfect for summer

2) Vegan Trail Mix Cookies: my sister, the health freak, was literally obsessed with these. While I didn't quite regard them as the ambrosia that she saw them as, they were delicious and very healthy, which is always a plus. Also they were quite filling, which is good for someone like me who's always hungry. Also, while I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, I am interested in reducing my meat/meat-based product intake, and I enjoy finding vegan recipes that don't sacrifice taste.

Recipe!

3) This is more of a "day in the life" kind of thing, but my mom bought 7 loaves of day old bread at the farmer's market for $5. So, so exciting! If your farmer's market sells day old bread, definitely go for it- these are much cheaper (usually $4.50 per loaf) and taste almost as good as regular bread (just toast them lightly).

4) Cucumber "Spa Smoothie": As delicious as this was, I definitely wouldn't consider it a smoothie- it was pretty thin and more of a "cooler." Additionally, I made this not because I was in a spa but because my house was more like a sauna...but that's not really important. The point is not to be turned off by the name.

"Mysterious green drink in a jar...how indie"- sister

Recipe: I subbed in orange juice because we didn't have any limes, and I left the peel of the cucumber on to save labor/vitamins. Still delicious

5) NO THIS EGG IS NOT MOLDY. It's just blue cheese. This was my first attempt to poach an egg, and as you can tell, it failed miserably. Still tasted pretty good though. From top down: blue cheese, poached egg, roasted veggies, farmer's market bread.

PS: the book in the corner is The Remains of the Day. Yes, this picture is a couple weeks old.

6: I like to eat other people's food: Stayed over at a friend's house and had a fruit salad, kale/carrot juice, and bread made from the pulp of juiced vegetables. Such a great idea.

7) Cottage cheese cake: Even though almost everyone I know sees cottage cheese as the quintessential disgusting diet food, I've loved cottage cheese and its bizarre texture since I was a child, so I jumped at the chance to make a "light cheesecake" out of it. Admittedly it wouldn't be mistaken for an actual cheesecake at any time, but it did taste pretty good. In response to the reviews: make sure you blend the cottage cheese to smooth out the lumps! Even I don't like lumpy cheesecake.

Recipe; also since I didn't want to use obscene amounts of butter for the crust, I used a vegan nut crust recipe. It's been over two months since I made this so I don't remember the website (seriously what kind of blog is this?) but this looks pretty good.

8) Rice and vegetable stuffed pepper. Like number 1, not very interesting, but a good quick dinner idea to remember.

9) Whole-wheat Banana Pancakes: The whole point of finding this recipe was to use up the buckwheat flour that had been lying around for too long, but apparently I had already used it up (forget what kind of blogger I am, what kind of person am I?). Nevertheless, the recipe sounded too good to be true (healthy AND delicious), so I decided to try it anyway with our whole wheat flour. And believe it or not, it really was healthy and delicious, and maybe I claimed it was more healthy than it was to excuse the fact that I ate several servings of these, they're definitely healthier than your average pancake, and my little brothers liked them enough to vouch for the tastiness factor. As you can tell from the picture, we didn't even need syrup!

10) More pancakes! These ones are a different recipe: whole-wheat (again) lemon ricotta with blueberry topping. The matching plate was completely intentional; these pancakes were actually made weeks apart. These pancakes weren't quite as healthy as the ones above, but more indulgent and honestly still healthier than the typical pancake. Some college-student budget substitutions: no chia seeds, and I used Labne, a Middle-Eastern yogurt-cheese that I use as a substitute for everything from ricotta (what the recipe called for originally) and cream cheese. The flavors are a bit more lacking but the texture is pretty good and I use it so much that I don't know what else food should taste like.

11) Oatmeal cups: These were made after a late-night announcement about roadtrips, and since my siblings and I need to snack constantly, I whipped these up pretty quickly. They're not oatmeal muffins, but actual baked oatmeal; basically the perfect roadtrip snack for my family since we'll eat practically anything when we're in the car. If you want actual oatmeal muffins these probably won't cut it, but I actually liked the unusual texture more, and I liked cutting out the unnecessary fluff.

Recipe

Okay this post took me nearly a month to finish. This is vaguely ridiculous, and when I FINALLY leave for college (next week!), I'm sure it'll get even more sporadic. I wondered the other day why I'm writing a blog that no one is reading and likely no one will ever read, but I do enjoy writing for unknown people to read. Maybe one day I'll write for a magazine or newspaper and people will actually read it!
I have very high aspirations for my future.