Lunch Break - Wednesday

This lunch took about 10 minutes to put together. Leftovers, fresh fruit, and crackers for the win!

BUTTERNUT SQUASH RISOTTO // This is actually a pre-packaged mix from Costco. It takes forever to make, but it is tasty. Which is a good thing, because we have about 10 lbs of it.

TUNA AND PICKLES // This is real tuna since it's for my husband, but I just found some vegan "toona" at Whole Foods made from pea protein, that I'm pretty excited to try.

RICE CRACKERS // By the people who brought you wheat thins, the saltier, less addicting cracker. They're great with things though. Such as tuna. Or chickpea tuna.

APPLES // Nothing fancy here, just apples.

Lunch Break - Tuesday

From left to right:

CHICKEN FRIED RICE // Includes broccoli, carrots, peas, Cocnut Aminos, sesame oil, and a teeeeeensy amount of chili garlic sauce. Also some chicken, because my husband eats chicken on occasion and with this diet he's eating whatever he can, but you could easily leave the chicken out for a vegan fried rice. It was decent, but I still need to figure out a better mixture of sauces. Coconut Aminos is good, but it doesn't deliver the same flavor punch as soy sauce.

CHIA SEED YOGURT PUDDING // Unsweetened coconut yogurt, which I sweetened with agave syrup and vanilla extract. This is easily kind of gross if you don't add some sort of flavor to the yogurt. So you must add flavor. You must! Almond extract and maple would also probably be pretty tasty. Chia seeds left to soak overnight making a nice pudding consistency. And blackberries on top.

VEGGIES AND HUMMUS // Grape tomatoes and carrots with homemade hummus. Most store-bought hummus - including our usual favorite, Sabra - add soy ingredients, or sugar, or who knows what else...womp womp.  After some research I've found that to up this to Sabra level, I maybe should have creamed the tahini and lemon separately before adding to the chickpeas. Nevertheless, I was pretty pleased with how this turned out. I event went through the trouble of taking the skins off of every single little chickpea! Despite my inexperience in the art of hummus, this was definitely above average. I will post a recipe later!

Avocado Summer Roll

These are one of my new favorite snacks/appetizers. They are light, healthy, and crazy delicious. There are lots of variations you can make to the recipe below. You could include cabbage, jicama, baked tofu, bean sprouts etc. One thing I always tend to include though is fresh basil. Mixed with the light rice paper and crunchy vegetables, the flavors combine for a perfect and refreshing summer snack.

Kale Chips

I am quite envious of my mom's garden. She has all sorts of herbs, vegetables, fruits, berries, and pretty much anything else a garden would grow. Every day seems to bring a new harvest. Today that harvest was kale. Lots and lots of kale. With the abundance of the vegetable, and knowing there are only so many kale salads one can eat, she gave me several bushels. Naturally, I made kale chips. 

For those of you curious about this healthy snack, it's very easy to make, quite high in nutrition, and depending on the amount of oil you use, relatively low in fat and calories. And for the flavor, it's really quite satisfying. My only qualm is that the texture reminds me of a crispier nori, the seaweed wrapper used for sushi. If there was some way to make these even the least bit thicker, they would be perfect. But even despite their paper thinness, I would still recommend them to anyone looking for a healthy in between meals snack.

Alternative use: Crumbled kale chips make a great seasoning for anything from popcorn to french fries.

Artichokes and Lemon Butter

I had never had a steamed artichoke dipped in lemon butter (made with Earth Balance soy butter) before. So when artichokes became a good price at Whole Foods, my boyfriend bought me one, prepared it, and we ate on the balcony on one of the nicest evenings we've had in a while.

It was delicious.

Granola Bars

I heard rumors that granola was not too difficult to make, but I just never got around to seeing if there was any validity to that claim. I think it was one of those things where everyone was saying how easy it was, but since it's so delicious, in my opinion, I didn't really believe it could be all that easy and was afraid I'd be the one person in the world that couldn't make it. But the price of granola in stores and the overwhelming amount of things that I had around the house that were just begging to be part of granola made me cave in. And what do you know?! It is easy to make! This is a huge breakthrough for me. I've thoroughly enjoyed having these granola bars to snack on all week as opposed to picking at the cookie dough that was sitting in the fridge. The downside is that I've eaten way to much of them way to fast. Guess it's time to make some more!

And now a note about this recipe. You may notice that there are two ingredient lists. No, this was not an accident. The first is the exact ingredient list for "Kitchen Sink Granola Bars." But I didn't have all the exact ingredients to make them, so I improvised here and there and I thought I'd share with you what I used so that you could make the same bars I did. I mean, that is, if you want to. But really, don't feel obligated to use what I used, or even what the original recipe instructs. There's a lot of freedom to be had. If you don't like nuts, don't put them in. If you don't have agave, use maple syrup. If you hate oats, well, you probably shouldn't be making granola bars...sorry. But go crazy, let your imagination run wild and please let me know if you come across a super winning combination.