changes

This was a quick besan scallion pancake stuffed with spinach, onions and sesame seeds. It was totally delicious. The pancake was made from leftover soba noodle, tofu and veggie soup blended in my vita mix along with fresh cilantro, garlic, besan flour and a tiny bit of baking soda. No pic of the original dish because I have been to tired and busy to take pics.

I have barely had time to take pics this last week. Life is just nuts. I've actually been cooking and we've been enjoying meals, but I don't have the energy to take the pics and blog. Hopefully, I can remedy this soon. This coming week will be full. I am teaching a cooking class Tuesday night. It's a Tofu class. I usually do 5 dishes with enough leftovers for people to take home. I'm still debating on the menu. I guess it depends on how tired I am. I have to work that morning super early and will have put in a 10 hour day before I even start teaching. I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Also, my personal life is changing a lot.

I am moving out of my house into my own apartment. My marriage has been over for a long time and I am starting over. This will happen after the 1st of November. I sign all of the paperwork tomorrow for my new place. What a difference it will be. I will be 200 feet from the beach, though... so expect a lot of pics on my photography blog!

Black bean and veggie burrito with a cabbage and spinch salad and guacamole. The beans were pressure cooked and tossed with fresh salsa. The veggies were sauted. The cabbage was marinated in lime juice, garlic and chiles. The burrito was pan fried in my beloved cast iron with olive oil cooking spray.
This morning, I decided to make some chipotle citrus spiced black eyed peas to take for luch this week (I have been packing my laptop lunches, but haven't had the gumption to photograph them before 6am).. I decided the beans would be better served turned into veggie burgers. I mixed them with tvp, flax and breadcrumbs; froze half the mixture and dry fried 14 burgers in my cast iron. Also, I have some leftover spinach and carrot noodles from today's lunch.

Something new for lunch

Ok, so it looks like I am back to my weekly posting. The only reason I'm posting today, is that my freaken car broke down last night. Horrific timing to say the least. My husband is in CA and his truck is down in MA.
So, I am stuck at home; it's clean out the fridge a day early! Since my fridge wasn't in super need of "cleaning" all I made was this batch of spicy noodles. I use leftover hummus in my noodles now and 1 T of coconut oil while the noodles are hot and thin it out with pasta cooking water. These are brown rice noodles. My younger son LOVES these so much and I secretly smile, since chickpeas are the base of the dish. He despises chickpeas.
How can a son of mine despise chickpeas?
Super fast one pot meal, whole wheat pasta with low fat "pesto" and green beans.
Potato-corn chowdah. Super simple and delicious. Very low in fat as well.
"Hi Momma!" My poor baby has been left alone for 8 hours every day this week. Mark is out of town, I'm at work and my kids are in school. She's doing great, though. This is the first time we've left her this much. No accidents or destructive behaviors. She's a great dog. I WUFF her!
Low fat, sugar free, whole grain muffins. I've found that raw pureed zukes and water make a GREAT fat substitute in baking. My kids have actually eating them for breakfast and liking them. As much as I say I don't like baking, I guess I like healthy baking. Last week I made some zucchini muffins and bread that turned out way too dry, so it was nice to improve my recipe. Of course, I didn't write it down, because my muffins are also clean out the fridge creations.
I've been packing my breakfast and lunch in my laptop lunchbox! You can't see, but this also contained a green smoothie. Not my favorite smoothie. I don't recommend soymilk, ice, spinach, flax meal and chocolate protein powder. Just don't do it. This was a sandwich on sprouted bread with Lightlife "ham", my sunflower cheez, spinach and mustard. The other main dish was tofu and green beans, stir fried the night before. Breakfast was supposed to be my smoothie and bran cereal, but I never got a chance to eat it.. and snack was hummus and raw veggies.
I think Eden blogged about a kale and kraut sandwich, which whet my appetite. On sprouted bread, I grilled hummus, kraut and kale with spicy dijon mustard. Better than any grilled cheese. I'm SOOOO into sauerkraut. In the back there are the wasabi chickpeas, cilantro and spelt berries topped with siracha and cukes, hummus and low calorie pitas. The smoothie was a great one with vanilla protein powder, ice, stevia and cinnamon. I have to pick up some bananas to add next week. I've been trying to eat more during the day and less at night. This is my first week of doing so. With my work schedule, I was not eating much at all during the day and then I'd overeat at night.. and I felt like crap. I've felt so much better this week with these nutritious lunches.
It's amazing how much food you can pack into this box. I love sandwiches for breakfast, so the Lightlife "ham" and thinly sliced homemade sunflower "cheez" hit the spot. The wrap was filled with wasabi chickpeas, vegenaise, scallions, carrots, baby spinach and wasabi mustard. Humus and celery was a great snack and of course, another green smoothie.
I made Joni's wieners the other day. I had to. They contained sauerkraut. Who can say no to that? I modified her recipe just slightly, but mostly followed it to a T. Delicious. I can't wait to play around some more with the spices. These were on a bed of sauted kale with garlic and hot peppers and more kraut, topped with dijon and wing sauce. I also had veggies, and two servings of various dry cereals to snack on for breakfast with my green smoothie.

So, I am back on the losing weight bandwagon. My breakfast, lunch and snack contain 1000 calories or less per day and my dinner around 600-800. With my activity level, this should lead to weight loss. Losing weight super slowly, I should be at my goal weight this time next year...

I've been posting to my photography blog. Yesterday, a co-worker and I went out driving around to shoot foliage. I think my new obsession is churches. I so want to go back on a sunny day and get some super colorful shots of that adorable church we found.

FOOODIIIEESSS!

I've been trying to post here and this is the second time. Anyone else having technical difficulties?
I pressure cooked a pound of chickpeas this morning and turned half of it into roasted red pepper hummus. Declicious! I also made a very lowfat baba ganoush, which paired with the hummus, veggies and 40 calorie whole grain mini pitas, made a filling and delicious lunch for two. I'm sure these two spreads will make their way into my new laptox lunchbox system! I'm such a food porn geek. Yes, I'll take pictures. hehe

Made a bunch of sauted veggies in my cast iron. Used some for pizzas. No pics of that. We'll use the rest in scrambles, quesadillas and wraps this week.
God loves vegan food. See how she shines her rays down on it!
Dreena posted this recipe last week and I was drooling at the thought. Of course, I don't follow recipes, so I used my teryiyaki glaze mixed with lots of wasabi paste to flavor up these roasted chickpeas. Hell yeah! Topped with nori shreds. I am in LOVE! Thanks Dreena, for the inspiration. Wasabi Peas were my favorite junk food before, and now I have no need for them. I'm going to tinker a bit and these will be going in my cookbook.
Again, a gross picture (and thanks to all of you who said the food didn't look gross.. I'm OK with the fact that some food doesn't photograph well.. we all know it is often the tastiest!..)
Last week, I created a zuchinni bread/muffin recipe that was vegan of course, sugar free, very low fat and whole grain. It turned out a bit dry. It would have been PERFECT with another cup of applesauce... anyways... I ate most of the muffins at work for breakfast since they were super healthy and I don't let things go to waste.. but parked the sliced loaf of bread in the freezer. I figured it would be PERFECT for "french toast" and I was right! Two slices of this bread provided 18 grams of complete protein and 10 grams of fiber. I used a soymilk/chickpea flour/spiced mixture for the french toast and made a cranberry apple sauce spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg (stevia sweetened) to top it. Of course, we finished it off with some powdered sugar. I cooked them in my cast iron with olive oil spray. (don't knock it til ya try it! Olive oil is delicious with sweet goods.. it lends a buttery flavor),,

I started a photography blog here to post non-food photos. My goal is to take a non-food photo per day. Work doesn't count, since I often take so many pics my head spins.. but they aren't creative in nature, so they don't count.
Next week is the Boston Vegetarian Food festival! I will be assisting with a demo.. when I know the details, I'll let you all know! If any Boston peeps are there, I hope we can meet up!

Just more cooking!

I host my pics at Snapfish, but lately they have been a pain, so I haven't been able to post pics here, hence no posts. Finally, today, I can post a bit, but some of the pictures just won't show up for whatever reason. Oh well. This was weekly clean out your fridge spicy noodle. Delicious and good and not a stranger to this blog as you all know!
Seitan fajita fixins. I pulled some seitan from the freezer and threw this together. I've used it in a wrap and we will eat it with corn tortillas, fresh salsa and other goodies later on in the week.

Vegetarian vegetable soup, like the canned stuff, but oh so much better for you. Here's the recipe.
Yesterday, I went to a co-worker's house and we cooked up a storm. Unfortunately, I did not take pics of everything, but here is the black bean enchilada bake. It does contain dairy cheese. We made black beans in the pressure cooker and spiced them up with onions, garlic, spices, mushrooms and spinach and topped it with homemade salsa.

This was roasted butternut squash soup with Italian spices and white beans for creaminess. We roasted the onions and garlic along with the squash.
We turned the second half of the black beans into this chili/stew with basmati rice. Beans, corn, onions, garlic, spices, cilantro, lime and some more of the fresh salsa made this terrific.
Not pictures was some Thai Tofu, Broccoli and Sweet potato curry and some whole meal marinara, which used 1 cup of yellow split peas, tons of veggies all pureed into sauce for the freezer. Her freezer is stocked and we had fun hanging out. It's fun making new friends. She is an amazing photographer, and I look forward to going out with our cameras in the future.
Pic of a church from a photo shoot earlier in the week.
How gross does this look? It was sure good though. It was my play on a super quick mutter paneer. I crumbled a bunch of lite tofu and made a super quick saute in a tsp of coconut oil with onions, garlic, spices, ginger, yellow sqash, frozen peas and a quick puree of fresh tomatoes, onions,garlic and cilantro. Topped with a squeeze of lime juice and lot of siracha, this was a pleaser. The kids ate it over rice, but I ate it more like a stew to save calories.
Hummus on low calorie/carb/high fiber mini pitas. These breads only have 40 calories per mini pita. This is my kind of breakfast.
Lentil soup. I love Fall! I just wich soup photographed better.