Random food thoughts and another great recipe

Day 18 of the 21 day vegan challenge, so thought I'd just ramble a little about various food thoughts I've had over the past two and half weeks.

It has been very easy to give up the meat, particularly the prep and cooking of it. Prepping chicken has always grossed me out and I tend to worry about it being cooked long enough. So to eliminate it from the diet has been nice. Our dinners have been revolving around veggies and some sort of grain or bean, with some pretty tasty results. Clean Fresh Hubby didn't exactly signed up for this challenge with me, but he is eating the dinners I make, so that's encouraging. And he is making healthier choices at lunch, so maybe I'm rubbing off on him a little!

Dairy has been the harder of the two to eliminate completely from my diet. I've had a few slips (a slice or two of cheese pizza), but overall I'm doing good about not eating cheese. I've been limiting my coffee intake to one day over the weekend since I do like to drink it with cream. I have been able to substitute agave nectar in place of sugar with good results, so this morning I decided I would try adding vanilla almond milk to my coffee to see if I could get away with that. No luck. Didn't have the same consistency as cream, so it really did nothing in my coffee. So I will continue to just drink coffee over the weekend, with cream, and consider it a treat. If a little cream is the worst I do, that's not that bad!

For breakfast, I've been alternating between carrot juice on the days I don't have to work and fruit smoothies on the days we're scooting out the door to work and school. Lunch is typically a salad, leftovers from whatever we had for dinner the night before, or a veggie sandwich from Subway on days I work. Dinner has been the time to experiment with new recipes; I'm finding quite a few good ones in Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet" book I've been reading.

Like this one, for pinto bean stew:

1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups Imagine creamy tomato soup
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 tsp dried basil (or 2 tsp fresh)
dash of dried oregano
dash of red pepper flakes
salt to taste

Combine the soup, 1 cup of water, soy sauce and oil in a large soup pot. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Add the beans. When the liquid returns to a boil, reduce the heat and add the onion, garlic, basil, oregano and red pepper flakes. If the stew seems to thick, add more tomato soup or water. Place cover slightly askew over the pot and simmer 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt.



This was super easy to throw together and quite delicious. I served it with a salad made of watercress, beets and tomatoes drizzed with a little olive oil and lemon juice (decided I'm not a fan of watercress, so next time I'll just use mixed greens and I think it will be much tastier).

I'm experimenting with quinoa too with good results. I made my favorite dinner (angel hair with tomatoes and garlic) and substituted quinoa for the pasta. I made the sauce as usual, then added 1/2 cup of quinoa to the pan, covered it, and let it cook for 20 minutes. It was excellent!



So overall, it hasn't been too difficult to find tasty foods to eat in place of meat and made without dairy. My plan is to continue on with this even after the last day of the 21 day challenge, but not be so rigid that I can't enjoy a dinner out with friends or a little creamer in my coffee (or a cappucino here and there!).