30 Day Detox: days 5 and 6

These days were STILL plagued by rain that would not end so prepare yourself for some more poorly lit photos.

Day 5

I was out of fresh fruit and so I made myself a tofu scramble. It had bell pepper, an anaheim chile, some spices, and then after this photo I topped it with salsa. I was in a hurry so it’s not the prettiest looking thing ever. Later on I had an apple.

For lunch my salad consisted of romaine, baby greens, peas, sprouts, carrot, radish, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, roasted chickpeas, and green tahini dressing from Get it Ripe. The dressing was alright. I love hummus but I don’t really care for the taste of tahini on its own. But I had a bunch of parsley to use up so I figured this dressing was perfect for that. For dessert I had an apple.

For supper I made bean chili…which I never use a recipe for…I just throw random things into the pot and let it simmer and keep taste testing. I actually had two bowls of this. I wasn’t really hungry but I went for seconds anyway. A bad habit of mine that I would like to stop.

For an evening snack I had mango “sorbet” which is just frozen mango chunks and agave whirred up in a food processor.

Day 6

I was still out of fresh fruit but by doing some digging I found enough frozen fruit to make myself a smoothie. This had banana, blueberries, protein powder, soy milk, and flax.

For lunch I used up the rest of my salad stuff. It had baby greens, sprouts, radish, carrot, onion, roasted chickpeas, and green tahini dressing. The salad wasn’t that big because I didn’t have that many veggies, so I also had some roasted cauliflower on the side. For dessert I made myself some more of that mango sorbet.

For an afternoon snack I had some kale chips loaded with nutritional yeast.

Dinner was quite late so I had an apple while it was cooking. My dinner consisted of lemon pepper tofu from Vegan Brunch (without the oil), roasted zucchini, and sauteed green beans and mushrooms from Vegan with a Vengeance (once again, no oil). I also had a small glass of soy milk and later on I had another apple.

More food from Get it Ripe

I was on a Get it Ripe kick for awhile. I’m pretty much over that now as once again I am deep in the madness that is the end of the semester while still collecting data for my dissertation. Anyway, I wanted to share the last few things that I made.

Here is the alfredo. I must say that I was not a fan. I had to doctor this up quite a bit. I thickened it with cornstarch as it was way too runny. It also was very tasteless, so I remedied that with nutritional yeast, loads of black pepper, and some different herbs. All in all I wouldn’t make this version again, as there are already lots of great vegan alfredo recipes out there. I served this on spaghetti noodles made of quinoa.

Next to the alfredo are brussel sprouts baked with dijon mustard which I loved! They were super easy to make, too. I might play around with the recipe a bit in the future.

Dijon Brussel Sprouts

• 1 lb. brussel sprouts, ends trimmed (I slice the overly big ones in half)
• 2 tbsp. dijon mustard
• salt and pepper to taste
• cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400 F. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray. Lightly spray brussel sprouts. Toss brussel sprouts with dijon. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bake 10 min. Toss brussel sprouts. Bake anothe 10 minues, or until brussel sprouts reach desired tenderness.

Another thing I made from Get it Ripe was the lentil dahl. I really enjoyed the seasonings in this dish and I think I may combine it with my usual dahl recipe, as I prefer the texture of that one. I think the two combined would be great and I’ll have to play around with that in the future. I served it on a bed of baby spianch like Jae Steele (the author) suggested. I was skeptical at first, but it was actually really good! I omitted the oil to make this Eat to Live compliant.

Butternut Squash Risotto

Another squash post. I also had a butternut squash to use up and I really wanted to make something from Get it Ripe…lo and behold Jae Steele has a recipe for butternut squash risotto. I omitted the oil from the recipe as well as the Earth Balance to make it low fat.

This was alright. My squash wasn’t very flavourful when it was done roasting, which is odd since I adore the flavour of roasted butternut. Must have been a dud squash. I also didn’t have the sweet brown rice she suggested and used regular brown rice. It worked okay, but the texture was a bit off. All in all it wasn’t bad, but I don’t think it was worth the work that went into it. Maybe if I had a better squash and the proper rice.

millet and mushroom tourtière

Not sure what a tourtière is? It’s a meat-pie from Quebec that’s typically served on Christmas or New Years. If you feel like learning more here is the Wikipedia page.

I’ve never had a real meat tourtière, but I hear they’re quite tasty, if you’re an omnivore who is into that sort of thing. But the idea of a meat pie sounded appetizing and comforting and I often thought of making a vegan one. I just never got around to it…until today.

With my dissertation in full swing now I am finding myself with very little spare time. Which means things like going to the gym get scratched off the to do list pretty quickly. So I ordered a few exercise DVD’s from Amazon…and a new cookbook of course. I ordered Get it Ripe by Jae Steele as I had heard so many wonderful things about it. One of the first recipes I flipped to was the millet and mushroom tourtière.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, with the exception that I used Bryanna’s low-fat oil pastry for the crust. I served it smothered in gravy. Mmmm….