Day 7

Today marks one week that I have been following a completely vegan diet as well as Dr. Neal Barnard's book, 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart. While not over yet, I can say that this week has had its ups and downs, but has been overall an incredibly positive experience in my life. For the past week I have eaten better than I have in my whole life--and I don't just mean better as in healthy. Better as in more food, more often, and more delicious. This is one diet you definitely won't feel deprived and hungry on. And what's more is that last night at Gobblerfest and the Spirit Rally I could barely keep my pants on me because they were so loose! The poor people sitting in the grass behind me had to stare at my backside all night due to the fact that I do not own a belt. As Carla said, "I wish I had your problems..."

The menu for day seven is:

Breakfast:
Pancakes with maple syrup
Fresh raspberries

Lunch:
Quinoa and Red Bean Salad (recipe)
Hummus and pita bread

Dinner:
Sauteed spinach with fresh lemon juice
Penne al Forno (recipe)
Linguine with Seared Oyster Mushrooms (recipe)
Mixed greens with balsamic vinegar
Baked Cardamom Pears (recipe)

The Asian buffet last night, Hokkaido, turned out to be very good, and had lots of vegan options. I chowed down on sauteed mushrooms, steamed bok choy, vegetable lo mein, rice noodles, and some fried rice (with no egg, yay!). Because of this, I didn't get to cook the lovely menu from last night. So tonight I am going to make a few substitutions. There is no way that I am going to let those mushrooms go to waste, whereas the Penne al Forno ingredients are nonperishable.

Check it out this evening!

Perfect Portobello Burger

This was my lunch for day six of the 21-Day Weight Loss Kickoff. Carla, Helen, and I are going out to dinner at supposedly very nice Asian food buffet tonight, so I decided to keep lunch light and skip the Sweet Potato Fries (again, argh!). This recipe was quick, easy, and small enough to be a nice sized portion snack, so it was the perfect choice.

While I did really like this sandwich, it didn't really photograph very well. The whole wheat bun was dark brown, the portobello was black, the caramelized onions were dark brown, and the lettuce was a very dark purple. Not to mention that the whole thing got kind of soggy and messy immediately. So, unfortunately, no pictures for this one.

I was a little nervous about that great big mushroom since I had never had one before. I love mushrooms, but I recently got a bag of shitakes that were infested with mushroom fly maggots (which you could not tell by looking, only breaking into) so I'm a little weird about the larger ones now--who knows what nasty surprises could be hiding inside! I ended up breaking this one in half once to inspect for any holes, and it turned out to be sound. In the end there was nothing to worry about at all, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mushroom.

The portobello went in a pan with a quarter inch of water, some halved garlic cloves, salt, and smoked paprika. It was done when the water had completely evaporated. I slapped that on a toasted whole wheat bun with the other ingredients and that puppy was good to go. The sandwich originally had roasted red pepper on it as well, but I picked that off half way through because it didn't really fit and it covered up the mushroom flavor too much. I thought I would miss some sort of condiment on mushroom burger as well, but it turned out just fine without it. I would most likely make this again.

This is what I imaged the Perfect Portobello Burger should look like.
Picture taken from http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/portobello_mushroom_burger/.

This morning's breakfast was alright. I made the scheduled pancakes with strawberries and Caribbean Passion Smoothie. The pancakes, being only whole wheat flour, soy milk, and baking powder, were not at all delicious. Last time the mango added some sweetness while the lime added flavor, whereas this time it was basically like cardboard. I ended up eating the strawberries off the top and drenching them in maple syrups, and even then I couldn't even finish the two of them. Next time the menu calls for plain pancakes, I think I'll add a tablespoon or two of cane sugar and some vanilla extract.

The smoothie was interesting. I almost didn't like it at first, but it grew on me over the course of the morning. I bought a smoothie blender yesterday with a travel lid so that all you have to do is blend, pop on the top, unscrew the base, and go. It was very convenient as I was rushing to get ready for my 8 am Organic Chemistry. The smoothie consisted of one banana, one orange, one mango, some pineapple, a cup of soy milk, and some cinnamon. I forgot to freeze the fruit last night so I had to blend some ice with it as well. Pretty tasty, and very filling!



This is actually the Mango Spice Smoothie, but the Caribbean Passion was almost the same except that it had cinnamon in place of serrano pepper.

Day 6

The menu for today is:

Breakfast:
Pancakes with sliced strawberries
Caribbean Passion Breakfast Smoothie (recipe)

Lunch:
The Perfect Portobello Burger (recipe)
Sweet Potato Fries (recipe)

Dinner:
French Onion Sourdough Soup (recipe)
Linguine with Seared Oyster Mushrooms (recipe)
Baked Cardamom Pears (recipe)

I am especially excited for today because I absolutely adore mushrooms, and here they are featured in two separate recipes! Crossing my fingers that today is a good day.

Day 5

Today didn't go quite as planned.

This morning's menu included a Breakfast Burrito, which I made along with (what was supposed to be yesterday's) a Mango Spice Smoothie. The burrito was filled with fried potato, onion, and kale, and it was quite bland. Perhaps some pico de gallo could liven it up a bit? The smoothie has the word "spice" in the name because it literally included a hot pepper. It wasn't bad, but it isn't a flavor combination that I will be using again.

Potato & Kale Breakfast Burrito

I had a lab for my Fisheries class today which didn't get out until almost evening. That, plus the fact that breakfast was very filling, contributed to the fact that I didn't have lunch today. I was actually supposed to go shopping yesterday but didn't have the time, so I didn't really have the ingredients for today's recipes anyways. I ended up going to Kroger's, but forgot to get something for tonight so I just ended up eating odds and ends like toast and hummus with cucumber. I decided to try some rather expensive vegan dark chocolate sandwich cookies from the store, which turned out to taste wonderful and made an excellent impromptu dessert.

So, sorry for the slacking--I promise to be more on track with the meal plan tomorrow!

To be honest, I'm getting a little sick of the Latin flavors. I feel like I'm getting mostly the same variations of rice and beans with salsa, and am getting bored with it. What I really want are some good Asian flavors. Where is my morning bowl of miso? There are quite a few of these types of recipes later on in the book, so I briefly considered switching around some days. I decided to be patient and just wait it out, however. I'll be happy to delve into some curry, ginger, mushroom, and rich umami flavors in a few weeks.

Due to the fact that I don't own a scale, I thought I would keep track of weight loss by taking measurements, which I recorded on day three. My reading for today asked me not to do that, so I headed out after class to purchase a bathroom scale. While testing it out in the kitchen when I returned home it read 252.8 pounds. I'm normally about 255. I'd say that 2.2 pounds in five days aren't too bad of results! I'll be weighing myself every Sunday and measuring progress that way. This is starting to get exciting!

Not Every One is a Winner

Most of the recipes thus far have been astonishingly good, and I haven't missed meat or diary at all. Every once in a while though, things just don't work out.

Lunch today wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either. I made a Sun-dried Tomato and Hummus Wrap, which I ate along with the the last of my fruit as well as some chips and salsa.

Sun-Dried Tomato & Hummus Wrap

Even though the ingredients were good, it just didn't come together. I think it was the fact that there just wasn't enough filling--too much tortilla, too little flavorful goodness. It also wasn't very filling, so I was hungry in only two hours.

Sometimes the whole...

...ISN'T greater than the sum of the parts.

This pales in comparison to dinner though. What a fiasco. First, the Quick Black Bean Chili. It tasted horrible, and wasn't like chili at all. It was a pile of black beans with some mushy tomatoes clinging to it with far too much bottled chili powder taste. I took one bite and threw the entire pot out, which makes me really sad to do (good thing I made only two servings worth). It even looked terrible.

Next, the Tomatillo Salsa. I was very excited about this because I have never tried tomatillos before. First off, some of the tomatillos had bugs in them. Second, they were oddly sticky, which was a little disturbing to me. I can't really describe the texture. Are they always like that? Next, the recipe said to halve them and then simmer until they turn into sauce. They didn't turn into anything except for very soft and hot tomatillo halves. I ended up using the food processor to make it more of a "salsa" consistency. Also, the recipe called for a ton of onion and garlic--an entire onion for less than two cups of salsa! I scaled it back a little. When I tasted the salsa with a spoon after pulsing I was not impressed at all. It was sour, and I couldn't imagine what to pair it with. It wasn't terrible though, so I decided to see how it would go on the rice.

Oh, the rice... The knobs on our stove are counter-logical, and so the three of us are guilty of accidentally turning on the wrong burner all the time. Well, I meant to have the rice on low and the salsa on med-high. I accidentally put it the other way around. It was only moments before the entire apartment was thick with burnt smoke. All three of us drug out fans and ran around flapping our arms, magazines, potholders, and whatever else we could find at the smoke. Even with the doors and windows open I can still smell it a bit, hours later. The rice didn't catch on fire, but it was close. Thank goodness the fire alarm for our building didn't go off. I'm not sure if that poor pot is salvageable now though.

Suffice to say, I was a bit put out by all of this. I had a Wildlife Society meeting to go to at 7 pm, so I decided just to get dinner out. Vegetable lo mein and a diet coke from Happy Wok might not be the best diet food, but it was vegan and I was tired and hungry. I was actually feeling pretty bad about the whole thing, thinking this whole endeavor was a waste of time and stupid of me, but a little smoke-free air and food in my belly soon turned my attitude around. That, and pretending to be an emperor penguin and frog noises at the meeting. All's well that ends well, I suppose.

Bananas in Berry Artesia

Oh my goodness, was this an awesome recipe. This was listed as dessert for day three, but it was my breakfast for day four. If you've got some fresh berries lying around, please try this quick and fuss-free recipe. While it was good on my sliced banana, I bet it would be heavenly on some pound cake. *drool*

Bananas in Berry Artesia

The first thing I did was to put half a cup each of the following into a small pot: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apple juice, grape juice. I also added one bay leaf, a vanilla bean (with the empty pod as well), and one tablespoon of maple syrup. If you don't have a vanilla bean--goodness knows they are insanely expensive (I've been saving this one for a special occasion)--it is perfectly find to use vanilla extract. Let all of this simmer for 5 minutes.

Let the berries, juice, and flavorings simmer for 5 minutes.

Next you want to get one tablespoon of cornstarch in a small bowl and ladle a few spoonfuls of the hot liquid in with it. Once you've got the cornstarch dissolved add it back to the pot, making sure to stir well while you are doing this. Simmer for about a minute longer.

Once the cornstarch is mixed in simmer for 1 minute longer.

Remove the sauce from the heat, discard the bay leaf as well as the vanilla bean if you are using it, and you are ready to serve over crepes, pastries, fruit, or whatever else you can find. It reminds me of berry cobbler filling. And so easy! The amounts in this recipe make one general serving.

Along with some blueberry oatmeal, this was my breakfast this morning.

Breakfast for Day Four

Day 4

Here is the menu for day four of the 21-Day Weight Loss Kick Off:

Breakfast:
Mango Spice Breakfast Smoothie (recipe)
Oatmeal with blueberries

Lunch:
Hummus and Sun-Dried Tomato Wrap (recipe)
Low-fat baked tortilla chips
Fresh apple

Dinner:
Quick Black Bean Chili (recipe)
Rice Topped with Tomatillo Sauce (recipe)
Warmed corn tortillas

I will probably be making quite a few changes today. I was so bogged down with homework deadlines last night that I didn't have any time to cook and just ended up eating my leftover Rustic Tomato Soup. This morning, instead of the smoothie I am going to make the Bananas in Berry Artesia recipe (which is basically the same ingredients in a different form). The tiny food processor we have isn't cutting it, so I'm going to have to go out and find a blender.

Today's going to be a busy one, so forgive me if I don't post until this evening.