Variations on a Theme

Becoming a Vegan is a consciousness raising experience. You have to rethink a lot of things you used to do without a second thought: Behavior Modification 101. We're learning to plan ahead (what a novel concept) so we are prepared to eat right. This is the no excuses tour after all!

We discovered a delicious breakfast porridge recipe in the Laurel's Kitchen Cookbook (I'll post it on the next blog) that we have a couple of times a week. It's easy to make up a large container of the dry mix and store it in the refrigerator.

The 21 Vegan Kickstart Program provides a thorough list of ingredients to help you stay on track. We now keep a variety of dry beans in the pantry, veggie burgers in the freezer, and a great selection of fruits and veggies for meal prep and snacks. I made up a tasty brown, black and wild rice mix so we can easily prepare enough for a couple of days.

The program also emails you recipes for each day.  We've been printing out the ones we liked and set up a binder in the kitchen. Yesterday we picked out a weeks worth and will get any missing ingredients on the next shopping trip. So we have been following the basic guidelines since the program started but have been winging it on recipes.

Chef-Boy has truly stepped up to the challenge and is a master of creating utter gastronomic bliss with whatever ingredients are on hand. He is the "cooka" and I am the designated "cleana-upa" which is a partnership that work's great for us. Here is one of his Variations on a Theme: 

He slow cooked a large pot of red beans and sauce (home canned tomato sauce from last summer), froze 2 quarts for another time and kept some aside some for dinner. I should have photographed the presentation, but I was too hungry! Red beans topped with asparagus tips, carrots and squash; a small portion of edemame salad (Costco has a great one) with sliced tomatoes and the kicker: mashed sweet/white potatoes smoothed with an avocado instead of milk and/or butter and little ground pepper. Oh Baby!

Day 10 Observation: We are more creative than we imagined and aren't missing meat, dairy and eggs.