Here's our gluten-free, vegan food for the day as linked up to Peas & Crayon's "What I Ate Wednesday" with our special theme being "Sensible Snacking".
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| 5:00 AM: Warm water with the juice from half a lemon...here's why. |
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| 5:30 AM Pre-workout snack: 2 gluten-free, vegan pancakes from The Cinnamon Quill blog, with Maple Agave Nectar as my syrup. |
Workout: 1 hour of yoga with 10 Minute Solutions: Yoga...talk about an arm workout! All those chattarungas (aka yoga push ups) really start to add up in this DVD.
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| 8:30AM Breakfast: Chocolate Ice Cream Smoothie Have you tried this smoothie of mine yet? So many greens and it still tastes like ice cream, love it! |
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| Avery's Breakfast: EnvrioKidz Organic Gorilla Munch Cereal and SO Delicious Sugar-Free Vanilla Coconut Milk. Avery loves the gorilla on this cereal, "Ooo ooo ahh ahh!" she'll say as I pull it out of the pantry. |
Just in case you're wondering...she's still nursing several times a day (especially before and after naps and bedtime), so it really helps me to not worry so much if she doesn't eat "all" of her food because I know she's getting any extra nutrients or calories through the breast milk.
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| I threw a few organic strawberries in there since she's loving those right now. |
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| She's usually pretty happy in the morning, especially when she's got her cereal. |
Then we were off to play with her new dollhouse. My awesome brother and his girlfriend got this Little Tikes house for Avery off Craigslist (one way to go green!). Apparently they don't make this style of house anymore, but they were able to find it on there in great shape and full of furniture, little people, and fun accessories. It's been fun seeing Avery learn some imaginative play skills with it, like making the people go up and down the stairs, rocking them in the rocking chair and singing, "La la la" as she pushes them in the pretend swing.
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| Avery's new/used Little Tikes dollhouse. |
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| On this particular day, I was feeling adventurous and added some real water to the pretend swimming pool. Avery went crazy for it! |
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| Her favorite character to play with: the baby, or as she says, "Bebe". |
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| I'm sure we will have many years of use to come from this fun dollhouse. Thanks Austin and Brittnee! |
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| 10:30 AM Morning snack: Peanut Butter & Jelly Larabar |
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| 12:00 Lunch: Vegan Sloppy Joes (see recipe below), on Rudi's Multigrain Gluten-Free bread, with Salt & Pepper Kettle Chips and an ear of organic corn on the cob. |
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| One of my favorite things about summer has got to be fresh, organic corn. You know that kind you "shuck" yourself? It may be messy, but it always tastes so much better than the frozen kind. |
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| Avery was pretty excited about it too. |
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| She chewed away on her "little ear" for a long time! |
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| After lunch we headed outside to play... |
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| ...and run! |
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| 2:15 PM Afternoon snack: bowl of seedless organic green grapes (fruit is one of my favorite sensible snacks!) |
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| Avery was loving them! |
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| She had fun pretending to hand me one of her grapes and then right as I went to get it from her, she would pull away. Sneaky girl! ( : |
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| 4:00 PM 2nd Afternoon snack: 2 slices of Rudi's Multigrian Gluten-free bread with Earth Balance vegan butter and honey. |
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| 5:30 PM Pre-dinner snack: Apple Juice and Amazing Grass Green SuperFood Powder |
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| Avery munched on a few of her favorite snacks: Veggie Straws! |
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| Then I told her we were going to go eat dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house...hold the phone! |
Before leaving, I got dinner all set to go. Tonight's meal was a cheesy broccoli with pasta dish, or "Broc and Mac" as I call it.
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| Want to know how I'm still able to have cheese even though I'm vegan? Well, I often make my own here in the blender! |
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| The ingredients are probably a little different than traditional cheese, but the end product comes pretty close. Some ingredients in this "cheese" include: cashews, water, corn starch, gf all purpose flour, nutritional yeast, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and salt. |
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| Usually then you put it on the stove to warm and thicken it a bit. |
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| End result: yummy, gooey "cheese"! |
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| Here's the finished product for dinner:"Broc and Mac". The cheese recipe is "Cheezy Mac" from Vegan Diner, with 1 pkg. gluten-free Tinkyada noodles, and 1 head of broccoli. |
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| In all honesty, I like to add a special ingredient to my "Broc and Mac"... KETCHUP! Kind of crazy I know, but the tangy flavor of the ketchup really compliments the cheese! Any other ketchup fans out there? |
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| Dessert: "Genuis Chocolate Chip Blondies" from Chocolate-Covered Katie. (It's made from beans!) |
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| Trying out her new "Lansinoh mOmma Straw Cup," since her Lollacup bit the dust. |
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| "Pasta with ketchup is always a fun time for me!" |
Now onto that recipe...vegan sloppy joes! On my vegan journey, sloppy joes were one of those foods that I had given up hope on "veganizing," I mean how could you recreate the texture of ground beef? Those that can have gluten may be able to come close with seitan (a wheat-based meat alternative), but since that option is out for me, I thought I was doomed to a non-sloppy joe future. That's until I came across a sloppy joe recipe that used TVP (or textured vegetable protein). Now I don't eat TVP often since it's one of the more processed versions of soy, as compared to tofu or tempeh, but there are some dishes that it really lends a hand with to recreate that "crumbled meat texture" and sloppy joes are one of them.
On top of getting a nice protein punch from the TVP (12g in 1/4 cup dry), these sloppy joes are also full of veggies like onions, green peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes. So get out your napkins and prepare to get messy with these delicious, vegan sloppy joes
Vegan Sloppy Joes
Inspired by "Sloppy Joes" from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and found here
Ingredients:
- 1 green pepper
- 1 stalk of celery
- 2 onions
- 1-8 oz. pkg. of mushrooms (I use Baby Portabella)
- 2 cups of strained tomatoes I like to use a jar of Bionaturae Organic Strianed Tomatoes because it comes in a glass jar as opposed to a can since canned tomatoes have been found to have some of the highest levels of BPA. There are some cans out there that are BPA-free, but since I haven't pinned those down yet, I stick to the glass option whenever I can.)
- 1/4 ketchup
- 1/4 Bragg's Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce)
- 1 1/2 cups TVP
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1 tsp. chili powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
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| The ingredient group shot. |
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| One thing that will really help cut down on your prep time with this meal is a food processor. Mine is pretty basic, but it gets the job done. |
Steps:
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| 1. Chop the onions, celery, and green pepper into small pieces or food process until they are small enough for your liking. |
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| 2. Now add this veggie mixture to the stove top (I use a cast iron skillet since I avoid Teflon) on Medium-High heat and saute for 3-5 minutes. |
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| 3. While the veggies are sauteing, food process or chop the mushrooms into small pieces. |
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| 4. Next add the mushrooms to the skillet and saute for another 2-3 minutes. |
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| 5. Now add the 1 1/2 cups of water |
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| 6. Followed by the 2 cups of strained tomatoes. Tomato sauce would probably work too, as well as some diced tomatoes blended up to equal 2 cups. |
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| 7. Add the 1/4 cup of ketchup, along with 1 tsp. chili powder, and 1 tsp. salt. |
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| 8. Time for the magic ingredient: TVP, you'll need 1 1/2 cups of it. |
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| 9. Combine all the ingredients and increase the heat until the mixture is boiling. Once boiling, reduce to low and simmer for 10 minutes. |
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| While the sloppy joes are cooking, you could clean your kitchen! Mine always gets crazy while I'm cooking and the "cook time" gives me a few extra minutes to bring some cleanliness back. Can you spot Avery within the mess? |
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| After about 10 minutes, all the liquid and flavors should have absorbed into the TVP leaving you with some fabulous sloppy joes! So eat up! |
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| We love to have our sloppy joes with Kettle Brand Salt & Pepper Crinkle Cut Potato Chips. |
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| You could serve them up on some bread, buns, or just use it to dip chips in! |
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| Rest easy vegans, sloppy joes are back. |
See you all next week!
Recently this recipe was linked up to "Healthy Vegan Fridays" which you can find any of these three blogs: Everyday Vegan Girl, Veggie Nook, and Carrie On Vegan. So get your "vegan on" and check out some other great vegan recipes!
