Yummy Smoothies

I love it when people share yummy healthy recipes that I’ve never tried before with me. This one I just had to share with all of you.

A friend of mine, spying an avocado on my counter commented that her 3-½ year old son loves avocados. I was a little surprised because it’s not really a flavor most little ones have a palette for. I said, “Wow that’s a pretty strong flavor for a little guy, I wouldn’t think he’d like that.”

She explained that her husband makes smoothies with them. Apparently I had a questioning look on my face because she went on to explain he puts 1 part avocado, 1 part ice cream and just enough milk to make it smooth in a blender.

Yeah, that was my thought too. Probably the same look on my face that you now have on yours as well.

At first I dismissed the whole idea thinking it would just be too disgusting to waste an avocado that way. But always the taste adventurer I decided, why not?

Of course being a vegan I substituted soy-cream for ice cream and vanilla flavored flax milk for cow’s milk.

I fully expected to report to you that it was a complete waste of an avocado but guess what? It was pretty good. Didn’t really taste much avocado, just sweet creamy soy-cream with just a hint of flavor of something else. If I hadn’t put the avocado in myself I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you what that hint of flavor was, but it was quite yummy.

Moral of the story: brussel sprouts and soy-cream smoothie next!

Complacency Kills

I was losing 2 to 3 pounds a week pretty steady there for a while, feeling pretty proud of myself. Then I hit a slump; some call it a “plateau”. What ever it is, it sucks. At first I wasn’t worried. I lost .01 pound in a week, but I thought, no worries, I’ll lose next week. But I didn’t. And I didn’t lose the week after that either. I didn’t gain, but I didn’t lose either. I was still exercising, still eating right. So what was the difference? I thought about it for a while and I realized: I stopped blogging and when I stopped blogging I stopped writing down what I ate. I was eating only healthy stuff so I didn’t need to write it down, right? WRONG! A handful of almonds here, a glass of wine there, it adds up! 2 months went by and I hadn’t lost a pound. When I first became determined to loose weight I made this really awesome spreadsheet to keep track of foods I eat with calorie count and it was just sitting there in my computer going to waste.  I had lists of the most common foods I eat with calorie count already there. All I had to do was record which foods I ate and the spreadsheet kept track of calories for me.  When I pulled up the spreadsheet I realized I hadn’t used it since I became a Vegan. Most of the foods listed had meat and/or cheese in them. So I took some time last weekend and updated the whole thing. I wrote all my new favorite vegan recipes with calorie count per serving and I organized the meals by usual breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. Now all I have to do is call up the sheet (my computer is on most of the time anyway) and keep track as I go. Sometimes I get busy and end up recording it all at night, this is a challenge in that I don’t always remember what I had for breakfast or snack so I try to record as I go. Results: down 2.6 pounds this week! WooHoo. Such a simple solution! Oh I still have a handful of almonds (23 to be exact) and a nice glass of wine now and then, I just make sure I don’t have all my high calorie meals on the days I have those.  I try to keep my daily calorie count to between 1100 and 1400 calories. For me if it’s too rigid I won’t stick to it. So if I have 1400 calories one day I just try and keep it closer to 1100 the next day. So I’m going to try and blog more often again, but even if I don’t blog about it, I’m definitely going to record what I eat. No more complacent crap. NO MORE EXCUSES! 

Yummy Healthy Oatmeal Fig Bars

 

                         

My Beautiful Fig Tree                                               It has tons of figs! As promised here is my recipe for my yummy, healthy oatmeal fig bars: 8 to 10 ripe figs

1 ripe banana (bananas are a good egg subsitute for vegan recipies)

1 1/2 cups oatmeal

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

The remaining amounts are estimates. I just dumped it in and guessed at the amount

1 cup flower

1 teaspoon cinnamon

*1/2 teaspoon cloves

*1/2 teaspoon allspice

3 Tablespoons Agave Nectar

* Use cinnamon and whatever sweet spices you like

Preheat oven to 350

Cut stem top off figs

Place in large saucepan and simmer on low heat until soft and easy to mush (about 30 to 60 minutes)

Add very ripe banana and mash it all up together (banana is a good substitute for eggs in a vegan recipe)

Add remaining ingredients and stir until a thick pasty consistency

I used Pam on my Pampered Chef Bar Pan, but if your pan is well seasoned you might not need the Pam

Pour the mixture into a Bar Pan and spread until even

Place in preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes.

When you take it out it will be gooey in the middle but should be firm enough to hold in your hand on the outside.

Cut into squares, let cool, but eat warm. Refrigerate leftovers but they're tastier warm so I microwaved them for 15 seconds.

Yummy and Healthy Snack or for a healthy quick breakfast!

When these are gone I'll make some more and use these exact amounts. If it needs adjustment I'll post the changes.

Simple Culinary Magic

Watched a little bit of Harry Potter and The Sorcerers Stone today. When it got to the part where they were enjoying their first meal at Hogwarts, Ron Weasly reached for some yummy looking chicken and I just about caved. Chicken was always my favorite meal, almost anyway you fix it. I love chicken. My husband is not Vegan so I have some chicken in my freezer. I kept thinking about all the yummy things I could do with that chicken. Who woulda thought Harry Potter could knock me off course? Well I knew I had to come up with some magic of my own if I was going to make it tonight. Then I remembered something. My wonderful neighbor brought me some zucchini out of her garden the other day. Mmmmm, I really like zucchini too. And there’s almost as many ways to make something yummy with zucchini as there is chicken. I decided I would need a yummy healthy desert too so I went out to my backyard and found some ripe figs. Here’s what I did:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Cut zucchini into thin strips.

Place in Pampered Chef Stoneware Baker

Brush with olive oil

Sprinkle with Vegan Grated Parmesan Flavor Cheese Alternative

And Pampered Chef Crushed Peppercorn & Garlic Rub

On the other side of the Baker

Cut stem off 2 figs and slice down the center

Pour a generous amount of Agave Nectar on fig halves

Sprinkle with Pampered Chef Cinnamon Plus Spice Blend

Bake in oven for 20 minutes.

Take that Hogwarts Chefs. I’m still Vegan and I just enjoyed a really yummy healthy meal. I should have taken a picture of it to show you, but I was hungry!

Nope, the Slave Driver Didn’t Kill Me.

                          Penne with Butternut Squash, Sage Pesto, and Almonds

It’s been a while. Weddings, engagements, baby announcements and putting together a new children’s book. I’ve been busy. But mostly I’m sharing my life with Kerrie as I live it, so I didn’t really need to blog about it to her. Alas, I’ve been depriving the rest of my fans…so here’s a catchup.

I’m down to 189 pounds. I feel great! And I’m Vegan. I knew she was going to try to con me into that. What I didn’t expect was that I’d actually love it. We tried the whole juice cleanse for a while. It was supposed to be a 10 day juice fast. Slave driver lasted 1 day, I lasted 3. The juice was yummy and really very filling. It’s not like the Motts you buy at the grocery store. We use her NutriBullet and or my juicer and juice lots of yummy stuff. I really thought I’d be able to go the whole 10 days but after a while I just wanted to chew something. We still have juice for 1 or 2 meals a day, but for lunch or dinner it’s food. Delicious food like the picture above. Who ever said there’s no such thing as a good Vegan meal obviously hasn’t had this. Super yummy! After all this juicing and veganing and exercising the really great news is, SD and I went on a 2 hour hike in the hills today! Up and down and all around and it was beautiful! We had such a good time and my knee didn’t hurt at all. I could breathe without feeling like I was going to keel over. I enjoyed the beautiful surroundings that is our home. It was wonderful! There’s no way I could have done that 2 months ago. It felt incredible to feel so good hiking again! So I’ll try and keep you updated more regularly. Have a very fruitful day all!

          Me and Kerrie Hiking. Wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to do this again.

Birthday, Vegan, Carrot Cake, Yummmm!

Hubby and youngest daughter took me to the Natural Café for my birthday dinner. I’m really glad I listened to Kerrie, and not to the reviews on the internet. It was yummy. I had a Good Karma Burger! Supper good. I opted for the veganaise instead of the garlic mayo, so it was a vegan meal which was good because I had a little cup of TJs mango yogurt and 2 hardboiled eggs earlier. I figured it’s my birthday, why not? They made me a little sick. I guess going vegan gives you intolerance to dairy. Think I’ll stick with vegan from now on.

We got home and had the supper yummy vegan carrot cake Kerrie made me for my birthday and she gave me an awesome yoga mat that I can hook my i-pod up to. I’ve been wanting to start doing yoga for a while. No excuses now! Hubby gave me a blue ray of Frozen Planet! Can’t wait to watch that. I love those things. Planet Earth was awesome!

All in all it was a lovely birthday and I figured out it was my platinum! When I turned 22 on the 22^nd, that was my Golden Birthday, so I figure since I was born in 1956 and I turned 56 today, that makes it a platinum. My sister said when I turn 156 in 2112 it’ll be titanium!

Tuesday – Exercise – Exercise – 20 minutes; 1.1 miles

• Breakfast – TJs mango yogurt and 2 hardboiled eggs and 1 cup of iced oolong tea.
• AM Snack – ½ glass fruit and veggie smoothie
• Lunch – full glass fruit and veggie smoothie.
• PM Snack – trail mix
• Dinner – Good Karma Burger & vegan carrot cake.

Fruit Smoothies and Eclipse

So my juicer came. Much earlier than expected. I have mixed feelings about it. I did a little research and found out that the top rated juicer is a Breville model that costs around $400.  I wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment just yet, so I went with the Hamilton Beach that was supposed to be comparable in juicing capabilities and easy clean up and was only $80. But Sears had it on sale for $60. WooHoo! It does seem to work well and clean up was pretty easy but it just seemed like we were throwing away a lot of vitamins in the pulp. I tried a banana in it and got about 2 drops of juice and the rest was the stuff you’re supposed to throw away. I’ve come up with a fix. We were using my Magic Bullet, which I love and use for a lot of stuff including baby food, but the work on the Bullet seemed to be overtaxing its motor. So I decided I’m going to juice the greens then take the stuff you’re supposed to throw away and put it in the Bullet and add it to my juice. It’s thicker that way, more like a smoothie than juice but you don’t throw away all those vitamins. We’ve been drinking a lot of these fruit and veggie smoothies so we’ll see tomorrow what the scale thinks of all this. Either way I know my body likes it. My carpet needed cleaning pretty bad. It was starting to look disgusting. So my Saturday project was clean the carpet. I did! ALL DAY! I started at 11:30 worked through till 230 when I ran out of rug shampoo so I did a Home Depot run. I drank a smoothie and back to work at 4:30. I think I finished at around 8. Whew, that was a lot of work. The good news is…my rose carpet is back to being rose, not some muddy color and I feel ok. Yeah, I was tired last night and my feet hurt when I got up this morning. But I expected to feel sore and kind of wiped out today but I didn’t. I did decide to do the other room next week (we don’t want to push it here, remember I am 55, well for 1 more day anyway) but I felt good enough to run errands all day. I got a lot done and I’m feeling pretty good. Yup this veggie thing is going to work out just fine. I’ll let you know how the combo juicing and Magic Bulleting thing goes.

BTW we modified that trail mix recipe. Seems the dates make the nuts get a little soft and I like my nuts crunchy. So we bought dates but didn’t but them in the mix.

BTW 2 Did you see that awesome eclipse? Some guy was out in front of Target selling eclipse glasses so I bought 2. It was very cool!

Saturday – Exercise – 6 and a half hours shampooing the carpet!

• Breakfast – ½ a glass of smoothie and 1 cup of iced oolong tea.
• AM Snack – too busy shampooing
• Lunch – full glass fruit and veggie smoothie.
• PM Snack –trail mix
• Dinner –rice and veggies and a bowl of vegan ice cream.

Sunday – Exercise – Running errands all over town

• Breakfast – ½ a glass of smoothie and 1 cup of iced oolong tea.
• AM Snack – too busy running errands
• Lunch – leftover spaghetti.
• PM Snack –trail mix
• Dinner –1/2 a TJ’s vegan pizza.

Big Development

So I started this whole thing to lose weight, but there are other important factors as well. Health is so much more than being thin. When I was a young woman whenever anyone took my blood pressure they always did it at least twice because they thought, either they did it wrong or the machine was broke. 85 over 60 was not uncommon for me. When I blew the tops of my fingers off in a freak electrical accident they nurse said, “Wow, your blood pressure is really low considering what you’ve been through.” Through the incredible pain I was in I asked her what it was. It was something like 110 over 75 or something. I kind of freaked because it had never been that high, but she said that was fairly normal. You can imagine my irritation almost a year ago when I got put on blood pressure medication. That was not supposed to happen to me. I got the usual, “Oh that’s not uncommon at your age.” I wanted to slap her. She did tell me if I exercised more and started eating better and lost some weight it might improve enough to get off the meds. She suggested I buy a blood pressure machine and keep track of it myself. I did. For about 2 weeks. Then I put the machine on a shelf and it sat there, neglected. Just like I had been neglecting myself. Well I dusted it off today and took a reading. 117 over 75! Woo Hoo! I might have to make an appointment with that doctor and see if I can stop taking these things.

Here’s what we did for the trail mix:

At Sprouts we bought:

·        ½ pound of organic raw almonds

·        ½ a pound of organic raw shelled sunflower seads

·        ½ a pound of organic dates

·        ½ a pound of organic dried cranberries

we cut up the dates and mixed it all together. Munchie and delicious!

Friday – Exercise – 20 minutes; 1.1 miles (I cranked the intensity and the motion up a notch and it turned to 200 calories burned at the .8 mile mark!)

• Breakfast – an orange, piece of whole grain toast with vegan butter, small serving of grits and 1 cup of iced oolong tea.
• AM Snack – a handful of our special homemade trail mix
• Lunch – fruit and veggie smoothie.
• PM Snack –an apple and a small glass of fruit smoothie
• Dinner – 2 small rice, black beans and tofu burritos and a small salad.