Settling into good (or at least better!) habits

Ah, it's that time of week again... my beloved Monday. Monday is a wonderful day in the Pethtel household. It consists of one or more of the following: How I Met Your Mother, Castle, Buffalo Chicken sandwiches (formerly calzones) or pizza. Since starting the vegan challenge, we have not had calzones or pizza (mostly because each have gobs of cheese and the calzones were making me obese). I am slowly mastering the art of creating a vegan Buffalo Chick'n panini.

I finally made an acceptable vegan version of ranch dressing. I can't have my delicious buffalo sauce without it being paired with ranch. While I understand that this is not really the healthiest obsession to have, it could be worse! I could be trying to make mock Big Macs (*shudder*). I'm reading Fast Food Nation, hence the shudder. :)

The vegan ranch recipe can be found HERE, though I did throw in a splash of regular soy milk, some dried dill, and some onion powder. This time I DID use the blender, and it came out quite nicely! I'm sure if you were to put it up next to bottled ranch dressing, it probably wouldn't be as good... but you know what? I made it myself from scratch, it's devoid of animal products, and I can put whatever sort of herbs I'd like! So that makes it a winner in my book. :) I noticed from the last (failed) batch, that it's much better after sitting in the fridge for awhile. I had it with baby carrots earlier today, and it was amazing. I can't wait to try the ranch on the paninis tonight!

Vegan Ranch!

And why, yes that is an old Prairie Farms sherbet container. I am very much my grandmother's granddaughter. She was raised during the Great Depression, so she never really throws anything out that could easily be reused. My family kids her about holding onto plastic containers that are supposed to be thrown away and recycled. She's the matriarch of our family, not to mention the best cook by far (sorry family members!). She would make so much food for Sunday lunches or holidays that there were always leftovers, and what made better to-go containers than old plastic food containers? She never really worried about getting the containers back, though if you amassed a collection of her Cool Whip bowls, you'd be politely reminded of it the next time you took home leftovers. Anyway, my grandmother is brilliant in more ways than one, but this is one of her good habits that I picked up... though I would say her love of reading is much more important, and I luckily inherited that as well. :)

On a side note: last night we had quick and easy Indian food. I put the packaging in with the recycling which was collected early this morning, so I can't remember exactly what it was or who made it. Epic fail on my part, but the food itself was really good. Pretty sure it was Channa Masala? All you had to do was make rice and then slit the package open and nuke it in the microwave for 2 minutes, and boom, dinner is served. Completely necessary on days when I just don't feel like cooking!

Also, we are no longer traveling for Easter, so I can go ahead and complete the vegan challenge as I initially intended. I started on April 7th, so I'm going to go until May 7th. I'm not going to lie - it's been kind of a pain to cook without any sort of dairy, but the substitutions if I can get them (or make them) are pretty awesome.

One week down!

Woo hoo! Today officially marks one whole week since I stopped eating meat and put myself on a vegan challenge. I've also been trying to exercise more. I've heard that if I keep with it, I'll eventually come to like it. Good, because I HATE EXERCISING! Actually, I had a fantastic treadmill experience yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I thought my legs were going to fall off, but I feel awesome today so, there are definite pros to working out.

A quick rundown of what I've cooked this week:
(Oh, by the way? Another thing you should know about me? I freaking love lists.)

Monday - My "cheat day". Mondays are always hectic in my house. Jason doesn't get home until nearly 9, so cooking (if we cook at all) has to be quick and easy. I made a grilled buffalo 'chicken' panini this Monday. It consisted of quickly heating up 'chicken' strips (a vegan version) in a skillet, adding a little vegan 'cheese', Frank's Red Hot, some of the mock ranch dressing I made, on (vegan) wheat bread and pressing it on the George Foreman grill. This actually turned out to be quite tasty!! The 'ranch' was off somehow. I found a few vegan recipes for ranch on the internet and I tried making it. Not bad. Not great. I think what really turned me off was the texture. I was only making a small amount in case it sucked, so I didn't want to drag the blender out. I used a hand blender, and I think that was my mistake.

Ah, a typical Monday meal! Eaten on the floor while watching Castle. I forgot to get a picture of the completed meal, so by the time I remembered, I'd already polished off 1/4 of it. :)

Tuesday - Lentil Pasta and Roasted Green Beans. YUM and YUM! The Lentil Pasta recipe can be found HERE and the Roasted Green Beans recipe HERE. I think next time I make the lentil recipe, I'm going to slightly increase the amount of garlic and decrease the amount of cinnamon. I made the lentils with whole wheat pasta. This dish was tasty, but different than I'm used to. Variety is wonderful!

Lentil Pasta and Green Beans. The green beans look burned, but that's mostly because I added paprika to the recipe. Also, the food doesn't really look all that appetizing, but I'm not a good photographer, and also - this was taken with my phone, haha! :)

So I'm almost halfway through the vegan challenge. Wow! I know I'm eating so much healthier than I was before, exercising more, and I feel great. I'm quite happy and I was telling my husband, "I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time." 2011 has just been quite the healthy year for me!

Broadening my culinary horizons

Well, it is day 5 of the vegan challenge, and it is still going great. I'm not missing meat at all, and I don't feel deprived or hungry, either. One obstacle I've encountered is that I kind of have to relearn how to cook and find recipes. I can't just pull any cookbook off the shelf and choose a recipe, because I need to be vigilant that there are no animal products in what I cook. Finding vegan recipes is not that difficult, but finding vegan recipes that don't require a trip to the grocery store is. I am slowly stocking a vegan/vegetarian kitchen, but money is a concern in our home, so I can't just run out and get every ingredient. If I don't have all but one or two items, then I am not cooking that dish.

I had a wonderful weekend that was chock-full of healthy happenings. We took the dogs on a 2+ mile walk on Saturday which, needless to say, they loved. We also finally made our way to an international grocery store fairly near our house. I've been meaning to stop in there for ages, and wow - I really like that place! It doesn't look that big from outside, but their use of space is excellent and we wound our way around the aisles for at least a half an hour. I found a package of an Indian paste for rice and Jason bought a package of seasonings so he could make tandoori chicken.

 

 I added a potato, green beans, carrots, and half of an onion. I would definitely 

add a LOT more veggies next time, especially more potato. I also didn't have
lemon curd (oops), so I just put lemon juice in it. Oh well. Yum!

HOLY COW, I am not used to eating Indian food! The spices built up until my mouth was melting, but it was so delicious! Jason seemed to enjoy his tandoori chicken, and we both loved the zucchini that Jason grilled. We had enough food to have generous helpings and still plenty of leftovers.

I've not really been an Indian food fan in the past, but this was SO good!

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. Jason spent an hour or so getting my bicycle in working order again. My poor bike has just sat in the elements for who knows how long. There are a few things about me that you should know: I hate exercising, and I have not really ridden a bike since I was a kid. That said, today my bicycle works, but I don't. I only went around a few blocks, but prior to my bike being back in good shape, it was stuck in high gear. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that my knee is somewhat stiff now. I'm determined to stick with it, though. Gas prices are ridiculously high and our income is still the same, not to mention the amount of weight I gained last year (for no good reason) and this year (since I quit smoking).

I also tried my first (intentionally) vegan convenience food today. It's from Simply Asia and the kind I tried was Sesame Teriyaki. I intentionally chose the mild kind, because after two days of Indian food, I needed to give my digestive system a break. :) Anyway, I thought the noodle bowl was pretty good. The amount of sodium was ridiculous, though. All in all, not too shabby.

Tasty but sodium-laden. Despite this, it's handy on lazy days!

Vegan Challenge!

I'm on day 2 of my 17 day vegan challenge! So far, it's been great! Today I have a lot more energy than I typically do. This is a big deal for me, because Spring is a bad time for me. I'm plagued by allergies, so my energy level is quite low this time of year.

I had to do some shopping to try and stock up our pantry. Luckily, we have a fairly good supply of canned and frozen veggies. I added some more grains and other vegetarian staples. I realize that I am going to be shopping differently from now on. We typically grocery shop every two weeks or so, but it's going to have to be bumped up to at least once a week, because I am flying through fresh fruits and vegetables and loving it!

 

Our shelf never looked so classy... or so appetizing!

I cooked my first intentionally vegan dish last night. It turned out quite tasty! Jason said he liked it, which is huge! If my meat-lover husband said he liked the meal that was devoid of any animal products, then I know the meal was a success. Jason coined the meal "Fala-hitas" because he said it reminded him of a mix between fajitas and falafels. I sauteed bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and corn with a little olive oil and fajita spices. For the wraps, we put a little plain hummus on whole wheat tortillas and topped each with black beans. I typically put sour cream on top of my fajitas, but seeing as I'm eating vegan, it wasn't an option. Hummus was a last minute call and if it didn't taste good with the fajitas, well, then lesson learned. As it turned out, we both really enjoyed it, but there has to be a good balance; a little hummus goes a long way.

 

"Fala-hitas"!! They were amazing and I am really looking forward to supper tonight for leftovers.

I'm loving the vegan challenge so far. I realize I'll probably get frustrated at one point or another, but I am going to keep with it.

Changes

This year has been chock-full of changes in my life! I'm now a non-smoker; I quit smoking in February. I was kind of a "closet smoker". I smoked for about 10 years... which is insane to think about, but what's done is done. The important thing is that I no longer smoke!

I officially quit eating meat yesterday. I almost feel silly saying that I'm a vegetarian, since it's so new. My husband is quick to point out that I was "really bad about being a meat-eater". I have always felt slightly guilty about eating meat, could not tolerate to listen to my husband talk about what animal we were having for supper, and absolutely despised raw meat. I have only handled raw meat a handful of times, because it made me nauseous. I think spaghetti tastes better if it's just a veggie sauce - no meat. I rarely ate red meat because I didn't really care for the taste. The only meats I regularly consumed were chicken and turkey, and sometimes pork and fish. I was really weird about making sure the meat was "done". I'm sure Jason (my husband) won't miss me asking (at every meal where there was meat), "Are you sure this is done?"

Anyway. I watched slaughter house footage and that did it for me. I cried... a lot. I was sick to my stomach. I'm a huge animal lover and it really made me think about what I eat. I realized that all my life, I didn't really care what I ate, as long as it sounded good and it filled me up. I had to face the fact that I am not a conscious eater. I didn't think about what was on my plate and where it came from - I just ate. Since I didn't really enjoy eating meat that much in the first place, the easy conclusion was to stop eating meat.

I put myself on a 30 day vegan challenge to start out my new lifestyle as a vegetarian. This sounds drastic, but since I was being conscious about what I eat, I realized that I'm pretty much addicted to cheese. I rarely ate eggs, and I only had (skim) milk on my cereal in the mornings because I don't like the way milk tastes, but I love me some cheese. I have since modified my challenge, because Easter is at the end of this month, and Jason and I will be going to visit our families. Both of our families gather around food, and I don't want to alienate myself or make anyone uncomfortable. I'm going to eat vegan until Easter, and vegetarian on Easter. I don't know what I'm going to do after that. I'm going to be vegetarian still, but I may eat cheese and milk occasionally. Oh, and I'm not giving up honey. I buy my honey locally, and I jokingly told my husband, "I know where my honey comes from, and besides, I'm allergic to bees, so screw them!" :)

Introductory post

I have posted and deleted several past attempts on jump-starting this blog. Well, here it goes again... though this time, I'm confident it will stick. :)

For introductory purposes, I suppose I should make a little list of who I am.

I am:

• Happily married
• Mommy to three furbabies (two dogs and a cat)
• Liberal (I post this mostly as a warning in case any future blog posts veer into political territory)
• Vegetarian (as of 04/06/11)
• A non-smoker (as of 02/23/11)
• Weird
• A knitter (since last October-ish, and I LOVE it! I'm slow but I enjoy it)
• An avid reader
• Not a movie watcher. I'm easily bored with movies, and I think it's because I enjoy reading so much.
• A nerd... but I married one, so I embrace it.
• A crafter. I am not good at drawing, painting or the "normal" arts, but I think I'm fairly good at making things. I enjoy repurposing items.

I think that just about wraps it up. I could not think of a title for this blog, so I suppose this is a work in progress.