Saturday I got up and had my usual coffee with So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer.
Then I had a toasted hemp bagel with Earth Balance, and I took my supplements.
I debated about whether to photograph the AZO, but then I decided that yeast infections are something many women suffer from, and they’re nothing to be ashamed of. If you’re someone who suffers from chronic recurring yeast infections and haven’t found anything that works to prevent them, I suggest you try the AZO Yeast, Natural Symptom Prevention and Relief. I take one tablet a day, and it really seems to be preventing the infections. (And I’m not being paid to say this.) I take two calcium-magnesium with vitamin D supplements in the morning and two in the evening for a total of 1,000 milligrams a day. My doctor was really pushing me to take calcium for the last couple of years, and I couldn’t really argue with her, especially since my mother has osteoporosis. It took me a while to get going on taking them regularly, but earlier this year I made a concerted effort to get in the habit. A few weeks ago I decided to try taking spirulina to increase my energy. (I take three spirulina tablets in the morning and three at night.) I don’t know if spirulina is a waste of money, but I do seem to be feeling pretty good so for now I’ll continue.
As I had my coffee and my bagel and my supplements, I thought about running, feeling as if I needed to do it, since I hadn’t run since Wednesday. One reason I’m afraid of running is because I’m afraid I’ll be uncomfortable. I usually am uncomfortable when I run. There’s no such thing as an easy run for me at this time. Of course the only way to get comfortable is to do it more. So I went and ran at the park yesterday on my own, without the aid of a running partner or the treadmill, and I was uncomfortable, and I was slow, but I managed two and a half miles. Not bad, huh?
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And now it’s time for my new blog feature: The Random Meal of the Day
Let’s go back in time and look at a dinner I made in January (!): pan-fried seitan, baked sweet potato and curried cauliflower with peas. I bake the sweet potatoes at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes, and cook the seitan thusly: heat safflower oil in non-stick pan, slice the seitan and place it in the pan, and cook until browned, about 5 or so minutes on each side. For the cauliflower, heat oil in a large skillet with a cover, add curry powder, and then the cauliflower pieces. Once the cauliflower is somewhat coated, I add water to the skillet, dump in some frozen peas and cover and steam the mixture until it’s done. You’ll have to excuse the lack of instructions as far as exact measurements and times. For a number of years, I cooked using recipes in cookbooks, and I believe this practice got me comfortable in the kitchen so that now I just cook intuitively, usually knowing what “enough” of an ingredient is and how long to cook something till it’s “done.”
Happy eating and running!
Tags:
bagels,
cauliflower,
coffee,
meal of the day,
peas,
recipes,
running,
seitan,
supplements,
sweet potatoes,
vegan butter,
vegan dairy
This week was a killer as far as work was concerned so I was fully ready to do nothing since I had today off. However, after waking up from a nap, I realized I wanted feel as if I had accomplished something so I decided to tackle a project I’d been wanting to do for a while: cleaning and organizing the pantry closet in the kitchen. The project was surprisingly easy. I discovered a few things I hadn’t known were there, I threw out a few things, I wiped down the shelves and then I had fun putting everything back in an orderly fashion. It looks great.
Here are the before shots:
And here are the afters:
Afterward I relaxed with a Meyer Lemon Grown Up Soda. Have you tried this stuff? It’s delicious: not too sweet and very refreshing.
Tags:
cold drinks,
getting organized
The Summer Solstice is tomorrow, and boy it certainly feels like it. The temperatures have only been up into the 80s, but the humidity is really high so we’re sweltering. Thank god Sweetie bought that air conditioner for our bedroom a couple weeks ago when we had the first little heat wave of the season. I’ve been really busy this weekend, doing all kinds of chores and errands, and I’m trying to mellow out now, but I’ve got the Sunday Night Anxiety Blues so I’m not really feeling so great.
ANYWAY, the good news is that I got a new MacBook Pro – the 15-inch one. I still have some file transferring to do from my other two computers (an eMac and a MacBook), but I’ve got some of it done and I’m just really happy with my new machine. It’s fast; it’s efficient; it’s light. It’s just great all around. It cost a pretty penny, more than the tax refund money I set aside for the purchase, but it was a good investment. I don’t feel any buyer’s remorse about it.
The weather has not put me in the mood for cooking at all so we ate out every night this weekend, instead of just the usual Friday. I had never been to Chipotle, but I heard great things about it, and one came to our town recently so on Saturday Sweetie and I checked it out. Can I just say yum!!! Wow, I see why people seem so excited about this place. The menu is small, but the vegan options are delicious. Sweetie had the Vegetarian Burrito and I had the Vegetarian tacos. I ate all three of them even though I probably should have stopped at two. But they were just so darn tasty. We’ll definitely be ordering from there again.
I do most of the cooking for dinner in our house, but Sweetie is big on breakfast. Every weekend he makes pancakes or scrambled tofu. and then he continues eating the leftovers on the weekdays, reheating the tofu or frying up up pancakes before going to work (!) – how ambitious, cooking on work day mornings – ! I’m not much for big breakfasts, but today I joined him for some scrambled tofu and vegan sausage patties, and they made for a delicious breakfast.
It’s still pretty hot and humid, but I’m going to take a nice cool shower and hope the Sunday Night Anxiety Blues wash down the drain.
Tags:
Chipotle,
dining out,
MacBook Pro,
summer,
Sweetie,
tofu,
vegan meat
Days off mean hash browns, sprinkled with nutritional yeast, for breakfast .
And for lunch, perhaps potato salad dressed up with avocado, greens and Annie’s Goddess Dressing.
Potato Salad Recipe
~3 pounds of red potatoes, skins on
1 cucumber
1 bunch of radishes
1 handful of sprouts of your choice
~.5 oz. of chives
~.5 oz. of dill
Vegenaise
red wine vinegar
sunflower seeds
salt & pepper
Leave potatoes whole unless very large. Put in a large pot with enough water to cover. Bring water to boil and then reduce to simmer. Let potatoes simmer for about 20 minutes. They should pierce easily with fork, but not fall apart. Drain potatoes and set aside until they are cool enough to handle.
While the potatoes are cooking, peel, seed & chop the cucumber into small dice. Wash the radishes and cut those into small dice. Finely mince the chives and dill. Add all of these to a large mixing bowl. Add Vegenaise to the vegetables and herbs in the bowl, and mix well. I didn’t measure the Vegenaise; I’m guessing it was about a cup or so – ? Just add what seems to be enough to mix everything together, taking into account all the potatoes you’ll be adding. (And remember you can always add more, but you can’t take any out.) Add 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar to the mixture and mix well. Mix in a handful of sprouts and a handful of sunflower seeds. Add salt and pepper to taste.
When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, chop them into medium dice, leaving the skins on. Add the diced potatoes to the vegetable and Vegenaise mixture and fold together. Eat at room temperature or chilled. The potato salad should keep at least week if stored covered in the refrigerator.
Makes a great main course for lunch. I got a work week’s worth of brown bag lunches, plus Sweetie’s and my lunches yesterday before it was gone.
Tags:
avocadoes,
hash browns,
nutritional yeast,
potato salad,
recipes,
salad greens
I am working 4 10-hour days this week, and then I’ll have Friday off. My department likes to have a couple people to answer phone calls after 5 so that’s what I’m doing. I still want to work out though so I got the crazy idea to work out before work on Monday and see how it went. I’m generally not a morning exerciser, but it just seemed to make more sense to work out then instead of going to work then working out in the afternoon: changing clothes and showering in the middle of the day and then going back to work. In case you’re wondering why I wouldn’t just work out after work, it’s because working this schedule I’m done at 7 so even if I felt inclined to work out at the hour (which I highly doubt), the gym closes at 7. The way I did it I came to work in my work-out clothes, stopped at my desk, put my things away, put my food in the fridge and then went down to the gym with with my work clothes in my gym bag. Then I ran intervals on the treadmill – 3 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking for 25 minutes. Then I cooled down and stretched, took a quick shower, got dressed and was up at my desk by 9. It went so well I did it again today. And I think I will do it again tomorrow.
You know there are so many opportunities to make yourself feel bad, sometimes without even looking for them. For instance, I read a number of fitness and running blogs and people will say things about having trouble keeping up their 8-minute mile pace or one that said her friends said Runner’s World magazine is not for “real” runners – huh? So there I was on the treadmill struggling through 3 minutes at a time at a 12-minute mile pace with Runner’s World magazine propped up in front of me. Since I was running and walking I couldn’t really read it, but it gave me something to look at other than the machine. And I felt good. I have to remember that this is about me and what I’m doing and that I may be slow and that I may like to look at Runner’s World, and if some people who I don’t even know are critical of those things, then that’s about them, not me.
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In other news, I’ve been taking pictures of my food throughout the past 5 or so months, but not nearly enough of them have made it to this blog, and I think I need to change that. Therefore, I’m thinking of doing a “meal of the day” or “what vegans eat” feature here so I can start posting the pics of the ummy food I eat.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of the latest banana bread that I made. This time I had 4 bananas so I was closer to the right (2 cup) amount of banana pulp the recipe calls for, and the bread came out great, if I do say so myself. The thing is you have to bake it for a long time when you use that high an amount of banana pulp. The original recipe says 50 minutes, but I find you need to bake it for at least an hour so it’s fully baked in the middle.
It was delicious with some Earth Balance on it, but Blue proved it can even be enjoyed plain. While it was cooling on the table and I was out of the room, Blue managed to hop up and bite the corner off of it – ! I told him he was a bad dog, but he just wagged his tail at me. Guess I have to keep a closer eye on delicious smelling foods cooling in the kitchen.
Tags:
banana bread,
blogging,
Blue,
meal of the day,
running
Last weekend was uncharacteristically busy for me with TWO events to attend – a cookout at Sweetie’s cousin’s house on Saturday (for which I made the aparagus salad) AND a cookout at my friend GG’s house on Sunday (for which I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies).
It’s only Thursday (or already Thursday – ? Short week!), but I’m looking forward to this weekend that has nothing scheduled . Yea for “me time.” Also, it’s June which is one of my favorite months. I think next to October and the whole holiday season, June is my favorite time of year. It’s warm, but the heat hasn’t gotten old yet, and everything is still fresh and blooming and we get peonies and roses. Sounds good to me.
I have plans of all sorts of chores to do this weekend, one of which will be figuring out what to do with my computers. I think the time has finally come to give up my eMac because it’s so slow and switch over to using my MacBook as my only computer. Or maybe give up that up too and upgrade to a MacBook Pro. A trip to the Apple Store will definitely be in order either way because if I decide to just keep the MacBook, the track pad will need to be repaired. It’s double clicking when I’m just trying to click – very frustrating.
I’m wondering how I’ll like sitting at my desk with just a laptop. It certainly will look different without a desktop computer.
Tags:
busy life,
summer
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