I apologize to all of our blog followers, We have been moving and haven’t been able to keep up with the blog. We were dealing with packing, moving company, and another sewage overflow. It is so amazing to free ourselves … Continue reading
So many people think that becoming a vegan, even just cutting out meat from ones diet, drastically reduces the amount of options that you have when choosing what you are going to eat. I think that this is a terrible misconception. The truth is that there are so many fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries, roots, and other whole foods that you and I have never even heard of. The abundance of natural food on earth is incredible! In becoming vegan, Danielle and I have exercised our creativity when it comes to cooking and thus diversified what we are consuming. The variety of food that we’re eating has increased so dramatically! We are having so much fun exploring all of these wonderful foods that we only dabbled in or did not even know existed before.
So yesterday we ate Oatmeal Cranberry pancakes again. If you have been following our blogs then you have already seen that recipe. We already told you how good they taste. Our eating them again is testament too that.
For Lunch and dinner we ate my new favorite dish. I had a feeling it was going to be fantastic, so when Danielle was putting the recipe together she said I’ll just double it for 4 servings. I said why don’t we quadruple that sucker! Thats just what we did!
Whole-Wheat Macaroni & Sweet Potato Cheese
Ingredients:
In a medium-sized bowl combine the sweet potato half, juice of half a lemon, mustard, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix until thoroughly combined.
Fold 1 cup of cooked noodles into the sweet potato “cheese”.
Place the mixture into a serving-size baking dish.
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast over the dish and drizzle with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil. This will allow the top to crisp while cooking.
Bake in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, or until the top begins to brown. Serve and enjoy!
It tasted like normal Macaroni and cheese, but with way more distinct flavors. If I were to eat as much regular Mac n cheese as I did this, I would have had to sit on the couch for an hour afterwards. Danielle and I both felt great! I heated up some today and it was just as marvelous!
We found out today that our apartment managers are going to release us from the lease early because of all of the issues that we have had. I am not going to get into all of that, but this definitely means that we will commence on our expedition across the country in about 10 days! We are getting so excited! It will include but is not limited to…
Big Sur
Santa Cruz
San Francisco
Wine tasting in Napa
Yosemite if the weather permits
Hiking in Utah
Josh Garrels concert in Boulder Colorado
honky tonk with Paul Secord
we are bringing our Vitamix and our juicer!
Stay tuned!
We will absolutely keep you guys posted on that!
Last night was officially our last night selling hot dogs! We sold our hot dog cart company to a great couple who we believe will do well with the business. And it was an absolute burden lifter. It was so difficult cooking bacon, hot dogs, and sausages, with cream cheese and shredded cheese for hours and selling something that we really no longer believed in. What we were doing was supporting the problem. Now it will be a lot easier to concentrate on this very enjoyable and challenging adventure we have set out on. Ok lets get to the food… Before preparing breakfast (not cooking) I looked at our meal planner and realized that the peaches and cream recipe was not going to be the one. The bananas were ripe and I had to use at least one. So now, with all of my experience with the vitamix, I felt comfortable throwing my own recipe together. This is what I came up with.
Travis’ all fruit Smoothie
1 perfectly ripe banana peeled
1 orange peeled
1 clementine peeled
1 1/2 cups of organic mixed berries (frozen)
Directions: Put a half cup of water in blender, add all ingedients, no ice because of frozen berries, and then hit the smoothie setting, which is probably about a 4 on the variable speed setting if you do not have the new machine.
It was nothing short of magical. And believe it or not, we are still eating almond butter and honey on organic whole wheat flax seed bread, and it still tastes amazing! We have more left still! We made a lot the first day!
After breakfast we showered and went to run some errands. After shopping for a while we were hungry again. We stumbled on a restaurant called true foods. We figured we would give it a try. We ordered a teriyaki tofu and asian vegetable bowl with organic whole wheat rice. It was extremely yummy! It even showed up my tofu bowl! However I assured myself and Danielle that if I had the organic whole wheat rice that my bowl would have been as good or better. Regardless, this restaurant gets two thumbs up from us! They had a herb garden on wheels at the door!
We went home and worked on getting rid of some things and selling others to prepare us for our move and trip across country. We are both getting really excited! I also ate some left overs from last night to hold me over. After a couple hours, wouldn’t ya know- we were hungry again. So we decided to try a different variation on the tortilla soup. It is and was as follows.
Place all ingredients except last three in Vita-Mix. Secure lid and turn machine on Low, then increase to High. Run for 3-4 minutes until steam escapes through lid opening. Reduce speed to Low. Remove lid and drop in corn, black beans, and chips. Run for an additional 10 seconds. Serve immediately. Makes about 8 servings.
Today was such a beautiful day! I woke up and to the magical sound of a 2 horsepower Vitamix blender Roaring. They are quite clamorous in a small apartment compared to the giant warehouse where we first observed one in action. Nevertheless I was extremely excited because I knew instantly what this machine was capable of. As has been said oh so many times- a picture is worth a thousand words.
Submitted by: Vitamix
Dietary Interest: vegetarian, gluten-free, low cholesterol, low fat, low sodium, no added sugar, raw foods, vegan
3 1/2 c (840 ml)
Easy
11 Minutes
Toast with almond butter and honey was the perfect compliment to the smoothie for a complete breakfast. Thank you to my beautiful wife for making me a meal fit for a king! Today was not as eventful as yesterday, but the food was the best we have made yet! We ran some errands and did some laundry. We sliced some organic carrots up put them in a cup and grabbed the Roasted Red Pepper Hummus. This was a perfect mid day snack and very scrumptous! After we got back from running errands, we decided that we were hungry again. While doing laundry Danielle whipped up the most palatable soup I have ever tasted.
Submitted by: Vitamix
Dietary Interest: vegetarian, low cholesterol, no added sugar, vegan
I gobbled down my bowl faster than a fat kid chasing an ice cream truck! Once I was done I looked over and noticed that Danielle had only eaten about half of hers. I tried to convince her to eat the rest. I was somewhat flabbergasted. That soup was a divine miracle sent down from god to redeem us from our feeble eating habits! I even licked the bowl! P.S. Ginger is one of the best things you can put in your body.
After probing her, and trying to get her to eat the soup, the truth came out. It looked too much like mustard! If you know Danielle at all, you will know that she is not very fond of condiments. Especially mustard, relish, and the dreaded m word 😦 which I am not at liberty to mention. After I poked fun at her for a little she said it was really because it was too rich. I love my wife, but she is silly sometimes. An hour later she was hungry again so we had some Hot chocolate (refer back to day 2 for recipe). Ok so fast forward to dinner and the most revered meal of all time! Now, I know I have built up every meal we have eaten so far, but this one…
This one was special!
Time: 25 minutes.
1. Heat oil in a large nonstick frying pan over high heat, add tofu, and gently cook, turning tofu occasionally, until browned slightly, about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer tofu to a plate.
2. Cook garlic, eggplant, and bell pepper in pan until softened, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Add soy sauce, sugar, and oyster sauce and cook until heated through, another 2 minutes. Return tofu to pan and gently stir to coat. Remove from heat and stir in basil leaves. Serve over rice.
Note: Nutritional analysis is per serving.
Hi there! Hope you are having a fabulous day… we have had quite an interesting one. First of all, this is our first EVER blog, so please bare with me on getting to know how to work it. Travis and I own and operate a hot dog cart company in San Diego, CA. We work 25 hours a week and enjoy the rest of our time off with each other in sunny California! It has been such an amazing summer and we feel super blessed! Last night we didn’t work because they were calling for lightening (in San Diego? Haha thats what I thought too) so we stayed home and decided to watch a few documentaries on Net Flix. If you have any extra time on your hands and are ready to be extremely freaked out…. watch the following…
1. The Gerson Miracle
2. Forks Over Knives
3. Food, INC.
Needless to say, we are ready to start eating 100% healthy! My stepmom is a health counselor and I have known for awhile now all of the issues with meats, cheese, and all other GMO’s, etc… I guess I have just tried to dodge it! Well, we are ready now! (if you watch the 3 movies above, you will understand…)
We are members of Costco and we have been wanting to get the VITAMIX for a long time now, so we went and splurged today. It is an expensive machine, but worth it in the long run. We plan on going on a 30 day VEGAN fast…starting today!
The first thing we decided to make was apple and carrot juice. Instead of waiting and finding a recipe, we anxiously just threw them into the VITAMIX. Not exactly the best idea, but we have time to learn. Then I decided to go out on a whim and make a spicy carrot soup! Ehh… not the best either, but getting there. I then got the urge to throw almonds in the VITAMIX and make almond butter! BEST IDEA YET! It is absolutely AMAZING! So easy to make and so fresh and smooth. Mmmm. I highly suggest making this homemade. Oh! I didn’t mention that we decided to throw out all of our foods that were on the GMO list and all of our meat and dairy. Luckily, we were in dire need of going grocery shopping, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We gave our 22 year old neighbors the food and they were excited, so at least it went to good use! Okay, back to the Vitamix… so yeah… we are now currently making “Not-So-Cheese” Pasta. It is like a macaroni and cheese dish, but with roasted red peppers, almonds, and some other non-dairy ingredients. I will post it below so you can check it out!
We made a meal plan for the week, wish us the best! I will make sure to keep blogging and keeping everyone up to date with how we are feeling and doing along the way… 🙂
Dietary Interest: low fat, gluten-free, low cholesterol, no added sugar, vegan,vegetarian
Intermediate
20 Minutes
This vegan “cheese” sauce is perfect as a nacho dip or served over macaroni.
Here is the strawberry-lime sorbet recipe Travis made for dessert! SO TASTY!!! I highly suggest it! He cut the recipe in half, so here is the version for 2 people.
1/2 cup filtered water
1/8 cup of natural sugar
1/4 of a lime peeled
1 pound frozen organic strawberries
Add all ingredients. Blend until smooth. Eat immediately.
TheKnewstepsJourney 
