Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Vegan Day 3: Keeping It Simple

Whew! I am one tired girl today! Guess I shouldn't have stayed up extra late finishing The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani. It was such a beautiful story I just couldn't put it down. I was actually in tears at one point. Trigiani guides you through the lives of Ciro and Enza as they both discover what it means to have family, love, and a home. It seemed no matter the circumstances, Ciro and Enza kept running in to one another until one day they decided to never live apart again.

Anyways, now to dinner!! I was glad that this dinner was an easy one since I was feeling so tuckered out. Ha! To throw this together, I just sprinkled the seitan with taco seasoning and heated it up on the stove-top for a few minutes. I topped my greens with the cooked seitan, guacamole, a few cherry tomatoes, and a little bit of salsa. Voila!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Vegan Day 2: Pasta Time!

My morning started off right when my friends and I saw a meteor/shooting star today before 6AM on our run!  How cool! We all assumed it was a firework until Emily came across a post by Action 5 News asking if anyone caught a pic of the meteor. :-) Since I have little time to get ready after my morning run, I packed some granola, almond milk, peanut butter, and a banana to mix together at work for breakfast. This kept me going much better than the oatmeal yesterday!
This evening, I cooked up two recipes from Oh She Glows. The first was the Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Brussesl Sprouts with Rosemary and Garlic. I didn't really do anything different than her original recipe except use red-skin potatoes.
Ready for the oven!
Alongside the roasted sprouts and potatoes, I served the Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta. I really did want to try the nutritional yeast that she calls for in the sauce for this recipe, but it was too expensive to buy at Whole Foods just for the sake of experimenting. I didn't want to be stuck with a whole tub of it if I didn't like it! Anyways, the pasta was pretty tasty. Not sure I am a huge fan of walnuts in the sauce, but I figured I could use the protein!
Dinner is served!
I must confess, I have really been missing milk in my life. Almond milk just doesn't make my coffee as creamy as cows milk!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Vegan Day 1: Pumpkin Curry Soup

Day 1 of this vegan week! Woohoo! I started the week off with a bowl of banana, walnut, brown sugar and almond milk oatmeal. Yum. :-)

This evening, I experimented by roasting a pumpkin to use for soup rather than going with canned. It was quite a bit of work! That pumpkin was a bit tough to cut up. I tried to roast it like The Pioneer Woman did in her blog, but it took much longer in my oven and didn't soften as much as I'd hoped. So, the dish ended up being a much thicker stew-like dish rather than a creamy soup - but it wasn't bad! I think I'll need to do a little more tweaking with this one so I won't include a recipe this time around.
Mmm... pumpkin stew!
However, speaking of good vegan recipes, I made this lentil and polenta dish last week that was awesome! I found it in the local Memphis Health + Fitness magazine complements of Whole Foods Market. When I went to make this after picking up the ingredients at the store, I didn't realize that it was a slow-cooker meal! Instead, I just prepped it on the stove-top and it worked out just fine. :-) I had to cut the recipe in half... and I still had leftovers!

Slow Cooker Lentil Stew with Polenta
(By Whole Foods Market in Health + Fitness - directions edited to cook on the stove-top.)
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cup brown lentils
- 2 onions, sliced
- 1 large green bell pepper, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 can plum tomatoes with juice
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 1/2 cup vegetable broth
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 1 cup quick-cooking polenta

Directions:
Cook lentils according to package directions using vegetable broth as the liquid. Saute onion, bell pepper, and garlic in a separate pan in a bit of olive oil until softened. Add tomatoes to the other vegetables and cook until it starts to simmer. Add cooked lentils, salt, vinegar, oregano, and red pepper to the tomato mixture. Simmer for 7-10 minutes. Serve on polenta! Yum!!

Vegan Challenge

Since it has been about 6 months, I revisited my "25 While 25 List" and realized I still have a lot of work to do! So, I committed to buckling down and trying to cross a few more things off. This week - it's #13, "Go vegan for a few days". When I told Will about my plan, he was like, "you can't just do a couple of days, you totally need to do a week!". Hmm. Well, I guess I have to now! After perusing some great vegan blogs like, Oh She Glows, The Vegan Stoner, and Peas and Thank You I think I was able to come up with a good plan. As long as I can resist the temptation of the ice cream social at work on Tuesday... I think I can make it happen! Haha.
When I think about my usual diet as a vegetarian, my meals are not too far from following vegan diet rules. If you are unfamiliar with the difference between vegetarian and vegan, here's a brief comparison:
Vegetarian: Refrains from meat such as chicken, beef, and pork. May or may not also restrict fish in their diet (I don't!). Dairy and eggs are ok.
Vegan: Eats no animal products of any kind. This means they restrict everything from steak to honey, gelatin, milk, eggs, other dairy, and in some cases beer/wine.
It's funny to see some people's reaction to when I say that I'm a vegetarian. Usually, they immediately assume I am a vegan, ie. "crazy person". Ha! As you can tell from the blogs I linked above, the vegan diet is no longer just for hippies or Hindu monks!
Shopping to prep for vegan week!
Each day, I plan to post about what I ate and any good recipes I came across. Here's my plan for dinner each day:
Monday:
Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup 
Tuesday: 
Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta by Oh She Glows
Wednesday: 
"Taco salad" with crumbled seitan and guacamole
Thursday:
Black bean and sweet potato tacos 
Friday:
Lentil and Squash Curry Stew by Oh She Glows
Saturday:
Dinner out - this could be a challenge!
Sunday:
Leftovers or Lentil Loaf by The Vegan Stoner

I am really excited about this experiment! It will be tough to miss out on cheese, milk, and greek yogurt for a week, but here goes! Maybe I'll love it and never want to go back...

Sunday, October 28, 2012

This Weekend: Bridal Shower and Passion Pit!

It looks like the cooler weather is here to stay! Friday was rainy and chilly - perfect for enjoying a bowl of pho after work. Yum. Also, I was definitely wishing I hadn't forgotten gloves on my 12 mile run on Saturday! Brr! After that run I savored my very long, hot shower! Once I had psyched myself up to face the chill again, I met up with Will to shop at the last Downtown Farmers' Market of the season. I was so sad I couldn't volunteer one last time. :-( However, since Will was volunteering I did get to see some of the fun pet Halloween costumes! So adorable.
After running and market time on Saturday, I headed to a bridal shower for my office-mate/fellow Dietitian, Erin. It's always a bit fun to see everyone outside of work! The shower was a great time. (Despite the fact that I spent a lot of time trying to get creative on how to wrap Erin's gift. Why do they even make CLEAR wrapping paper! Lol.)
Since I was the only one with a real camera, I was elected to be photographer. Here's a few pics from the party!
Guest of honor in the middle with the lovely party hosts! 
Delicious brunch dishes. My fave was the french toast casserole. Yum!
All the lovely VA nutrition staff at the party!
After the party, I was able to get in a glorious long afternoon nap. It was much needed! Later that evening, Will cooked up dinner and we headed to Minglewood Hall for Passion Pit! To be honest, initially I wasn't super excited to go since I had gotten a bit burned out on their Manners album. It was one of the only cds I had to play in my van the summer I worked for Americorps and did a ton of driving. The concert was much better than I thought it would be! I am really digging the stuff on their newer cd, Gossamer which just released a few months ago. I'm beginning to think this album is much, much better than Manners! Here's one of my favorites from last night.
"Take a Walk" by Passion Pit
There they are! It's so hard to get good pics at concerts. Oi.
Hope you did some fun things this weekend! Here's to another great week! I seriously can't believe that it is almost November. Where did October go???

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Chicagoland

In order to get a better lay of the (Chicago)land, Will and I took a long weekend to do some exploring! We definitely took advantage of the plethora of fantastic restaurants they have there - including my first taste of true Chicago-style deep dish pizza! Yum. There is seriously so much to do in the city all the time - it's almost a bit overwhelming. We enjoyed a couple of nights of stand up comedy, films at the Chicago International Film Fest, museums, and quality time with our Cleveland friend Chris (who just happened to also be in town)!
View of the lake from the Aquarium. 
The best part of the Aquarium - jellies!!
Caught a set of short films and one full length feature at the Film Fest!
Deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's!
Yum!

Farmers Market - we had to check out one of theirs of course!
Navy Pier

Water taxi time. 
City views from the river.
Great stand-up at the Laugh Factory!
View from Lakefront trail.
I spent a lovely 22 miles on the trail. The weather and views made it so pleasant!
I was happy to have Will bike alongside of me the last 4 miles. I needed the
encouragement!

Lentil tacos and macaroni-n-cheese from Nana's. That mac-n-cheese
was divine! I may or may not have had leftovers for breakfast the next
day...
Chicago was definitely a great time. I'm feeling excited to get to spend more time there in the future! The trip felt a bit like the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles since between the two of us, we rode all the forms of transportation! Haha. The Amtrak train from Chicago to Memphis was actually rather pleasant! Now to recover and get back in to the swing of things at work. :-)

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Pumpkin Macaroni and Cheese

Mmmm...
           Last week I had the worst craving for macaroni and cheese! I had seen some great mac-n-cheese recipes around the internet. However, the one that really caught my eye had pumpkin in the cheese sauce. What, what?!? That's right. I put pumpkin in my macaroni and cheese... and I liked it! Haha. Because, let's face it, when fall comes round I get just a bit obsessed with pumpkin!
           To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised by this dish! The pumpkin was very subtle and contributed to the creaminess of the sauce. Plus with the addition of the pumpkin, you can cut back a little on the cheese - saving some calories! It also adds a bit of fiber (there are 7 grams of fiber in a cup of pumpkin!) and loads of vitamin A (763% of the daily value to be exact!).
            Now I can say that I will definitely be making this dish again in the future. One word of warning though... it makes a huge batch! I had to put several containers of it in my freezer for meals later, not that I'm complaining! I used this recipe from the blog Gimme Some Oven (click for recipe!) which I found via Pinterest and I am really glad I did! The food photography is fantastic! I start drooling just scrolling through the posts. When I prepared mine, I did the quicker option and didn't bake it with breadcrumbs - I just ate it once done cooking on the stove top (I was too hungry to wait!). I think it turned out just dandy. When I served mine up, I topped it with just a little sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Yum! Next time around I might try making it with whole wheat noodles for even more fiber!
Loving this breakfast!
           Speaking of pumpkin, I was excited to break out the pumpkin oatmeal this week! For this bowl, I threw in currants, honey, cinnamon, and chopped pecans as my mix-ins. Delish. :-) Oatmeal is seriously such a versatile food. I love it! If only I could convince more of my cardiac patients to eat it. Sigh...

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Happiest Race on the Planet

Good Saturday Afternoon!
 I have been looking forward to The Color Run for what feels like ages! So, you must imagine I was super pumped this morning when race day was finally here. :-) For those of you who have no idea what this race is all about check out the website --> http://thecolorrun.com/. Like most organized 5Ks, this race travels the country picking local charities to support with registration fees such as the DeNeuville Learning Center for the race here in Memphis. Everyone who signs up comes to the race wearing a white tee and accessories. During the race, volunteers throw colored powder (made of dyed corn starch) at you! Sounds a little ridiculous but it is so. much. fun!!! The running part just seemed to fly by. Plus, it was refreshing to do a 5K with no time chips or trophies! The purpose was to just enjoy yourself! Will was super supportive and hung around to see me off a the start line and gather my rainbow dusty self at the finish. :-)
Two thumbs up for The Color Run!
There was such a huge crowd!
Definitely got a lot of orange powder right to the face!
Not the best tasting stuff in the world... ha!
Funnest adventure race ever. :-)
I will totally be doing this race again in the future if it is around again next year wherever I may be. Hopefully I can convince  few friends (or maybe Will!) to join in on the fun next time!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Why I'm So Glad I Joined a Running Group!

Too much fun a the photo booth! From left to right: Courtney, Emily, Me(!),
Brad, Donna, Sara, and Sally
      Last week, I had a blast at the Memphis Interfaith Association's annual Feed the Soul Event at The Warehouse. (Just across the street from my apartment!) When this picture came up on facebook today I knew I had to share it on my blog as well. This photo depicts exactly why I am so glad that I decided to join Star Runners last year! When I moved to Memphis a year and a half ago, I didn't know anyone except Will. It was a tough transition to settle in a new city so far from all of my college friends. In school it is so much easier to meet people and make friends!
    I went out on a limb when I joined Star Runners. A year later, I am still so impressed at how perfect a fit it was for me. The day we met up for that first run, I was so nervous that I would be the slowest one in the pack! (Because, let's face it, I am no Olympian. Ha!) Luckily, it ended up being a group for people of all paces - both faster and slower than I. Plus, the overall attitude of the group wasn't just about preparing for local races... but enjoying the company of the people you sweat through the miles with each week!
   As you can tell from the picture, the fun doesn't end on runs! I keep trying not to think too much about my future move to Chicago. I will really miss running and spending time with these great people! Now that I know how rewarding it can be... I am totally joining a running group when I move!!
Just one more awesome pic from Feed the Soul! :-)

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Dietitians of the World Unite!

Hey Friends!
 Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. :-) I just flew back to Memphis last night from Philadelphia where the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics annual Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo was held. I always love attending these conferences not only for the new information but also to get excited about being a dietitian again! It is so inspiring (and a bit intimidating... not going to lie!) to hear all of these dietitians who have accomplished so much in their careers in nutrition. Plus, I ran into one of my Bluffton nutrition classmates (small world!), as well as said "hi" to Dr. Steiber from my days at Case Western. Glad to see them again!
 In additional to the interesting presentations, I also volunteered at the VA career/internship booth at the Expo part of the conference - what a fun experience! I got to talk with so many prospective interns and dietitians looking for a career change who stopped by our booth to chat. The VA really is a pretty cool place to work.
Why, hello FNCE!
VA Expo Booth!
  My top 2 fave sessions of the conference were on blogging (of course!) and one on how to write a sensational article pitch for print/online publishing. The two ladies who did the latter session were editors at Eating Well Magazine and cookinglight.com. I am so jealous of their jobs!
  In addition to the great conference, it just so happened to be restaurant week in Philly. Awesome!!! We were able to snatch up some pretty fantastic food at a great price. :-) We hit up Sole Food, El Vez (my fave!), Continental Mid-Town, and Scoop DeVille Ice Cream. Plus, the convention center was just across the street from Reading Terminal Market which had tons of small delicious food vendors to choose from.
Geeky pose on our way to dinner
Best margarita I have ever had! Blood orange flavor from El Vez!
Fantastic food action at the Reading Terminal Market!
No trip is complete without a brewery stop! I tried the Grog at Nodding Head...
delish!!!
I only wish I could have stayed a bit longer so I could explore city more! All the more reason to visit Philly again. :-)

Friday, October 5, 2012

Love Me Some Lentils!

To kick off fall, I was inspired to finally cook up some of the green lentils I bought ages ago living in one of my kitchen cabinets. I also had picked up a big butternut squash at Whole Foods last week, so I thought I might try to combine the two! It turned out really well - I packed it in my lunch for the rest of the week. You can serve this both warmed or cold! YUM.
 Curried Butternut Squash Lentils
Ingredients:
- 1 cup lentils
- 2 cups vegetable stock
- 2 cups water
- 1/4 tbsp curry powder
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 large butternut squash
- Olive oil
Directions;
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Skin and chop butternut squash into uniform 1/2 inch pieces. Lay out cubed squash on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
2. Bake squash for 25-30 minutes or until soft with browned edges.
3. In the meantime, to cook lentils... Heat up water and stock in a saucepan on the stove. Add lentils and bring to a simmer. Sprinkle with curry and S+P. Cover and cook until the liquid has been absorbed.
4. Combine squash and lentils. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!