Day 262

We are still in the month of September. Honestly, I haven’t been posting much as of late because mainly I haven’t had much things to write about. I haven’t been cooking a lot, it’s been the basics such as spaghetti, peanut butter sandwiches or peanut butter and crackers, and some fruit here and there. With classes in full swing, my main thing has been keeping up with the gazillion readings we have to do each week and keeping my kitchen routines short and sweet. And this is okay. Sometimes we feel like we need to be rock stars in the kitchen every week but we don’t. I have a simple go-to list of foods that I buy and keep in stock and I kind of rotate around those items with the help of Pinterest.

I’ve been staying away from soy products as much as a I can but I discovered coconut bacon and it’s pretty legit. It does have that texture of baked coconut flakes but it has the seasonings reminiscent of bacon bits that you would buy through the grocer’s aisle with all the salad dressings and toppings.

With two months left in my vegan year, I can say it’s definitely a lot easier now than at two months in. When I get extremely hungry I do crave animal products though, so I try not to get to the point where I feel like I’m starving. Hungry people make poor choices. It’s a fact, just ask Google. During my 3-hour classes I keep granola or biscuits on hand lest I run to the vending machine for the junk food they have there.

I am looking forward to the pumpkin overload that’s going to kick off next month. I’ve gotten started already.

It tasted beautiful. The spices were a great match with the crisp taste of cider and added that it’s starting to get a little cooler, I’m excited for pumpkin mania.

My sad, sad attempt at a baked onion bloom. I used a red onion and I needed to work the batter into the crevices more. Also, note to self: when deep frying vegetables in batter, please season before coating.

Anyway, cheers to the next 103 days left in 2015.

Using Pinterest

Many of the recipes I go by are found Pinterest. It is just such a great tool for cooking and just inspiration of any kind. You simply type a food item into the search bar and it populates items with that food name in the title. It also gives you suggestions to help narrow down your search. Plus, there are tons of cool photos that makes even the weirdest food look appetizing. That’s one of the main reasons I have a hard time writing recipes on my blog because there are already so many out there. I do share areas of recipes that I make adjustments to but I’m just not about the recipe writing life at this point. On my Pinterest page I have a board dedicated to vegan recipes I find, a few of them I’ve certainly tried, others I plan to.  If you’d like to see the foods that I’m inspire me check it out: My Vegan Life 

Food Scraps : Late Post

This week has been an interesting week personally so there haven’t been much meals that I cooked worth posting. For the most part I just threw things together. There were at least two nights when I didn’t eat dinner or I ate So Delicious ice scream.

Totally forgot that I grilled this super sweet piece of pineapple. Usually I stay away from cooked fruits but I said what they hey, YOLO.

Those buffalo cauliflower were really spicy. I think I’ll start making buffalo sauce from scratch and save my chest and mouth the slow burn. I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy foods.

Some time in June I made vegan duff and had leftover dough and duff sauce that I kept frozen in my freezer. I decided to make a hybrid of coconut and guava duff because I didn’t have anymore actual guavas and I wasn’t about to hunt them down. Its pretty good actually. Still have a few slices left that I’ll probably eat tonight with the sweet potatoes I’m currently baking. I’ll just throw some hummus on there and figure out what to do with the zucchini in the fridge. To Pinterest I go!

What I threw together….

Breakfast to Dinner with Grits

Growing up as a kid, Saturday mornings were a time when you not only did chores but you could get a heartier breakfast than you would normally have during the school week. For me, if I stayed by my cousins it meant stew fish with johnny cake/bread and grits, tuna and grit, corned beef and grits or boiled fish with grits…basically something was gona be eaten with grits. I would make a pretty safe bet that this is how many Bahamians have come to know grits.

Grits, or polenta is basically coarsely-grounded corn and Quaker is a brand of grits commonly found in food stores. They usually sell it in white or yellow and you have instant which should cook in 5 minutes and the regular which requires about 20 minutes (at least)to cook. Personally, I prefer the yellow grits because it just has an authentic, “real” taste to it. Some people prefer white grits, which also takes less time to prepare.

I had never heard grits be referred to as polenta. Even during my college culinary years I hadn’t been exposed to the “polenta”. A Bahamian acquaintance brought back to Kansas some yellow grits for me so I was super happy and began to imagine how many Saturdays I would eat grits with a mushroom stir-fry and avocado (because no grits and eggs, or sausage, or bacon). When I showed my Chilean born boss, he said “Oh , polenta!” And I said who?? He said polenta. Thus began my Pinterest adventures to find ways of spicing up this here polenta. I was fascinated at the ways other folk prepared it, namely the fried polenta cakes.

This past weekend after I made a batch of grits, I decided why not try one of these polenta recipes. Here is my final result.

After I cooked the polenta, I immediately poured it into a small aluminum tin bread loaf pan so that it could cool and take shape. I left in the refrigerator until I was ready to cook. The next day, I popped it out the pan and cut into rectangle pieces. I let each side fry a good 5 minutes, although I’m sure that was way more time than it needed. While this was going on, I sauteed some red spinach along with shiitake and button mushrooms in another frying pan. I also had some tomato sauce and a can of tomatoes and green chiles. I threw this into another pan and simmered with some olive, garlic, salt, basil and oregano seasonings until the mushrooms were done.

My cousin inquired as to the taste…It’s grits, what is there not to like?! When I cooked it, I made sure to add some vegan butter and salt to give it a little flavor. The stir-fry and the spicy marinara sauce were a great addition. Shiitake mushrooms are bomb!

I imagine this can be eaten at any time of day, I know I sure enjoyed it for dinner. Polenta/grits is a food that I would recommend for a weekend brunch and pinterest has so many receipes from sweet polenta pancakes to polenta crust pizza.

Second Chance

When I was a kid, avocados, plantains and tomatoes were some of my least favorite vegetables to eat. They just didn’t taste good or in the case of avocado, didn’t have enough taste (flavor, excuse the Bahamian lingo) for me to get hyped about eating it. Later on as a young adult I gave them a second chance to prove themselves worthy of my palate and avocados succeeded.
When I started this vegan journey I decided to give tomatoes another chance and instead of the big red tomatoes, I experimented with cherry, plum and grape tomatoes which have a sweeter taste. I was okay with these alternatives in my salads but as of late, my taste buds are not about the tomato life. I think I’ve gotten stalled of eating them. Since I bought a pack my last trip, I have to get rid of them somehow, so this calls for a stove top pizza dinner tonight. Otherwise they will sit in the refrigerator until they spoil. For right now, I’m over uncooked tomatoes.
Plantains have never really gotten a second chance because I have horrid memories attached with them. I remember eating Sunday dinner as a kid and they were the very last thing left on my plate and I was already super stuffed. But I’m from the days of if there’s no allergy, you eat what’s on your plate. So I stuffed my chipmunk cheeks with the fried plantains and proceeded to swallow and then brought everything back up onto my plate. I know, gross right?! Yea, so now every time I smell or even attempt to bite a plantain it triggers a gag reflex.
I do however believe in giving foods a second chance because our taste buds and our likes and dislikes may change over time. Like I recently discovered that I like olives so now they’ve been added to my salad ingredients.

What foods are you giving a second chance and which ones never had a chance?

Too Much?

Sometimes when I go to the store — well most of the time, I get excited about the variety of foods available. Then I get annoyed when I see that it contains soy, eggs or milk but for the most part my excitement still exists. This often results in a cart filled with way more fruits and/or vegetables than I need. If I’m not careful or haven’t planned out at least one week of meals is certain produce beginning to spoil. This es no bueno because I hate to see food go to waste. Not only is it a waste of money but that item could have been given to a co-worker, friend or someone who hasn’t eaten. To avoid throwing away my precious college-budget coins, I simply prep and freeze them.

Fruits like bananas and blueberries go straight to the freezer and make great smoothies or “nice cream” as I’ve seen it called on Instagram. Spinach is frozen and I use it as my base after tomato sauce for my pizzas. I found that for mushrooms, it’s best to slice and freeze but then use them for soups or sauces because they can get kinda weird and squishy. Or maybe it was because I defrosted two days in the refrigerator.

Kale is suggested to flash cook by cooking in boiling water followed by an immediate ice bath. I’m too lazy for all of that so the one time I did it, I flashed half the bag and then threw the rest straight into the freezer. I haven’t cooked that set yet to see how it will cook.

I rarely have to freeze rice or quinoa because I typically cook a lot but I eat it for a week or until it’s all gone, whichever comes first. I’ve had no issues freezing either or pasta, which again is a rarity.

Currently I have some vegan guava dough items in the freezer to prepare in another week or two, so hopefully those items will turn out okay, but I’ll share the results.

So tell me, what foods do you freeze to prevent wasting?

Untitled Dish

After a month in The Bahamas followed by a weekend at the airport for work, I’m now back in my humble abode and can make food that I don’t have to question what’s in it.

I can honestly say that July has been my worst vegan month on my own fault. I didn’t want to spend my outings at restaurants eating a measly salad (because their salads are a joke) so I gave in and ate what was in my surroundings. My stomach right away was not happy about the bits of cheese and certain foods just lost their palate appeal. The meat items were not so much a bother on my system but I have noticed changes in how I feel after ingesting an animal product food versus mostly vegetables and grains. With this month being the 8th month on this journey I feel good about this experience and there’s a lot I will take into my eating habits moving forward.

One aspect of this journey I have appreciated is the ability to have and maintain dedication and control even when others around you are eating cheese and the smell of fried chicken is just so irresistible. This self-control can lend itself to other areas of my life and doing this to means that I can literally do whatever it is I put my mind to. Self-control isn’t just a word and it’s not something you can necessarily teach or learn through one specific task and yet it can affect so many other things.

I called this Untitled Dish because there were just so many thoughts and reflecting about this vegan journey, I knew my mind would be all over the place making random connections. Now that I’m 8 months in, I don’t get as many questions about what I’m going to eat except from new people who observe my meatless and high carb plates.

I have no doubt that the next 4 months will be a breeze but the question still remains: what next?

Grocery Shopping #10

Even though it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve gone shopping, I’m still sharing my shopping list from when I returned from my vacation back home.

• Mango Peach Salsa
• Coconut Oil
• Dark Chocolate Red Berry Granola
• Spinach
• Grape Tomatoes (slowly starting dislike)
• Organic Bananas
• Blueberries x 2
• Mushrooms x 2
• Dried Cranberries
• Avocados
• Peaches
• Plums
• Cucumber
• Lg. Pitted Olives
• Tortilla Chips
• Rice & Grain Blend
• Baby Lettuce
• Spanish Olives
• Agave
• Nectarines
• Broccoli Crowns
• Mini Sweet Peppers
• Arizona Green Tea

My total came to around $50.15 and I was happy. The prices back home, particularly in Exuma were starting to kill me, honestly. $12 for a 24-pk of water, yikes! I also stopped in Walmart and picked up a few items there.

• Salted Caramel Dairy-Free Ice Cream
• Bread
• Mangoes
• Almond Milk
• Granola Cereal
• Garbanzo Beans
• Canned Pineapple Juice

My food is going to last a lot longer because I’ve been eating quite a few lunches at dinners at school due to work and simply being too tired to do anything cooking-related. It took me nearly a week to eat 6 pancakes (I eat 2 per meal) because work has just been so busy with new student arrivals and orientation. I’ve got at least another week before I become concerned with grocery shopping again.

Din din

This evening’s dinner: quinoa with garbanzo beans, kale and spinach salad with mushrooms and peaches sautéed in a blueberry vinaigrette dressing and a simple salad with olives (because now I like olives). And to think I was feet away from eating college cafeteria food when I had all this in my kitchen!

Exuma Meals