1 Tbsp. coconut oil

16 oz. (extra) firm tofu, cubed

4 cloves garlic, minced

assortment of red, yellow, and orange pepper slices, cubed

shredded coconut

3-4 Tbsp. coconut vinegar

3-4 Tbsp. agave nectar

1-2 tsp. lemon juice

Heat the coconut oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the cubed tofu when the oil is hot and let it cook in the skillet for about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add in the minced garlic. After the tofu has been cooking for about 10 minutes, add in the peppers.

While the tofu is cooking, mix together the coconut vinegar, agave nectar, and lemon juice. When the tofu is starting to lightly brown, add the mixture to the skillet. Sprinkle shredded coconut (as much as you’d like) over the tofu in the skillet, and continue cooking, stirring often.

When the tofu is browned on all sides (and is at the consistency you’d like it to be), remove from heat and enjoy!

I would have taken a picture of my coconut sauteed tofu, but I was so hungry that I started eating the tofu as soon as it had finished cooking… I didn’t put it over rice or anything because it was delicious all on its own; however, it would taste great with rice or anything else you’d want to eat sauteed tofu with.

The recipe said it called for about 1 hour 10 minutes to prep and cook; knowing my cooking abilities, I figured it would take at least 2 hours. I was pretty close to being right. What the recipe doesn’t tell you, though, is that it is far easier if you have a pair of helping hands. If it had been me alone in my kitchen last night, it probably would have taken me much longer to make the dish, not to mention that something probably would have burned while I was doing other steps in the recipe. The end result was worth the time and effort it took both of us to make it, though. It rivals the ratatouille experience, which is saying a lot for me.

It reminded me, though, that cooking isn’t really meant to be a solo activity. Cooking is more fun when you know someone else will be enjoying the food you’re making (which doesn’t happen often in my household since everyone who lives with me refuses to try my vegan dishes). When I’m alone in the kitchen, I like to turn on songs to keep me company, and I sing while I cook. While singing, dancing, and cooking can be a fun combination, it doesn’t quite compare to the feeling you get when you’ve got a helper in the kitchen to talk to and share the aromas of your culinary masterpiece with.

Cooking with someone else also revitalized my love for food and gave me a much needed prod to get back into blogging. I have so many posts I need to get up here, yet I’ve been diverting from sitting down and getting back to blogging. It feels good to be back. A big heartfelt thank you goes out to Jackie, who was my partner in mis-chef last night (yes, I spelled that wrong in an attempt to be witty).

I need to find a happy medium between the Eat to Live plan and simply eating whatever I happen to be craving for the moment; for example, instead of eating 90% of my daily intake from fruits and veggies, maybe I could eat 70% of my intake from fruits and veggies and still feel the health benefits.

Just this morning I went back to my morning coffee routine, and I feel like I am welcoming back an old friend. In order to not completely unwrite what good I had done by kicking the caffeine habit, I am drinking decaffeinated coffee (which I realize still has some caffeine in it, but not nearly as much as caffeinated coffee has).

While this chapter of my eating history is coming to a close, I still look forward to my renewed love of food in my vegan diet. I’ll have to post about the delicious Cuban Black Bean soup that had me salivating for an entire week, and hopefully I’ll have something to say about the Spinach Lasagna I’m attempting to make this weekend (with a “tofu ricotta” to substitute for cheese).

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Asparagus Soup

Asparagus Soup

Yields 4 large servings (roughly 2 cups per serving)

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 leeks (white and some green parts), chopped

3-4 medium carrots, chopped

1-2 stalks celery, chopped

2-3 pounds asparagus (a bunch is generally close to a pound), cut into 1-inch pieces

2-3 squash (green or yellow), cut into 1-inch cubes

4 cups (32 oz.) vegetable stock

1 cup water

1 tsp basil

salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Once it is heated, add the garlic and sauté for a minute or two (don’t let the garlic get brown). Add in the chopped leeks, carrots, and celery, stirring occasionally. Cook the vegetables until they are soft but not yet brown (about 5 minutes or so).

Add in the vegetable stock, water, asparagus, squash, basil, salt, and pepper, and bring to a light boil. Cover and turn down the heat to low. Cook for 20-25 minutes, or until the asparagus and squash are soft.

Allow the soup to cool slightly and then transfer the soup to a food processor. Blend the mixture until it is creamy. If your food processor is about the same size as mine, you may need to do this step several times (I was only able to get about 1/4 of the soup mixture into my food processor at a time). If you have to do it in stages, make sure you’re getting vegetables and liquid into the food processor for each round of blending.

If the soup mixture is cool, reheat it in a saucepan over low heat; otherwise, it is ready to enjoy. If you have fresh basil on hand, chopped fresh basil as a garnish in this soup is rather delicious.

When I tried the soup, I was surprised at how delicious it was. It has the consistency of split pea soup but all the flavor of roasted garlic and asparagus.

If you try the soup, let me know what you think!

When I woke up on Saturday, I made it my goal to find a recipe to maximize the use of my newly acquired vegetables. Not only did I want to use the vegetables while they were still at their freshest, but I also had dinner plans that night with my friend Jackie. She was coming over to enjoy some delicious vegan cuisine with me.

I found the jackpot in the Moosewood Restaurant’s Simple Suppers, a cookbook I’ve owned for over a year but haven’t made enough use out of. It was a ratatouille recipe. Prior to last Saturday, the only thing I knew for sure about ratatouille was that there was a cute movie about a rat who made ratatouille. I figured it was originally French (the name gives its origins away), but that was about the extent of my knowledge. I figured I’d give the recipe a whirl, though, because it called for most of the ingredients I already had in my fridge–the only things I had to pick up at the farmer’s market were onions, eggplant, and garlic (the garlic I ended up having to get at the grocery store).

The recipe directions claimed that only about 15-20 minutes of preparation were required (the other 40 minutes were cooking time), so I started prepping around 5:00 for a 6:00 dinner. At 6:15, I was still prepping…

My major roadblock is that I am not a quick chopper–when I have a knife in my hands, I tend to move methodically to make sure my fingers don’t get under the blade, and I haven’t quite figured out the art of mincing and dicing and chopping the way the pros do it. I also had no idea what I was doing with half of my ingredients. I had to stop several times to look up how-to videos on YouTube (thank God for YouTube!): How to Peel an Eggplant, How to Prepare Garlic… I hadn’t worked with onions in over a decade, so I even had to do a little refresher with how to peel them without taking off too many onion layers.

At one point, I even called my sister to ask questions about eggplant and garlic. I had never worked with natural garlic before, so I had no idea what to do with this head of garlic. It cracked me up because as I was pressing the head to separate the cloves and then thwacking the cloves to separate them from their peels, my sister was giving me directions based on the sounds she was hearing coming through the phone on my end. It totally reminded me of the episode of Friends where Ross is on a date wearing leather pants. The leather pants are making him sweat so much that he goes into the girl’s bathroom and takes off his leather pants to cool down. But then he couldn’t get them back on. So he called Joey, who told him to try lotion (among other things), and when Ross tries to pull his pants up with lotion-covered hands, his hand slips off his pants and hits his forehead with a ‘thwack.’ On the other end of the phone, Joey nods and says, “Sounds like it’s working.”

When Jackie arrived at 6:00, the ratatouille hadn’t even made it to the oven yet, so it was a good thing she didn’t arrive starving. During the 40 minutes of bake time, I prepared some sauteed Swiss chard, and Jackie taught me how to chiffonade basil (‘chiffonade’ is my new favorite word). The smells coming from the oven were aromatic, so when we finally sat down to eat, I was super-excited to try the ratatouille.

I fell in love. It was creamy and heavenly and … I can’t even find all the right adjectives to insert here to fully describe the awesomeness called ratatouille.

Unfortunately, I discovered that I really don’t like Swiss chard no matter how it’s prepared (I’ve tried raw, steamed, sauteed, and boiled). But not liking the chard meant that I could wipe off half my plate to make room for more ratatouille.

What made the ratatouille even more delicious was knowing that all the ingredients–except the garlic–came directly from local farms. My mouth is watering now just looking at these pictures and writing about the food. This recipe is a definite keeper and do-again-er!

Travel Channel's Man v. Food

You’d think shows like Biggest Loser would be more inspiring because they focus on getting people healthy. But for me, I see those shows and get tired of watching as the contestants get bigger and bigger each year and treat the show more as a game than as a life-changing get-healthy push. I used to watch Biggest Loser and eat junk food at the same time. Not inspiring.

But with Man v. Food, I watch as Adam Richman challenges himself to eat massive portions of entirely unhealthy food, and I start craving fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m morbidly fascinated by what he’ll put into his body, and every time I watch his food get prepared, I renew my commitment to getting and staying healthy. The show inspires me both to eat healthy and to exercise. It also inspires me to stay vegan. That might sound counterintuitive, as Richman eats anything but vegan food on the show, but let me explain.

Last night’s new episode featured Richman in Cleveland, Ohio, eating a 14-cheese grilled cheese sandwich with large servings of french fries and cole slaw on the side. Altogether, it was a 5-pound platter. I used to love grilled cheese, and chances are, if I were to eat another one right now, I’d still love it. But as I watched 14 different cheeses get piled onto three huge slices of bread, my stomach turned. Watching the cheeses melt together and make a big gooey mess didn’t make my mouth water–it had the opposite effect on me. Watching people take omnivorous eating habits to the extreme and practically cut out anything to do with vegetables and fruits makes me remember that I used to do the same thing (though never to the 14-cheese grilled cheese extreme) and makes me want to stay on the current dietary path I’m traveling.

As a reminder, I’m vegan for health reasons. So as I watch the show, my main concentration is on thinking about the nutrients–or lack thereof–that are going into people’s bodies who choose to eat those oversized portions of meat, more meat, and maybe some potatoes fried in grease. And that visualization of what is going into their bodies (of what used to go into my body) inspires me to remain vegan.

My body also responded by losing nearly 3 pounds in a week. I know most people go through rapid weight loss right at the beginning of a dietary change for the better, but my body takes a little bit longer to respond, and last week was that highly responsive week. The rapid weight loss helped keep me inspired even through some stressful situations.

On top of all that, I’m starting to see other benefits, particularly in my skin. I’ve long battled skin problems (as I’ve mentioned before), and the past couple days I’ve started noticing how good my skin looks. My skin looks alive–it’s practically glowing. I’ve also noticed that I have more energy, so when I work out, I get a lot more exercise in and look forward to my next session (instead of dreading it). Overall, I feel great.

I feel a little like an infomercial, but with all the positive experience I’m having with the Eat to Live plan, I’d suggest it for anyone wanting to vamp up their health and energy.

My second month anniversary of being a vegan has come and gone, and the only mishaps I’ve had so far have been accidental: casein-laden veggie cheese, poppyseed dressing, and a possibly suspect slice of bread from a restaurant. Not too shabby!

This week also marks the beginning of my third week on the Eat to Live plan, as outlined by Dr. Fuhrman in his Eat to Live book. So far, I’ve done pretty well on a day-to-day basis; I have, though, incorporated two cheat days (both of which were Saturdays). In cheating, though, I’m still eating vegan–I’m just eating things like Oreos and Teddy Grahams and lots of bread, all of which are not included in the Eat to Live plan (well, bread in small quantities can be included, but what I’ve consumed on the past two Saturdays could not be described as small quantities).

My first cheat day was a week ago on Saturday, which coincided with my first photography gig at a wedding (to be specific, it was my first photography gig ever, and it happened to be a wedding). It was an outdoor wedding, and it was hot. And sticky from the humidity. The only vegan-friendly food there was a fruit platter. So I ate a lot of fruit. By the time I got home, I was craving anything but what I should be eating (after salivating over the cake I wouldn’t let myself eat, I thought I deserved something sweet).

My second cheat day was this past Saturday, which was also the day we spent at the Blueberry Festival. For anyone in East Texas, they know the Blueberry Festival is a huge ordeal and a lot of fun but is also really disgusting because it’s so darn hot outside. I was hot and felt nasty, so I snacked on fruit all morning until we got home. I ended up just snacking the rest of my way through the day.

Do you see a pattern? I do: Saturdays are dangerous; spending time outdoors in the heat is dangerous; eating tons of fruit all at once is dangerous. Put all three of those together in one day, and I’ve got myself a cheat day.

Were the cheat days worth it? Not really. I woke up on Sunday morning–both times–feeling bloated and a little yucky. But I don’t regret them because they felt necessary when I was in the moment. If having a couple cheat days will keep me on target in the long run, then I’ll take them.

I am working my way toward one measurable goal: I’ve managed to lose 4 pounds in two weeks (even with the cheat days). Hooray for eating tons of leafy greens!

I mentioned in my last post that I’m hoping the Eat to Live plan will help with my acne, something I’ve struggled with since middle school. I was one of the youngest patients to be put on Accutane (I was only 12), yet no one told me that if I modified my diet I might have been able to see results without taking incredibly toxic drugs–and I would’ve gladly tried other more natural remedies before going with the Accutane (anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of undergoing the Accutane regime knows what I’m talking about). The Accutane worked… for a few years. I’ve since been battling acne on my own with over-the-counter face care products and then more recently with skinID products. I have yet to be happy with my skin.

I feel vain concentrating on the hope that new eating habits will help clear my skin when I have more important health concerns to focus on, and yet of all the things mentioned in the Eat to Live book, my eyes gleamed a little brighter when he mentioned something about a link between acne and food intake.

I seem to be adjusting to my new eating habits pretty well–the caffeine headaches have been nearly nonexistent for most of today, and my stomach has been fairly happy today. I think I might be eating more fruit than Dr. Fuhrman had intended for people to eat on the plan (given a choice between fruit and veggies, I’ll go for the fruit every time), and I’m nowhere near the 2 lbs. of leafy greens he suggests on a daily basis (in fact, I’m still working toward getting 1/2 lb. daily). But I am sticking to the oil-free cooking, consuming beans daily, and limiting grains/nuts principles. So I’d say I’ve been pretty successful so far. So far, so good.

My forlorn coffee pot, mug, grinder, and espresso machine.

Let me start off with the reasons I love coffee. Smelling freshly brewed coffee reminds me of being a kid; every morning, my parents shared a pot of coffee. At the time, I thought the black liquid was disgusting, but I did love the smell. Even the sound of coffee brewing is enough to make me feel peaceful as my mind goes into comfort mode. Over the years, I have grown to love the taste of coffee–so much so that I now drink it black. I used to have to dilute it with cream, but now I couldn’t imagine diluting the taste of fresh-brewed coffee with anything (unless it’s McDonald’s coffee or some other chain–then I dilute away). Hot liquid first thing in the morning is soothing for my throat; my throat is perpetually dry when I wake up, and coffee makes that go away. There is something therapeutic about early morning reading and drinking coffee–it feels good.

While I love drinking coffee, I get tired of having to make coffee every day. The tedium of having to grind the beans and set up the coffee pot every day gets old. While I love having my slow mornings, I don’t like that if I wanted to jump in the car as soon as I got up, I couldn’t. I’d have to either have my to-go cup of coffee with me or I’d have to run by Starbucks. I realize I’m a caffeine addict (even though I’ve weaned myself down to drinking decaf coffee and tea, the amount of caffeine in them both is enough to keep me drinking), and I don’t like being addicted to substances. I don’t like that my body is sensitive enough to caffeine that if I don’t get the same amount of caffeine from day to day, I get headaches and fatigue. I also don’t like that coffee stains my teeth. I try not to be vain, and I don’t mind not having perfectly white teeth; however, I don’t like having teeth that, to me, look yellow. Overall, I think not drinking coffee every morning will feel liberating, to some degree. It will open up possibilities for how I choose to spend my morning rather than providing a schedule of spending at least an hour at home to drink my coffee.

Since I skipped my evening tea last night, I could already feel the headache coming on before I went to bed; surprisingly, it’s not much worse right now, but I’m sure it will get worse as the day goes on. Because I was drinking mostly decaf beverages, I’m hoping that my adjustment period will only last for a few days. When I was younger, I quit drinking caffeine (I was addicted to Mt. Dew at the time), and I went through two weeks of painful headaches, fatigue, and mood swings before my body finally leveled out. After seeing how violently my body reacts to caffeine withdrawal, the smart thing would’ve been to never pick up the caffeine habit again, but why would I want to do the smart thing?

Yesterday went well as my semi-first day on the Eat to Live plan (semi-first because I had coffee in the morning). One thing that has me excited about this new plan is that it allows me to chuck calorie-counting and food journaling out the window. In fact, it tells me to eat as much as I want–as long as I’m eating the right food. There is a certain amount of freedom to think that any time I feel hungry, I can go to the fridge and pull out something yummy to snack on. In the book, Dr. Fuhrman says several times that Americans have never felt true hunger, and after last night, I understand what he was saying. I had a caffeine-withdrawal headache, and my body interpreted that to mean I was hungry. I knew I had just eaten a large meal and couldn’t possibly actually want anything to eat, yet the urge to eat was so great that I had to eat something. I snacked on some blackberries, which made me feel better, but had I not been on this new plan, I would’ve grabbed something bready or sugary during those hunger pains, which would’ve made me want to eat more. I’m excited about detoxifying to get rid of those fake hunger pains.

My primary goal in eating to live is to get my cholesterol levels down–way down. I want to get it below 150; at my last blood draw, it was hovering around 200. Secondary goals include losing the extra weight I’m carrying around (only about 10-20 more pounds to go–the precise number depends on how much muscle my body starts building), getting clearer skin without having to rely on products filled with salicylic acid and benzyl peroxide, having more energy, not having as many aches and pains in my already arthritic knees, and just feeling better all around. If what Dr. Fuhrman says in his book is true, my goals are in line with my new eating habits. Oh, the possibilities!

So as I say goodbye to coffee (for at least the next six weeks), I say hello to a better me.