The whirlwind trip part 2

Part 2 of Seattle Adventure

The next morning we were back at Jamba Juice so I could start out my day with another healthy smoothie, and this time, I went ahead and got a full shot of wheat grass juice.

This was Christeen, the sweet lady who gave us the wheat grass juice.  They grow it hydroponically, right there in the store, and juice it fresh.  Mmm.

Bottoms up!  (again!)

I couldn't resist. :)

This was lunch for day 2.5.  It was very good, but by far the most unhealthy vegan dishes we had.

It was a cute little corner vegan deli, and while it tasted great, I know that was largely due to the grease I could feel dripping down my hand.  I probably should have stopped eating it, cause my tummy felt a little sloshy afterwards, but I admit to not being perfect.  I generally don't eat greasy foods now - almost never.  But I do admit that this one tasted great, in spite of or because of, the grease.  So I ate it, enjoyed it, and realized I wouldn't eat there again.

That pretty much sums up the food pictures for the trip.  There was one very memorable meal we didn't get pictures of, that took place at a lodge, in the mountains, on an icy night, with a chef who went above and beyond and made a special 5 course vegan meal, just for me.  I totally should have asked the waitress if I could snap a few non-flash pictures anyways, even though cells and cameras were frowned upon.  I've never had such fancy and well crafted food in my life!  It was truly gorgeous to look at and gorgeous to eat (does that even make sense??).

So I realized this trip that my nutritarian sensibilities were somewhat clashing with my vegan sensibilities.  It was all amazing, vegan food.  But I wouldn't say it was all nutritarian food (high nutrient density food) by a long shot.  The last sandwich picture, case in point.  It was vegan, but it was not what I'd call healthy.  It just goes to show you that even vegans can eat unhealthily.  What, you didn't realize that white flour, white pasta and white sugar are all vegan but still really unhealthy whether you consider yourself a carnivore, omnivore or herbivore?

So here are some last pictures of us on the ferry boat ride - the last thing we did before our icy lodge dinner and heading back to the airport.  It was cold by the way.  Freezin' cold.  Thank goodness for my sister's coat and scarf!!

"I have a thing for ferry boats."

I love this man.

 Oh oh, and here is a picture of the gorgeous Snoqualmie Falls, where we had our fancy dinner at Salish Lodge.  We got to the falls right before dusk and I quickly snapped this picture.  You can see the icy bushes in the foreground.  There were signs up everywhere telling us to watch out for the slippery ice.

So the weekend was great and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

I know you are wondering, "what about Seattle and Microsoft?!?!?!" - the really important question.

Seattle and Microsoft were amazing.  Seattle was gorgeous and we could totally see ourselves settling down there (at least for a little while).  Microsoft looked like an incredible company to work for, with lots of amazing people I was already wishing to get to know better at the end of 4 days.    They treated us well and we liked what we saw.


So are we moving?


No.  In the end, what we value most in life is right here in Raleigh.  There were so many reasons we could have moved, and yet equally as many and more for staying right here.  So after what felt like a really long, agonizing decision, with lots of questioning and prayer and "what ifs" and "are you sures", we now know that we are staying here and that it's not just the easy/lazy decision, it's the wise decision.  And peace is knowing that you prayerfully considered and made a wise choice.  Even when part of you wishes for the opposite decision, peace is knowing that God will take care of you and provide for you, wherever you are.  Seattle.  Raleigh.  Or any where in between.

So, look out Raleigh!!!    .......    We're staying here!!!!!  :-D

I am becoming my mother...

That title really might sound more ominous than it should.  Unfortunately most of the time when people make such statements as "I'm becoming my mother!" or "My parents used to do that!" it's in a negative tone.  How unfortunate.  There are of course sins of every father that the child does not wish to repeat themselves.  We are all imperfect.  However, people should focus on the good aspects of being like their parents more than they do.

Soap box aside....

I am in fact becoming my mother.  At least where my salads are concerned.

Notice the stainless steel mixing bowl.  Only a mixing bowl will do for that size salad.  Relax, it's just my medium 2qt bowl, not my large one. :)

My mother is the Queen of "Everything but the kitchen sink" salads.  Seriously.  While I don't particularly care for all the toppings she includes, I am stepping ever closer to the "...but the kitchen sink" part.  In the above salad there is:

Standard Salad fare:
-good old romaine
-carrots
-tomato
-zucchini

Standard Jamie Salad fare:
-black beans
-hummus
-lemon juice
-ACV
-Bragg's Liquid Aminos  (the 3 liquids and the hummus make a killer dressing)
-pepper

New additions today:
-Urad Dal (aka Ivory Lentils I recently picked up at the Indian Market and cooked up a small portion of to see if I liked it enough to go back and buy another 4lb bag before the Diwali sales went off)
-mixture of leftover regular brown lentils and ivory lentils cooked up with my Smoky Autumn Blend seasonings used to make a sandwich spread/filling
-some stray white beans
-green onions

If I had been thinking about it, some pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds would have made a nice addition.  I don't think I'm nearing the number of ingredients that my mother usually puts on a salad, but she is the Queen after all. :)  I'll keep trying Mom. ;-)

And for better or worse, I am one of those people who likes uniform flavor in her food (not dull, just uniform), so once I reach the desired ingredients and flavor, I mix it up like crazy so that every bite is evenly covered with dressing/lentils, and I try and get a small bite of each veggie in every forkful.  Yes, I am I that person, who turns a beautiful bowl of salad into a crazy stirred up mess in order to enjoy the same awesome flavor in every bite.  Don't hate me because I'm a food stirrer.

You should also know that the Ivory Lentils were just one of 4 different types of lentils picked up at the Indian Market the other day.  I can now proudly state that I have 5 different kinds of lentils in my house, several of them in 4lb bags.


Don't kid yourself, 4lb bags of any bean don't last real long in our house, especially if it's a lentil or a chickpea. 

Chocolate oats anyone?

For those of you thinking "how gross!"  Don't.  It's seriously not gross, and kind of fun to eat chocolate for breakfast in the morning. :)  For those of you wondering just how sugary and unhealthy this cereal is - Don't you know me better than that by now?!  This breakfast totally not gross, it's fun to eat, very tasty AND pretty healthy too.  Not green smoothie healthy, but really not much can compare to that.  In the realm of oats, we're talking pretty tasty and good for you.

The ingredients are fairly basic too.  All you need is oats, water, non-dairy milk (like almond or soy - or regular milk works too), cinnamon, vanilla, unsweetened cocoa powder, banana and stevia (or other healthy sweetener, or sugar if you are willing to go that route).  Since bananas are naturally so sweet, they help prevent the need for oodles of sweetener to be added, plus they give this oatmeal a super creamy texture that is amazing.  I will probably never make another batch of oats again without adding a banana to it, FYI.

Chocolate Oats  ~  Serves 2

1 cups rolled oats (not instant), covered in water in a glass jar and soaked over night

1/2c water

1/2c non-dairy milk

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

2-3 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder, to taste

1 banana, thinly sliced

1/4 tsp stevia powder, or other sweetener to taste*

Soak oats in a jar covered with water, overnight.  (This cuts down on cooking time the following morning.)  Drain excess water from oats in strainer and place in pot.  Add 1/2c water and bring to a boil and let simmer (stirring occasionally) till most of the water has been absorbed and it is just beginning to stick to the bottom of the pan.  Whisk in non-dairy milk, cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa and banana slices.  Whisk until rest of liquid has been absorbed and the banana has broken down, forming a really creamy oatmeal.  Remove from stove and stir in stevia or any additional sweetener of choice.

*Note that this recipe is not a super sweet chocolate recipe.  It's just enough sweetness to combat the bitterness from the chocolate, making it a very mellow, and creamy chocolate taste - not a super sweet chocolate dessert.  Also, what sweetener you use and how much of it you use dictates how healthy or unhealthy this becomes.  One of the nice things about stevia is it's a highly concentrated, but healthy herbal sweetener, so using a 1/4tsp does the trick for me and I'm not adding a bunch of calories from processed sugar.  If you decide to stir in like 2 Tbsp of white sugar, then the healthy factor of this recipe has decreased some.

I love this a lot.  Even though it's not a really sweet chocolate flavor, it's just sweet enough to feel indulgent about eating chocolate for breakfast, while still staying healthy.  I enjoy this breakfast a lot, although not as much as the Pumpkin Overnight Oats that I've been making now that pumpkin is back in season.  I'll share that recipe soon too.  In all fairness though, hubbs does not like this recipe.  So while I enjoy chocolate oats immensely for breakfast, it was not a home run for both of us.  Take that for what you will.

But DO let me know if you try this breakfast and like, so I'll know I'm not alone in the chocolate oat love. :)

P.S.  The weirdest bit of all, this tastes good as cold leftovers.  Seriously not kidding!  Usually cold oatmeal texture skeeves me out, so in the past if my bowl of oats got cold, I couldn't finish it.  I think the addition of the banana making the texture super creamy is what makes this eatable as cold leftovers.  It becomes almost like a cold rice pudding in texture.  You may not like it, but I love it.  Bonus for me - I don't have to make breakfast the next day!

What did you have for dinner?: The leftover edition

Husband wasn't home tonight, there was already plenty of food in the kitchen - that means NO COOKING!  Hehehee.  I do love to cook.  Really.  But you have to admit, some nights, it's just a relief when you don't have to dirty up the kitchen.  Besides, no cooking meant I had time to do working out during at the end of Charlie's nap and then went for a light jog when he got up.  Whee!  So good for me.  I've started doing some Body Rock workouts lately.  I'm not a huge fan of the wardrobe she sports, but the work outs are killer and I'm enjoying them immensely.  Then I popped Charlie in the jogger and went out and got turbo chased by the dinkiest little dog that Charlie even kept mistaking for a cat.  Fun times.

Oh.  But.  So.  Dinner.  Leftovers!

Actually half leftovers, half sauteed frozen veggies.

Here are my brussel sprouts looking fabulous!

And here are my vegan jambalaya leftovers!  (Not nearly so fabulous looking, but still very tasty.)

And here is my lovely dinner paired together.  Oh the sauteed brussels perk up the leftover jambalaya immensely!

Vegan jambalaya is actually super great and one of my faves, so don't let my love for the brussels and the lack luster enthusiasm for the jambalaya pictures deceive you.  Jambalaya just doesn't LOOK as appealing as those sprouts!  :)

Mmmm.  It was a good dinner. :-D

Curried Vegetable Burger

Boy, I have got a tasty veggie burger for you all!  We had this a couple weeks ago (and it's taken me that long to blog about it!), but it was so good, even on a full tummy, my mouth is watering a little.  :)  It's the first veggie burger I've made with potatoes and curry in it, and mm-MMM good.  The curry gives it such a nice spicy warmth, and the potato adds a nice texture that we don't usually have in our veggie burgers.

The recipe was taken from http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/278/Curried-Vegetable-Burgers-With91962.shtml

I made a few alterations (as always), but not many.  And because I love it when posts show step by step pictures along the way, I'll will do that for you now.  Well, 4 pictures to be exact.  Not quite step by step, but this recipe is hardly complicated enough to warrant that.  But I do like to know what a recipe looks like at different stages to make sure I'm on the right track, so I'll assume the same for you all. :)

Ingredients:
1lb potatoes
1 flax egg
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 small leeks, chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 tsp curry powder
2 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
non-dairy milk (optional)
salt and pepper

1. Boil the potatoes in water until tender, then drain.  When cool enough to handle, peel and mash them with the egg yolk (or flax egg).

2. Meanwhile, cook the onion slowly in the oil until softened.  Add the garlic, leeks, and carrots, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, adding water if needed to cook without additional oil.

All the veggies sauteing.  I'm kind of obsessed with how leeks look these days.  I think they are gorgeous.

3. Stir in the curry powder for 1 minute.  Mix the curried vegetables and the parsley into the potatoes.  Add a little milk if the mixture seems dry.

Doesn't that look delicious already!

4.  Form mixture into flat cakes.  Put on lightly greased or parchment lined baking sheet, and bake at 375 for roughly 15 minutes on EACH side.  You want a nice golden brown color on both sides.

Prior to baking.

And voile!  A little spicy, warm and tasty dinner!  Generally I like a nice dollop of hummus on my veggie burgers, but this one was so good, I didn't need the hummus!    I like just putting my burgers on a bed of lettuce and tomato, but hubby of course eats his on a bun with fixin's.  :)  You can eat it however you choose. :)

Let me know what you think if you try it!

The newest dressing in my life

A lot of the healthy salad dressings I have require a bit of time to make.  Not really any significant amount of time because it usually just involves dumping about 8-10 ingredients in the blender and, voile!  But compared yanking a bottle of premade, store bought dressing out of the fridge, it takes time.  So here is my latest dressing, created in really about 10 second moment when I desperately needed a dressing for myself and to walk out the door about a minute later.

Warning:  this dressing is not for the faint of heart.  It is Ah-MAZing, but totally packs a really zingy, flavorful punch.  You'll see why as soon as I list out ingredients.  So if you are a subtle, mellow dressing kind of person, this might not be for you.  If you appreciate zing and pizazz, try this!

The Zing Pizazz Dressing

3 parts lemon juice

2 parts Braggs Liquid Aminos (like soy sauce, but healthier)

1 part apple cider vinegar

(I generally make it up in a glass jar with 3/4c lemon juice, 1/2c braggs, and 1/4c apple cider vinegar - but it can be made up in any 3,2,1 size quantity.)

This dressing is very versatile.  So far I have thrown it on regular tossed salads, pasta salads, bean and veggie salads, and hummus wraps.  Oh and just today Sonny insisted I put some on his food, so I spooned out just like tsp on his quinoa and he seemed to like it.  :)

The dressing is good by itself, but it is very tangy, so in order to cut the tang sometimes, I'll mix it in with some hummus on top of a salad and that is just super tasty.  

Black Bean and Corn Salad

Whew!  I am back from the depths of cold hellishness.  (Not cold temperatures, cold sicknesses.)  I have to say this might be the most grateful I've ever been to be done being sick.  On to other things now!

Since it's nice and summery and HOT over here now, I am raiding my recipe stash for cold dishes to prepare for meals.  I have a much better stash of nutritious, vegan hot soups, than I do cold dishes.  So I'm always looking for a new cool, summery dish to try.  (Hint hint, time to share your healthy summer time recipes with me.)

I remembered my fabulous Black Bean and Corn Salad recipe that is a frequent dinner guest at our house in the summer, made it the other night (actually hubby made it), and knew I should post the recipe.  The recipe is originally found here courtesy of Allrecipes.com.  I have, of course, made a few alterations to it to make it a bit healthier and for our tastes, so that's what I'll post below.

I really thought I had a better picture than this, but it will have to do.  See all the rainbow colors?!

Black Bean and Corn Salad

Dressing:
1/2c freshly squeezed lime juice (bottled works, but fresh makes ALL the difference in the world)
1 medium clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp salt
1/8tsp cayenne pepper

Salad:
2 cans (or 3 cups) of black beans, rinsed and drained
1 1/2c frozen corn kernels
1 orange bell pepper, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped
2-3 green onions, chopped
1/2c cilantro, chopped
1 avocado, chopped

Combine all salad ingredients in a big bowl.  Whisk together dressing ingredients in separate bowl, pour over salad and mix well.

This salad is SUPER delish and refreshing.  Using it as dip on corn chips is even MORE amazing, but if you don't want the extra calories, or simply want to stay on the healthy side, avoid the chips and just eat a big bowl of salad.  The salad is fantastic by itself, but eat it with a chip and you might not want to go back to plain salad.  Consider yourself warned.

The alterations I made were cutting out the oil in the dressing (you don't miss it or the extra calories!), switching out a red pepper for an orange one (cause I'm so nerdy I wanted to see as many rainbow colors as possible - red tomato, orange pepper, yellow corn, green cilantro and onions, black beans that almost look purplish), and cutting back on the onions (since 6 green onions were too much for me).  Also, while avocado is so tasty in this, if you don't have avocados near you or can't find any good ones that day, don't stress.  Just make the salad without.  I have had to do that on occasion before, and while I miss the avocados, the salad is still yummy!

This salad really is killer good.  Enjoy!