Day 8
Saturday was a day of much repeated food, finishing up leftovers before cooking some more. I started the morning with a smoothie of kale, banana, strawberries, peanut butter and udo’s oil, along with my coQ10 and multivitamin. I love the cute little bubbles on top of this smoothie! I also had some chai tea to wake me up before a big grocery shopping trip. I tend to sleep in on weekends when possible, so no morning snack was required.
Upon my return from the grocery store and unloading what felt like a massive amount of groceries, I had a salad with leaf lettuce, shredded carrot, red pepper, sauteed cajun tofu and non-honey honey mustard, and brewed some cinnamony coffee then added almond milk, cause the tea just didn’t do it for me. My afternoon snack was two apricots, half a cantaloupe and some pistachios, and I also had a few beers because Dave and our friend Tom were brewing in the kitchen, and how could I NOT have beer while the whole house smelled of it? For dinner I ate the last of the brown rice ‘n’ beans jumble-aya and steamed green beans. Due to getting up later on the weekends I also tend to stay up later, and I became ravenous a few hours after dinner so I popped some no-oil-added popcorn in the microwave. I tried to stick some seasoned salt and nutritional yeast on the popcorn with a new olive oil sprayer I got, but it still didn’t work! Most of the seasoning ended up in the bottom of the bowl. Anyone have a trick for getting seasoning to stick to popcorn other than dousing it in Earth Balance?
Day 9
This nice purple smoothie contained kale, a whole container of blackberries, a peach, udo’s, almond milk, mixed berry rice protein powder and agave nectar. The taste was good, but I put in the whole packet of rice protein powder which I shouldn’t have done since it made it kind of powdery. I normally use only half a packet in each smoothie.
My lunch salad was inspired by trying to figure out what to do with the cherry tomatoes provided by my CSA. I reeeally don’t like cherry tomatoes raw, either whole or halved. There’s something about the taut nature of the skin, with the juicy inside and how they pop and all the raw tomato flavor. Blech. I remembered reading somewhere that you could slow-roast tomatoes, so I found this instructional online. With as much as the author raved about them, I figured I couldn’t lose.
before…
…and after…
…and a close up.
Boy, do these tomatoes deliver! All the weird texture that I dislike disappears and leaves a chewy, tasty little tomato. I went for simple and left out the garlic and herbs called for, spraying the baking sheet and tomatoes with olive oil and seasoning simply with a little kosher salt and fresh black pepper. These guys really don’t need a lot of help to taste good. I took the smaller ones out of the oven after 2 hours but left most of them in for 2 1/2. This will probably be what I do with any more small tomatoes I get from my CSA this summer!
To use my tasty tomatoes, I made what I am calling a Greekish salad.
This lovely plate has leaf and romaine lettuces, cucumbers, chickpeas, red onion, artichoke hearts, slow-roasted tomatoes, Sunflower Feta from Yellow Rose Recipes and an herb vinaigrette. I’m not a huge fan of this feta. The texture is feta-like and worked in the salad, but the taste alone just kind of tastes like tofu, lemon juice and sunflower seeds. I think I’d like it better with cubed tofu that marinates or brines for a longer time. Along with lunch, I took a spirulina tablet that I bought on Saturday to start taking a few times a week. My afternoon snack was a pear and half a cantaloupe.
For dinner I made Tofu Vindaloo from Vegan Planet. In the spirit of trying new grains, I cooked up some buckwheat. Good news – I like buckwheat! It has no actual relation to wheat, is ready in 15-20 minutes, and is quite good for you nutritionally. I think I overcooked the buckwheat just a tad, so I’m looking forward to trying it again soon. The vindaloo was just okay. I liked the large amount of fresh ginger and spicy kick but hoped that there would be more of a sauce. This was more like well flavored tofu and veggies with some juice in the bottom of the bowl. After dinner I had two beers, to kind of say goodbye to the weekend.
Day 10
This was a great smoothie that I couldn’t get a good picture of: spinach, banana, mango, strawberries, udo’s, almond milk and amazing meal powder (original flavor). Using spinach as my green resulted in a MUCH smoother consistency than using kale gave me. I also took coQ10 and my multi.
I was so excited about my morning snack that I took a picture while packing it up – figs and cherries. Yum! To perk me up, I drank some darjeeling tea.
For lunch I had the same exact Greekish salad as above, with some added capers and a probiotic supplement on the side. I wanted to include capers the first time but couldn’t find them in the fridge! My afternoon snack was an apple with peanut butter, and dinner was tofu vindaloo with buckwheat and chilled camomile tea. It was much, much too hot for hot tea.
Well, that’s days 8-10. I’m not hungry all the time any more, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m unwittingly eating more calories or if I’m getting used to lightening up my diet. Jessy told me she wasn’t hungry all the time after her first week on ACT, so perhaps it’s psychological! I haven’t seen any more weight loss, in fact I think I may have jumped up just a bit, but it’s only part way through the week so we shall see.
