englandsword

I'm sorry I haven't posted in several days - I've been sick. It's probably just a bad cold but it has laid me out so badly I've barely been able to move or think. I have been eating gallons of soup. I invented a new delicious soup called Onion Soup. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. Sautee some onions until nice and browned, add broth. Add miso if you have it. Another delicious variation is to sautee mushrooms with your onions and create Mushroom Onion Soup. I love the clouds that miso makes in soup. Delicious! I love broth. I remember opening up a can of broth to eat like soup when I was a kid and my mom was like, "Whaaat? You can't eat that! That's just broth!" But there is NO reason to buy cans or boxes of broth. Just buy the concentrated stuff and mix it yourself. Save yourself lots of money and packaging. This is my favorite: So here's my official recipe for Onion Soup for Sick Day s: 1 sweet onion 1 cup mushrooms 1...

Food Diary: Breakfast: Chickpeas and broccoli Lunch: Salad, Gardein beef tips Snack: 1/2 serving zucchini pasta Dinner: Instant Colcannon, Cocoa Berries I made some sprouted chickpeas over the past two days. It's really easy - you start with dry chickpeas, then soak them overnight in some water (use lots of water because they puff up a lot). Then put them in some sort of mesh bag for a couple days and rinse them a few times a day. Lots of people sprout with jars, but it's so much easier to get some sprouting bags. I just keep them in my dish drainer and rinse when I'm at the sink for some other reason. You can eat sprouted chickpeas raw if you like the taste. I don't really like it, so I cooked mine. Cooking raw sprouted chickpeas may seem counterintuitive, but you still get benefits of sprouting plus a really short cooking time - like ten minutes instead of an hour and a half. I steamed up some broccoli, squirted ketchup all over it, and ate breakfast. Can you s...

Food Diary: Breakfast: Spinach salad w/ peach salsa and homemade Rawmesan Lunch: Brussels sprouts w/ nooch Dinner: Brussels sprouts, Spiced Carrot Puree, Cocoa Berries I woke up at 6:30 this morning, pretty early. I wanted to do my Rosetta Stone Russian program, but it wasn't working on my computer. That's when I realized that I haven't used it yet on my new computer, so I would need to install the program. Except I apparently lost the installation CD! So I wrote to the company asking for a replacement and guess what - it costs TEN DOLLARS! WTF?! Anyway, after my Rosetta Stone letdown, I got sweaty. I worked out while watching Losing It with Jillian on Hulu. She went to a Native American reservation to help out a family and hopefully the entire community but she caused a stir when she thew away the fry bread they were serving at a picnic. People got pretty mad at her, saying that it's against their customs to throw away food. Fry bread is supposedly a Native Ame...

Food diary: Breakfast: Cocoa Berries Lunch: 2 nori rolls, steamed broccoli w/ BBQ and ketchup Dinner: Arugula salad w/ peach salsa and Homemade Rawmesan, Cocoa Berries First up today was general blog-reading time, then I walked to Cardio Barre (where Ashlee Simpson was in my class today). I stopped at Whole Foods for some groceries afterward and then walked back. I bought this lovely heirloom tomato. I had two of these nori rolls for lunch. They included cabbage, broccoli, carrots, red bell pepper, onion, and snow peas, and the paste is miso, garlic, wasabi, and umeboshi plum paste. And check out this comparison of the storebought Rawmesan with my homemade version. Storebought: Homemade: Don't they look almost exactly the same? And they taste almost exactly the same, too, except that I use more nooch. One of the blog posts I read this morning was this one: http://tierfrei-mampfen.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-it-man-als-veganer-teil-1456.html It's in German, so read it if you c...

I got lots of little things done today, which felt good. For some reason I had trouble sleeping last night and didn't get to bed until probably 1:30 or so, but I still got up around 7:30. First things first, I worked out and watched Covert Affairs on Hulu. It's a new show about a CIA operative. I'm a sucker for CIA narratives! I once thought that maybe I wanted to join the CIA, but then I realized that I really just wanted to ACT like a CIA agent... like Sydney Bristow (Alias). =) I also washed my sheets and towels, watered my plants, took out recycling, did some cooking and used up vegetables, and trimmed my bangs. I've only trimmed my bangs once before and it was a huge failure because I can't tell what's straight and what isn't. But it went much better this time because I cut a teeeeny tiny bit at a time. I also watched the movie MASH and read Wired magazine. My stepdad got me subscriptions to Wired and Fast Company, and I love reading them beca...

I invented a delicious dessert! And it's reaaaally easy. But we'll get to that in a second after two days of food diaries. Yesterday I went to a panel at the DGA as part of Outfest called Coming Out in Hollywood. The panel featured three actors, including Meredith Baxter and Jonathan Slavin, who played Phil on Better off Ted (if you have not seen B.O.T. - DO IT NOW. Lem and Phil are my favies), a publicist who helps celebrities come out of the closet publicly, and a TV writer. It was very interesting to hear about the ramifications of coming out and how many actors are still closeted for fear of what it will do to their career. But Phil (sorry, can I just call him Phil? I feel awkward calling him Jonathan like we're friends, and calling him Slavin would be like I was writing for a newspaper) said that people really need to think about what's important in life - losing some acting jobs versus being able to be open and honest about who you are. I totally agree wit...

I made myself an awesome salad for lunch yesterday and ended up having a similar version for both dinner last night and breakfast this morning. There's arugula, spinach, carrot shreds, broccoli, red pepper, sugar snap peas, marinated mushrooms, onions, pineapple salsa, and Rawmesan. I was getting pretty low on Rawmesan, so I decided to make some of my own. Here's what the stuff from the store looks like (Parm! looks similar). The only ingredients are brazil nuts, nutritional yeast, Celtic sea salt, and herbs and spices. Parm! uses walnuts instead of brazil nuts. I had some leftover raw soaked and dehydrated brazil nuts, so I decided to make my own. Homemade Rawmesan Brazil nuts or walnuts Nutritional yeast Braggs or Celtic sea salt Garlic (optional) Italian seasoning I chopped up the nuts roughly with my slap chopper so they wouldn't hurt my coffee grinder, then I put them in the grinder and processed into course grounds. I added a bunch of nooch, a bunch of Italian ...

The other day I saw something at Ralph's that I found pretty exciting: That's Daiya vegan cheese, nestled in with all the dairy-based cheeses. Cool! Daiya is all the rage in those fortunate parts of the country like mine where it is widely available. I've only tried a bite of someone else's pizza with Daiya, but it was definitely good. The general consensus is that it's melty, delicious, and stretchy. If you want to see more, check out quarrygirl because she posts about daiya-laden foods on an almost daily basis. This discovery made me think that maybe I should write a little bit about vegan milk and cheese substitutes. You may see them spelled "mylk" and "cheeze," and while I get the point of such labels, I think they're pretty silly and something akin to writing "womyn." There are tons of brands of vegan cheese, from the classic Follow Your Heart to Teese, Cheezly, VeganRella, and now Daiya. Daiya is especially known for m...

The new ABC Family show Huge has been getting lots of press lately. The show focuses on a group of teens at a weight-loss camp, and it serves as the first show with a predominantly overweight (actually obese) cast. But what kind of messages will it send about body image, self-acceptance, and health? Many people are worried that the show will reinforce stereotypes of fat people (that word is a choice, BTW. I don't think we need to use euphemisms for fat). And it certainly is replete with stereotypes, as are most TV shows and movies. The question usually boils down to whether we should accept ourselves if we're fat or whether we should try and lose weight. But I don't know why people feel the need to take one side or the other. The real problem I have with the self-acceptance and fat pride movement is the all-too-frequent accompanying message that you will always be fat, there's nothing you can do about it, so just get used to it and accept it. I think that's...

Well I've had a busy couple of days, and tomorrow will be no different! Yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out at my friends' house, and for dinner my lovely host made me this salad: There's lettuce, chopped veggies, and some chickpeas. Instead of dressing I used horseradish mustard and lots of fresh cracked pepper. YUM. I love good mustard and I definitely need to get myself a pepper grinder. Today I cooked, went to Power Group, and went to a talk by a casting director. Both events were through The Actors Network. Power Group is a group of actors that get together every month and talk about what they did for their careers in the past month, goals for next month, and then issues they need opinions on. Food Diary for today - Breakfast: Spinach salad Lunch: Brussels sprouts, 1/2 sweet potato Dinner: Brussels sprouts, coffee I know spinach salad is a strange breakfast food, but I'm a strange girl. Lately I have been loving salad with peach or pineapple salsa...

I finally got to see my movie last night! My first feature film, Bloomington, had its LA premiere at Outfest last night at the Laemmle on Sunset. It was really fun and the movie turned out great. Before the movie, my friend Emily and I went to the Veggie Grill, which happened to be directly below the movie theater. She got the chili and kale salad and I got the chop salad. It was great! I have to admit, though, after doing lots of having fun and staying up late this weekend, I am ready to get back on my schedule. I just feel better going to bed at 10:30, getting up at 7:30, working out first thing, and making my food at home. I am so lame. =)

Chocolate-Covered Katie (chocolatecoveredkatie.com) issued a CHALLENGE to post makeupless pics, preferably post-exercise. And I just can't resist an embarassing challenge. And for some reason I like to post dumb pictures of myself on the internet -- is that an official mental disease yet? Well I don't have any pictures of me exercising (because why would I let anyone take pictures of me exercising) I do have this: That's me in Vietnam at an outdoor exercise class. So I'm kind of exercising, but mostly I was goofing around. And just for fun, check out this picture that I was e-mailed today: OMG, right? It's a cat and a deer, and they're friends! So anyways, food log for the past two days: Breakfast: Sweet potato Lunch: Salad w/ mango salsa and Rawmesan Dinner: Instant Colcannon Breakfast: Coffee Lunch: Instant Colcannon Dinner: Arugula salad w/ mango salsa and the last crumbles of dehydrated eggplant bacon, 1/2 instant colcannon, sweet potato

I had a great day! I walked the 30 minutes to my Cardio Barre exercise class, did that, stopped at Whole Foods for some kale and lettuce, and walked back. Cardio Barre is a workout that combines cardio and strength, based off of ballet principles. It's challenging but I felt pretty good. Oh and I saw vegan Snickerdoodle ice cream at WF. No, I didn't buy it, but I thought it was exciting anyways. Food Log: Breakfast: Coffee (I don't like to eat before I workout, makes me sick) Lunch: Salad w/ mushrooms, mango salsa, and Rawmesan and 1/4 potato of Instant Colcannon Dinner: 1 potato of Instant Colcannon, 1/4 sweet potato I also read Luna Nueva and online news in several languages in order to practice my skills, fixed my broken lamp, painted my nails, and watched Prison Break! I am always way behind on shows but I just got into it and wow, it's really good! Of course, the two main characters are so amazingly attractive that I would watch the show even if it was about p...

Rude Health - Rants

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! I know I did. And my mom baked this vegan cake and sent me an e-mail picture of it. She said she baked it for me and would eat it for me, too. I have a great, super-easy recipe to share with you today! Instant Colcannon 1 organic potato several cups of kale nutritional yeast salt, pepper, seasonings Here's what you need: First, scrub your potato. If it has any imperfections or little sprouts, just dig them out with your fingernails. It's easy. And always buy organic potatoes - they're on the dirty dozen and they're root vegetables, so they just suck up all the pesticides. Poke the potato several times with a fork and microwave for about three minutes, longer if it's a big potato. While your potato is microwaving, boil a couple of inches of water in a pot or pan. Put in your steamer basket and steam several cups of kale for about 30 seconds. This will make your kale softer and bright green, but minimize cooking time. ...

I made another Trader Joe's run yesterday to get more brussels sprouts. And I got SIX BAGS. It turns out brussels sprouts are an entire dollar per pound cheaper at TJ's than at Whole Foods or Ralph's. They cost $2.99/lb at WF and Ralph's and only $1.99/lb at TJ's. But it does drive me crazy that at TJ's they come in plastic bags and you can buy them in bulk at the other stores. Plus, TJ's is a little bit out of walking distance if you're carrying groceries. But a dollar a pound difference is just too huge. That means I saved six bucks. That's big money! The cashier commented on my six bags of brussels and I told her that I just really love them, I eat them for dinner, and they're my favorite food. We both laughed that I'm probably the only person on the planet whose favorite food is brussels sprouts. But maybe there is someone, and I hope to meet that soulmate someday. So here's my TJ's stash: On the right you'll see some ...

I never liked eggplant before I went to China. Then I learned the joy that is qie zi and I've loved it ever since. If you want an oily splurge, get some eggplant in an Asian restaurant. Or make it yourself. You can stir-fry it, roast it in the oven with some tomatoes, onions, zucchini, and squash, and you can flavor it Asian or European style. You can also cut it into thin strips and use it for Raw dishes like manicotti and ravioli. I made some Raw manicotti in March that had cashew cheese and spinach on the outside, rolled up inside thin, marinated eggplant slices. It was super good. I finally made the eggplant that I bought last week. I cut it into thin slices on my mandoline and then made half of it into a cooked dish and half into a raw dish. Here are the recipes. Spicy Italian Eggplant 1/2 eggplant, sliced or cut up however 2 tomatoes, diced Garlic Chili powder Paprika Italian seasoning Turmeric Fennel seed Stir-fry and add seasonings to taste. The fennel seed gives ...