englandsword

Ali got here yesterday! I picked him up at LAX and we came back home and went back to bed for several hours. I can't even say how happy I am to see him. After we woke up we went to Veggie Grill for an early dinner because Ali wanted some vegan mac and cheese. Veggie Grill is an awesome vegan restaurant (they don't ever use the word vegan or vegetarian but they are totally vegan) with a few locations. Mac and cheese isn't on the menu but I called to make sure that they have it - I think they're testing it out or phasing it in. I got the kale salad, and it was really good. Ali liked it, too. And it's beautiful! Ali got the VBurger with mac and cheese. Both were fantastic and after only a few bites Ali declared Veggie Grill the best restaurant he had ever been to. The mac is made with Daiya and it's creamy and delish. The burger is by far the meatiest veggie burger I've ever eaten... to the point where it's creepy. Creepily delicious. I have swo...

Quick update with some recent food pictures. A breakfast this week: black beans and rice, red pepper, and fresh peas. Dinner the other day was zucchini noodles and sweet potatoes. I made a sauce for the noodles out of umeboshi plum paste, nutritional yeast, agave, garlic, and miso. It was my first time using umeboshi paste and it turned out well! It's very flavorful, salty, and sour and needs to be balanced out with the sweet, which is why I used some agave. Today I ate sweet potatoes and soup. The soup has a head of kale, a head of chard, a carrot, a zucchini, some corn, two tomatoes, garlic, and broth. And no, I did not eat all of this today. It's a lot of soup. I still have plans to write about the issues I previewed in my last blog, but they'll have to wait. My boyfriend Ali is coming to visit tomorrow and is staying for nine days so I will be a bit preoccupied. =)

I went to the Studio City Unitarian Universalist church yesterday as planned and the Earth Day service went really well. I was trying to think of something I could do for the Earth Day Lent -- but I'll get there in a minute. I always walk to church and afterwards I walked to Whole Foods to pick up some more sweet potatoes. When I got home I did some cooking -- I made veggie soup, black beans with wild rice, raw bread, raw green smoothie crackers, dehydrated sprouted lentils, buckwheat groats, and spelt groats, and some slightly dehydrated kiwi slices. The soup had leftover veggies I needed to use - a bunch of collard greens, carrots, fennel, half a tomato, some sun-dried tomato, a little bit of corn, some yellow pepper, a couple mushrooms, veggie broth (I use the concentrated kind out of a jar that I mix with water - there is no need for all that waste buying packages of veggie broth!), garlic, and seasonings. It was really good! I made a small pot and ate that for lunch. The...

Yesterday I met my stepmom's cousin and her husband and their little baby for lunch -- they live five minutes away from me! What a coincidence! We went to Aroma Cafe here in Studio City, it's a cute place with lots of outdoor seating and several vegan options. I got a great Asian noodle salad with tofu, plenty of veggies, and papaya shreds. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture! Oops. I had that for brunch and later in the afternoon, too, because it was a really big salad. I went to the library and checked out the book "The McDougall Program: Twelve Days to Dynamic Health." I wasn't expecting a lot of new information but I have to say, it's pretty interesting. He advocates a starch-based diet with plenty of green and yellow veggies and a couple servings of fruit a day. Absolutely no oils or even fatty plant foods like nuts, seeds, and avocados - at least if you are trying to lose weight. There's also a diet called "Mary's Mini,...

Yesterday I had an audition in the morning, then got my oil changed. Yay! I have been meaning to do that for a while and it really felt good to get it done. While I was waiting I walked to Trader Joe's and picked up a few items -- mango salsa, which makes my salads that much more enjoyable, a tomato that did not end up being extremely tasty, and some seitan strips which were low-cal, very low fat, and low price. I'm not the biggest fan of TJ's in the world because I dislike how focused it is on packaged items, but when there are certain packaged items you need, it can be really good deal. For example, I picked up a jar of crushed garlic for about $1. Not bad. After the oil change I met my friend for a hike in Runyon Canyon. I can see why it's so popular -- it's amazingly beautiful!!! I had a big old salad in my new salad bowl, topped with mango salsa. Today I didn't go to my Cardio Barre class because I was too sore and realized that not only do I need to...

Lots of pictures for you today! I busted the dehydrator back out last night (OK, it's always on the counter) and I made some great stuff. And then I ate all of it today. I dehydrated some apple chips, strawberries, and a kiwi, and a tray of fruit leather. The fruit leather was made of several clementines that needed to be eaten, a couple figs, a kiwi, some strawberries (tops and all), and then some spirulina, which made it green. I also made a bunch of kale into kale chips. My first kale chip venture was not fantastic, but also not horrible. I definitely need more practice. Kale chips with noochy sauce. Dehydrated fruit, fresh on the screen. YUM fruit leather. I ate all of this today. So what else did I do today? Lots of exercise. Lots. First I did my usual 1/2 hour walk to and from my 1 hour Cardio Barre class -- so that's two hours right there. Then I came home for about an hour and a half and had some lunch. I ate this: A purple smoothie with berries and spirulin...

I ate a lot of salad this weekend. A LOT. And then last night I got this CRAZY craving for seitan. I had been feeling it for a while but I didn't eat it because it isn't raw. But then, my love for seitan could not wait anymore and I did something I've never done before -- I actually drove to the grocery store just to pick up one item because I absolutely had to have it, right then. And it was really, really good. Yumyumyum. I also had some miso/kim chi soup this weekend, which just meant I heated up some water for a minute in the microwave, then stirred in some miso and kim chi. Very sophisticated. Today I went to Vegan Village Internet Cafe for lunch with a Meetup group full of people I had never met before. I had a great time and stayed so long that by the time I got home it was dinnertime. I just talked to people for a long time about a wide variety of stimulating topics. I love good conversation! I had this kale salad: It was really tasty but I wished it was...

I started off the morning with yoga and a walk/skip. =) Breakfast was a green smoothie with kale, cucumber, strawberries, a kiwi, spirulina, rhubarb, and blueberries. Snacks throughout the day were several oranges and 1/2 a cherimoya. For lunch I had three nori rolls with asparagus. The first one had asparagus, cultured veggies, and then... mustard. I got the idea from Averie (of Love Veggies and Yoga) who loves to put mustard on green vegetables. And it was surprisingly delicious! My second roll cut out the cultured veggies and added ketchup! By the way, I have eaten half the jar of cultured veggies in the past TWO DAYS. That is a little whoaa but also it's definitely not the worst thing to have eaten half a jar of. I also had a small salad comprised of greens, arugula, and herbs from my garden!!!! I also added some salsa after the picture was taken but I didn't grow that so I didn't feel the need to record it. For dinner I had more salad! OMG, I have eaten so much...

I had a huuuge salad for dinner last night. It had lots of mixed greens (spinach, arugula, kale, chard, Italian mix, winter mix, and spring mix), cherry tomatoes, cultured veggies, pumpkin seeds, Rawmesan, goji berries, and my new raw sweet onion dressing. That's the bowl from my salad spinner -- I ate all of that. Plate #1 of my salad, post-adornment. For dessert I had a banana mashed up with cinnamon and some shredded coconut and cacao nibs. It's a really satisfying dessert that is good to eat when you're still a little hungry and need something to help satisfy that urge to eat more. This morning I woke up and did some yoga and went on a walk/skip outside -- skipping forwards, backwards, and sideways is just fun and silly but it's also a good workout. I was thinking about the difference between yoga and all other types of exercise. When you do different yoga poses, the teacher makes comments like "This move is good for the liver" and "This is for y...

Yesterday I went to the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, as is quickly becoming a weekly ritual. I bought 2 avocados, 3 cherimoyas, a bag of kiwis, lots of mixed greens, and fresh peas. Then I went for an hour-long walk along the beach. So nice! After the beach I went to the Santa Monica Co-Op, which I hadn't been to before. I was pretty devoted to our co-op in Bloomington (Bloomingfoods) and this one was like Bloomingfoods but bigger and with a lot more vegan stuff. I was so excited and went a little purchase-crazy. They have a fantastic bulk section as well as a bulk spices section, which I hadn't seen anywhere in LA yet. I don't want to buy a new bottle every time I run out of spices (and I run out of cinnamon a lot because I loooove it). I bought some St. John's Wort tea, some Zukay raw dressing, some garlic sauerkraut, some cultured veggies (it's like sauerkraut of broccoli, carrots, etc.), and yacon powder. I ran out of my beloved maca and decided t...

Phewf I have been busy. So let's see. Friday: audition, dinner party at Michelle's with a Native Foods Vegan Wellington as the star. For those who don't know, a vegan Wellington is like a beef Wellington... except it's vegan. This one was stuffed with seitan, mashed potatoes, peas, and kale, and probably some other stuff. It was very good. I brought the cookies I made and they were a hit! Yay! I also met some interesting people and one girl told me about her former part-time job as a model for art classes. I'm seriously thinking about trying it... maybe? Saturday I went to brunch at Madeleine Bistro with two girls from the Vegan Ladies meetup. The girls were very nice and we had a good time but I have to admit I was slightly underwhelmed by the food and it was definitely not worth the price. I got the tofu benedict, and it just wasn't that substantial. It was $15 for some hash browns with tofu on top, with a little bit of mushrooms in between and aspa...

Yesterday was a day where I just tried to eat up everything left in my fridge, which included some non-raw food for the first time in about a month. For breakfast I ate a few oranges and then for lunch I made some miso soup with Shirataki noodles. I mostly ate the noodles because they had been in my fridge for a while and needed to be eaten. They were tasty, though, and I felt good after eating them. I certainly love raw food but I don't feel like other people do when they say, "Oh whenever I eat anything cooked I feel horrible." I feel pretty much the same as long as whatever I ate was healthy and I didn't eat too much of it. For dinner I had salad and nori rolls, which was a great way to use up my leftover produce. I also made cookies for the dinner party that I'm going to tonight. It was a good way to use up the flour and other ingredients I still had and which I can't really see myself using now that I'm eating predominantly raw. The cookies h...

So I finally made zucchini pasta and now I get what the big deal is. Last night I had three zucchinis in my house and now I have none -- I need to rectify that soon! I also had lots of salad last night. This picture only shows one bowl, but I had two or three more bowls after that. It has a baby romaine mix, cherry tomatoes, spicy sprouted lentils, Rawmesan, sauerkraut, and baby artichokes. Another thing I've been thinking about is coffee. Gena over at Choosing Raw just posted about her decision to keep drinking coffee because she likes it so much. I have given it up for the last several weeks, which did help me realize that I'm not addicted to it. But I have realized one thing I really like about coffee is the time that I take to drink it. I sit down, slow down, and focus on it. I have a problem slowing down sometimes and coffee is a great way for me to do that. Plus, I really don't think it's that bad for you. So I had a cup today and it was great. :) In the...