Simple Food for Stressful Times

Work, and life in general, have really ramped up in the last few weeks.  I’ve also been traveling way more than normal this past month (taking trips to Richmond, Florida, and NYC [recap coming soon!] in three consecutive weeks).  

As a result, I haven’t been doing a ton of cooking, mainly because I don’t want to leave leftovers sitting in the fridge while I’m away, but also because the idea of keeping things super-simple is just  so attractive when you’re going through crazy times.

My days have been looking something like this:

Breakfast:  Smoothie, made with all frozen ingredients.  This is a departure from my normal practice of combining fresh and frozen ingredients, but I have resisted buying a lot of fresh produce lately, because I’ve been out of town so often.

Morning Snack:  Grapefruit or a navel orange.  My mother-in-law receives shipments of the most wonderful citrus from Florida all winter long and generously shares these with us.  This comes in super-handy for quick snacking.
Lunch:  Soup or a tofu sandwich.  Soup is either defrosted from our freezer or from a can (I always keep a supply of Amy’s soups on hand).

Afternoon Snack(s):  I almost always have two snacks in the afternoon, one at work and the other pre-workout (if I’m hungry then) or post-workout while I’m getting dinner ready.  The standard of late has been 1/4 cup of homemade hummus with carrots and sugar snap peas (one of my favorite foods!), and 1/8 cup of soaked raw almonds (I just put them in a small container with water in the morning and they soak through the day).


Oh and if you have never had soaked almonds, you are missing out big time!

Dinner: Whatever is around!  On the nights I have cooked, it’s been something really easy, tried and true that H also loves (so I know there won’t be too much left over), like my Easiest Lentil Soup or the Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry from Veganomicon (one of the best recipes of all time).  I also always have cooked brown rice available (often in the fridge but always in the freezer) for making ultra-lazy “bowls” where I heat it up with some canned beans, spices, and steamed (or defrosted) veggies.In this one I used Gardein buffalo “wings” that had been in the freezer for a while and added a lazy man’s “ranch” sauce that I made out of reduced fat Veganaise (which is unbelievably good, btw) mixed with some lemon juice, cumin, and dried dill.  [Note: these are not affiliate links, just links to the companies’ websites so that anyone who’s not familiar with the products can see what I’m talking about.]

It’s not the most exciting or glamorous daily menu but it’s been working fantastically for me during these busy times.

What simple meals help you through busy times? 

Salad and Smoothie Spree

Today I am going to do a big old vegan food blog cliche by writing a post featuring salads and smoothies.  I embrace it.   I can’t help myself; I’ve been having so much fun with spring and summer produce!

I have the incredible fortune of living within 10 miles of 9 farmers’ markets and 36 farmstands (5 of them organic).  The bounty of gorgeous, fresh fruits and vegetables coincides perfectly with my body’s craving for lighter, more refreshing meals.  The result has been a total spree of salads and smoothies, with no room for boredom!

For example, two weeks ago, I bought the biggest head of lettuce I have ever seen in my life.  It cost $2.50 and lasted me up until this morning. And it was organic!

On day one, I chopped several of the leaves and tossed in some apple, carrot, and toasted pecans.

I made a lemon-shallot vinaigrette to go with it.

It kinda looks like a raw egg yolk, but it tasted amazing!  This was: 1/2 finely chopped medium shallot, juice of half a lemon, 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp. dijon mustard, 6 tsp. extra virgin olive oil, scant 1/2 tsp. agave nectar, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Last weekend, I bought a beautiful bunch of beets (how’s that for alliteration). On Sunday I roasted the bulbs, and used the roasted beets all week in salads.

Chopped farmstand lettuce, baby arugula, sectioned grapefruit, avocado, and roasted beets.  And yes, the beets stain everything pink!

Chopped farmstand lettuce, baby arugula, cherry tomatoes, roasted beets, apple, carrot, radish, and avocado.  Also, the radish was the cutest thing ever:

A very simple salad of organic baby arugula with organic raspberries and pine nuts, and a dressing of garlic-infused olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I love that salad-making lets me incorporate whatever fruits and vegetables I happen to have on hand.  This has helped tremendously with my goal of avoiding wasting food.

Today’s lunch: the end of the farmstand lettuce, organic baby arugula, cherry tomatoes, avocado, organic farmstand sugar snap peas, carrot, craisins, and hemp seeds.

Salads are obviously extremely portable, making them a great weekday bring-to-work lunch.  I love that I can do most of the prep ahead of time, either on the weekend or the night before.  It seriously saves me so much time and money.

The same is true of smoothies.  They are the perfect vehicle for incorporating a rainbow of ingredients and ensuring that I make use of the insane amount of produce I buy each week this time of year.

Like native strawberries galore:

In the past I have not been a fan of smoothies for breakfast because, although they taste great, I find that they don’t keep me full for more than an hour or two.  Since at my current job I don’t go to lunch until 1:00, I need something longer-lasting than that.

During my 3-Day Detox in May, I learned that using “chia gel” (1 tbsp. chia seeds soaked overnight in 1 cup of water) as a smoothie base is a way to stretch a smoothie’s ability to count as an actual meal, likely thanks to the absurd amount of fiber contained in a small portion of seeds.

So now I’ve been having smoothies for breakfast between 3 and 5 mornings a week.  Each one is different from the next!

This smoothie contained 1 cup of chia gel, one fresh kiwi, one frozen banana, 4-5 fresh strawberries, and a big handful of spinach:

I love this picture of it blending all together, with the little whirlpool in the middle!

Another day, I tried a yogurt-based smoothie, using So Delicious plain coconut milk yogurt.
It contained 1 cup of chia gel, one frozen banana, 1-1.5 cups fresh pineapple, 3 fresh strawberries, a big handful of chopped romaine lettuce, 1/2 a stalk of celery, and about 1/2 cup of coconut yogurt.The color was kind of ugly but this may have been the best-tasting smoothie I’ve made yet!  The yogurt definitely enhances the flavor and texture.

I have a lot more great seasonal dishes to share in an upcoming post, using farmstand treasures and more!

Not Yo Mama’s Happy Meals

Those who know me know that I strongly believe that being vegan is a snap if you plan and are adequately prepared on any given day. Even so, in the midst of busy lives, work schedules, and obligations to family, friends, and significant others, true preparation can be a lofty goal.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feelin’ 22 I find that every aspect of my life runs so much more smoothly when I am on top of my food and eating. Recently, I did a 3-day Detox Cleanse from Maria Guadagno at Bombshell Blueprint (more information here). The cleanse was awesome of course, but what it really showed me was that having a true plan and schedule for what I’m going to eat, when I’m going to eat it, and maybe most importantly when I’m going to prep it, is the key to my feeling happy, productive, and in control of my life and health.

So today I present some of the “happy meals” that I have been eating of late. These are meals that, with a little advance preparation, can be thrown together super-quickly at any given time, whether it’s the usual early-morning-packing-lunch-for-the-workday grind or a getting-home-after-Zumba-and-have-no-time-to-cook-dinner situation.

Ever since my cleanse I have been wild about cooking up a pot of brown rice with shiitake mushrooms at the beginning of the week and using the rice in all sorts of meals. All you do is add the sliced mushrooms to the rice about 10 minutes before the cooking time is up.  You get a whole lot of extra texture and nutrition with little to no extra effort. Best of all, you can eat this rice with basically anything.

For example, here we have shiitake brown rice packed alongside lentils (which my mother-in-law cooked up with a little onion and carrot and gave to me), ready to take to work.

I stirred some turmeric and cayenne into the lentils and it was absolutely delicious, hearty and filling, not to mention healthy!

I tried the shiitake mushroom trick with soba noodles as well. Scroll down for shiitake soba noodles three ways:

1) with stir-fried green beans and red pepper (also a gift from my mother-in-law):

2) with sauteed sugar snap peas:

I topped and tailed these babies the night before, then sauteed them with toasted sesame oil (my LOVE), garlic, ginger, and a little fresh cilantro in the morning and packed it all up to take to work.

3) with the remaining sauteed sugar snap peas, with Sticky Maple Tempeh by Happy. Healthy. Life (recipe here) for dinner:

Another big reason that meal planning is mentally refreshing for me is that it allows me to actually use up the ingredients I have in my constantly overpacked fridge and pantry, which is especially important this time of year when fresh produce is everywhere. Planning also allows me to utilize a handful of the several thousand recipes I have stored in my email (never mind the ones in all my cookbooks) that I want to try which use those ingredients.

I especially love to make a recipe that leaves leftovers that I can repurpose in another way. One night I made Summer Slaw from Happy. Healthy. Life (recipe here) and used it as a base for jackfruit carnitas tacos (look out for those in an upcoming post).

The slaw recipe made a TON! So the next day I ate some of it with the leftover Sticky Maple Tempeh. The rest of the week I had it as a side with pretty much everything else that I ate. (I highly recommend both the slaw and the tempeh recipes, but especially the tempeh, by the way. I have had mixed results with tempeh in the past but making this gave me more confidence to try other things with it in the future.)

With a block of extra-firm tofu that was on sale, I made Curried Tofu from Veganomicon. That one block of tofu lasted me more than a week, and was delicious chopped up over salads or used in sandwiches like this one:

I also recently made Curried Chickpea Salad from Fettle Vegan (recipe here) one night and used it on sandwiches and wraps for days.

I only used 2/3 of the amount of mayo called for and still found the recipe a little too rich/creamy for my tastes. I’m not sure I would make this specific recipe again but I would definitely tweak it and/or use other chickpea salad recipes (Lord knows there are thousands) because I love the idea of having something like that available for quick meals, snacks, or sides.

Finally, since it’s berry season, I’ve been all about fresh strawberries and blueberries (organic because the other ones scare me). I made Strawberry Mint Salad by Maria Guadagno (recipe here) and ate that over organic baby spinach and oh my.

For breakfast, some blueberries mixed up with So Delicious strawberry coconut-milk yogurt and hemp seeds.

Or cherry vanilla smoothies that I made for H and me after finding cherries for $1.99/lb (yay!).

Each smoothie had about 2/3 cup of pitted cherries, 1 cup of unsweetened almond-coconut milk, 1/4 of an avocado, 1/2 a frozen banana, 1 tbsp of hemp seeds, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. They were really tasty but strangely turned a nasty-looking gray/steel color after 2-3 minutes (?!). Not sure what that was about.  I didn’t take a picture because it was disgusting.

Another popular and quick breakfast has been a sprouted whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter, hemp seeds and banana slices (this breakfast idea came from H, my little hemp seed convert).

Those are just a few of the happy meals that, along with the beautiful summery weather, have been keeping a smile on my face!

What are your happy meals made of?