VeganMoFo - The Final Chapter

And the month is ending on a whimper. The kid's night class has been canceled so I'll make something he likes instead of the lentil loaf I planned. He likes simple foods, so I'll make what we call Chinese Veggies - a honking big bowl of carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, pea pods, water chestnuts, a can of sprouts if I have any, and a small can of gluten. I'll make up a fresh batch of brown rice and serve it with our standards - baked Chinese noodles, soy sauce and sweet n sour duck sauce.

Summary of the Month's Meals:
Thanks to the cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero, Mary McDougall, and Bryanna Clark Grogan, there's no reason not to cook healthy, enjoyable and very flavorful vegan meals.

One bad thing about this is that although the great majority of the meals I prepared were very low fat, low salt, and low cal, I still ended the month about 4 pounds higher than how I started it. I guess it really is possible for healthy food to be bad for us.

VegMoFo Post - Now it's 0 for 3

Lasagna is usually my tried and true, always comes out fantastic with no problems. Well, life like to screw with me and I had a lousy lasagna yesterday. The whole wheat noodles (Healthy Choice) never fully cooked, even though the pan was wrapped tight and was in the oven almost 2 hours. The sauce was watery, even though it was a brand and flavor I've used successfully in the past and has been a family favorite. The ricotta was too salty, even though I measured exactly the same amount I use every week.

Tonight is un-chicken patty sandwiches. The boys will have dead bird and I'll take from the bag of Bryanna's chicken cutlets in my freezer, made from the recipe on the Everyday Dish dvd. The only way this meal will get screwed up is if the rolls I have rising right now flop. I've made rolls with this bread recipe many times in the past, but then again, I made that lasagna many times, too.

Tomorrow's the last day of November and the last day of VeganMoFo. I have planned a lentil rice loaf using a new recipe, but the way things are going this week I may just open a can of baked beans and make some mashed potatoes to go with it. I'm afraid to cook now!

VegMoFo Post - 0 for 2 This Week

Maybe it's because we're not wine drinkers, but that dish I made for dinner last night tasted so horrible I didn't even finish a third of what was on my plate and instead of looking for seconds hubby suggested we toss the rest out. Yes, it was that bad! I guess I better lay off the recipes from Marla's blogs, as this wasn't the first that bombed from there. I'm glad I made my veggie soup to go with the meal and a loaf of bread!

At least today will be better - Lasagna night! This is such a staple in this house I can make the tofu basil ricotta in my sleep and assemble the dish itself with my eyes closed.


And yet when I got on the scale this morning I was up 2 pounds from yesterday. I really should just give up!

VegMoFo Post - Marla's Marvelous Recipes

A long-time McDougaller known only as Marla has 2 different blogs with McDougall-safe recipes. The first is located on VegSource and is known as Marla's Marvelous Meals. The other one is on Yahoo's 360 and known simply as Foodblog. Today's dinner recipe comes from the first, but both sites have loads of recipes from different ethnicities to suit every taste.

Breakfast: same old oatmeal and applesauce
Lunch: same old veggies and rice
Dinner: Beans Bourguignon, maybe a loaf of whole wheat bread made in my Oster ABM, and some cauliflower on the side.


Now, about those Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets I made yesterday that the vegan blogging world has been raving about. Hubby thought they were one of the best foods on the planet and that if the kid didn't insist on burger for his birthday on Thanksgiving we should have had those. I thought they were kind of meh, no better or worse than some of the seitan/garbanzo flour
cutlets or loaves made from one of the many Bryanna Clark Grogan recipes. Could it be because I baked them to avoid the high fat that comes with pan frying in oil? If I did that it would almost double the calories and it would be all from fat!

For the people complaining that they came out stringy - so did mine. I used cold veggie broth, even refrigerated it a few hours. I used the hint to use a food processor to crush the chickpeas and continued the recipe in it, and had a heck of a time getting it all to mix. This was probably where the seitan got hot, as the blades whirled but nothing was moving. Next time I'll process the beans and then pour them into a mixing bowl to continue the recipe. The amount made was perfect for the 2 of us, so I know I will be making this again.

And next time I'll be sure to take a photo before hubby grabs the plate.

VegMoFo Post - Chickpea Cutlets

Photo from Utopian Kitchen File's blog entry until I can make and photo my own

Today it's back to normal, food and exercise-wise. I have a pot of beans on the stove for tomorrow's dinner, and in a little while I'll start looking over the recipe for Chickpea Cutlets from the Veganomicon. Everyone's been raving about them since before the book was even published, so I guess I better get into the act.

I already have 2 other cutlet recipes that I use - the Chickpea Cutlets from Low-Fat Jewish Cookbook by Debra Wasserman, an editor of Vegetarian Journal, and the Chicken Cutlets from the Everyday Dish DVD by Bryanna Clark Grogan. I'll let you know which I like best.

VegMoFo Post - I'm Fat - So What?

I'm one of those people who was born fat into a fat family, and even when I starved myself on 1000 calories or less as a pre-teen I could never get the weight off with any success. For the past 20 or so years I've been following the McDougall Plan off and on, mostly on with a few indiscretions around holidays. I once lost 45 pounds on the Maximum Weight Loss Version, well, actually my version of the MWLP, which eventually brought me down to under 800 cal a day and was still gaining. And most of that weight has returned, anyway.

So I try to console myself in the fact that although I may still be fat and will be fat for the rest of my days, at least I'm healthier than the average Jo on the street because of my vegan food plan. My cholesterol is great, my blood sugars are no where near diabetic levels and even dip into the hypoglycemic range (thanks to CFS and hypothyroid), the arthritis is kept in check, and many other benefits. Better on the grocery budget, too.

Except for some goodies like Amy's Breakfast Burritos. I love those things, but at $2.50 a pop I really can't afford to continue eating 2 a week, cut down to one a week, and now have to cut them out entirely. My job for this week is to find a recipe for these luscious rolls of goodness and fill my freezer with my own home-made ones. But for now, I'm sitting here waiting for this week's burrito to cool off enough so I can eat it without burning my mouth.

Lunch today is more veggies and rice. Yesterday I tried to have just a bowl of that Red Beans and Sweet Potato Soup for lunch, and by the time we ate dinner my blood sugar was crashing on the ground and I could barely think! I guess I'll finish up that soup with my veggies, too.

Today is Sunday, so we'll have our traditional Sunday dinner of burgers. I'll have the oat-burgers from a Bryanna Clark Grogan recipe that I think is on Dr. Barnard's diabetes book's PDF file, and the boys will eat their dead turkey ones.

My evening snack will be my usual banana.

VegMoFo Post - Typical Saturday

Today we're back to non-vacation, non-holiday foods.

Breakfast was my usual oatmeal and applesauce.

Lunch will be veggies and rice with some salad dressing, probably Annie's Organics's Goddess

Dinner is pizza made with home made whole wheat crust, oodles of veggies, and either Follow Your Heart cheese or cheeseless, depending in whether or not the HFS got some cheese delivered since I was there the other day.

Damn, I wish my pizzas looked as good as this one on the Vegan Gourmet home page! (It only loads half-way for me so click that link and see if it opens for you.) Mine always look like this:



Looks like melted plastic. If I shred it instead of slice it still looks plastic. Many people say this is the best cheese for melting, but it doesn't "melt" as much as soften up. Sometimes I just take the back of a tablespoon and smear the softened cheese around on the pizza, but usually I just leave it or do without.

VegMoFo Post - Detox Friday

Okay, so I had a bit more to eat yesterday than I planned to, and of not-so-healthy foods, so today it's going to be nothing but super-healthy foods.

Breakfast: Bob's Red Mill Scottish steel-cut oats with diced peeled apple
Lunch: Red Bean Sweet Potato Soup and some bread for dunking

Dinner: more soup, maybe some veggies and Jasmine brown rice
Snack: banana

VegMoFo Post - Thanksgiving 2007

Obviously, no turkey in this house. In fact, because it's also our son's birthday, and the birthday person gets to choose the meal, we're having burgers today. I'll be making stuffing, taters, veggies - all the traditional Thanksgiving sides - to go along with them, though.

Just remember what my buddy here says:

VegMoFo Post - More Boring Vacation Foods

I warned ya that this week would be boring!

Breakfast - oatmeal and applesauce
Lunch - veggies and rice with leftover pea soup
Dinner - pasta with Brussels sprouts instead of veggie meatballs, now that I found out they're not vegan, maybe tomato soup


Snack - banana with a schmear of peanut butter

It's the day before Thanksgiving, so waddaya want, a feast?