Food Prep 2/21-Enchiladas

We are having enchiladas this week.  I had some taco cup mix left over from last month in my freezer, so I used that for my fillings.  The girls have about the same, just ground turkey instead and no rotel.
Which from this batch I made, I will never use in my enchiladas, it made the filling to wet and soggy.

Oh well, you live and learn.

I am using the Go Veg Cheddar Shreds this week.  I've never had them, but I am hoping they will be as good as the Mozz from last week.

There isn't much to discuss this week so enjoy the lunches.

                                               

                                                                    The Girl's

Happy Birthday!

Bijoux

                                                                 Bexley

Today my girls turn 4.  I can't believe it's been that long.  So in honor of their birthday I decided to make them a vegan dog treat.  I was not about to go buy ingredients so I googled some recipes with peanut butter, since I new I had that on hand.  I have just about everything else, so that wouldn't be a problem.

I found a recipe on this site Vegaprocity.  It has some interesting stuff on it so I tried the recipe.  I used 1 cup of flour and 2 cups of coconut flour.   I also used a smidge less peanut butter, that shit sucks to scoop out.  And I added more water as it was mixing.  It was looking pretty dry.  I ended up with 1/2 a cup of water total.

The mix still didn't form into balls like a regular cookie would, so I just mashed them in my hand and whatever shape I got is what I got.  My girls are not picky about shapes (because they're dogs).

I had a lot of mix left so I put the rest in a baking dish.  Maybe it will make bars or something.

The recipe says 10 mins, but my ish started to burn on the cookie sheet.  But I put the baking dish back in for another 10 mins.

Once they were cool, they held together pretty well.  Still a little crumbly, but they will do the job. Enjoy the pics.

And HAPPY HAPPY, to my annoying, energetic, loving, loyal, overweight, excitable, smart, friendly, and wild girls!

OOTD Week 2/13-2/17

This week I was inspired by Balentine's Day (no typo) so I decided to go with PINK as my color.  I chose a nail color that looked pink in the bottle, but is more of a candy apple red on my nails. So I will not being adding that to the outfit photos.  Anyway, I never realized how much pink I actually owned, but I have enough that I could do pink at least 2 weeks in a row.  Enjoy this week's outfit choices.

Food Prep Week 2/13

This week we had veggie lasagna.  And let me tell you it is bomb.  The girls had real ricotta and real cheese and I had an almond milk ricotta and vegan cheese.

I went to Whole Foods for the vegan items.  So far in all the times I have called or been in store looking for a type of product I have been steered wrong.  Basically, they seem to not really know what products they carry or are not really all that willing to look.  Either way, being that Whole Foods carries so much bizarre shit, I assumed dairy free ricotta wouldn't be that difficult to find.  They have a vegan "dairy" section so I figured it would be there.  And I was right.  I should work for them, I can tell you what they carry better than they can.

Anyway, so I only saw one brand of ricotta.  It is almond milk and looks gross.  It looks nothing like the pic online.  First of all it is brown, secondly it looks more like hummus, but cooks up nicely and you can't even tell it's not the real thing.  I also added Go Veggie Mozzarella Shreds .  These are also pretty tasty and even melt.  Not like real cheese, but it still melts better than some other vegan cheeses I have tried.  I didn't care for the American Cheese from this brand.  But as my mom says, "That's because American is not real cheese".

So in the lasagna we used the same veggies.  I cooked eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, onion cubes (like bouillon cubes, but onion flavored), garlic, Italian seasoning and my house seasoning (salt, black pepper, and garlic powder).  Once those were soft I assembled the lasagna.

The girls had a meat flavored pasta sauce and I used a chunky mushroom.  I never thought spaghetti sauce would be so difficult to search through.  Even the sauces with veggies sometimes have hidden dairy in them. So beware if you are truly eating a vegan/plant based diet.  But I digress.

I used oven ready lasagna for the first time ever. GENIUS!  Where have I been all this time.  If the product says manufactured in a plant that contains milk/egg ingredients I still use them.  I just don't use them if the dairy is in the product.  So these are good to go.  I did find it interesting that the Wal-Mart brand was dairy free and the name brand had both milk and egg and cost more.  So it was a win-win for Wal-Mart.

I'm not going to bore you with how I assembled the lasagna just enjoy the pics instead.

                                       
                                                            The Girl's Lasagna

                                                           My Vegan Lasagna

OOTD Week 2/6

This week is brought on by the color marigold, or mustard.  Which ever you'd prefer to call it.

I'm feeling good about my outfit choices and being able to put together pretty awesome outfits.  I did plan my colors based on my nail polish choice this week.  So I decided to match my clothes to my nails this week!  This has been fun for sure.

Food Prep Week 2/6-2/10--Burger and Tots

This week we went with burgers and fries.  A tiny twist in that the girls have black bean burgers and I have vegan Boca burgers and tater tots.  I chose tater tots because they last better for the week and cook better in the microwave.

The MorningStar brand uses dairy in the foods, which I will never understand.  I feel it is unnecessary to add dairy especially since it is all processed anyway.  Why not remove as much animal fat as possible?

As I mentioned before I don't care for the vegan cheeses so i skipped the cheese and used avocado as my healthy fat.  This shit is bomb.

The girls have cheese with their burgers and no avocado.  In total we are looking at about  459 for my burger and the girls are about the same, a little higher at 494.

Food Prep Week 1/30- Lettuce Wraps Taco Style

Last week I had a craving for burritos, but wanted to keep it fairly light.  So I opted for lettuce in place of tortillas.  The fillings are everything I would put in a taco, except cheese.  I am not a huge fan of vegan cheeses, so I have mostly opted for not having them at all. It is surprisingly pretty easy to cut cheese once you get used to it.  Plus the alternatives really make the food taste weird so I am better without it.

In this lunch we have red leaf lettuce.  Beyond meat crumbles, black beans, no salt added corn, no salt added Rotel, yellow onion and some garlic.  I didn't season the crumbles this time, because they looked like they already have something on them.  The last time I used them, I did season them, but it was a different flavor of crumbles.

The girls have ground turkey for their meat, and their corn and rotel have salt (I don't reduce their salt intake.  I am more concerned with my blood pressure levels and swollen feet as far as salt is concerned).  I keep our veggies and fillings the same for the sake of keeping it simple.  Mostly I only change the meat.  The girls don't have cheese either. 

Everything is an estimate, but my lunch should be about 279 calories for two taco wraps.  The girls should be about 358 for two taco wraps.  

The cost is pretty cheap this week at $8.50 or $2.83/day for a cup of meat mixture and lettuce each day.

Enjoy this week's lunch:

OOTD Week 1/30

This week is sponsored by the color burgundy.  I had an outfit planned from last week that I didn't get to wear because I was out sick, so I saved it for this week.  We have two days of casual (Monday and Tuesday) and then back to business.  I decided that since I have so many clothes I could go back to keeping my weekly outfits in the same color family.  I am going to go back to matching my nails to my clothing for the week as well.  Fashion is fun, and I am having a grand time.

Enjoy this week: