Stuff I Ate

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well and staying safe and healthy. I'm trying to get used to the new normal and have some struggles of course but I think I'm holding up ok. I've been trying to psych myself up to go to Aldi but haven't gotten there quite yet. I'm going to try really hard to get there on Thursday but I guess we'll see. This week I tried to photograph as much as I could and have a few pictures to show you of stuff I ate. This week is Passover but I haven't really been following it because let's be real, we are in the middle of a plague so I think all will be forgiven if I can't get my kosher for Passover food.

So here is some stuff I've been eating!

First up I have a little flatbread pizza and some steamed broccoli which I desperately needed.

I made this udon noodle stir fry and it was so delicious! It was udon noodles with zucchini and broccoli and onions and I added some tamari, agave and some garlic.

I found this really cool product and was lucky enough to get my hands on it! I still haven't tried the Just Egg in the bottle because the price was just crazy to me but I decided I couldn't pass these folded "eggs" up. You know I love my breakfast sandwiches so I thought it would be a fun time to try something new!

Another amazing breakfast sandwich, this time with the Just Egg and Beyond sausage patties. The sausage patties were super delicious and I can't decide if I like the Beyond Sausage or the Field Roast better. I would definitely buy them both again. The Just Egg folded things were good and definitely mimicked having eggs in the sandwich but they were kind of bland. I don't know how often I would buy them but it is definitely good and I'm glad I tried it. I definitely still want to try the liquid version. I think Aldi carries it at a much better price so I'm hoping to get my hands on it at some point.

This was a random udon noodle soup with some corn and broccoli and Better than Bouillon No Chick'n Broth. It was very delicious and came together quickly

This last treat was something I found on Pinterest for 3 ingredient cookies! I used this recipe and it was so simple and came together so quickly and they were delicious! The three ingredients are almond flour, banana and baking powder. I wanted to add even more flavor so I included some chocolate chunks, some vanilla extract and a little maple syrup. They were seriously delicious and I will probably experiment with oat flour and different add ins as well.

They aren't the most beautiful but they were tasty and seriously so easy. I highly recommend them.

I've moved my home office out of my brother's house and into my own home because I just didn't feel comfortable leaving my house and being around other people anymore. I did snap one last photo of my lazy coworker sleeping on the job yet again. He is too adorable and I definitely think that is why he gets away with it 😉

I hope that you are all holding up ok and staying healthy 💚

Vegan MoFo 2019: Trying Ambitious Kitchen's Chickpea Blondies!

Hi friends! I hope that you are all doing well today! For today's post I'm trying another blogger's recipe again. This time it is Ambitious Kitchen's Chocolate Chip Chickpea Blondies! I've been wanting to try Chickpea Blondies for a while and figured now was the time (when it's hot AF and the oven shouldn't be on but oh well). 

This recipe came together so quickly and so easily! There was only a few ingredients that most vegans would have on hand already (chickpeas, maple syrup, peanut butter, etc.) and you just toss them into a food processor and make your dough! It seriously couldn't be simpler than that!

I think the finished product looks amazing! It tastes really great too. It's a really great treat when you want a baked dessert with less guilt. It has a really nice texture too! It stays together pretty well, maybe a little more crumbly than a traditional blondie but totally worth it!

I swear, the things I do for this blog 😂😂😂 Totally kidding, obviously but can we talk about this chickpea blondie sundae?! I warmed up a blondie for about 25 seconds and then topped with a scoop of the Haagen-Dazs ice cream that I got. Of course I had to top with sprinkles because sprinkles. It was delicious!

Of course I had to do a glamour shot of my beautiful Vegan Bowl with that delicious scoop of ice cream sticking out of the top 😂 So good you guys!

So, moral of the story is I highly recommend this recipe if you'd like to try chickpea blondes. There are only a few ingredients that are pantry staples, they only require a food processor, they come together quickly and they taste amazing. I'm so glad I finally tried this recipe! 💚

Stuff I'm Into

Hey guys! I hope that you are well and had a good week! I am getting back into my normal routine and trying to catch up on sleep. I should be back to regular food posts next week and I'm looking forward to it! For today, I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I've been loving lately. I would love to hear about the things you've been enjoying as well!

Netflix

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It shouldn't be a surprise that I love The Great British Bake Off because I've mentioned it before in another favorites post. However, I took a break for a few season when Mary Berry and the two hosts left the show. Paul is entertaining but I tried watching with all the new people and I just wasn't able to get into it. I heard that there was an all vegan episode on the latest season to hit Netflix so I decided to give it another try. Naturally this leads to a 2 season binge and I can't get enough. I still miss Mel and Sue and Mary but the new crew has grown on me and the baking is as inspiring as always.

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Do you guys have that movie that you keep checking for on Netflix? My movie was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I love this movie and I have been wanting to watch it for so long but I was never able to find it on Netflix. I decided to try searching for it a week or two ago and it was there! If you have never seen this movie I highly recommend watching it! It's really good and I thought Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were amazing in it. It also made me hate Elijah Wood and I didn't think that was possible 😂

Disney/Pixar

Over New Year's there were Disney movie marathons all over the place. Thanks to this I was able to watch a movie that I hadn't seen yet. In addition, Netflix added another movie I hadn't seen and both of them were incredible so I wanted to share!

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Tangled was a Disney movie that I had somehow never seen but always wanted to watch. It hasn't been on Netflix since I've had the service and it was never on TV during these marathons. FINALLY it was on and I caught it during a Disney movie marathon and I FREAKING LOVED IT. It quickly became one of my new favorite Disney movies. I love the story and I love Rapunzel and it was beautiful and I just loved it.

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Over Christmas I was asked if I had watched Coco and I said no. I was told it was incredible and I would cry like a baby. Truthfully I didn't have high hopes because I felt it started out a little slow but OH. MY. GOODNESS. It lived up to the hype and it was so good you guys. Of course I cried like a baby and I'm so glad it was recommended to me. It just happened to be added to Netflix so it was perfect timing and I highly recommend checking it out if you can!

Cookbook

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This book has also come up before on this blog when I mentioned some cookbooks that were on my radar. I was lucky enough to receive NYC Vegan for the holidays and I am SO EXCITED!!! I haven't made anything from it yet but all of the recipes look delicious and I can't wait to dive in. Of course some of them will be once in a while treats because they don't quite fit into my nutrition goals for chronic illness management but there are also plenty of recipes that do! I'm so excited to give it a try and I can't wait to do a proper review once I've tried a few recipes!

Food

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I have been seeing Tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes) EVERYWHERE lately and they sound so freaking good. It is my intention to run over to H-Mart this weekend to pick up some rice cakes and gochujang so I can try making them myself. I found a recipe from The Viet Vegan (pictured above from her site) that I am going to try and I can't wait!

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Technically this is a meme but it contains food and is hilarious so I had to share it with you. I can't stop laughing every time I look at it 😂

As you can see I've been catching up on my Netflix/movie watching a lot lately. I have not been feeling great (chronic illness acting up and not sleeping much makes you not want to do much) so I've been giving my body the rest it needs and relaxing and catching up on Netflix. I rarely ever watch TV and I don't really use my Netflix a ton so it was nice to just relax and catch up. What have you been watching on Netflix lately?

That's all I have for you today! I hope that you have a great weekend and I'll be back Tuesday hopefully with a ton of hauls to share with you!! 

Christmas Things!

Hi everyone! I hope that you are all doing well and that you had a wonderful holiday! If you don't celebrate the holiday I hope you just enjoyed your days! As you may know, I celebrate Hanukkah but my sister in law and niece celebrate Christmas so my family always celebrates both. We had a really nice couple of days but I learned that I really have to be careful about overextending myself. As I've mentioned, chronic extreme fatigue is a symptom of my fibromyalgia and the last few days have been a lot. I did a lot of baking and we had busy days on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so it was incredibly difficult to get out of bed today. That said, I still had a great time!

I don't have a ton to share with you today but I wanted to show you the cookies I ended up making! I also had gotten a few gifts and I wanted to share what my friend gave me because it is AMAZING and relevant to a food blog.

First let's check out some cookies!!

Up first I made the Vegan Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Nora Bakes. They were very easy and came out great! Mine didn't really spread at all and I'm not sure why but they still look great and tasted delicious!

Don't mind my ridiculous nails 😂 This is a close up. She's beautiful!

I also made a recipe that I didn't include in my recipe roundup that I decided to make. These are the Easy Vegan Cinnamon Pecan Cookies from Beaming Baker. I found this recipe last minute and decided to give it a try. I added chocolate chips because all things are better with chocolate. These cookies are DELICIOUS and this was definitely a great choice.

I had made a third batch of cookies that were supposed to be cookie butter chocolate chip funfetti cookies but they were a disaster. They were like sand when you bit into them and it was terrible. It was upsetting not just because I wasted ingredients but I wasted so much energy trying to make them. By the time I finished baking on Sunday I was EXHAUSTED. This helped me realize that my goal to eat easy but unprocessed meals is going to be so crucial to getting my health on track. Finding a balance of easy, quick meals with having to prepare them all myself will take some time but I'm confident that I'll figure it out.

So this is the first part of my awesome gift that my friend got me! This oven mitt is AMAZING and hilarious and SO PERFECT for me! I am obsessed!

She also got me these kitchen towels and I'm also obsessed with them. They are so funny. As you can see, she knows me so well 😂

Finally, here is sweet TJ enjoying his new toy!! He is too sweet, I love him so much. Poor thing is allergic to everything (my kindred spirit) so his face gets really red and it makes me so sad. 

So that's all I have for you today! How was your holiday/day? I should also let you know that I'll be house/pet sitting for a week starting on Thursday so I'll do the best I can to get you some more posts! I'm going to be doing some planning for how I want to go about my lifestyle change as well as brainstorming delicious, whole foods, EASY recipes to make so I'm excited to bring you along on this journey.

Do you have any goals for the new year? Let me know!

Cookie Idea Roundup

Hey everyone! I hope all is well! Thanks for your well wishes after my sick day post, it is greatly appreciated! I'm definitely starting to feel better but not near 100% yet so meals are still quite boring. I figured it would be fun to share some fun cookie recipes I found on Pinterest for anyone planning on getting into the holiday baking spirit! I definitely plan on making some cookies once I feel better so I'm sharing the list of cookies that I will definitely be making as well as some maybes :)

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First up are these gorgeous Vegan Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Nora Cooks! I love the powdery, snowy finish on them, it reminds me of hot cocoa and snow. These are on my definite list and I'm so excited to give them a try!

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Next up are these beautiful Molasses Cookies from I Love Vegan. I always want to make Molasses Cookies but I never do and I think I want to change that this year. I love the ones with the sugar crystals on them because it reminds me of glitter and you know how much I love glitter 😉

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These Chocolate Chip Sprinkle Cookies from Namely Marly are another one on the definite list for me. I know they may not be Christmas festive but they are fun and festive and the only thing that is better than funfetti is when there is chocolate involved as well. I'm so excited to give these a try!

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These beautiful Vegan Thin Mint Cookies from The Pretty Bee are a PERFECT cookie for the holidays! I'm pretty sure everyone loves Thin Mints and mint and chocolate is such a classic holiday pairing. They would be beautiful with some crushed up peppermint candies on top as well. These are high on my list and one I would love to make if I have the time!

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Another recipe that I found and would love to make are these Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies from Loving It Vegan. This may be blasphemous but I'm actually not the biggest fan of peanut butter cookies but I had the idea to swap out the Peanut Butter for some Trader Joe's Cookie Butter (you're welcome!). To me that feels so festive for the holiday because the cookie butter has such a warm holiday flavor and what is better than a little Cookieception around the holidays? 😉😂 If I get the chance to make these I'll be using the cookie butter and I will definitely let you know how it swaps out!

The last thing I hope to be able to make are little chocolate clusters with lots of different ingredient combinations in them. I love making bark and chocolate clusters around the holidays because they are so easy and come together so quickly and the flavor combination possibilities are endless. Some of my favorites are peanuts and raisins (any fans of the Chunky bar?), cashews, pecans, cranberries and pistachios with white chocolate (how festive!), the Candy Cane Joe Joe's from Trader Joe's, pretzels, etc. The possibilities are endless and it as easy as melting chocolate, adding your mix ins and scooping onto a pan and refrigerating.

So that's what I have for you in my cookie lineup this year! Are you baking for the holidays? What's on your cookie list? Definitely share your ideas in the comments!

I hope that you all have a wonderful week. I'll see you back here on Friday, hopefully with some regularly scheduled programming 😃

Thanksgiving Feast

Hey everyone! Happy belated Thanksgiving! Whether or not you celebrate the holiday I hope you had a great day yesterday. I spent my day with family and it was really nice but OMG so cold. You guys. It's so fucking cold. It dipped into the 20s and I hate it 😂 Anyway, I enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast yesterday and I remembered to take pictures for you!

Before I get into the Thanksgiving goodies I have an AMAZING udon noodle soup to share. I had a sad packet of mushroom udon noodle soup that I needed to use (it was the refrigerated kind) and decided to doctor it up and make is special. You guys. This soup turned out AMAZING. I started with the noodles and the broth flavoring and added some broccoli, soy curls, green onion and seaweed. OMG. So damn good you guys. I had this Wednesday night and it was perfect and so filling.

Ok onto Thanksgiving! I managed to take some pictures of most of the vegan stuff as well as my plate.

This is my FAVORITE broccoli corn casserole. It has broccoli, creamed corn, stuffing mix and onion. My mom leaves out the egg and uses Earth Balance so I can eat it and it's so damn delicious. It has been my favorite Thanksgiving dish for as long as I can remember.

Some delicious roasted potatoes (we had mashed potatoes too but I don't like mashed potatoes so I told them not to worry about the butter - they did ask though which was so nice!).

This was my plate! I had some Gardein tenders, roasted potatoes, broccoli corn casserole and brussels sprouts (I didn't get a pic of those in their dish).

I made this apple crisp for dessert and I was so proud of it because I turned a dessert disaster into a dessert win. I found a recipe on Pinterest for apple crumb bars and I could tell as soon as I mixed up the "shortbread" base that it wouldn't work and that the picture was a lie and not what the bars would actually look like (which made me so angry because these ingredients were not cheap and I hate when people misrepresent their recipes with fake images). I refused to waste the ingredients to I made the shortbread base into a crumble topping and added some oats and cinnamon to it. I made a different apple filling from the recipe as well and combined the two and it worked out way better than the bars would have. Everyone loved it and it was delicious. I have some leftovers so I'll photograph it the next time I eat it (and you better believe I'm adding ice cream next time 😂).

That's what I have for you today! I have work today and tomorrow so no long weekend for me but I hope that all of you have a great weekend and I'll see you back here on Tuesday!

Grocery Haul, Meal Prep and Meals... Oh My!

Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing well, had a great weekend and are staying cool. I really enjoyed this weekend as I was able to see one of my best friends for the first time since December. We've been friends for almost 20 years and she is one of my favorite people on earth and I miss her all the time. We were also joined by her husband who is also wonderful and we had a great time. I'll share a little more on this later.

Today's post has a lot going on! Of course I have my (small) Trader Joe's grocery haul to share. I also got some meal prep done as well as some meals I ate over the past week to share with you. I also have the delicious meal I enjoyed with my friends to share as well.

Let's get into it!

First is the produce portion of my grocery haul. I got two bags of butter lettuce, some shredded carrots, asparagus, portabella mushroom caps, grape tomatoes, an avocado and an onion.

My grocery portion of the haul was quite small and contained two delicious treats: Crunchy Curls and Soy Creamy mini ice cream sandwiches.

Next up we have some minimal meal prep:

The timing could not have been more perfect to make these banana muffins. I have been craving banana muffins for a while and I happened to have some very ripe bananas that needed to be used so I got to work using my very favorite recipe: Chocolate Covered Katie's Fat Free Banana Bread recipe. Instead of strawberries I used walnuts and chocolate chips and I made them into muffins. Of course it can't be a Sarah muffin making experience without some sort of issue (seriously, why can't I just make a batch of muffins without incident?). This one was minor but I completely forgot that since these are fat free they would stick to the paper... seriously that's amateur hour on my part. Luckily it's not too bad and I was able to rescue my muffin from the paper (in a few pieces) but next time I'll just make the loaf like I normally would.

Of course I made a batch of my favorite pasta salad for the week. I usually get 3-4 servings from the batch (I usually use a half of a bag of pasta at a time and add tons of veggies) so lunches are pretty well set for the week.

And here is some stuff I ate:

Of course you know I have to have my watermelon!

This was a lazy yet delicious meal of mini Field Roast corn dogs with some roasted potatoes and obviously a lot of ketchup... because I love ketchup on everything.

A quick lunch of rice and beans and broccoli. Very delicious.

This was the amazing meal I enjoyed when I went out for lunch with my friends on Sunday! We had Thai food and I enjoyed this dish of spicy eggplant, tofu, broccoli, onion and green beans with a spring roll and some rice. So so delicious and the leftovers were devoured the next day.

We also went for some bubble tea and I had my usual Peach Pulp tea with boba. I thought I'd take a picture of the top before I punctured it with my straw because I thought it was so cute! You know I love my skulls so combine them with bubble tea and I'm a happy girl.

So there you have it! A little bit of everything to start off the week :) I hope that you all have a great week and I'll be back here on Friday with another post to welcome the weekend (well for you guys, not for me since I still work Saturdays). I hope that you are all enjoying your summer! What fun summer things have you been up to? 

Grocery Haul and Meal Prep

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are easing back into another week. I feel like I've been on the hot mess express for the last week and I'm ready for my stop so I can get off this train ;) I made a really conscious effort to be as prepared for the week as possible as you'll see in the grocery haul and the meal prep that I did this weekend. I have a really bad habit of not being able to decide on anything in terms of meals (or anything really) because I never know what I want so I figured if I made the effort to plan and prep it'll make my life and the decisions much easier. It literally took me three hours to decide to eat cereal for dinner the other night. It's so ridiculous, haha!

Anyway, I made a trip to Trader Joe's on Sunday and figured I'd share the haul with you!

For produce I got some romaine lettuce, baby spinach, potatoes, broccoli, baby carrots, diced onion (lazy as fuck) and grape tomatoes.

I picked up a few grocery items as well. I got some of the Lavash, the high protein tofu, some soy creamy cherry chocolate chip ice cream, mediterranean hummus (still the best store bought hummus in my opinion) and some frozen blueberries.

After Trader Joe's I decided to do a little meal prep for the week. Here's what I made:

I made a HUGE tofu scramble with the high protein tofu, onion, broccoli and spinach. I seasoned it with Trader Joe's onion salt and some black pepper. It's so good you guys. I had the onions in there the longest and they got all brown and caramelized and they made the whole thing taste amazing! I'll be able to get a ton of meals out of this too.

I really wanted some redemption after my last muffin fail so I decided to make some blueberry corn muffins. They are better than the last muffins I made (I mean they aren't green yet so that's a step in the right direction) but they are so dense and pretty dry. They are edible and it's nothing a little Earth Balance and maple syrup can't fix but they aren't amazing. At least they look pretty. The blueberries gave them a pretty purple swirl and I'm not mad at it.

As I mentioned I'm really trying to be better about planning my meals to make my life and decision making a lot easier for myself. I got this new insert for my planner and it is great because you can plan your meals and write your grocery list in the same spot. I'm just hoping that I'll actually use it!

Are you a meal planner? How far in advance do you plan? What happens if you don't want to eat what you've planned. That tends to be my biggest problem.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I'll see you on Friday with another post! <3