WIAW: What I (Want to) Eat on Thanksgiving

Can you believe we’re just over a week away from T-day? Me neither! Does it surprise you that I really like Thanksgiving–even as a vegan? For me, it’s not really about the food (the desserts, though…) but the fact that I get a week-long break away from school, just when I need one. I am really stressin’ right now but luckily this year, I get an extra day off because my class on Friday was cancelled. Definitely thankful for that!

Even though I’m not a fan of the traditional Thanksgiving fare, I still have some things I would like to make and eat on the big day. Some of the flavors that scream ‘Thanksgiving’ for me include maple, pumpkin, cranberry and pecan so hopefully I can include all of those in this year’s meal.

Maple roasted veggies. Photo from La Vida Vegga.

Roasted veggies are the best–why not make them even better with a hint of real maple syrup? I think these would be great as leftovers too!

Maple pecan pie bars. Photo courtesy of Natural Noshing.

Can you believe these are vegan, gluten-free and grain free? Me either, but I really want to give them a whirl to see if they turn out as delicious as they look. I actually really love trying out recipes that are vegan and grain free, which is kinda hard to find since most grain free recipes include eggs, but this one thankfully doesn’t!

Cranberry kale salad. Photo courtesy of Kraft (recipe from Whole Foods).

You all know how much I love kale (it’s my favorite veggie, other than sweet potatoes) so combining it in a salad with fresh cranberries and miso paste sounds perfect for Thanksgiving.

Vegan caramel apple. Photo courtesy of Healthy Happy Life.

Caramel apples seem so complicated and way too sugary…but not this one! The recipe seems so easy to follow, and the caramel sauce itself is made with coconut sugar (lower glycemic!) and coconut milk so it’s much healthier.

Spiced grilled sweet potatoes. Photo courtesy of Whole Foods.

Sweet potatoes are great, but even better when they’re grilled and made spicy!

Pumpkin s’mores pudding. Photo courtesy of Healthy Food for Living.

How amazeballs does this look? It’ll be the perfect way to use up some of the Ricemellow creme I just bought–huge container, thought it was a little too sweet but it would be great on top of this!

Pecan pie waffle. Photo courtesy of Three and a Half Vegans.

You know my obsession with waffles–these take that to a whole new level! I think I know what I’ll be having for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning…

Do you prefer pumpkin, apple, sweet potato or pecan pie? What’s your favorite fall flavor? 

WIAW: Weird Day of Eats

This is going to be a quick WIAW post since I’ve been incredibly busy this week–it’s midterm time and I’ve been overloaded with other school stuff too. But I still wanted to get in a WIAW so here it is! This is showing (almost) all of my food from Monday and it was a weird day of eating. My fridge hasn’t been working so I’ve had to keep my food in a small insulated cooler and I have to constantly change the ice out. It’s a pain in the butt, especially since the whole ordeal ended up making my kale inedible 😦 but hopefully my fridge will be fixed soon.

Caramel apple protein smoothie. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk. A quarter of a Pink Lady apple. 1 small Medjool date. Vega vanilla almondilla protein powder. Dried apple ring.

This was totally made up on the spot, but it worked, and actually tasted caramel-y. It’s still warm enough here most days for smoothies so I hope I can enjoy this a few more times.

Starbucks tall salted caramel mocha frappuccino light with soy. Unpictured side of dry roast edamame and maple pecans.

Yes, this was lunch. And yes, it was delicious. Also yes, it didn’t leave me satisfied. Obviously having a lunch that’s mostly caffeine and fake sugar will do that to you, but I was really craving a light frappuccino and this did the trick. I tried to bulk it up by adding protein (edamame) and fat (pecans). I wouldn’t do it again, but it was tasty.

Hannah yam. Salted almond butter, maple syrup, vegan chocolate chips.

This quick snack did the trick. The combo seems really weird but it works. If you’ve never tried a Hannah yam, you should. They look like regular potatoes on the outside but have a yellow-y inside and taste like a sweet potato.

This is my morning weather update from this week! It’s CTV’s (my college’s TV station) first week trying out these morning weather updates so hopefully they get better over time. And next time I hope I don’t look fat–it’s probably just how the shot was cropped and that it’s widescreen but I look seriously bloated. No bueno.

Yay for cheap-o knockoffs!

If you thought these were TOMS, you’d be wrong. But they’re almost as good, plus they were under $10. I made an impromptu stop at Super Target the other day and got sucked into buying these shoes. But hey, they were a good deal and I needed a pair of flats. You can’t really tell by the picture, but they’re a glittery gold. So cute, and so cheap.

Coconut flour microwave cake topped with peanut flour. Kale with vegan creamy garlic dressing. Two falafel balls. Dried apple rings.

Finally some veggies other than a sweet potato! This was the last of my kale because sadly it wilted after being in a less-than-cold fridge. Sad day. This was a delicious, if random, dinner though. (Side note: I finally have peanut flour back in my life!)

Protein cereal bowl. Sunrise maple cereal. PB & chocolate Puffins. Chocolate chips. Raisins. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk. Peanut flour.

I used to be such a cereal fiend, but now I have it maybe once a week. And it’s always in protein cereal bowl form, aka I put protein powder or peanut flour in the bottom of a bowl, dump in the cereal and other add-ins and then add almond milk. So good, and I get a nice dose of protein with my carbs.

Do you have any ‘knockoff’ shoes? What’s the weirdest lunch you’ve ever had?

WIAW: Fall Flavors

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m excited for fall. I vowed to not wear long pants until fall officially arrived…yeah, that didn’t happen. I wore them twice in the past two weeks because it got randomly chilly for a couple days. I’ve embraced my moccasins again (and I’m looking for another pair to buy). And I’ve been enjoying the flavors of fall. Here they are, WIAW style!

Caramel apple coffee? Uh, heck to the yes!

You know me, I’m a sucker for anything seasonal or limited edition. I recently inherited my dad’s coffeemaker and I was planning on buying the coconut macaroon flavored coffee from Target, but when I saw this, there was no stopping me. I mean, you can’t go wrong with caramel and apple in coffee. Especially when it’s made with vanilla almond milk.

Looks weird, tastes amazing.

I’ve finally got a recipe for y’all! I made this last week when I got down to the end of my first can of pumpkin. I also had a bit of a leftover sweet potato so I decided to mix them up with a few other things and it turned out surprisingly really good.

Pumpkin Coconut Mash (vegan, gluten-free)

1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree

1/4 sweet potato (or another 1/4 cup pumpkin)

1 tbsp coconut flour

drizzle agave or maple syrup

maple or vanilla extract

unsweetened vanilla almond milk, to thin

cinnamon, raisins, protein frosting, etc. for topping

In a bowl, mash together pumpkin, sweet potato (if using) and coconut flour. Add in liquid sweetener and extract to taste and pour in almond milk until mixture is thick and wet. Microwave on high for 1-3 minutes, or until combined and hot. Drizzle with more maple or agave, cinnamon, raisins, protein frosting or whatever you want. Makes 1 serving.

Coconut oil makes everything better!

This was my attempt at homemade plantain chips. I’ve always wanted to try them, but I’m not a fan of deep-fried things or weird oils. So I bought a plantain, put a little coconut oil in a pan and cooked up the slices. I also sprinkled cinnamon on them while they were cooking. They turned out really delicious, but not crispy at all. Next time I think I’ll cook them first and then dehydrate them.

Slice homemade white pizza, slice homemade sweet and salty pumpkin pizza, fresh blueberries.

Have any of you ever had “white” pizza? I think it’s usually an alfredo-based sauce topped with wilted spinach. I haven’t had it in years but I really wanted to recreate it, healthy vegan style, and I was totally successful. I topped some Whole Foods multigrain pizza dough with Follow Your Heart vegan creamy garlic dressing, shredded kale leaves and navy beans. Super simple, but it turned out great. The dressing kinda soaked into the crust and it tasted even better that way. The pumpkin pizza I made wasn’t quite as good, but I made an amazing pumpkin pizza last year, so I’ll just have to tweak this sauce next time.

This is basically the cleanest donut ever!

Have you ever seen a donut with these ingredients? I’ll admit, neither had I until the other day. I really think it’s awesome that Whole Foods made a healthier donut. Who could say no to garbanzo beans, coconut, almonds and pumpkin in their donut? Of course I had to buy it to try it out!

This gluten free and vegan donut was a winner!

And the verdict is….amazing! This donut was perfectly moist and fudgy, like the perfect chocolate cake. I’m not even a fan of cake and I liked this. I was only disappointed because it claimed to be a pumpkin donut, and it was basically all chocolate. But I don’t complain about chocolate, ever.

I’ll miss being able to wear strapless tops with no jacket…

I’ve been switching up my workouts lately with an app called Skimble Workouts. Most of the stuff on there is free, and they’ve got a ton of pre-made workout routines of different lengths and intensities. I’ve been getting great ab, leg and arm workouts lately and they’re lots of fun. Obviously I wanted to show off my hard work with a progress pic of sorts. Can you see that baby bicep?

So I was going to end this post with a video of my first weather forecast ever from last week but the video wouldn’t load. I should be able to get either this week or last week’s forecast up in the next few days though. I’d love any and all feedback you guys have for me!

What’s the weirdest ingredient you’ve seen in a baked good? What’s your favorite “fall flavor”?

WIAW: Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve

Hey friends, what is up? Can you believe that we’re just 4 days away from Christmas (hence my title)? It’s total craziness if you ask me, but I’m definitely looking forward to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for several reasons. One being I love the church service my family goes to every Christmas Eve, and I also can’t wait to watch the 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story on TBS! That is my favorite Christmas movie, so hilarious and such a classic.

But enough about Christmas, let’s get on with this week’s WIAW! Is it lame that I’m always super excited for it? Nah, I don’t care if it seems dumb, it’s such a fun foodie party that I can’t not participate in it week after week. This week’s edition includes some random eats I’ve been loving lately, as well as a couple of recipes too–BONUS 😀 And apparently this week I was obsessed with Instagram…

Hot caramel apple pie volume oats--I know you've gotta be drooling by now!

As I mentioned in my NaNeFoMo bucket list post, I said I was planning on making some raw treats. Well, the first thing on my mind was raw salted caramel apple dip. I bookmarked this recipe a few weeks back and was just itching to test it out for myself. I made a few tweaks to it, though, but it still turned out yummy. Next time, I think I’d add a bit more salt, though, because it didn’t have quite the hint of saltiness I thought it would.

Raw Salted Caramel Apple Dip (vegan, no cook)

1/2 cup dates (the original called for Medjool, I used California pitted), about 12 dates

1 T raw nut butter (I used Artisana’s walnut)

squeeze fresh lemon juice

sprinkle sea salt or kosher salt, to taste

Soak dates in water for at least four hours (I did overnight) and cover. Drain dates and reserve soaking liquid. Blend dates and rest of ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Add in soaking liquid one spoonful at a time until it’s the right consistency for you. Use as a topping for oats, as a spread on fruit or bread or as an apple dipper, of course! Makes about 3/4 cup.

The salad kick continues with a homemade salad of spinach, crispy tempeh bacon slices and Whole Foods' carrot ginger dressing.

The dressing can really make or break a salad, but luckily, this one was a winner! I found it in the produce section when I hit up WF the other day, and it’s got a nice tanginess to it.

The perfect sides for a salad--a ripe Satsuma tangerine and some peanut butter balls cereal.

Hot cocoa (with marshmallows!) and frozen raspberries make a yummy snack.

I’ve been craving hot cocoa lately, so I decided to whip up an easy mug of it. I just heated up some unsweetened vanilla almond milk in the micro, mixed it with some Hershey’s special dark cocoa powder and a packet of stevia, and topped it with a few pescetarian marshmallows. It was the best hot cocoa I’ve had in quite a while (I actually rarely drink hot cocoa), so I’m thinking almond milk is what made it amazing. But then again, what isn’t amazing about almond milk?

A throwback to an old favorite--"taco salad" with black beans, spinach, plain Oikos and crushed mild green mojo multigrain chips on top.

So remember me talking about how I’ve been obsessed with salads lately? Ummmm, well, that obsession’s gotten a little bit stronger since then. Since I got home, I’ve had a different salad for lunch every single day and it’s been glorious. Having fresh spinach leaves really takes them over the top. A good obsession to have, am I right?

Simple ingredients make for the most delicious cookies!

Nutty Cherry Chocolate Chunk Cookies (vegan)

1/4 c almond butter

1/3 c maple syrup

1/2 t vanilla extract

1/4 c pumpkin puree (I used butternut squash, since it was on hand)

1/2 c oat flour

1/4 t salt

1/4 t baking soda

1/4 c vegan chocolate chips

1/4 c unsweetened dried cherries

1/4 c chopped pecans

In a large bowl, combine almond butter and maple syrup together until mixed; add in pumpkin and vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking soda and then add in to wet mixture. Stir in chocolate chips, cherries and pecans until combined. Cover and chill batter for at least an hour. Preheat oven to 350. Scoop chilled batter with a melon baller onto baking sheet, spacing dough 2 inches apart. Bake until golden brown and just slightly soft, about 15 to 20 minutes. Set aside on baking rack to cool. Makes 12.

I loosely based this recipe off one from the Whole Foods website, but I made it vegan by subbing almond butter for dairy butter, maple syrup for white sugar and pumpkin puree for eggs. They turned out pretty good, a little small, but nice and “rugged” I guess. I like cookies that aren’t delicate–I definitely prefer ones like these that have chunks of good stuff in them! These cookies are pretty low-cal (about 120 per cookie) and you can feel good about eating them because they’ve got healthy ingredients like nuts and oats in them. But mostly you’ll just like them ’cause they taste good 😉

A 'classic' dinner with a twist--homemade black bean burger, sweet potato tots (best little things ever!), peanut flour sauce.

I made an attempt at making my own veggie burger last night, and it actually turned out decent, except it was too crumbly. I basically just mashed drained black beans and rolled oats together with a little chili powder and cooked it up in the skillet. It was a simple and delicious dinner alongside my favorite sweet potato tater tots and some peanut flour sauce for dippage. My kind of “burger and fries”.

What better way to start out the morning than with peanutty raspberry chocolate volume oats?

I have so much fun creating new oats combos. This one, like most of them, was a total winner, but then again when isn’t the combo of raspberry, peanut and chocolate delicious? Unfortunately, my supply of peanut flour is running dangerously low (no worries, another bag is on the way) so it turned out kinda runny but it still mixed well with organic jam and a few dark chocolate chips.

 

What is something you’ve tried again recently for the first time in a while? What is your favorite part of Christmas (if you celebrate it)?

WIAW: Old Things, New Ways

Hi ladies 😀 Well, another Wednesday is upon us, and I for one couldn’t be happier. First of all, it’s supposed to snow for the first time this season today! Okay, so that might not be so fun to walk to classes in, but I think snow is so pretty, and the first few snowfalls are the best. Come January and February, not so much 😦 But right now it’s great. It’s also another week closer to Thanksgiving break–aka 9 days of freedom from this crap known as school. I have big plans for that week–well, not really, but I have a lot of cooking and baking plans, that’s for sure. And finally, it’s almost the weekend and I’m headed home again! So it should be a pretty busy but fun 2 days.

So I was really struggling coming up with some kind of theme for this week’s WIAW. I don’t know why, but I think it’s more fun with a theme or extra thing, like a survey. I kinda got burned out on surveys, so lately it’s been all about some theme like new purchases or recipes or what I did over the weekend. Since I haven’t had any of those this week, I couldn’t think of anything…until I looked through my pictures and realized that they were all of things I’ve had before, but in a new way. So that’s my WIAW theme this week!

Banana whip smoothie, half a sweet potato topped with hot Mexican style chili powder. Sweet and spicy...awwwww yeah!

 So I haven’t had a ‘banana whip’ since sometime this summer but that’s only because I haven’t had almond milk around since then. Sad, right? I finally grabbed a carton of unsweetened vanilla AM two weekends ago and it’s definitely been put to good use in lattes and cereal. But then I remembered how much I loved this smoothie, and I made it for a snack, alongside half a chili powder-spiked sweet potato (eaten cold, BTW). Basically, you just take 3/4 cup almond milk, a packet of Truvia or stevia and a handful of frozen banana slices, and blend away. Once I invest in xantham gum, you best believe this will be even better and more milkshake like.

Pumpkin spice Vitatop (with a bite taken out of it, oops!) topped with a teaspoon of almond peanut cashew butter.

 Vitatops aren’t quite the same when you can’t toast them (stupid dorm rules) but they still smell amazing in the microwave. I topped this one (pumpkin spice, of course) with some drippy, almost-at-the-bottom-of-the-jar APCB. So. Good. Period. Why did I never do this before? I honestly don’t know!

Vintage-ized photo taken by my lovely phone. Dr McDougall's vegan tortilla soup.

 So I’ve had this soup before, and it’s really really good but for some reason, I’ve always eaten it out of the paper container it comes in. I decided to fancy it up a bit by pouring it in a bowl. Classy, no? And I also just realized, after almost 2 years of having my phone, that it can edit photos right on the phone itself. Since this picture was taken at night (and therefore was super yellow), I messed around with the coloring and also decided to make it look vintage-y. I got bored, okay?

Caramel Oikos (in a bowl) topped with frozen banana slices.

 Again, I’ve had frozen banana slices and this flavor of Greek yogurt before, but never together and never in a bowl. I mean, it comes in a container you can eat out of, so why use dishes, right? Turns out, it tastes much better in a real bowl, especially when mixed with frozen banana. It’s like dessert almost (I had this for lunch, though).

Homemade Starbucks latte, half sweet potato, raisins, sour gummy vitamins, almond peanut cashew buttah.

 I’m a coffee girl at heart. Not so much for the caffeine, because it doesn’t do much for me (other than when I get anything larger than a tall at the ‘bucks–then I feel sick and have a humongo headcahe afterwards) but for the delicious taste. I’m not a hardcore black coffee person at all–I like some sweetness and flavor. Oh, and I also rarely have coffee at breakfast, usually opting for the afternoon (because caffeine does not keep me up at night–I could probably drink coffee at 10 pm and still sleep fine) but lately, I’ve been feeling a nice cup thermos at breakfast time, especially since it’s getting pretty cold around here. Anyways, I make my coffee with half a packet of Starbucks VIA mocha instant coffee, a packet of Truvia, 1/4 cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk steamed in the micro and a dash of cinnamon. Alongside that I had half of a hot sweet potato, some raisins and APCB. Oh, and my beloved sour gummy vitamins. I wish I could eat them more than just once a day, because I totally would, they’re so good 😛

The new Halloween Clif Kid bar flavor--full moon brownie.

 I love Clif Z-bars–they’re perfectly snack sized and come in really good flavors. So far, I’ve tried the blueberry, chocolate brownie, apple cinnamon (which was discontinued) and s’mores and have liked them all. But the full moon brownie is by far my favorite! I love the soy white chocolate chunks and the richness of the bar itself. I wish it was a permanent flavor, though–guess I’ll just have to stock up before Halloween!

 

What “old favorite” have you eaten lately in a new way?