Vegan Homemade

Day 19

My Wednesday morning smoothie had baby spinach and red chard, banana, strawberries, almond butter, chia seeds and coconut milk, and I took my multi and b complex.  My morning snack was two nectarines, figs and chai tea.  For lunch I had a semi-repeat of the roasted chickpea salad from the days before, except I was out of roasted chickpeas.  This salad contained leaf lettuce, sliced carrot, squash, radish and persian cucumber, chickpeas and an everything-in-the-pantry balsamic vinaigrette, and I took a probiotic supplement.  For an afternoon snack I had carrot sticks, green bell pepper strips and pistachios.  Exciting, I know!

I’d been wanting to make some breakfast for dinner, so I turned to Vegan Brunch and picked out the Sesame Tofu Scramble with Greens and Yams.

Honestly, if you had asked me after my first reading of Vegan Brunch what the first ten recipes I would try would be, this one wouldn’t have even been close.  I thought it fit best in my cleanse though since it has everything in a bowl, and I’m really glad I made this because it’s a spectacular recipe!  It’s less of a tofu scramble, I’d say, and more of a delicious, Asian-inspired, make-your-tummy-super-happy kind of dish.  I served it over savory oat bran which may seem like an odd choice, but the creaminess was actually a perfect texture foil to the scramble, which was soft but chunky.  I should also say that I added baby shiitake mushrooms and dulse, and I’d do it again because they were the perfect complements to round out the meal.  After dinner I had apple cranberry tea.

Day 20

Another fuzzy smoothie picture.  After this was taken, Dave bought and installed a bunch of new lightbulbs in the kitchen and living room, which have bettered my pictures.  I knew we had lightbulbs out and that I was having trouble focusing on some pictures, but hadn’t put two and two together.  Doh!  Anyway, this smoothie was made from baby spinach and red chard, banana, strawberries, berry pomegranate hempshake, udo’s oil and coconut milk, and I took my multi and coQ10.  At work, I had two apricots, a plum and coffee with coconut milk.

Since I had made dinner the night before and didn’t have the energy to prep another whole meal, and I was out of salad fixings, I decided to buy a salad for lunch.  Gasp!  Luckily, there is a restaurant near my office, Smart Alec’s, who claim they are “healthy fast food” and offer a few salad options, as well as a downright decent veggie burger and air-baked fries.

Sorry for the awful photo, I forgot to bring my camera so this is from a cell phone.  I chose their Sesame Tofu Salad, which is kind of funny because I had just had sesame tofu for dinner the night before, and the salad that I was supposed to bring but was too lazy to prep was an Asian-y cabbage salad.  I guess I really wanted sesame and tofu!  This salad had lettuce, a wee bit of red cabbage, baked tofu, crispy rice noodles and sesame dressing.  The tofu was hot when they put it in the container so it wilted the lettuce a little, which I actually like.  My only complaint about this salad is that it could’ve used more veggies, but overeall it was quite good.

The afternoon snack of the day was carrot sticks, cucumber slices and bell pepper strips with White Bean Pesto Dip from Versatile Vegetarian, which sounds uneventful save the fact that while I was slicing the cucumber that morning I sustained my first cooking injury!  I cut my thumb.  Not so bad that it needed stitches, but bad enough that it bled quite a bit and I felt a little woozy.  I was kind of excited to go into cooking school next month never having cut myself (I’m sure it would’ve happened eventually, possibly AT school), but I also kind of feel like I went through some sort of rite of passage into becoming a real chef.  So much so that I felt the need to document my battle scar.  Click here ONLY if you’re a bit morbidly curious and don’t mind the sight of blood.

For dinner I had more sesame tofu scramble over oat bran, and I took another picture because I thought the first one from the night before was too covered in sesame seeds.  For this one I mixed the seeds in first so you can actually see what it looks like.  Before bed, I had camomile tea.

Day 21

I had planned to make Friday morning’s smoothie with some blackberries, but upon taking the berries out of the fridge they had gone moldy.  So I went to plan B and included baby spinach and red chard, banana, frozen mango, mango pomegranate hempshake, udo’s and coconut milk.  This smoothie turned out fantastically, so apart from wasting berries, I was kind of glad I couldn’t use them.  I also took my multi and b complex.  For a morning snack I had a pear, a plum, figs and coffee with coconut milk.

For lunch, I made Napa Cabbage Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce from Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen and added cubed, smoked tofu.  I feel this salad wasn’t named appropriately, because there’s no peanut sauce anywhere.  It’s really a sesame-soy dressing over cabbage with chopped peanuts sprinkled on top.  The flavors were good, but it was a whole lot of cabbage to eat at once.  The recipe called for the salad to be dressed just before serving, but I feel like it may have benefitted from the cabbage sitting in the dressing, like a slaw.  My afternoon snack was carrot sticks, squash slices and red bell pepper with white bean pesto dip.

On the way home from work I picked up some black cherry and citrus vodkas and diet tonic water to have some flavored vodka tonics.  I had one of each, and more sesame tofu scramble over oat bran for dinner, then we spontaneously decided to go to Oakland to see a friend’s band play.  I had two beers there, and when we got back home I was starving.  I wanted a crunchy snack and didn’t have much in the way of cleanse-friendly snacks that weren’t nuts, so I popped some popcorn and seasoned it using Bianca’s tip (see the comments of this post).  It worked!  I seasoned with nutritional yeast, dried dill, salt and probably too much black pepper.

You may remember that i was disappointed to gain a bit of weight during the second week.  Well, the good news is that I lost 2.5 pounds this week!  Yay!  That makes 4.7 pounds total in 3 weeks.  Not bad, for me at least.