Why Don't You ...

Instead of eating because you're bored, why don't you ...

Clean something up. Choose something small like a junk drawer, a single shelf in a cupboard, or your cosmetic bag.

Get outside. Taking a 10-15 minute walk makes everything better.

Brush your pet or give a loved one a hand or foot rub.

Find a new recipe. You don't have to commit to making it.

Update your list of goals. If you don't have a list of goals ... um ... why?

Find some good light and groom your brows. They can always use it.

Write someone a note and mail it.

Write a LinkedIn recommendation for someone.

Update your iTunes playlists or sign up for Pandora and create new playlists.

Shred some old documents you've been meaning to get rid of.


Start a journal. In the book Happier, the author suggests you write a journal and include a portion about gratitude. 

Cheater Cheater Chicken Dinner Eater

Mea culpa: I have been completely uninspired the last month or so to write anything for moreskinnydays. I am in somewhat of a vegan recipe rut and have deviated from said vegan recipe rut with the following:

• An In-N-Out double double at my company-sponsored burger bash (meh)
• Panko oven baked chicken with buckwheat pancakes, a meal that looked like some sort of Rachel Ray feast had crashed into the foreign foods section of Whole Foods. (delicious)
• Corned beef finger sandwiches, beer battered fish, and chicken fingers at a neighborhood pub (delicious).

To combat this ... behavior ... I have been a slave to Tony, the charismatic instructor to BeachBody's P90X DVDs. Have you tried this? While not following the program to a tee I have been doing at least one DVD daily including kenpo, plyometrics, ab ripper, core synergistics, and a triceps routine that actually works my arms instead of my shoulders. 

I should be able to begin swimming in another month or so. Summer how I missed you.

Favorite Vegan Blogs

ohsheglows: I like the recipes and she does a great job photographing the food. Her food is pure and macrobiotic--not a lot of weird additions. Some of the cookie recipes are amazing.

veganyumyum: I die for the Alfredo sauce here. The photography is great and all the dishes look appetizing. Some of this is pretty fancy cooking (i.e., recipes inside recipes) but relies in my opinion a bit too much on soy meat replacers. I am cool with the occasional tempeh but I think it should be used sparingly--we shouldn't just swap meat for soy.

fatfreevegan.com: These are homey recipes. My good friend swears by the site so I am passing it along, but I haven't yet found my joy here.

This isn't a blog, but a recipe for out-of-this-world raw vegan chocolate mousse!

12 Commandments

I recently began reading The Happiness Project blog. It's based upon a best selling book about a project that a woman, Gretchen, undertakes to spend a year toward improving happiness. One of the exercises that she suggests is writing your own Personal 12 Commandments. I thought it was a great exercise. My favorite of her 12 is to Be Gretchen, which means of letting go of things that are not Gretchen--letting yourself be sad for things that you are not and letting those go.

Here are my 12:

1. Practice La Bella Figura. I included a link so you could read the long explanation. It's an Italian thing.
2. Everything is a tradeoff. Every choice you made whether it was a side dish at dinner, a career, a major, or if you flossed this morning. 
3. Fix the problem. Sounds easy enough but often we're not willing to stop and be introspective enough to ask the uncomfortable questions and get to the root of the matter.
4. Be still, be present, be quiet. There is a lot of anxiety in American culture. Americans are so quick to talk (interrupt), move around and fidget, and then move onto the next big thing. 
5. Be grateful. My personal struggle.
6. Organize, simplify, and streamline. When it comes to things, one needs fewer, not more.
7. Add beauty daily. Do one thing a day that makes you, your space, your life more beautiful.
8. Find your muse. There are ruts. When they happen, you must get out of them. 
9. Get outside. Again, this is borrowed from Gretchen.
10. Think about the person you want to become and then act accordingly.
11. Say "No thank you." Whether it's a piece of cake, an invitation to the event of the year, or a lifestyle choice, be okay opting out.
12. Appreciate Plenism. Nature abhors a vacuum. Since the universe is continually plotting against you to fill everything with something, you must work extra hard to create space, be it an empty shelf in your home, a free hour in your day, or no plans for lunch on a Friday.

Veganomania

Since eliminating dairy and reducing the amount of meat, i.e., food with a face, I have enjoyed my new way of eating so much I am not sure I can stop. It's way too good! Suddenly I realize that I relied a bit too much on the salty yet creamy flavor of cheese in a tortilla, the scald bacon bits in pasta, or the melty goodness of butter in oatmeal. Going without these things forces you to make different choices to add flavor--which has turned out to be such an addicting flavor bonanza I am not sure if I want to go back! Look at what I have been eating:

• Vegetarian sandwiches: Two slices of Trader Joe's organic whole wheat Tuscan Pane* with avocado smeared on both slices and then sprinkle flax seeds onto the avocado. Add two kale leaves, shredded carrots, thinly sliced Persian cucumbers, spinach, and red pepper slices. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar if you like.
  

• Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo: Pasta with the sauce made from Tahini and raw cashews. Sinfully delicious! I added bake cauliflower to this and pasta for a completely filling meal.
  

• Rice, Kemp's Black Beans, and yams: Kemp's recipe is delicious! Add some lime juice to the beans and it's the most satisfying and comforting weeknight meal ever.

• Chocolate Chip Cookies: Ridiculous. These will ruin your life. Everyone who tries these say "You gotta be kidding me! These are vegan?" Yes, they make vegan chocolate chips and they are super good.

• Tempeh, Soba Noodles, and Kale: This is so good! First you make the facon. Next you make the greens and noodles, but use soba noodles instead of spaghetti, shallots instead of garlic, and of course omit the Parmesan. Then you mix the facon into the dish! You can use the facon marinade to add extra flavor to the dish if you dare!
  

*High in sodium, so reduce elsewhere that day.

Situational Vegan

My husband and I have declared ourselves situational vegans. I know, it sounds weird. But here is how it has progressed.

Ten years ago we ate everything. We made Boboli pepperoni pizza at home, had Ben and Jerry's ice cream with the log of Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies for dessert and we ate Mexican food. I cooked recipes from the Weight Watchers site and we ate low fat snacks. We were a bit chubby but for the most part we enjoyed our food, although we were often bored with it.

Five years ago we began making our own pizza crust, ate dessert on weekends only, and reduced our meat intake to chicken, pork chops, and buffalo burgers. We swapped creamer for soy milk, yoplait for plain yogurt, breakfast cereal for steel cut oatmeal and increased our consumption of vegetables, significantly. We began to really enjoy cooking and eating our creations. We probably each lost about 5 lbs.

Two years ago we swapped soy for almond milk and I began making soup, bread, granola and vegetarian chili. We started treating vegetables as the main dish. We cut out red meat except when entertaining, save the monthly buffalo burger. We stopped eating cheese as a snack and instead ate an occasional grilled cheese sandwich or quesadilla on a rainy night or Parmesan shavings for pasta dishes. I brought home new grains (kamut, millet, quinoa, and barley) that added new interest to recipes formerly prepared with brown rice. We started to love our food, almost to the point of not being excited to go out to dinner. Whatever we were cooking usually tasted so much better! Oh, and we both lost 10 pounds.

Six months ago we began drinking Glowing Green Smoothies before breakfast. We swapped our beloved chicken breast sandwiches for vegetable sandwiches and love them even more! We have discovered delicious bean recipes that serve as the protein base along side rice and kamut and that varieties of beans are much more healthy and delicious than chicken thighs. Our regular weeknight dinners--baked squash, homemade soup and bread, pilafs, and veggie sandwiches are something we both look forward to. We are discovering that there is no need to add a layer of grated Parmesan nor a pat of Irish butter to every piece of bread. We are dedicated Sunday farmers market patrons and find ourselves completing cleaning out the refrigerator by Saturday afternoon.

So are we vegans? No. I enjoy entertaining and that usually means cooking something with meat or dairy. I like to be a gracious guest and enjoy what I am served; I don't want to torture my host with a list of "I don'ts." When we go out to dinner--Indian, Lebanese, Italian, or sushi--we want to enjoy the bounty that is offered. We're situational vegans--working to reduce the amount of animal product we consume for our health and for the health of the planet.

Eating Clean, Week Two

Eating a clean lunch means eliminating processed foods high in sodium and preservatives from your diet. I pack a lunch daily with simple, delicious and nutritious foods. You don't have to be a chef or in your own kitchen to eat a healthy meal daily.

Begin with a salad. Every lunch should contain a salad. It's fibrous bulk that keeps you full for very few calories. Try cabbage, spinach, mache, chopped romaine, or endive for the base. Add shredded carrots, raw peas, chopped cucumber (I like the Persian variety), red peppers, tomatoes, or other chopped vegetables to add nutrients.

I eat my daily pre-lunch salad without dressing, but if you do use dressing make your own with lemon juice and high quality, fresh oils and vinegars. Oils go rancid rapidly, so make sure to buy smaller bottles and discard them every 90 days or so. Discard all purchased pre-made dressing. They contain stabilizers, high amounts of sodium, and weird jelly-like chemicals to make the consistency gooey. Everybody I know who buys dressing keeps it in the door of their fridge for months on end and says "this dressing is pretty good." Throw that crap away and stop putting these toxic chemicals on your fresh vegetables.

"Grey the meat and drain the grease." This was the first line in a chili recipe I ran across. Eliminate ground meats from your diet altogether. Nobody should ingest this. Work to eliminate the habit (it's just a habit after all) of thinking you need meat for lunch. More protein is contained in vegetables than in meat pound for pound. Animal products are the only source of cholesterol and once you reduce your intake, your cholesterol will drop. Of course the dairy/meat and drug industries don't want you to believe this--they'd rather keep you eating the animal products and buying the drugs. When you do eat meat for lunch, opt for organic meat that you prepare yourself and stick to only 3 ounces and not every day.

So what should you eat for lunch? Vegetable soup that you prepare yourself, vegetarian chili, lentil and whole grain pilafs (so many combinations), vegetable sandwiches on organic bread, almond butter and fruit sandwiches on homemade bread, vegetable wraps, and baked and reheated vegetables and potatoes. I will eat the same thing for lunch twice per week, so each week I only need to create four different lunches.

So, in summary:

• Eat a vegetable salad with lunch
• Discard commercial dressings
• Get used to vegetarian lunches
• Prepare soup, sandwiches, wraps, chilis and pilafs using fresh, organic ingredients