An Adventure in Drunken Cooking: The Vegan "Chicken" Wrap

It was early evening and the little one had fallen asleep early. This gave my husband and I a rare opportunity to spend time together alone. I am a light weight so after 2 drinks on the deck I was in the bag and I still had not made supper. Opps. Oh well, convenience food to the rescue. Here is a wrap recipe that is easy enough for a drunk me to make.

P.S. I don't recommend cooking drunk as you risk cutting yourself. Do unwise things at your own risk :)

What you need:

• wraps
• 3 vegan chicken strips per wrap
• chopped up kale
• Lima beans (optional but awesome. Any beans would work)
• Vegan mayo

Simplified Vegan London Fog

I love London Fog teas but when I went searching for a recipe I could not help but notice how complicated or time consuming the recipes are out there. I don't have a lot of time and there are only a few basic elements to this so here is a quick and easy way to make a London Fog. You need a milk frother for this recipe.

What you need:
1/2 cup of water
Earl Grey tea bag
1/2 cup of milk
Sugar or alternative, to taste
1 tsp vanilla syrup, the kind you put in coffee (optional)

What to do:

1. Heat up 1/2 cup of water in a mug in the microwave. Add earl grey tea bag and steep a few minutes.

2. Heat up 1/2 a cup of soymilk in the microwave (I used 1 minute 40 seconds for the water and the milk) than froth with a milk frother.

3. Remove the teabag from the tea and sweeten to taste. Add a teaspoon of vanilla syrup. Stir.

4. Add the soymilk to the tea and enjoy.

Simple and Delicious Vegan Matcha Latte

Matcha powder is not easy to come by. It is pretty rare and very expensive but I got lucky at the Chinese grocery store across the street and found a bag for $5. I doubt it is "authentic" but it tastes good so I don't care. A milk frother is required for this recipe.

What you need:

• a scoop of matcha powder
• 1/4 cup of water
• sugar or whatever you like to sweeten your tea, to taste
• vanilla soy milk- about 1 cup.

What to do:

1. Put the scoop of matcha powder into a mug with the water and mix with the frother. 

2. Add the sweetener you like. I would use as much as you typically like in tea. I used about 1 tsp but I like things sweet. Mix with the frother. 

3. Put soy milk in a microwavable mug and nuke for 2 minutes. You could heat it in a sauce pan on the stove if you don't have a microwave

4. Add half the hot milk to the matcha. Froth the remaining milk so there is lots of foam than add it to the matcha too. 

5. Give the whole thing a gentle mix and enjoy.

Another Pinterest Trick, Tested and Works

I heard about this a long time ago. If you have greasy hair and you don't have time to shower, you just rub a bit of cornstarch in your hair and it isn't greasy anymore. I don't have the opportunity to shower a lot but I don't want to leave the house with greasy hair so I tried this and it worked great. I didn't take pictures because I didn't think to but next time I will try to remember. Didn't even need a lot of cornstarch. 

Irish Spring Soap Actually Seems to Keep Squirrels Away

Last year I got a total of two peppers out of my two pepper plants and the squirrels got one of them. I like squirrels but that sucked. This year something has been eating the shoots off the snap pea plants and we didn't get a tone of peas as a result. I could hear them through the window at night, routing around, getting up to no good. Well, not anymore.

I saw the Irish Spring soap trick on Pinterest so I bought 2 bars from Dollarama. I chopped them in half and drilled a hole in them for the string and hung them on the deck. They are pretty smelly but it is not a bad smell and the critters have not come around since so far.

Something on Pinterest that did what it promised!

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Organizing meal planning so anyone can do it when I get too busy

I am too busy to plan meals sometimes during the school year. Traditionally, I have always been the one to cook the meals, so I plan and make the grocery lists and often do the shopping. Luckily, my husband can do the shopping part on his own and often does if I make him a list. The planning of meals is complicated by my being vegan though also because I took over the cooking almost 10 years ago. My husband is fully capable in the kitchen, and seems happy enough to cook but like many young girls in love I think I was overly eager to prove my homemaking skills early on and thus the traditional roll became established.

To tackle this roll I created for myself, I thought up a way to simplify to planning process. Menu planning is important because not planning results in multiple trips to the grocery store when we don't have time, or take out when we don't have money. It can also lead to more expensive meals at home and more food waste.

First I separated my freezer door into 7 sections to represent days of the week. They were big sections so I made enough spots to plan for 2 weeks just in case. I used painters tape, hopefully it doesn't fall off but it seems stable so far. I used my fancy label maker to mark each day.

Kettle chips and chocolate Icing.

It's what dunkaroos should be. That's really all I have to say.

Simple Vegan Cream Cheese

I was always interested in making cheese but before I had a chance I went vegan and now cheese smells like feet to me. I use to like cheese and miss some aspects of it so I was thrilled when I discovered you can buy vegan cheese at most grocery stores. I tried as many as I could find that did not have casein hiding in the ingredients and they were usually awful. They were also expensive. Life changed for me with the advent of Daiya. Beautiful, wonderful, fantastically melty, this put a lot of options back on our menu. The local pizza place now makes vegan pizza with Daiya. The shreds are the best but they are expanding to sliced and cream cheeses. They all cost a lot.

I have been experimenting with cashew cheese and I am very happy with the results of this cream cheese. It is simple, doesn't require anything that is hard to find and it tastes good. It is more on the subtle side of the cheese spectrum. You could probably use it in desserts if compelled to.

What you need:

• 1 cup of raw cashews soaked overnight
• water
• 2 capsules of probiotics
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp of salt

Fantastically Filling Taco Salad

I love taco salad but it doesn't feel worth eating if I am going to be hungry still after I finish the meal. No problem with that in this recipe. It's packed with beans and tofu. My non-vegan husband really likes this meal so I make it a lot. Serves 2-3 people (usually two adults and a 3 year old with some left over for a lunch the next day).

What you need:

• ice berg lettuce for crunch
• Dandelion greens or any other leafy green
• Chopped tomato
• Chopped pepper
• Salsa
• Daiya
• 2 tsp oil
• Black eyed peas or any bean you like- rinsed
• one package of firm tofu cut in squares
• chopped onion
• 1.5 tsp chilli powder
• a few squirts of lime juice
• Nacho chips

Rekindling the Romance With Salad

I got sick of salads long before I ever went vegan. We had salad most days with dinner growing up but it was the same everyday and I am one who lives for variety. So I rarely eat salad unless someone makes it for me. I am trying to change that as the salad is simply a medium through which one can unleash culinary creativity. When properly assembled, the salad can be a game changer when it comes to keeping one healthy.

I learned a while back just how fantastic bitter green vegetables are for the digestive system and I need to eat leafy greens to keep my iron up anyway. Dandelions have become my all time favorite since I found them in the budget grocery stores. They are bitter, very bitter. I always hated bitter foods so I weaned myself on to them slowly, starting with slightly bitter greens like escarole, working up to off season dandelions then the more bitter in season ones. I typically just much on them without any dressing but putting them in a salad makes dandelions far more palatable. Dressing and raw cashews really cut down on the bitterness. 

Dandelions need to be washed well then I chop them up with kitchen scissors because it is easy. French dressing went nicely with this salad in the end. 

This salad is pretty simple.

Super Easy, Healthy and Nutrient Dense Breakfast

Step 1: Throw a bunch of nuts and seeds in a bowl. I like pralines and raw cashews in the morning.
Step 2: Add fruit. This could be berries, sliced banana, apple, anything you have handy that is easy to chop up.
Step 3: Top with ground flax seed and soy or other milk.
Voila! Crazy healthy breakfast that tastes great and is quick to make.

Fantastically Refreshing Strawberry Water

This is so easy I don't think I can count it as a recipe. You blend a handful of strawberries in some water. That's it. It makes a quick flavoured water which is great if you are like me and cannot stand the taste of city water but also can't afford (and are morally opposed) to buying bottled water. And you get some bonus nutrients from the strawberries. This is way better than drinking those chemically flavoured waters you can buy in the store.

The Difference a Little Sun Can Make

We moved to a townhouse a year ago. We found it difficult to be happy in an apartment in Toronto, especially one beside the 401. This is our first full summer at our new place which has an amazing feature none of our previous rentals have had: Sunlight. There is full sun on the deck and yard below in the afternoon and sun in the front yard in the morning. Growing vegetables is just so much more possible here. The two pepper plants we had last summer produced two peppers in total. There are at least 3 per plant here and we have room for more plants.

We are trying to be as cheap as possible so our planters are a mix of small garbage bins that I think my husband got at ValueVillage and dresser drawers that someone left loose to be hauled away as garbage. We added a few hollow recyclables to the bins as a reservoir for water. 

There are beans climbing along the fence and up the walls which add to ambiance a bit. Despite all the plants there is still room for us to enjoy the space. 

We fit a few planters on the ground below the deck for some extra tomatoes. Over 20 of our seedlings survived so we had to put them somewhere. You can't have too many tomatoes. 

Since the sun makes it into the house, I am starting so beans in hangers inside. Just 2 up now but I am working on 2 more bean plant hangers and one onion hanger to avoid buying as many onions.

This is a bit experimental but why not grow a pineapple. 

There was an empty patch of dirt in the front yard for all our lettuce and rainbow chard, which just turned out to be all yellow but still neat. 

We were blessed with some nice wide window sills in the kitchen for our kitchen herbs to grow on. 

The stinging nettle is really not a house plant I suppose but I love nettle and I found this little guy growing randomly in my seedling tray with the tomatoes. Not sure how it got there but its a pretty awesome weed to have around. I'll have to plant it somewhere a kid is not likely to get stung by it. It has outgrown its living space. 

Make a wish

Today, for the first time in a very long time, I went to church. Not the type of church I tried to fit myself into when I was younger, this place is a bit different. It is profoundly accepting. I could not count the number of churches, the different denominations and eventually religions I investigated over the years. Each one brought I new hope that I had found the one I belonged to but this hope was always short lived. Sometimes I knew right away that I was in the wrong place, other times it took me a while. During this while I would try to get involved a bit and try to fit myself in the mold of that particular group, but there would always be the nagging feeling that I did not fit into this mold and I would be found out, not accepted and shamed. This notion would occasionally become reality. So I have let go of my process. I will not try to fit myself into someone else's specific expectations, I go as I am and nothing else. I do not fear nonacceptance or worse. It is a welcome sign that I must be on my way. There is a difference between universal admittance and universal acceptance. Most churches offer the former but I was in search for the later. 

But it looks like I found one that I mesh well with without effort and I am pretty excited. 

It is a church that accepts and celebrates everyone just as they are, and I don't mean just welcoming everyone then challenging their personal attributes as some churches have tried with me in the past. There appears to be little in the way of judgement which brings me to the whole point of this post. We were asked to make a wish. A big, influential wish. I thought about this deeply, however briefly and decided that the worst thing in the world are the judgments we place on others and ourselves. These judgments create all the great problems in the world. There could not exploitation if someone had not made a judgement that those they exploit are not as worthy as themselves. There could be no genocides if one group had not judged another inferior of life. There would be no poverty if employers had not made the judgement that their employees where not worth an acceptable wage or that one country was less deserving of resources than another. Many in my generation who search for employment would have it if we collectively had not been judged as lazy. I suspect much depression, disordered eating, addiction and mental anguish could be avoided if we avoided the harsh judgement we place on ourselves.    

These judgments spread like viruses, and once they are shared with us by another, they are planted in our minds and difficult to uproot. 

I did not wish to end these judgments however. That would be a pretty lame wish. It is negative, focusing on what should not be done when I needed to look from the other direction. So I wished for universal acceptance for all people. And all day long I have been witnessing these acts of acceptance. I had never noticed them before. 

A few little ways to help calm yourself down when you become overwhelmed.

Life today is too bloody busy. It seems as though the whole world took on this intensively rapid pace that humans as a species are not suited to handle. While many of us can thrive in this climate, I suspect these sudden bursts of hyper-productiveness are doomed to be short lived. We place the expectation on ourselves and others that we are unstoppable and never tiring. I don't remember life being this way as a kid. Perhaps I am just remembering the world through kid glasses but the lack of cell phones and internet definitely prevented life from moving at this speed. So what to do when our plates get too overloaded? I have a few little methods that work some of the time.

1. I write a list of everything I need to do that day and everything I have already done. I put it all together on one page, then cross off everything I have already done. It is a nice reminder that I've already done a bunch of stuff and should go easy on myself.

I am done with the Illusion of Perfection

To the outside world, my life is pretty perfect. I have a beautiful 3 year old boy who is as smart as a tack. I am in a very demanding program at school and by all objective measures I am excelling. I am married to a really great man with a successful career. If you come to my house you will find it neat, tidy, clean and organized. Food and drinks are never simple, rather they are part of the show I put on for the world. It is assumed I eat well, live a healthy lifestyle and am thus thin. I have everything under perfect control...

...except that it's all a lie. I don't have it all under perfect control. I don't have anything under any control. If you dropped in unexpectedly you would find that my house is the furthest thing from clean. It's cluttered and nothing resembling organized at all. There are dirty dishes on the counter right now, the living room is scattered with toys, I have not put the laundry away in a few weeks. I can't remember the last time I cleaned the bathroom. While my grades may be high, that is far from a good measure of success. I write exams so frequently I have developed an anxiety disorder and have to defer exams regularly to prevent myself from losing a pathological amount of weight or falling into a deep state of sympathetic overload that I can't pull myself out of. Thin, yes, but because of a gene and excessive stress, not in a way anyone should hope to be.

We pretend though, that seems to be the acceptable thing to do. But why? Why pretend to be perfect? Doesn't that just perpetuate this myth that we are all to have perfect families and perfect careers and anything less means we are failing? Were did this even come form. It feels so wrong. If pretending to be perfect makes others feel they have to live up to the unrealistic example you have set, it's damaging to society. So for societies sake, I am abandoning the illusion of perfection. As of right now. I am also no longer treating it as a goal as I have more attainable goals to work towards.

It feels like there is a pressure on our generation as a whole to have it all figured out by now. This may in part come from the constant stream of criticism our generation is receiving in the media. But it's crap. We are not all "lazy" and unemployed and living in our parents basements. And given the socioeconomic climate, I really wouldn't judge those who are living with their parents. It makes smart economic sense given the overvalued real estate market. But I digress, I am changing up this blog a bit. I have not been posting as I have nothing perfect to post. Perfection takes time that I don't have. But I have plenty of real things to post so that is what I will do. But for now I have to go study for my stupid exams. :(

Three Batches of Stuffed Pasta Shells. High Protein, Low Fat and Good for Picky Kids

About a month ago I tried this great lasagna recipe that had this tofu based ricotta that was a real hit with my son and husband. I hate working with lasagna noodles because they break and I seem to waste them. So this time I opted for shells. Shells still break but in fewer numbers I find and I can often piece them back together. My picky little eater ate has whole plate then came after mine so this was win. I cooked the whole box of shells, took two pots, then stuffed 'em and topped 'em with sauce. I split them between three pans but if you have a larger or more hungry family your may want to split them between two. It depends how many shells survive I guess. I ended up with 35 shells in the end, then we ate one pan worth and froze two. And I served it with garlic toast.

Recipe

Ricotta Mix

-block of frozen spinach, thawed with water squeezed out

-one package of firm tofu

-one package of soft tofu

-1 TB sugar

-1/2 tsp garlic powder

-2 TB lemon juice

-1 tsp basil

-2 tsp salt

-One package of Pasta shells, large

-One Jar of Pasta sauce

Shawarma Style Roasted Veggies on Rice

Schools done for the summer! So I am right back to doing what I love; cooking, baking, experimenting and homeschooling my little munchkin. All of which is going great. With regards to experimenting, I really like this one dish at a Greek restaurant so this is my attempt to copy the idea of it. I am not going to the trouble of putting the vegetables on skewers like they do. I want something easy that can be thrown together.

How to make it:

1. In an oven safe baking dish, mix together ...

1/4 cup lemon juice

2 tbsp tomato sauce

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp paprika

a pinch of ginger

a pinch of nutmeg

2 tbsp olive oil

2. Chop up a bunch of veggies in big chunks, add them to the dish and mix until coated. I used the following veggies but I am sure any mix would do fine providing you cook denser veggies a little longer. 

2 shallots

1 zucchini

1 bell pepper

A handful of cherry or grape tomatoes

1/2 cup of cauliflower

1/2 cup broccoli

2 big mushrooms

3. Let the veggies marinate for a few hours if you like or just mix them well and pop them in the oven, preheated to 400 F for 30-45 minutes. This goes well with brown rice. 

Making Brown Rice

Brown rice can be tricky but this method works well. Add 2 cups of rice and 3 cups of water to a pot with a tbsp of oil. Bring water to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and add a lid. Simmer for 20 minutes then turn off the heat and let the rice sit undistributed for 20-30 minutes. Then it is ready. Makes 2-3 meals worth for us (us being 2 adults and a toddler). Also you can half the recipe and it still works out fine. 

Finished Product:

Neat Things I Learned On My First Day Of Naturopathic Medical School

Well it is back to school for me! I have been waiting patiently for my turn to go back and today finally came. The main thing I learned is that I am going to be extremely busy. There is a lot of content to absorb and it blows my mind a little bit that I am going to know all this stuff by the time I graduate. Unlike undergrad, I feel like I will be gaining useful knowledge that I have a keen interest in so that should help. Though I also have a baby now. There are lots of moms in my school though, and if they can do it, so can I. And I will as I have already invested heavily in this career and I am simply too cheap to throw that money away.

I still have a stress headache. I wish they gave me some material to start on. Something to focus my energy on right now. I learned a bunch of general facts from my Botanical Medicine prof. that I found very interesting.  I think Botanical Med. will be a favorite of mine, I love the subject, I have used herbs on myself with a great degree of success and I quite like the prof. It is the reason I decided on Naturopathic Medicine.

The placebo effect is basically when a percentage of your test population reaches the desired outcome (ex. is cured) by taking a fake treatment like a sugar pill. Generally in studies, the placebo effect is viewed as a problem, something we correct for. I learned about the placebo effect in a different way today. If you take a step back from the standard thinking and realize that the placebo effect cures some disease than it is a good thing. Helping the patient should be the most important goal, if placebo can help that it should be used.

Some remedies and treatments in the naturopathic world might be powered by placebo, but so are a lot of conventional medications. I don't have sources for any of my info here because I just picked it up from lecture (and I am adding the odd fact I know from elsewhere) but it was mentioned in class that Prozac made 40% of patients feel better. 37% was attributed to placebo. Hmm. I'd rather take a sugar pill and avoid the side effects personally.

The placebo effect can be heightened by some weird things. More side effects and more invasive procedures seem to increase the placebo effect. Preforming fake surgery can cure a patient better than perhaps a fake pill. Big pills work better than little pills, red pills work as better sleeping pills, blue pills are more sedative, etc. Lots of neat psychological effects.

We learned that health authorities are quick to ban herbal treatments which is unfortunate. Kava Kava is an herb that was linked to 5 cases of drug induced hepatitis. There was minimal investigation and it was banned. Tylenol is the leading cause of liver failure (I read elsewhere that it is responsible for about 2000 deaths per year in the US following the recommended dosage, not sure if that is via liver failure or something else) but it is not only on the market but it is over the counter.

The last thing I will mention as I am going to fall asleep at my computer (this must be ripe with spelling errors) is that he stated that there will always be a place for drugs and surgery and I completely agree. I don't think there are many plant medicines that will cure a gun shot wound or a collapsed lung. But the priority should be to provide the patient with the safest, most effective option and botanical medicines tend to be safer and are incredibly powerful. Now I must go to sleep.