Vegan Meatloaf

Ever since I became vegan, I've been craving meatloaf. I used to love meatloaf with mashed potatoes and corn. It was always a comfort meal for me. I found the recipe for a Vegan Chickpea Meatloaf on Pinterest and made it for my hubby and I. 

The recipe required a blender or food processor and ended up being incredibly tasty. It had the consistency and flavor of meatloaf and had a maple glaze on top that was very similar to ketchup. 

The recipe requires you to take all of the ingredients for the meatloaf portion and put it all into a blender and blend it all together. You put the mixture into a baking dish and cover it for 30 minutes and then take it back out to put the glaze on and then leave it uncovered while the glaze is on and cook for another 20 minutes, so the recipe does take a while, but it's worth it. 

If you are ever in the mood for meatloaf, I suggest this recipe for sure! 

Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

I love making pancakes on a Saturday morning and these were

fantastic! They had a great flavor and a great fluffy texture. We followed the recipe from Pinterest for Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes, except I used Vanilla flavored soy milk and added more of the soy milk then suggested because I felt like the batter was too thick. I probably added at least a cup more. I also added a small amount of pumpkin pie spice. Otherwise the recipe was followed precisely. We used the brand of vanilla soy milk in the picture, if you were curious, but any brand would work just fine. 

When putting the batter onto the griddle it didn't lay out like normal batter, it was kind of sticky. I used the spatula to try and flatten out the batter every time I dropped some of the batter on the pan. The directions say to put vegan buttery spread down first, which I did about half the time, both the flapjacks in the butter and not turned out well. After dropping each amount of batter, I would put dairy free mini chocolate chips on top. They worked out very well and tasted great with the pumpkin taste of the pancakes. The recipe only

requires 3 tablespoons of pumpkin puree, so I would suggest that if you make this recipe, make sure that you have another use for the remainder of the pumpkin puree. There are tons of pumpkin vegan recipes out there. 

All in all, this was a delicious Saturday morning breakfast. It was thoroughly enjoyed by both my husband and I with vegan buttery spread and pure maple syrup. It's definitely a recipe that I will make again and again as it was easy and delicious and a great October treat. 

Vegan Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta

My hubby and I were trying to figure out what to make for dinner

tonight. We were lacking in the vegetable department and we were at a point that required some creativity. I went to my trusty pinterest and looked up this Vegan Butternut Squash Pasta because we knew we had butternut squash and pasta that home and just needed a sauce. 

It turned out pretty well. The sauce required a blender or food processor and we ended up with far too much sauce because we used the entire Butternut squash instead of following the recipe's measurement of three cups. 

The flavor was kind of plain. So we added some garlic salt to the top as well as some more of the dried italian herbs that are a part of the recipe. This did help a little. We also used a type of almond cheese on top that was purchased from whole foods. It was great because it melted really well. 

I'd also suggest using a fettuccine pasta like in the picture in the recipe. We only used the pasta that you see in this picture because we had two bags of half pasta that needed to be used. 

The broccoli florets was my favorite part of this pasta and I'd say adding more veggies like maybe some kale, corn, or carrots would add some more flavor to it. 

We have enough sauce leftover to feed an army for a week, so we saved it and are planning to make it into a butternut squash soup. I'll keep track of what we do with it so I can pass along that recipe as well. 

J. Selby's: A Plant-Based Eatery

I had never been to J. Selby's before. It's a vegan restaurant located in St. Paul, MN. My husband and I decided to try it out before a play we were seeing. 

What I wasn't expecting was that you order your food first and then

go sit down at a table. I sort of thought this was going to be a kind of fancy sit down restaurant. However, I didn't let this bug me. We looked at the menu and ordered a plate of vegan nachos, and I ordered a chickpea salad sandwich with fries and my husband ordered one of their raw plates. 

I thought the nachos were pretty good. They came with vegan sour cream and guacamole. The hubby didn't enjoy the fake cheese, but I actually thought it was pretty good considering other fake cheeses I had tried. It was just the right amount of salty and in my opinion, didn't taste too different from a nacho cheese. It came topped with olives and salsa as well. 

The chickpea salad sandwich was pretty good. It reminded me of a tuna salad sandwich. One thing I don't like about restaurant versions of any sort of salad sandwich though is that they always make it sweet instead of tangy. I prefer tangy to sweet in most cases. But, the sandwich was edible and pretty tasty. The fries that came with it were not impressive. Just your average freezer fries with little to no flavor and not the greatest texture. I wouldn't order the fries again. 

The raw bowl was just that, a bowl of raw vegetables with a carrot

ginger dip type thing in the middle of it. When it came out and we realized what it was, we kind of wanted to return it for something more substantial. I mean, we can throw some veggies into a bowl at home and call it dinner for a lot cheaper. So, I personally wouldn't recommend the raw bowl. It worked for my husband because he needed something gluten free, but there were other options for him. 

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good experience. What I love about this place is that it's all vegan. I didn't have to worry about cross contamination or wonder what I could eat. The menu was full of tasty items that were all plant-based. They had house made corn dogs even! I was sitting next to a guy who was eating their cauliflower wings, which are breaded cauliflower with your choice of sauce and my mouth was watering watching him eat those. I'll have to try them next time!

Well, signing off. I hope you enjoyed my post, and I'll see ya next time! 

Kale, Cauliflower, and Carrot Stir Fry

I was running out of ingredients and Chris and I needed dinner and

one of our go to dinners is stir fry. I took out all the veggies I had in the crisper, which ended up being only Kale, Cauliflower and Carrots because my broccoli was completely rotten, which was a bummer because it was a big bushel of broccoli. 

I normally put onions in my stir fry as well as broccoli, but I was short on ingredients. It actually turned out way more tasty than expected. 

I cooked basmati rice in the rice cooker while I sauteed the carrots in the frying pan. Then I chopped and added the Cauliflower and Kale and mixed it up with olive oil and garlic. After the vegetables started to get soft, I added 2 tablespoons of teriyaki sauce and 2 table spoons of soy sauce. Once it was a bit more cooked, I added a bit more soy sauce to make it saucy and then ate it over rice. 

It was quite delicious and easy. I just get sick of stir fry, since my

husband and I eat it all the time. But when it's all you've got in the kitchen, you just go with it! right!?

Thanks for reading! See ya next time:)

Easy Vegan Apple Kale Salad

First of all, kale salad goes with everything. You can make a small

kale salad as a side to any meal or even just eat it as a main dish. I use organic kale from whole foods or from our garden in the summer. The kale I got came in massive leaves, so since I was just making myself a salad, I just used one leaf. I washed it well with water and ripped it into pieces.

I added 1 honey crisp apple sliced into small bite size pieces and

added sliced almonds and dried cranberries. I get the almonds and cranberries from the bins at whole foods. It not only saves me money, but the product is delicious. I don't do well with full raw almonds due to my TMJ, so grabbing them pre-sliced is the best way to do it for me. 

I used Annie's Raspberry Vinaigrette for the dressing, however you

could use any sort of vinaigrette on this salad. My husband makes a great balsamic vinaigrette that would be great on this salad as well. I'll have to share that recipe some time as well. I suggest that you make sure that each leaf is covered in dressing as kale is a very healthy but strongly flavored leaf and the dressing helps to mellow that flavor out a little bit. 

All in all, this is just a really easy salad with only 5 ingredients and is super easy to just throw together for a quick lunch or a quick side dish. 

Enjoy and thanks for reading! :)

Sugar and Carbohydrates VS Cancer

When it finally hit me that I had cancer, trust me it takes a while to

set in, I started doing research on diet. I had already heard from several people and had read several articles via Facebook about how a plant-based-diet was beneficial to anyone who was sick. 

This wasn't just people with cancer, but people with other sorts of diseases, like auto-immune diseases, heart disease, MS, and all sorts of other ailments. I read and watched documentaries and found that a plant-based-diet had helped many people with horrible diseases, including cancer, to heal themselves of the disease, or decrease their symptoms to the point that they no longer needed any medications. In some cases the diseases were cured completely. (I strongly suggest watching the documentary on Netflix called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.)

Well, in one of the books I was reading called Crazy Sexy Diet, the author mentions that cancer feeds on sugar and there were studies done that proved this. So when she switched to a plant-based-diet, the only sweeteners she consumed were Stevia and Agave. Stevia apparently is known to not react to our body the same way that regular sugar does. So it doesn't feed the cancer cells.

Anyways, I had to look into this because it was already hard to switch to plant-based-diet and get rid of all animal products. Did I really have to get rid of sugar too? Was I feeding my cancer by eating carbs and things with sugar in them? Sugar is plant based. So I did some research, and I'm still unsure. There are differing ideas out there. 

Most of the articles say that exercise along with having small meals will decrease the cancer's ability to gain access to the glucose and use it to grow. Other articles say that this is just a myth and that sugar does not make cancer grow faster. It's scary to think that, as a

cancer patient, I'd have to worry about, not only eating well, maintaining my weight, but then also avoiding sugar and carbohydrates. If you are interested, feel free to read the two articles that I got most of my information from below. 

Article # 1

Article #2

Chemotherapy makes you feel yucky and it decreases your appetite or takes it away all together. So eating healthy is very difficult at times because all of the oncology nutritionists will tell you to just eat what you feel like eating. They are concerned with their patients maintaining their weight and nothing else. If you have cancer, diet is the one thing you can control. I suggest watching the documentary What The Health on Netflix and also the documentary Vegecated if you are interested in learning more about plant-based-diets and what they can do for your health. 

I chose to change my diet, and instead of getting rid of sugar and carbohydrates all together, I have just lessened the amount of sugar that I eat in a day. Natural sugars are fine (like in fruits), and good carbohydrates like potatoes, whole grains, nuts, and rice are fine.

You can control your diet and what you eat and if not heal yourself, then assist in the healing process. With my kind of cancer, I didn't have much of a choice to try and heal myself with diet. Acute Myeloid Lukemia is fast acting and so the doctors had to act fast and had me on Chemo my the day after I was admitted to the hospital. Now I'm doing my best to help my healing along by eating a plant based diet and giving my body all of the healthy nutrients it needs to heal the cancer and to stay healthy. Check out the below articles. Article 4 is great if you aren't totally sold on the plant-based diet. Even though I'm vegan and am moving towards a whole food plant-based diet, I thought Article 4 was really helpful. I hope you do as well!

Article 3

Article 4