What I Ate Wednesday #46

     

Happy What I Ate Wednesday!  I hope everyone is having a happy start to your new year. 

 

January means a fresh start to a everyday eating. The new year brings about a renewed sense of discipline for me.  My mornings are starting out with a shake and some avocado toast, or a mini tofu “egg” on flatbread.  Today it was a Blueberry Pie Protein Shake.

Excuse the “Bud” glass, I was going for the Flyers logo…yea, hockey is coming back. Andy is thrilled!

Thick, rich, frozen and frothy.  A coconut vanilla base with layers of freshly defrosted juicy wild blueberries.  This shake is a meal in and of itself. 

Blueberry Pie Protein Shake for two

• 1.5 cups fresh or frozen wild blueberries
• 1 tbsp. agave
• 8 large ice cubes
• 1 frozen banana
• 2 cups coconut or almond milk
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 scoops vanilla vegan protein, (I used Spiru-tein)
• 2 tbsp. hemp seeds
• 2 tbsp. chia seeds
• 1/3 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup shredded coconut

Defrost blueberries for 1 minute in microwave or leave out in the fridge over night, mixed with 1 tbsp. agave. Set aside.

Place all ingredients except the blueberries in a high speed blender. Blend until thick and creamy.

Pour half into two glasses. Scoop in half the berries in each glass. Top with remainder of shake.  Pour remainder of berries on top, and serve!

Just because I am enjoying a healthy start to the new year, does not mean that hoagie cravings don’t still occur.  My healthier hoagie bites are just right for those cravings. They also make a filling lunch that is so satisfying it feels like a cheat meal.

My hoagie bites are butter lettuce cups filled with all my favorite hoagie ingredients. Thin slices of Tofurky turkey, shreds of Daiya jack cheese, a mixture of spring mix, chopped tomato, hot and sweet peppers, Italian seasoning, white balsamic vinaigrette. 

After lunch, I wanted to make Mya a sweet treat that she loves.  My vanilla protein bark. Since vegan white chocolate is hard to come by, this is a great option.

The trick to this bark is melting coconut oil, adding a little bit a agave for sweetener, and stirring in some vanilla protein powder.

Then add your favorite stir-ins. Mine are pistachio nuts, raisins, hemp seeds and coconut.

Pour mixture into a parchment lined glass dish and pop into freezer.

Eat some pistachios while waiting.

In one hour, it will look like this…

Break into pieces and enjoy as an after meal sweet treat.

Dinner time, I was looking forward to this meal all day. Eggplant Parm with salad.

Whole grain spaghetti in a tomato basil sauce topped with vegan eggplant that was frozen and baked until crisp.

A lovely side salad necessary to keep me from eating too much pasta!

When I grew up salad always accompanied pasta.  Today we call it spaghetti and sauce.  My grandmothers called it “macaroni and gravy”.  Now, macaroni is associated with a small box and powdered orange cheese, and gravy is something brown and salty that goes over mashed potatoes and meat. When I was a kid, I loved when the “gravy” mixed with the vinaigrette in the salad. Today, the moment those two combine on my plate, I am flashed back to being 10 and wiping the plate of “gravy” and vinaigrette with a piece of crusty Italian bread. Food memories are so powerful.  I hope I can pass those to Mya the way my grandmothers cooking has been the inspiration in my life.

LiveJournal Tags: vegan,pasta,eggplant,hoagie,protien,vegetarian

Thanks for joining me for WIAW. Now, go make a memory in your kitchen.

WIAW 44 & 45 Holiday Edition

 

Hi everyone! I apologize, with our bakery orders so busy on Christmas Eve plus entertaining on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I did not get my WIAW #44 Christmas post done.  This post is going to be a summary of Last week and this week.

Christmas was fantastic.  Christmas Eve I spent most of the day in the kitchen making Stromboli and pies. I made spinach and mushroom, vegan ham, pepperoni and cheese, and cheese steak varieties.  {click here for recipe link}

I made the pies for Christmas Day, tofu Coconut Cream Pie and Vegan Nut based Cheesecake, I used the extra bits of filling to make mini versions for Christmas Eve,.  The cheesecake was my favorite, it was mostly made from soaked cashews and macadamia nuts. Classically flavored with lemon zest and topped with cherries, everyone loved it and had no idea it was not dairy!

Me and Mya also tried to make almond meal thumb print cookies.  They looked really nice and tasted awful!  Epic failure!  It was a recipe from Vegan Family Meals, awful.  I gave them to the birds.

Although we had fun making them! And, made quite a mess.

Mya’s creativity was a good distraction while waiting for guests, , she spent all day Christmas Eve making accessories for her Monster High Dolls. She allowed a Disney Prince to stand in for Claude Wolf in case she did not get any boys from Santa. She is becoming quite the photographer!

We spent Christmas Eve with my dad, my brother, and Andy’s parents. We feasted and opened some presents.

I tried an iPhone self portrait…how do people do this?

I served (all vegan) Stromboli, onion rings, mini hoagies and cheesesteaks, waffle fries and some mini desserts that were a preview of our Christmas Pies.

 

After eating all that good food, and a few glasses of wine, we were exhausted. Mya was thrilled her mom-mom Iva gave her the Monster High School Christmas Eve.

We watched the Polar Express, all squished together, like we do every Christmas Eve and then went to bed by ten.

 

It was the best Christmas ever.  Mya was beyond thrilled, it was a Monster High Christmas.  She got all the dolls she asked Santa for and a few extra Monster surprises.  I could not stop smiling all day.

Mya played all day with her new monsters.  She loved the boys so much, she did not put them down.  She had a late afternoon nap with Prince, and the boys!

Christmas day was spent feasting again, this time with mom!

We had my famous loaded lasagna stuffed full of veggies, Field Roast Italian sausage, and my tofu cashew ricotta.  No one could believe it was vegan.  I will admit, it was probably one of my best ever.  I made some snacks, including my left over Stromboli, and a huge Italian salad to go along.  I was so happy to have lasagna as a meal for the next two days.  So sad when it was all gone. {click here for lasagna recipe}

 

During the week, Mya played with her monsters non stop.  And then we were lucky enough to enjoy a few inches of beautiful snowfall. 

It was Prince’s first snow. He loved it.

We went sledding that afternoon. I love going down on the tube.  It was a perfect hill for me. Not too much to walk back up!

 

We had a lot of tofu Florentine breakfasts this week.  Shitake mushrooms and onions sautéed in Braggs with kale and spinach atop my tofu eggs and spice Daiya cheese. I ate this at least 4x this week. So good! {click here tofu Florentine recipe}

Salads and leftovers were consumed a lot this week. Even a pot of chicken-less pastina soup after Christmas, we all had the sniffles.

All in all, I could not have had a happier 10 days!  I will be super sad when Mya goes back to school today.  She is really excited for after school, her snow boarding after school program stats today, I will post the pics.!

There was lots of coffee drank, and snacks eaten through the week.

We ordered Chinese for New Years Eve.  It was delicious.  I have not had Chinese take out in about 5 years.  I just usually cook everything myself.  But the kitchen was clean and I was tired, braving the grocery store for something special on New Year’s Eve was just not going to happen.  A treat was in order.  It was really good, but I don’t think I will be having any again anytime soon.  Kung Pao tofu is my favorite.

We hung at home, ate our dinner and curled up to take in the Avengers.  We saw it at the movies, but we were looking forward to watching again at home to catch all the little things you miss the first time.  I just adore super hero movies, especially Marvel!

I took a short nap between the Avengers and midnight, got up just in time to watch the ball drop with Andy and Mya.  It could not have been better! 

I hope you all had a great holiday week as well.  I promise next week will be filled with healthy meals and recipes.  The photos of meals kind of got away from me this week, the dark coming so early doesn’t help either.

Have a great Wednesday.