New Week, New Job, New Food!

There are a few things I haven't really mentioned on here. First, I quit my job. Second, I got a new one. I know a lot of you were with me for my student teaching earlier this year, and I was really stressed out. I started a job with a very large school district here, and it just wasn't working for me. I think I cried every day except Fridays and Saturdays. So I quit.

Today I am starting a new job at a vet's office. I am really looking forward to it. The best part is that I don't have to do hours of planning at home, so I had plenty of time to get everything ready for this week regarding food. Of course, food is the first thing that pops into my mind when I have any kind of free time.

Sundays now, are spent planning meals, food shopping and cooking. All through the week when I find something I want to make, I put it on the "Dinner Ideas" list, and then add the ingredients to the list. By Sunday, I maybe have one meal to add, and we are ready to go. After hitting Trader Joe's (we are addicted to their granola, aka crack in a box) and Wegmans, I headed back for a nice afternoon of cooking my little heart out.

First up is a batch of seitan, same as I made last week. I had dinner plans, but I really wanted to bake something. I poured through my many cookbooks and ended up on the computer going through Sweet Freedom. I love this cookbook, but I've only made a few things because many of the recipes include things that I should have on hand...but don't. Like agave. I ran out a few months ago and didn't buy it again. There is a lot of agave. Anyway, I settled on a delicious Raisin Tea Bread. Named not because it is to be eaten with tea (which was what I thought), but because there is actually tea as part of the liquid in it. Sweetened lightly with maple syrup and made with whole grain spelt, this baked up beautifully, with a nice crunch to the exterior, but a light and moist interior.

I used Chai Tea, which was intensified by the warm spices added to the bread.

After that, we watched a movie and I have to say that our recent movie rentals have been dismal. One of them we didn't even finish, and the other two...if I had my way, we wouldn't have. Nick said, that's what you get when you get your movies from a vending machine (Redbox), but I really think we just chose poorly.

Dinner was Breakfast. Or the other way around. I wanted to try Bianca's Breakfast Casserole, and I knew I would never actually get around to making it for breakfast. Her recipe calls for the use of any cheesy sauce recipe, and I doubled this recipe, from Fat Free Vegan's Eggplant Parmesan, which was one of the first posts I made on here, actually.

It came out delicious; yummy pieces of soaked bread, chunks of scrambled tofu, and bites of smoky sausage. I used Yves breakfast sausage, and I added garlic and onion to the scramble. Next time I think I will add some greenery to it, maybe mix in some peppers, or spinach.

Of course, it was only natural to follow this up with something else breakfast-y, the Tea Bread! With some vegan cream cheese slathered on, this was the perfect end to my day of food.

How do you go about planning your meals for the week? Do you just play it by ear with what's in the fridge? Go shopping every other day? Plan everything in advance and hope it all works out?

Hope everyone has a fantastic week! I hope to see you back here fairly often since, as my job doesn't start until 11, I will have plenty of blogging time!

Seven Pound Vegan

Christmas is in less than a week!  Incredible!  I am going down to my in-laws tomorrow and had to finish that shopping today.  Shopping is exhausting.  

Anyway, I ended up with a lot of food today.  I made some bread, then made dinner for my family, then made lunch/dinner for my travels.  I usually take prepackaged sandwiches on the road but I haven't been eating that well, and I know everything will be screwed up this weekend while I am gone, so I wanted to make sure I had something hearty at least.  

Without further ado, I first present dinner.  It was from the January 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times; the Spicy Tofu Lettuce Wraps.  It was good.  It did not look appetizing though, I cooked it much longer than the recipe said to, letting it brown so that it got a nice color.  Anyway, sorry but these are the best pictures I could get! 

Toppings (Bell Pepper, Peanuts, Carrots)

Lettuce Wraps

(Nutrition Info is given in the magazine, which I don't have with me, oops!)

We had some rice with it, brown rice with grapefruit and scallions.  

I made the White Gingerbread from the current VegNews, which I believe was one of Hannah's features?  I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but..umm..her byline was on it.  I made it gluten free by using spelt and brown rice flour.  It smelled like French Toast when it was baking, and I agree with Shelby that it has a chai taste, which makes sense given the spice combo.  Nevertheless it is delicious, and it went perfectly with my pear butter (which was why I made it)! 

I used Smart Balance Light, and some kind of artificially-maple syrup that my family had.  I think it was a light version.  Ugh, okay, ::checking::...okay, it is Aunt Jemima Light.  So it definitely affected the calorie count.  But with those two things, this is how it worked out...

Serves 12  

Nutrition Information:  157.8 Calories;  4.3g Total Fat;  1.2g Saturated Fat;  0.0mg Cholesterol;  27.6g Carbohydrates;  2.1g Fiber;  2.6g Protein.  

Because I would have preferred to use real maple syrup, I calculated it with that also:  

Nutrition Information:  175.4 Calories;  4.3g Total Fat;  1.2g Saturated Fat;  0.0mg Cholesterol;  32.1g Carbohydrates;  1.9g Fiber;  2.6g Protein

My lunch for the road is the Chipotle Chili with Sweet Potato and Brussels Sprouts from the PPK blog.  

I told you the pictures were bad today. 

I halved the recipe, eliminated the oil, and calorie-wise, it made two servings.  However, I was definitely full before I finished it.  

So, if you serve 2 (or 4 if you make the whole recipe)

Nutrition Information:  337.0 Calories;  2.1g Total Fat;  0.3g Saturated Fat;  0.0mg Cholesterol;  70.6g Carbohydrates;  18.5g Fiber;  20.0g Protein

I have to tell you, I wasn't thrilled with this.  I cooked it for longer than it said to, and I still don't think it was cooked enough.  The flavor was good, but nothing spectacular (sorry Isa).  

Anyway...I don't know when this will post, because I started it yesterday and finished it today, and that always confuses me, but I'm at my in-laws now.  I discovered Clif Bars today.  Yeah, I know not an incredible discovery, but I thought they had less protein or something.  I dunno, I had a reason for not buying them before.  I got the carrot cake flavor, it was delicious!  

I hope everyone has a good weekend.  Anyone get snow?  My family got a lot of snow (New York).  I left at 5AM to drive down here (Maryland), to avoid it.  There was just lots of rain here, gross.  

We saw Seven Pound today, the current Will Smith movie.  It was very cool, I thought, how often veganiam/vegetarianism showed up in the movie.  One of the main characters was a vegetarian, one of the supplementary characters was a vegan, and when Will Smith was sitting in the hospital waiting area, at one point, in front of a white board, and right over his left shoulder was VEGAN in big letters.  Besides veganism being featured, the movie was also really really good, but definitely emotional.