So, my daughter asked me if I plan on returning to my vegetarian habits when she leaves home.
I said no, but the more I think about it— the answer might be yes.
I probably eat 75% plant-based naturally. I even eat quite a few vegan meals, like the Hungryroot zucchini falafel I had for lunch yesterday in a sweet potato wrap with green chili sauce and lemon tahini.
As the teenager likes to remind me; I put beans or vegetables in just about every meal.
I find plant-based cuisine quicker to prepare, very versatile and easier for me to get the nutrients I need. And harder to overeat. Easier to stay lean.
And easier to avoid processed or fatty foods.
But the volume of food needed to gain muscle and stay satiated when weight training is intimidating. If I weren’t at the gym— I know I could keep a good diet. But I’m already struggling with my macros so it makes me nervous.
This is when I turn toward Simnett Nutrition, Gaz Oakley the Avant Garde Vegan and even Abbey Sharp on YouTube.
I also ordered a Green Chef meal box. This accompanies the meals and groceries I have delivered from Purple Carrot and Hungryroot.
I “do” Purple Carrot and Hungryroot once a month each and I was jonesing for an extra Purple Carrot box last night at 1:30 a.m. but I missed my order cut off and found a discount code for 50% off a Green Chef box so…
And the teen and I are supposed to go grocery shopping at noon today. I intend to go to the gym, hit the weights hard, and come home and meal plan. I need to make it harder to abuse myself with food.
Speaking of the gym… My Nick Best/Best Strong t-shirt by Barbell Apparel arrived Tuesday night and I am so excited to wear it to the gym. Nick Best is a strong man athlete up there with Brian Shaw and Edie Hall, but Nick is in his fifties. I can relate to his philosophy:
My trainer Dan at Apex Fitness said something last week that made me chuckle and made me beam with pride.
“I forget you can handle more [weight] than most [women].”
“I still got it?” I asked.
He laughed.
Dan is very good at using full body motions even on isolated body part days. So on leg day we’ll throw in some bicep curls after those deadlifts and on upper body day, we do things that focus on form and stretching the lower body in addition to burning out the arms and chest.
I’m noticing much more flexibility in my body and that my chiropractor has gotten more agressive as well.
And I get to play with Dan’s super adorable baby and we talk a lot about food. He just picked up a client who is a vegetarian and doesn’t like tofu and some other stuff. We were brainstorming protein sources.
I thought I’d make a list.
Here’s my favorite vegan athlete on YouTube: Simnett Nutrition. Look at the sheer volume of food he eats. That is why I can’t be vegan. It has nothing to do with the diet— I just couldn’t stomach that much food.
Nut butters (morning hack— coffee, nut butter and yogurt smoothie. Add dates if you want to feel trendy)
Homemade salad dressings featuring tahini or peanut butter
Add black beans or chick peas to anything you can
Add hummus or tahini and/or sprouts to sandwiches. Pick bread with higher protein.
Nuts and seeds (including chia, flax and hemp) on salads, oatmeal, in baked goods or smoothies
Ancient grain or chick pea pasta
Peas and lentils
Frozen lentil pasta
Morningstar vegetarian breakfast patties
“Wheat meat”/seitan
Brussel sprouts
Adding beans or eggs to soups
Eggs & cheese
Snap pea snack crisps
Special K nut and fruit protein bars
Sweet Earth frozen foods
And for vegetarian meal services/meal kits:
Purple Carrot offers meal kits and prepared food. They have low calorie and high protein options are plant-based and get on the table in about 40 minutes. Purple Carrot is expensive, and requires a minimum of three dinners a week. Read my previous blogs on Purple Carrot here.
Hungryroot has more flexibility than Purple Carrot and offers “free protein”with each box. You can order meal kits, prepared foods or groceries. I get one or two meals and spent the rest of my credits on groceries. A lot of their recipes include extra ingredients— instead of a small jar of a tablespoon of Chile sauce for example, they send a tub. So you can use the extra for other meals. They can get on the table very quickly. They use a lot of “whole” main ingredients coupled with prepared sauces which keeps nutrient value high but prep time low. Read about my impressions of Hungryroot here.
Hello Fresh has a lot of great recipes and offers vegetarian food. All the sauces are incredible. But you spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Also expensive. Servings tend to be small. I am told Every Plate is cheaper. Myexperience with Hello Fresh is here.
First I’ll let the photos and video speak for itself.
Next, a little back story. Some familiar to my readers, some probably new.
1. When other people go to Target, order weird lamps off the internet, buy clothes or troll yard sales, my version of retail therapy revolves around food. Wegmans is my happy place.
2. I spent my twenties as a vegetarian— even tried veganism for about six months. Back then, you had to go to the natural food store to buy non-dairy milk and you had two choices: rice or soy. Both came in aseptic boxes that were shelf stable. I don’t like the big business that agriculture has become, and I don’t like not knowing what is happening to my food via industrialized farming.
Why did I stop?
I got pregnant. The teenager has always been a huge carnivore. I had gestational diabetes while pregnant so I started eating turkey sandwiches to change up some of my proteins.
Then when the teenager was about 18 months old, I started craving bacon cheeseburgers (and I don’t even really like bacon). That was probably when my anemia started.
3. I am really enjoying this tour of meal delivery kits I’ve been doing this summer. Hello Fresh has flashy recipe cards, a lot of rice, a lot of prep and amazing sauces. Hungryroot has a nifty blend of “groceries” and “recipes” so if I just want that out-of-this-world snack cheddar, I don’t need to order the whole grilled cheese kit. The recipes are an easy blend of processed and fresh, so the fridge-to-table time is a fraction oh Hello Fresh.
Now we add Purple Carrot. It’s the plant-based Hello Fresh. Three things about them I liked as soon as I opened the box:
They send a booklet of all the recipes for the meals and extras, regardless of what you ordered. I lost the Hungryroot recipes. And Hello Fresh gives you your meals. This is practically a little cookbook.
Their bags and containers are all clearly labeled.
The bags and containers are all clear. It’s easy to see everything.
Based on my initial impression— making one of the four meals I ordered— here are my thoughts.
Pro
The vegetables shine, instead of being a side dish.
I finally know how to make tofu crispy.
Even though they are plant based, they still have high protein options.
It’s been an exciting week for Aspire to Autonomy, Inc., and an even more exciting Friday night!
As early as Monday, the communications team at Aspire will be sending out a press release talking about all of this excitement. If you are reading this, you are getting a taste of what the media will learn Monday.
On Monday, our new team of 6+ social work interns from the graduate programs of Kutztown and Marywood universities started work with Aspire. So it’s great to have new people with new energy and new voices.
In the middle of the week, as Darnell and I were trying to put the finishing touches on the organization’s 2019-2020 Annual Report, Amber let us know that Northampton County had approved Aspire’s grant application for more than $8,000 to provide masks and hand sanitizer to the underserved and unsheltered.
Today, Aspire learned that Just Born has awarded the Community Intervention Service pilot program a $2,500 grant.
The teenager at Third Street Alliance
Me passing off masks and hand sanitizer
Darnell explaining what’s in the bag
Me explaining the food to Nan
A closer look of Aman’s offerings
On top of all of this, Aspire had the opportunity to host a hot meal distribution of quality vegetarian Indian food from Aman’s Artisanal Indian Cuisine on Northampton Street in downtown Easton.
Aman’s worked with Lehigh Valley Sikhs to pay for and prepare these generous meals that Aspire distributed to the elderly, disabled and other underserved individuals identified as part of the Communities Impacting Communities program, primarily in West Ward, Easton, but also in Wilson borough.
Bulk meal distributions happened at Third Street Alliance for Women and Children and other Lehigh Valley non-profits. I helped distribute some meals at Third Street, with teenager in tow, and delivered others to families in my own neighborhood who I know have been furloughed since the beginning of the pandemic.
As I was leaving, Darnell gave me one of the single person bags to give to my blind, senior citizen friend, Nan.
I hadn’t even thought about her— her fixed income, her disability, her reliance on friends for what she needs, and her age. To me, she’s just my good friend and partner in crime. I was touched that Darnell remembered Nan and wanted the outreach to help her too.
This is why I Aspire—the Lehigh Valley is one of the most populated regions in the state. Its transportation infrastructure makes every other region of the country super accessible. It has proximity to New York City, Philadelphia and the New Jersey shipping ports.
Human trafficking happens here and it may not look like what you expect it to look like.
Human trafficking is modern day slavery.
Aspire to Autonomy wants to find trafficking victims and give them the tools and support they need to rebuild an independent life. But they are forward-thinking and broad-reaching and grassroots in their vision.
They celebrated their second anniversary in July and they are gaining momentum every day.
Their anti-trafficking vision also helps strengthen our communities and forges partnerships and connections that hopefully will improve life for every underserved citizen. Because traffickers prey on the vulnerable, and if we strengthen our bonds in our neighborhoods, traffickers won’t have a place to hide. Or a place to hunt.
This is Why I Aspire. Anti-trafficking may sound like a niche, but helping our neighbors is not.
So, as I wrote this, Nan finished her first meal of the goodies from Aman’s that I brought her. As a blind person, she couldn’t quite recall what everything was but she offered strong reviews of the deliciousness.
She had some of the “cross between vegetable soup and vegetarian chili” (lentil and black bean curry) and loved the “cucumber salad” (cucumber salad with chickpeas) and had to dip a spoon in the “fruity pudding” (sweet pudding). She reports that the individual bag is at least two meals, but the cucumber salad probably won’t last the night.
She confirmed that she has never had Indian food before and that she is now a fan.
And she asked me—after making me promise to thank Darnell, “is it okay to have Indian food for breakfast?”
There are several reasons why I love vegan cooking, but there are also several reasons why I won’t go vegan.
Why I love vegan cooking:
It’s simple.
When done correctly, it usually features fresh, whole foods.
Gaz Oakley, the avant garde vegan. Look him up on YouTube.
It’s a great way to empty the fridge.
It’s healthy.
It reduces the impact of seasonal allergies by lowering the body’s production of phlegm.
Why I won’t go vegan:
I have a high metabolism and I require an unusual blend of macros higher in fat and protein and lower in carbohydrates than a lot of my peers. To reach those macro goals via veganism requires a large amount of food.
I can’t drink my coffee black.
I was vegetarian for eight years, which ended when I was diagnosed was gestational diabetes at the beginning of my second trimester of pregnancy. I remained primarily vegetarian until my daughter was about 18 months old. At that point, I started craving bacon cheeseburgers even though I hadn’t eaten red meat in a decade and I hated bacon.
Why I went vegetarian:
I hate touching meat.
I hate modern factory farming practices (luckily I live in the middle of some great family farms and can buy milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, honey and meat from them if I want to be ethical).
It’s so healthy, when you’re not living on refined white carbohydrates— which I was.
Why I stopped being vegetarian:
The teenager is a huge carnivore. As a preschooler she told my mom she had to go shoot a bear so she could eat the ham out of him.
A French cookbook. A friend brought me a cookbook in French, from France. I had to cook the recipes.
The onset of anemia, which is when I started craving bacon cheeseburgers.
Today I experimented with some vegan cooking. Do not try this at home until you read this whole post.
Pumpkin Tacos
A few weeks ago, I made vegan tacos with sweet potato in the filling. They were so good! (Recipe here) So I wondered if pumpkin tacos would be similar. The answer is NO!
I heated some corn tortillas— 3 — because you know what’s worse than a vegan pumpkin taco, three vegan pumpkin tacos. It reminded me of the vegan hot dog recipe that recommended steaming and sautéing a whole carrot and placing it in a bun and eating it like a hot dog.
Don’t do it.
Then I filled each tortilla with some canned pumpkin, organic black beans from the Grocery Outlet, and lots of lettuce that I got on clearance for 50 cents at Lidl, 10 days ago.
And I sprinkled each with fresh lime juice.
I ate them. But never again.
My second vegan experiment today involved making my own creamy, tangy hot sauce.
Now this, my lovelies, I encourage you to try.
Vegan black bean hot sauce— upper left, 11 o’clock
Vegan Black Bean Citrus Hot Sauce
In the Nutri Ninja (or high powered blender or smoothie mixer) combine:
Hot peppers to taste— mine were from my mother’s garden and may have included habanero. I used about the equivalent of one cup.
1/2 can organic black beans, rinsed—mine came from the Grocery Outlet
About 1/2 clove diced garlic
Juice of one small lemon
Juice of 1/2 lime
A few tablespoons water
Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil—I like the cold-pressed imported from Lebanon that I buy at Forks Mediterranean Deli
If you try it, let me know what you think.
Nala approved, she kept sticking her head in the dirty Ninja cup.
Yesterday was a very nice Sunday. We went out to the backyard to enjoy a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. We had a big bags of lemons and Meyer lemons.
Fresh squeezed lemonade with unsweetened tea
We rescued a baby sparrow, and set in up in the parakeet cage in the backyard. That way his momma could still feed him but he’d be safe from wild or domestic animals. My mother-in-law thought he was a day or two away from flying.
Momma
Baby
Yes, I let the teenager capture a baby bird. Watching his momma dote on him was beyond precious.
And then he crawled out of the cage and hid between the garage and the fence.
For dinner I made an exquisite vegetarian ramen dish to use some of the fresh ginger I bought at Tucker Provisions. I based the recipe on one I found in Bon Appétit.
I mixed up the ginger, some carrots and some cabbage in my Ninja. I sautéed everything with garlic, coconut oil, fresh chives and some spices. I mixed a sauce of apple cider vinegar, low sodium soy sauce, sesame oil and vegetable oil and poured it over everything. Then I toasted some sesame seeds in the mix.
I cooked the ramen. I made some egg drop in the ramen water, and scooped the mix out of the water with a slotted spoon.
Then I placed the vegetable mix over the noodles.
My Ramen
The meaty bits in the photo are Golden Island Korean Barbecue Pork Jerky. I found them at the Grocery Outlet. The teenager enjoyed them. It was a way to add extra protein. Tasted more or less like every other kind of jerky.
And to round out the evening, I poured a stiff drink (mint whiskey and Diet Coke as that’s the only alcohol I have in the house) and watched TV and binged on Double Good popcorn.
So I’m a pound heavier today but the time with the teenager was worth it.
This morning, I tried the other Siggi yogurt Ibought at the Grocery Outlet. I couldn’t wait to try it as it was strawberry rhubarb. The smooth, not sweet yogurt might be my new favorite brand.
Many years ago, I used to blog every meal I made, in part because I had friends in far away states who wanted my recipes. Also because I am frugal. I also kept the blog because I never cooked the same meal twice and I wanted to preserve my best dishes. Even if they were an accident.
I promised the teenager we could take her kitten on a car ride. His first. So I ordered him a hamburger patty from Wendy’s and we also got french fries for Nala.
Scared kitten
Hamburger for kitten
Misty at Wendy’s
Then we came home and started dinner of leftovers and the next round of goodies from Grocery Outlet to make luscious vegetarian tacos.
Ingredients:
Corn tortillas, I don’t even remember when/where I bought them. I heated them in the skillet with coconut oil and a touch of chili powder and smoked paprika.
Green leaf lettuce leftover over from Tucker Silk Mill/Tucker Provisions from the burger kit I bought for Memorial Day two weeks ago.
A Boca Southwestern Skillet vegetarian dinner kit I bought at Grocery Outlet last night for less than $3. Three servings, though the outside of the package said serves 2. The sauce was tasty.
Jalapeño velveeta, also from the Grocery Outlet, which I got for 47 cents. A touch gave the taco some fire.
We had Italian black olives but we opted not to open them.
There are often silver linings to difficult situations, and that is true even when marriages end. Once upon a time, my husband and I were the couple that everyone thought would last forever and that expectation— and the shock I often see when I say we’ve split up after 20 years—makes the separation hard.
I still know everything I once loved about my husband, the teenager’s father, my first love. And I will always cherish those memories and I will miss those feelings we once had for each other. As I’m sure he has similar nostalgia and good-heartedness.
It was he who told me no matter what happened we would always be family.
And we will.
But there are some parts of this process that are uplifting. New beginnings. New traditions. No more compromising.
Ending family curses.
I mean that. You see, my household had a curse that involved grilling.
You see, every day time we tried to grill, it rained.
Today, I decided to grill. We have a couple of portable charcoal grills. I even sprung for the instant/match light charcoal.
But I decided to keep it vegetarian.
That way if I didn’t get everything cooked properly I didn’t have to worry about the internal temperature of meat.
And since I paid for about ten years of Girl Scout summer camp for the teenager, she should be able to cook on a fire.
So first I weeded the yard and cleaned up the grill.
Got the hose and some Brillo pads.
And the teenager reassembled the grill (and we lost some nuts and bolts— oops). I wrapped a sweet potato in some foil to toss in the coals and also some apples.
I put carrots and fingerling potatoes in the basket.
And I planned on making some chickpea Bubba vegetarian burgers once the grill got good and hot. Sadly, the burgers were freezer-burned beyond a level that could be salvaged.
So the teenager got some chip steak and I put it on my cast iron griddle.
Now if you note in the photos that there are two grills, that’s because once my grill fell apart, we transferred the hot charcoal into the other grill.
But hey— at least it wasn’t raining.
To make matters interesting, the sweet potato was half-cooked. The teenager thought the potatoes and carrots too crunchy and charred. And the chip steak overcooked. But it was a meal we laughed a lot over and we didn’t starve.
The teenager used my small cast iron pot to make tea on the grill, which she will tell you was the best part of the meal. I got a little ice cream so our hot apples could go in it.
When the teenager would come home from Girl Scout camp, she would talk about sugared apples on the fire. I thought I’d surprise her and recreate a beloved summer childhood memory.
Except I didn’t know to core the apple. Obvious now. And we forgot to turn them so they were only hot on one side.
I really had a lovely evening barbecuing with the teenager at the helm of the fire, but sometimes I think my family life might be the script for the next movie in the National Lampoon franchise.
Today was hard—one of those days where I thought I had all my ducks in a row only to be asked why the sheep were still out to pasture.
A goofy image, but how I feel.
The teenager and I have been eating well. My neighbor has been sharing some of her Hungryroot deliveries. If she doesn’t like it, she sends it to my house.
That’s how I discovered that I like polenta.
So this weekend, I made spaghetti with Hungryroot’s Spicy Thai peanut sauce and sautéed fresh radishes and frozen stir fry vegetables in sesame oil and Bragg’s liquid aminos.
For breakfast that morning we’d had scrambled eggs in homemade crepes with turkey bacon, Gouda and a pickle.
Today for breakfast, the teenager had the last of the Thai peanut sauce and bacon on a bagel.
For lunch today we had leftover spaghetti, vegetable dumplings and Green Giant Steamfresh superfood edamame mix. So yummy.
Dinner was salad with sesame dressing and Hungryroot lemongrass tofu.
And yesterday the teenager baked me the most amazing dark chocolate cookies with dark chocolate chips and piles of fresh coconut.
My dear friend and traveling companion M got to meet Nala over FaceTime today and commented how she was more cuddly and quiet than he expected.
She’s been very tired lately, but she’s been waking often in the night.
Nana sleeping on my chest
And for one last burst of cheer, here’s a pile of kittens:
The teenager asked to go to the gym and I didn’t want to go but I went. All I did was 10 minutes on the bike. But I came and that is something.
That’s enough for me right now.
As a parent, I told the teenager I would never say no if she wanted to drag me to the gym.
My yellow budgie, Peek-a-Boo (whom we nicknamed Boo-Boo), had an episode of night fright last night and woke me up at 4:30. I had gone to bed shortly after nine, so I had trouble falling back to sleep.
I ended up doing some writing for work. When the house is still and your mind is fresh, it’s amazing how easily ideas flow. Even if it is 5 a.m.
I packed my yogurt, fruit and granola parfait for lunch, substituting some chocolate Fontina brand Christmas cookies for breakfast. Lunch didn’t happen until 1:45 so that didn’t help my fatigue.
NALA
But I got some amusing text messages when my daughter got home from school. I had set Nala up with her new toys, fresh fruit and romaine and Hulu set to hours of Sesame Street.
My daughter went to check on her, which says a lot about how far their bond has come as a week ago my teenager was afraid of Nala and vice versa.
Today I got a text that the teenager planned on offering Nala tea. This photo followed:
And it looks like Nala did not pluck today. Now Nala was also glad to see me when I got home, though we had a disagreement about where Nala was going to sit while I ate dinner.
I think Nala thought my plate was her plate. So I ended up with a pretty pointed beak stab in the middle of my middle finger.
DINNER
The teenager says she’d like to lean toward vegetarianism. So we’ve reduced the amount of meat we buy.
Last night’s dinner was homemade mozzarella that my neighbor received as a Christmas gift, spinach, a Pillsbury flaky buttermilk biscuit, two poached eggs and imitation bacon bits.
Tonight’s dinner was “Greek Night.” I made that up. It’s a mess of stuff from the cupboards. But it doesn’t qualify as vegetarian, only pescatarian.
I made a green salad of chopped romaine lettuce, two kinds of olives, the mozzarella again, and avocado. I added two prepared Greek Salads from Lidl: one a giant white bean salad and the second a tomato-based lentil salad. I also served “calamari fries” from Lidl, which are basically thick chunks of potato somehow mixed with calamari.
The teenager had her salad with light ranch dressing. I had mine with a Whole 30 approved balsamic vinaigrette. I made a salad for lunch tomorrow (but didn’t include the calamari). That’s the featured photo for this entry.
Well, now for the amazing part of this entry.
BEDTIME
Last night I tried to put Nala to bed at 6:30 and sit downstairs so she could sleep. Just like a baby, she screamed for Mommy. I returned to my room, and watched TV on my iPad in the dark just load enough so she knew I was here.
Tonight I put her to bed at 6:30, left my pink night light on, covered her and went to the gym.
When I came back an hour later, she didn’t even rustle. I’m tiptoeing around my room as not to wake her.
Angel Ackerman 