New Year's Black-Eyed Pea Quinoa Salad

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a lovely holiday season. I know that I did - it was really nice to relax and see friends and family. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and it's time to head back to school tomorrow. 

I went shopping at the Whole Foods at Cambie and 8th in Vancouver this past week - always a treat since it's so expensive there! My favourite part of that store is the bulk foods area - they always have really different and interesting grains and legumes. I make a point of getting at least one or two new types that I haven't tried each time I go there. The nice thing about buying bulk, dry grains and legumes is that even though Whole Foods is expensive, stuff like that is still pretty reasonable in price. Way cheaper than buying meat, that's for sure!

This time around I thought I'd buy black quinoa and black-eyed peas, neither of which I have ever tried. Both just looked interesting. Later on when looking for inspiration on what to do with the black-eyed peas, I also found out that in the Southern US, eating black-eyed peas on New Years Day helps give prosperity throughout the new year. I'm a few days late, but I figure it can't hurt!

This recipe was inspired by Laura McAllister's Szechuan Black-Eyed Pea Salad recipe, but I decided I needed more grain in the salad to make it a complete meal and not just a side. I also didn't have a few of the ingredients she used, so I substituted and improvised. The result was a very tasty "salad" that can be served warm or cold.

Black-Eyed Pea Quinoa Salad
Yield: 4 meal-sized servings

Ingredients:
1 cup (250 ml) black quinoa (or any other variety)
2 cups (500 ml) water
2 cups (500 ml) cooked black–eyed peas
1 medium green bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp (15 ml) Earth Balance margarine
2 avocados, cubed
2 Tbsp (30 ml) lemon juice
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil
3 Tbsp (45 ml) white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp (30 ml) gluten-free tamari (or soy sauce)
2 tsp (10 ml) sugar
1/8 tsp (0.5 ml) cayenne pepper

Method:

1) Rinse quinoa and put into a pot with 2 cups of water. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, let sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

2) Saute garlic and green pepper in margarine for a few minutes, until slightly softened. (You could skip this step if you'd prefer raw garlic and pepper.)

3) Toss cubed avocado with the lemon juice.

4) Combine cooked quinoa, cooked black-eyed peas, green pepper, garlic, and avocado in a large bowl.

5) Using the same bowl that you stirred the avocado and lemon juice in (that's now empty), whisk together olive oil, white wine vinegar, tamari, sugar, and cayenne.

6) Pour dressing over the salad and toss to combine.

7) Serve immediately for a warm salad, or refrigerate and serve cold.

This was quite tasty! Just a slight hint of spiciness from the cayenne, which you could adjust to your preference. The textures were nice and varied - the avocados and peas providing a luxurious creaminess, while the quinoa and bell pepper gave it a bit of a crunch too. If you use the gluten-free tamari rather than traditional soy sauce, then this is also a gluten-free dish!

Happy New Year, and good luck with back-to-school for all the teachers and students out there!

No-Chop Lentil Pilaf

As a vegan, you tend to eat a lot of vegetables. And consequently, you tend to chop a lot of vegetables. You get to be very intimate with your cutting board and knife! Tonight, I wanted a break from all that chopping, but I still wanted our meal to be nutritious and as whole-food as possible. I came across this recipe that used Beluga Lentils, and I just happened to have a bag of pre-cooked ones in the freezer. Plus, the recipe could be made to be chop-free, which was perfect! So here is my adapted version of Cookgirl's Black Beluga Lentil Pilaf recipe.

No-Chop Lentil Pilaf
Yield: 5-6 meal-sized servings

Ingredients:
2 cups (500 ml) sprouted brown rice (or a rice of your choice)
3 cups (750 ml) water
1 clove garlic, minced (I got around the chopping for this part by using pre-minced garlic!)
1 tsp (5 ml) cumin
1 cup (250 ml) raisins
2 cups (500 ml) pre-cooked beluga lentils (or another lentil of your choice)
1 cup (250 ml) frozen green peas
Salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1) Rinse rice and place in a large pot. Add water, minced garlic, and cumin. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to low and let simmer for 25 minutes.

2) If raisins are getting a little old and crusty, which mine were, put them in a bowl and cover with water to let them "plump." Leave them in the water while the rice cooks, and don't forget to discard the water before you use the plumped raisins.

3) Once the rice is done, mix the lentils, raisins, and frozen peas into the pot. Let sit for about five minutes with the lid on, until the peas have thawed and everything is warmed through.

4) Season with salt and pepper as desired.

I like the colour the bright green peas give to the dish, and I also like to add something green in whenever possible. Green = good for you! The sweetness of the peas and raisins is a nice counterpart to the more savoury rice and lentils. I did find the dish to be a bit dry, so if that bothers you, you could mix in a bit of vegan margarine. We served it with a bun on the side, which was very tasty. This was also a really nice fast dish that makes a lot - perfect for freezing or leftovers!

Nacho Nacho Vegan!

Tonight was nacho night. We haven't had nachos in forever, and not at all since we've gone vegan. The one thing I hear the most from people when we talk about going vegan is, "I don't think I could do it. I could never give up cheese." Well, I have to admit, it was difficult to give up that ooey gooey deliciousness that is cheese. But, becoming lactose intolerant this past year did help! Not so much fun to eat something that doesn't make you feel well. Actually, that's how I feel in general about non-vegan food - it doesn't make you feel well, whether you realize it or not. Just try going vegan and see how much better you feel! For me, that was a big indicator that the food I had been eating was not good for my body. (Keep in mind, I was on the "healthier" end of the non-vegan spectrum - it's not like I ate tons of junk and processed stuff all the time. I was eating chicken breast, steamed veggies, skim milk, etc. - all that supposedly "healthy" food.)

But, you do get to missing some non-vegan food. And cheese is definitely one of those foods. There are vegan "cheeses" out there, like Daiya, but I don't particularly like them. They seem to try too hard to be cheese, when all they really are is mostly chemicals that melt into a sticky gooey mess (and not gooey in a good way). I came across yet another amazing recipe from Oh She Glows! for "Cheeze" sauce and decided that it might be a good thing to try with nachos. I made the recipe exactly as printed, but I would add less salt next time as I found it a little too salty. I'm pretty sensitive to saltiness, so others might find it to be okay. I might also add a little less dijon mustard as it was pretty tangy, but not necessarily in a bad way. Overall, it was a pretty good substitute for cheese sauce. I made a double recipe so we'd have lots:

Looks pretty "cheezy," doesn't it? I assembled the nachos using organic blue corn tortilla chips with flax, one diced red pepper, one diced green pepper, about 1 cup/250 ml cooked black beans, and a bunch of frozen corn. I broiled the nachos with toppings on in the oven for about 10 minutes or so - keep a watch on them so they don't burn. Then, I poured the hot "Cheeze" sauce over top. I have to say, it was pretty yummy. The hubby and I basically finished off this entire tray:

I don't feel too bad about eating so many nachos since they were mostly bean-veggie topping with not too many chips. But I was wondering about that cheeze sauce - how did it stack up for calorie and fat content compared to real cheese sauce (using this basic recipe). Using the recipe analyzer at caloriecount.about.com, I discovered that it is actually really similar to real cheese sauce in terms of calories, protein, and fat content (the recipe I used for real cheese sauce was supposed to be a lower-fat version of the more processed types). But, in terms of good points, the real cheese sauce only has three: high in calcium, phosphorus and riboflavin, plus two bad points: high in saturated fat and sugar. Meanwhile the cheeze sauce has many good points: no cholesterol, very low in sugar, high in dietary fiber, high in iron, very high in niacin, very high in pantothenic acid, very high in phosphorus, high in potassium, very high in riboflavin, very high in thiamin, high in vitamin B6, high in vitamin E, and NO bad points. In my mind, this makes the cheeze sauce a much more worthwhile use of my calories. So, perhaps not our most low-calorie dinner, but we seriously don't plan on eating it very often. Not sure if you could go vegan 'cause you'd miss the cheese? Give this sauce a try - but be openminded (it won't taste exactly like cheese because it isn't cheese!) and remember that you are putting good things into your body when you eat whole-food plant-based. Be kind to your body - it's the only one you've got!

Thai it!

Okay, yes, that was a very cheesy title. Er, I mean silly, since vegans don't eat cheese. Maybe I should just stop now.

I decided to experiment tonight with a Thai coconut curry. It was a night to use up veggies in the fridge and throw together a quick dinner with what I had on hand, so I had the following to work with:
- 1 package pressed tofu (which I cubed)
- 1 Japanese eggplant (which I sliced into thin slices)

- 1 very large box of snow pea tips - it's taking us forever to get through this thing! Thanks Costco!

- 1 package spinach noodles

- 1 can light coconut milk (I love Trader Joe's!)

- 1 jar Thai green curry paste

Here's what I did to put the meal together:
1) Heat a large skillet and spray with cooking oil.
2) Add the eggplant and saute for a few minutes until they start to go softer and begin to get translucent. Add a bit of water to the pan if they start to stick.
3) Add a bunch of the pea tips. Basically you want so much that you can't add any more in to the pan. They shrink down A LOT, so use as many as you can fit. Saute them for a while until they start to shrink.
4) Add the tofu cubes. Toss with the eggplant and pea tips.
5) Add the coconut milk and about 1 Tbsp (15 ml) of the curry paste). Stir to coat everything in the pan, then simmer on low for about 5-10 minutes.

6) Cook the spinach noodles, or another noodle of your choice as per package directions. When done, drain off water and toss with the mixture in the skillet.

Here's the final product:

The whole dinner probably only took me about 20 minutes to make and was quite tasty. It makes around 4-6 servings, depending on how big your serving is. Vegan cooking doesn't always have to be a long, drawn-out process. Sometimes a quick meal with whatever you have on hand is both easy and delicious!

Sunday Brunch Pancakes!

I love pancakes. Luckily, so do my son and husband. They are one of our favourite breakfast-for-dinner options, and I always make lots so I can freeze them and send them to daycare with my son for his lunch. Or, you can also just pop a frozen pancake in the toaster oven for a quick delicious breakfast. Mmmm... pancakes.

I have been using a recipe from this cookbook called Cooking Without Mom (1986, Hen Party Enterprises) that my mom gave to me when I first moved out on my own. It's a neat little cookbook that has seen me through a lot, but my favourite recipe in it has always been the pancakes recipe. When I decided to go whole-food vegan, I tried a few vegan pancake recipes online, but none ever came close to being as good as the ones from this cookbook. I wanted to make some pancakes this morning for brunch, but got discouraged by the idea of trying yet another pancake recipe that wasn't going to cut it. And then, I had the brilliant idea of whole-food veganizing the original recipe that I love so much. Luckily, it worked! The finished pancakes were light, fluffy, and oh-so-delicious. And, they had oodles of good stuff in them too with no added sugar or fat.

The Best Vegan Pancakes Ever
Yield: 11 1/3-cup sized pancakes

Ingredients:
2.5 cups (625 ml) whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (125 ml) quinoa flour
2 Tbsp (30 ml) baking powder
1/2 tsp (2 ml) salt
2-3 tsp (10-15 ml) cinnamon
2.5 cups (625 ml) unsweetened non-dairy milk
1 cup (250 ml) water
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla
1 small or 1/2 large ripe banana, mashed
1 flax "egg" (1 Tbsp ground flax meal + 3 Tbsp warm water)

Method:
1) Whisk together flax meal and warm water. Let sit for 5-10 minutes until thickened. Whisk again before adding to wet ingredients.

2) Combine flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon until evenly mixed.

3) Mix together "milk," water, vanilla, mashed banana, and flax egg.

4) Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the wet all at once, then mix until just combined but still lumpy.

5) Preheat your non-stick frying pan(s), using low-medium heat (about a 4 if your stove has numbered dials). I always use two non-stick pans so that I can cook more pancakes at once. Non-stick also prevents you from having to use oil. Always remember to use a plastic flipper to avoid scratches, and get a new pan once you start seeing cracks in the non-stick finish. You'll know your pan is preheated enough once you drop a few drops of water onto it and the water "dances."

6) Use either a 1/3 cup (80 ml) measuring cup or a ladle to portion out the pancakes. Drop them onto your preheated pans, making a circular shape.

7) Let cook for about 2 minutes. You'll know they are ready to flip when they get bubbles all over and the edges look dull. They should be golden brown once you flip them.

8) Cook for another minute or so after flipping until the other side is golden brown.

9) If you are making a lot and not planning to eat them fresh off the pan, heat your oven to about 200-225 F. Put a cooling rack onto a cookie sheet and place your pancakes on top of this in the oven. It will keep them warm without letting them get too soggy.

10) Serve pancakes hot with a topping of your choice. Here is my finished pancake with maple syrup. Sometimes I do a fruit sauce for a topping, chop some fresh fruit on top with maple syrup, and sometimes I put almond butter on top. All delicious ways to eat these pancakes!

A note on quinoa flour: quinoa is high in protein and iron, so it's excellent for vegans. I tried making some pancakes using all quinoa flour, but the taste was so overpowering that it just wasn't appetizing. I'm experimenting with how much I can put into a recipe without my son saying, "Mommy, this tastes funny." A half cup in this recipe worked - couldn't taste it, but it still adds some nutrition. You might be able to get away with more quinoa flour and less whole wheat. Alternatively, if you have no quinoa flour on hand, all whole wheat will also work. You could also try different flours, like spelt or kamut. I will probably experiment with these alternative flours at some point in the future!

Another tip for this recipe: you can also add in finely diced apple, blueberries, raisins, or vegan chocolate chips. Add no more than 1 cup. The diced apples are my favourite! Enjoy!

Christmas in September

Yesterday was a hot hot day, so I thought a nice summery salad would be in order. For inspiration, I visited Oh She Glows, which is an awesome vegan food blog. Definitely check it out! I decided to adapt Angela's Back on Track Wheat Berry and Bean Salad, which I also like to affectionately call "Christmas in a Bowl." It's a super pretty salad with lots of Christmas-y red and green colours. The original recipe called for navy beans which I didn't have, so I decided to use some beluga lentils that I had pre-cooked in the freezer. If you're not familiar with beluga lentils, they're a pretty little black lentil that kind of looks like beluga caviar when cooked, hence the name. If you don't use lentils in your cooking on a regular basis, I encourage you to start! They are excellent sources of protein, fibre, and iron. My favourite kinds are French puy lentils (yummy just cooked on their own as a side dish), and red split lentils (which mash up well and work nicely in pureed soups). I came across the beluga variety at Whole Foods and of course had to try them!

Wheat berries are the whole wheat kernel without the hull. They come in a few varieties and two colours - red or white. The ones I used for this salad were the soft white spring variety,which take less time to cook than the hard kind and don't need to be soaked overnight. For hard wheat berries, just soak them overnight like you do with beans, then boil/simmer for about an hour. Soft wheat berries just need to be boiled/simmered for 60-90 minutes. Wheat berries stay nice and chewy, so they work really well in salads.

Here's a great post by fellow blogger Desiree at Eat Drink Be Happy on the book Wheat Belly by cardiologist (note: he's not a nutritionist!) William Davis. I agree with Desiree's review of this book - wheat is not evil! If you're not celiac or gluten-sensitive, consuming wheat is totally fine and even good for you, as long as it's wheat in it's whole form. Wheat berries are wonderfully full of nutrients, including lots of protein and fibre. It would be a shame to take them out of your diet simply based on the recommendations of someone with little to no nutritional training! Here's a tip when you read books on diet: always check the credentials of the person writing the book (are they a nutritionist? do they have real training in nutrition?), and look for the claims in the book to be backed by peer-reviewed studies. Those two checks will help you determine whether the book is really a reliable source of information.

And so, here is a yummy, nutritious, wheat-filled recipe:

Christmas-y Wheat Berry Salad
Yield: about 8 cups

Ingredients:
1 cup dry wheat berries, cooked and drained
2 cups/500 ml cooked beans or lentils
1 English cucumber, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 large tomato, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup fresh parsley, diced with large stems removed
Sea salt + pepper, to taste

Dressing Ingredients:
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp mustard of your choice
1/2 tbsp soy sauce (MSG free and low sodium!)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Method:
1) In a medium bowl, soak the wheat berries overnight in cold water (if using hard wheat; if using soft, skip this step). The next day, drain the wheat berries and place in a medium sized pot, covered in three inches of water. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to medium and simmer for one hour (may need 90 minutes if using soft wheat). Drain and cool.

2) In a large bowl, mix together the diced vegetables and minced garlic.

3) Add in cooked and drained beans or lentils and stir.

4) In a small bowl whisk together the dressing ingredients. Set aside.

5) When the wheat berries are ready, drain and rinse. Stir into the salad. 

6) Add the dressing just before serving and stir well. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Doesn't it look Christmas-y? Or maybe that's just me wishing for some cooler weather... my school has no air conditioning and it's been way too hot this past week. Someone please remind me in a couple of months that I asked for cooler weather!

The one that started it all...

Tonight's recipe is the first one I made when I decided to go vegan back in May 2012. It was so incredibly yummy that I thought to myself, yes, I can do this! The original recipe is from Susan at blog.fatfreevegan.com, but I've adapted it a little more to my liking.

When I was grocery shopping last weekend, I came across this clamshell of heirloom beans. I have to say, I am a sucker for heirloom veggies. They're just so pretty! So, I decided to make this recipe using one pound heirloom beans and one pound regular green beans. The heirloom beans definitely added some nice colour (especially those gorgeous purple spotted ones!), and a slightly different texture. Yum!

Green Bean Casserole
Yield: apparently it's supposed to yield 6-8 servings, but I think those would be tiny servings as a side dish - we eat this as our main course and usually polish it off as two large servings since it's so yummy! I also don't feel too bad eating so much of it because it's basically all veggies, with lots of excellent plant protein too.

Ingredients:
2 pounds (900 g) fresh green beans
6 large mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons (30 ml) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (190 ml) vegetable broth
1 tablespoon (15 ml) dry sherry
3/4 cup (190 ml) unsweetened almond milk
2 slices whole grain bread
1 tablespoon (15 ml) Earth Balance margarine (the best vegan brand!)
1/4 cup (60 ml) nutritional yeast*

Method:
1) Bring a large pot of water to a boil. While it's heating, wash beans, then cut the ends off. Chop into bite sized pieces.

2) Add the beans to the boiling water. Cover and cook for six minutes. Drain the beans in a colander, then spray for one minute with cold water to stop the cooking process (incidentally, this is called "blanching" the beans). Let the beans continue draining in the colander to ensure as much water as possible comes off of them.
3) While the beans are cooking, wash and chop the mushrooms.

4) Spray a large non-stick frying pan with vegetable oil. Add the minced garlic and mushrooms to the hot pan. Cook until mushrooms are very soft and begin to extrude their juices.

5) Combine the vegetable broth and flour. Whisk them until their are no flour clumps. Add the broth/flour mixture to the pan and stir quickly - it will thicken almost immediately. Reduce your heat to low and add the sherry and almond milk. Keep stirring a couple of more minutes while the sauce thickens and simmers.

6) Combine the sauce and beans in a large casserole dish.
7) Using a food processor, pulse the bread, nutritional yeast and margarine until crumbly.

8) Spread the bread crumbs evenly over the beans in the casserole dish.

9) Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, until bread crumbs are golden brown.

10) Let it sit for a few minutes, then serve! Yum!

* A note on nutritional yeast: 
Never heard of this stuff before? It's a staple for a vegan diet. Here's a description from Wikipedia:
Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast which is sold commercially as a food product. It's sold in the form of flakes or as a yellow powder similar in texture to cornmeal, and can be found in the bulk aisle of most natural food stores. It is popular with vegans and vegetarians and may be used as an ingredient in recipes or as a condiment.
It is a source of protein and vitamins, especially the B-complex vitamins, and is a complete protein. It is also naturally low in fat and sodium and is free of sugar, dairy, and gluten. Sometimes nutritional yeast is fortified with Vitamin B12.

It has a slightly cheesy flavour, so we often use it if we want something to taste kinda cheesy, without the cheese. Here's what it looks like:

The other reason we like to add it into our meals is that it contains vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is typically found in animal products, which is one of the reasons opponents of the vegan diet say that being vegan isn't natural (humans need to ingest B12 to live). However, animal products only contain B12 because animals eat "dirt-y" food. B12 is actually produced by bacteria in soil. When animals eat the plants from that soil, they invariably eat some of the dirt that the plants were growing in, thus ingesting the B12, then transferring it to their muscles, milk, or eggs which are then eaten by humans. When we used to not wash our plants so much, we also could get B12 from the soil our plants came from. But, now that we wash our vegetables so well before we eat them, we don't get B12 from plants anymore. So, really, it's not that you can't get B12 from eating plants, it's just that you need to eat dirt-y plants which most of us don't because of concerns surrounding pesticides and other contaminants. Most vegans take a B12 supplement to ensure that we're getting enough. The vegan diet is not unnatural; it's more accurate to say that the way we grow and prepare our vegetables these days is unnatural!

Most omnivorous people I know take at least a multivitamin, if not a variety of other supplements, because their diets do not provide them with proper nutrition. That seems pretty unnatural to me. My vegan diet provides all of the nutrients I need without supplementing (save for B12 and vitamin D since I live in a not very sunny climate). I think it's much more natural to get your nutrients from plants, which are real food, than from pills! And if you give this recipe a try, you'll see it's also pretty yummy to eat vegan too!

Quick Eats

So today was the first day back at school, as well as a boot camp day (I go 2-3 times a week - a wholistically healthy life should always include exercise!), so that left very little time for making dinner. I decided to try out a new recipe using kelp noodles. I've never used kelp noodles before tonight, so I was a little unsure about whether I'd like them. I'm not a big fan of seaweed, so I was worried that the kelp noodles would be too fishy tasting. Suffice it to say, they actually didn't really taste like anything! They had a slightly chewy texture that wasn't off-putting. And they were super easy to prepare. The nice thing about kelp noodles is that they are only 6 calories per serving! And they have a bunch of minerals and good stuff in them. They made a great pre-workout meal because they didn't leave me feeling too full or sluggish. I love pad thai, but don't get to eat it very often, so this was also a great chance to try making it at home. So, here's the recipe!

Pad Thai with Kelp Noodles
Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:
1 lb (454 g) kelp noodles (Sea Tangle is a great brand)
350 g extra firm tofu
1 zucchini
6 large mushrooms
1 red bell pepper
1/2 lime
2 Tbsp (30 ml) chopped peanuts
2 Tbsp (30 ml) nutritional yeast

Sauce:
1 Tbsp. (15 ml) tamarind paste
1/4 cup (60 ml) water
3 Tbsp. (45 ml) soy sauce
1 tsp (5 ml) Thai red curry paste (or less if you don't like it too spicy)
3 Tbsp. (45 ml) brown sugar

Method:
1. Rinse kelp noodles in running water, then soak in a bowl of water with a splash of lemon juice while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Mix sauce ingredients together in a bowl, using a whisk to mix them to a consistent texture. Taste, and add more tamarind, chili paste, or brown sugar as needed.

3. Drain water from tofu and cut into cubes. Set aside.

4. Chop zucchini and mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. Julienne red pepper.

5. Saute vegetables in a bit of water for about five minutes. Add tofu and continue to heat for another five minutes.

6. Add noodles and sauce and heat for another minute or two until everything is warmed.

7. Serve with lime wedges, chopped peanuts, and nutritional yeast sprinkled on top.

Overall, this was a pretty yummy meal. Spicy, with a bit of sweet, much like traditional pad thai. I think if you wanted it a little more like pad thai you could take down the curry paste and up the brown sugar a bit, but I liked it with this ratio. 

I had a feeling this was a pretty low-calorie meal too, so I thought I'd do a quick nutritional evaluation of it. Using the recipe analyzer at Calorie Count, I discovered this recipe has less than 250 calories per serving! But, it still has a good amount of protein (about 18 g), lots of vitamin C and iron too, plus a plethora of other vitamins and minerals. I'm definitely going to be adding kelp noodles into my rotation of foods - it's a great replacement for pasta!

And now, I better be getting to bed - first day with students tomorrow, and I know I'm going to be needing my sleep tonight!

Breakfast of Champions

I thought my second post should perhaps start at the beginning - with breakfast!

In thinking about beginnings, I was brought back to the first few weeks of being vegan earlier this year. I feel that I should warn you about a few things if you do decide to try being vegan. Knowing these might help you make it over the three-week hump - that's about as long as you'll need before your body starts to actually enjoy being vegan.

First, you might get a bit of an upset stomach during the first week or two. Your body is likely not used to so many excellent foods, so it might rebel. This is totally normal and temporary.

Second, you might get increased acne. At least, I did! I have pretty much always had good skin - not many pimples, even in my teenage years. But when I chose to become vegan, all of a sudden I broke out a lot! It made me question my decision to eat this way... but luckily I stuck it out and after a couple of weeks the pimples were gone and I was back to even better skin than before! I figure it was my body detoxing out all of the nasty stuff I'd been putting into it. Some sites I've read warn that you might get pimples as a vegan from increasing your soy intake, but we ate about as much soy as we did before becoming vegan so I don't think that explains it for me.

Third, you will crave all of the old stuff you were eating. Try your best not to give in, but if you have to, eat a small amount. It's best not to eat it at all as this will help your body re-orient itself to enjoying vegan food faster. But, do what you need to do to stick with the program, even if it means "cheating" a little in the beginning. Eventually, you won't want to eat all of the meat, dairy, processed foods, etc. that you used to - you just need to get past the hardest part.

So, that's really what you need to be aware of at the beginning - it will take about three weeks to one month to really start enjoying being vegan. If you're committed, just give it time!

And now on to breakfast...

Before becoming vegan, I ate cereal and skim milk every morning. Truthfully, I eat almost the same thing now, although my cereals are healthier (granola, All Bran Buds), and I've switched the skim milk for almond milk (for a super yummy treat, try the Vanilla Almond Milk, or even better, Dark Chocolate Almond Milk - but limit these since they have way more sugar than the unsweetened variety). I do switch it up a bit too and sometimes eat oatmeal. I'm not a big fan of goopy, hot oatmeal, so I've had to develop my own way to eat it. And so we come to my first recipe! 

Vegan Olie's Daystarter Power Breakfast
Yield: 1 serving

Note: this is a make-ahead breakfast. You need to get it in the fridge the night before you eat it.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (125 ml) old-fashioned large-flake oats (not quick oats)
1 cup (250 ml) almond milk (unsweetened)
2 Tbsp (30 ml) dried goji berries
2 Tbsp (30 ml) hemp hearts

Method:

1. Mix together the oats, almond milk, and goji berries in an appropriately-sized bowl. Note: you can always switch the goji berries for raisins if you can't find any or you run out.
2. Cover bowl with saran wrap or an upside-down plate and place in the refrigerator overnight. This allows the almond milk to soften both the oats and berries to a nice eating consistency.
3. Remove from refrigerator and add hemp hearts.
4. Serve cold, or you could warm it up if you really wanted to, but I find it's yummiest cold. The oats still hold their shape when it's cold, so it's not too goopy.

And there you have it - an excellent vegan breakfast with lots of protein and other good nutrients. Plus, it's sweet, creamy, and satisfying.

Never tried almond milk, hemp hearts or goji berries? Well, here's what they look like:

Where can you buy them? I buy both the hemp hearts and almond milk at Costco, but I've seen them in most grocery stores too. These are actually fresh goji berries (I'm out of the dried ones). I buy the dried ones from a health food store called Galloway's. I've never seen the fresh ones being sold - these are from my mother-in-law's back yard.

And what makes this breakfast so rich in nutrients? Here is just a part of the nutrition in each of the ingredients (percents are based on a 2000 calorie/day diet). Keep in mind that these numbers are approximate, as they can vary based on when the items were harvested, where they were grown, etc.

• Oats: 190 calories, 3 g fat, 8 g protein, 5 g fibre, 12% of your daily iron
• Almond milk: 40 calories, 3.5 g fat, 1 g protein, 1 g fibre, 30% of your daily calcium
• Goji berries: 45 calories, 0.5 g fat, 0.5 g protein, 1 g fibre, 70% of your daily Vitamin A, 5% of your daily iron
• Hemp hearts: 110 calories, 9 g fat, 7 g protein, 2 g fibre, 20% of your daily iron (and a huge number of other vitamins and minerals)

So, overall you're looking at 385 calories, 16 g fat (all good, natural whole-plant fat), 16.5 g protein (the average person only needs about 50 g per day), 9 g fibre (that's almost half of what you need per day), 37% of your iron, 30% of your calcium, and 70% of your vitamin A. And, there are a ton of other nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that you also find in these foods that all work together to make it a healthy, whole-food start to your day. Not bad for a simple four-ingredient breakfast!