A Snobby Joe Kind of Day

When I left the house to go to work this morning, I was pretty happy that the roads didn't look too terrible, considering we got freezing rain from yesterday afternoon until early this morning.  My driveway, on the other hand, was a different story.  It was a total ice rink! Fortunately, after a few tries, I was able to get the car out into the street, and I managed to do it without killing (or maiming) a pedestrian or causing an accident.  After the big storms that we've had two weeks in a row, with no melting time in between, the shoveled snow is piled up on either side of the driveway over 5 feet high.  Then I hear that we are supposed to get another foot of snow on Friday.  UGH.  I am not a winter person even when it's just cold and the ground is clear, but these types of winters, where you're taking your life into your hands every time you go to work, really do bad things to me.  I get the blahs something awful.

In addition, I'm team captain of a healthy eating/weight loss challenge at work, so I've been getting into a new routine with eating and exercising.  I guess since I'm the vegan, I'm a natural choice to lead the team toward healthier eating (and believe me, I'm pushing plant-based meals; I like to convert through delicious food since I don't want to bring politics to work--just wouldn't be a great idea at my job), but over the winter so far, I've been more of a baked goods and convenient, quick meals vegan than an oil-free whole foods vegan.  I know most people choose to make their dietary changes on New Year's Day, but since my birthday is on January 3, I like to postpone any food-related resolutions until later in the month.  So this challenge is well-timed for me in that respect, but in another way, it's not perfect, because with this kind of weather, all I want to do is eat cookies and curl up in bed, not work out and cook healthy meals.  So tonight, I tried to compromise.

I was definitely in a sandwich mood, and I was thinking about some type of burger-style food, but none of the recipes I was finding were appealing to me, so I decided to go with the Snobby Joes from Veganomicon, aka the vegan bible.  It seemed like a good choice, because it's comforting and super-delicious, and even better news for you, the recipe is online here:  http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/snobby-joes/.  So you can try it yourself!  I made a couple of changes, using brown lentils instead of green, and eliminating the oil to lower the calories & fat (by sauteeing the onion & pepper in water).  Otherwise, there's not much reason to change something that is working so well.

Those are some sexy sweet potatoes in the front, dry roasted with salt, pepper & garlic powder

Although this wasn't a dinner I could curl up in bed with (lentils in the bed doesn't sound like a good time, but I guess I have some friends who would disagree--you know who you are!), it certainly hit the spot.  It felt like a guilty pleasure, but there was nothing to be guilty about!

To those of you who are in the central Massachusetts area, stay warm and be safe on the road.  The life you save may be mine!  To those of you elsewhere, please be appreciative that you are elsewhere.  As for me, I'm going to keep exercising and trying to eat good mood food, because even I am getting tired of my miserable attitude!  ;-)

A Quick Snack

Just popping in quickly today to post about a tea time snack I made the other day.  John used to be a big fan of the chocolate chip muffin from Dunkin' Donuts, in theory at least.  Generally when he would get one, it wouldn't be as good as he hoped, and instead would be dry and crumbly.  When we started flirting with the idea of veganism, I bought a couple of cookbooks to try out some recipes, and one of them was How It All Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer.  It seemed like the authors were a lot of fun, and the ingredients were pretty much normal, so I felt like it would be achievable.  The first recipe I picked was the Chocolate Chip Bars, which turned out to be the perfect replacement for chocolate chip muffins, and much more dependably delicious than Dunkin' Donuts.

Sorry for the red tint - low light situation going on here and the tablecloth took over.

These make a great little snack with a cup of tea, or a light breakfast on the go.  I make them with part whole wheat pastry flour to try to up the nutritional profile a bit, and I'd like to try replacing the added fat with applesauce or banana.  I do think the recipe should actually be called Chocolate Chip Muffin Cake, because the texture comes out much more cakey than fudgy, which is not what I would have expected with bars.  The recipe isn't available online, so I can't reprint it here, but I do recommend checking out Barnard & Kramer's book (and their follow up The Garden of Vegan), as both contain a lot of easy, tasty recipes that use ingredients you probably already have on hand, and the ladies are chock-full of personality, which makes the books more fun to read.  You may even be able to find these books at your local library, so don't forget to use that as a resource!

Me & My Cookbooks, plus Red Lentil Artichoke Stew

OK, so I may have a slight vegan cookbook addiction.

This is pretty much all the vegan ones, not counting e-books.

This was definitely a post-vegetarian development.  Before November 2008, I had about 6 cookbooks, and I thought I was overloaded.  Now, I have around 27 vegan only cookbooks, plus 3 vegetarian, plus a few others that are omni but have a large vegan (or veganizable) selection of recipes.  This is also not to mention the myriad of absolutely phenomenal bloggers who are out there putting out great recipes, sometimes daily.  Some of them do have cookbooks out, or coming out (for example, I can guarantee that my next purchase will be The Happy Herbivore Cookbook by Lindsay Nixon of www.happyherbivore.com, due out this month), but some of them don't, and you really need to explore the world of vegan blogging.  I have to admit I have only been a lurker and haven't commented (I am surprisingly internet-shy), but these people are my heroes!

Tonight's recipe is something I originally found in a flyer at Whole Foods about recipes under $40, all of which happened to be vegan.  It also appears in my newest acquisition, The Vegan Table, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  Although I made quite a few changes, I am not comfortable including the actual recipe (I'd rather err on the side of not stealing), but I did find another adapted recipe on another site that is practically the same, so I will link to it and tell you my changes.  Here is the link:  Red Lentil Artichoke Stew.

The spices in the recipe seemed to give more of a Middle Eastern or Indian flair to the dish, but I decided to go more Italian.  My changes:

• I am not a cumin fan, so instead of several teaspoonsful, I only added a dash.  
• I eliminated the coriander.
• I added about a teaspoon of basil.
• I added a dash of oregano (would have been more, but I ran out.  I am an oregano maniac.)
• For the salt/pepper to taste, I went with no salt (plenty from the tomatoes & artichokes) and added about 1/2 tsp of pepper.  
• I increased the red pepper flakes to 1/2 tsp.

Another quick note is that at the beginning, the onion should be sauteed in a bit of water.  This eliminates any need for oil, which is a great bonus, making this a low fat, high protein, whole food meal.  I served over brown rice, and we had a few glasses of Green Truck white wine, which I would highly recommend.  It's organic and vegan, and John said it's his favorite white wine ever.  Usually my heart belongs to red, but for this meal, the white was a nice match.  I don't know anything about wine pairing though, so don't kill me if I sound like an idiot.

This was SO GOOD.  Like, go make it now, in other words.  The great thing was, most everything was already in my pantry.  I had to go buy a lemon for the juice, but that wasn't a big deal.  We had a nice big portion each, and even with that, we both have enough for lunch tomorrow.

I am headed back to work tomorrow.  (GROSS.)   I have to say, it has been so wonderful to be off at the first of the year, starting things off right and having plenty of time to relax but still be able to devote time to my new project and to myself.