Vegan Highlights from the Week

With my recent commitment to my preschool blogging, I have put my vegan blogging on the back burner.  I wish I could spend the whole day doing both because I so enjoy it, but I'm short on time these days.  So this week, after a successful three posts on my work blog, I give you an overview of what emerged from my kitchen this week.

Remember my cold last week?  This orange juice smoothie helped me kick that cold's butt!  Contains oranges, lemons, a grapefruit, some garlic (wait, did I already blog about this one?).  Okay then here's another one I've had on my to-blog-about list:

Apple Pie Smoothie.  Apples, oats, cinnamon, ginger, almond milk.  Maybe a dollop of maple syrup.

Collards, fennel bulb and squash in cheezy cashew cream sauce (cashew cream, apple cider vinegar, onion powder, black pepper, mustard, miso) topped with pine nuts.  My husband's was topped with veggie bacon.  Served over brown rice.

Add some olives and call it a salad for lunch tomorrow.

Risotto Style Barley from Vegan Epicurean

This was delicious and inspired the following day's rice method.

Trader Joe's Cuban Black Beans (one of the few pre-prepped foods I eat and they are a treat!) and Brown Rice, Risotto style (it was so good, next time I'll post the recipe if I can remember how I made it...the creamy addition at the end was cooked down cashew cream from the above cheezy cashew cream sauce, plus I spread this concoction on the flatbread).   This meal was my favorite this week.

Wholesome veggie soup.  Thin sliced carrots, celery, crimini mushrooms, chayote, onions and garlic with a little bullion and tomato paste.  At the end I added potato gnocchi (I lied about the beans being the only pre-prepped thing I eat...I had store-bought gnocchi this week!).  It was so good, I had dinner, went out for the night, and came back and had it for a second dinner!  Tristan loved this soup.

Desperate to find a use for two weeks' worth of radicchio from my CSA box, I ate almost a whole head of the stuff in this recipe.  Sure, his dish looks better, liquidier, better color, more balanced.  But mine tasted great.

Strawberry Frozen Dessert from the Vita-Mix.  Frozen strawberries, frozen coconut milk, frozen banana, a dollop of water to process, a dash of cinnamon and a scoop of cashew cream.  Topped w/vegan chocolate chips (they were more for the picture than anything...you can't even taste them in the ice cream) and chopped pecans (now those you could taste and were good!)

I've also started taking vitamin supplements this week and they make a big difference in how I feel, not so much physically, but all-around.  Less mental tension.  Clockwise from top: Mushroom complex (for immunity), B complex, magnesium/potassium, WTCB (for immunity), zinc (for immunity).  I also have digestive enzymes, sea vegetation, calcium and vitamin D.  Although right as I typed that my vegan nutritionist friend emailed me and told me to throw all my calcium and magnesium/potassium away, so this list may be changing very soon : )

QUESTION:

Have you ever used purple kale in a smoothie?  Was it the same as green kale?  I'm going to try it tomorrow and I'll let you know how it turns out (but if you've had a smoothie fail because of purple kale, save me before it's too late!).