Avocado love

I always heard that avocados were full of bad things for you, that you shouldn't eat too much because it will make you fat. Some people are so full of it and ignorant. There is such a thing as the different between good fats and bad fats, just like good carbs and bad carbs. Avocados are full of good fats. Like anything with fat though, too much can be a killer; but don't hesitate for a second when you reach for an avocado at the grocery store. Not only is it good for your health as its full of GOOD monosaturated fat and is also a winner in heart health, but it also makes for a great facial mask :)

The oleic acid found in the green flesh of the fruit has been known to help lower cholesterol, and it is also very rich in potassium and fiber. In Vegetarian Times' Healing Foods Cookbook, it is also recommended to try using avocado as a substitute in baking for eggs and butter. Who'da thunk?!

So go make some guacamole, and dip some chips in it or slab it on your face - and enjoy a simple ride to health inside and out!

finally, chocolate!

So I've had my minimal chocolate fixing by occasionally having Silk's Soy Chocolate Milk, but when it came time to need to bite into some chocolate... I wasn't well educated and thought all i could eat was very very dark chocolate. So I bought what I think was 88% Dark Chocolate, by Godiva (percentage might be off), and oh my god... my first thought was "my life sucks". THEN I found out that I can eat pretty much anything over 70%, as long as I read the ingredients carefully.

Yesterday at Whole Foods I decided to go on a chocolate spree. I bought their freshly made silken-tofu vegan chocolate pudding and it was pretty good!! The little bits of tofu that weren't 100% blended in, just added a nice crunchy texture reminiscent of the crunch I like in my peanut butter! :)



Also in my cart? A couple Lara Bars! I was in a bit of a hurry and there was a huge selection, so I simply grabbed Cinnamon flavor and Fruit/Pecan flavor, however I am sure there is a chocolate one somewhere. Also indulged in (I forget the brand!!) buying a vegan chocolate chip cookie, which was good BUT not enough for $1.99. For $4.99 I can get a non-dairy cookie dough mix and make about 20-25 cookies, so... you do the math! I'll talk about that mix in a later post, next time I make them. It's got a picture of the cartoon Arthur on the box, and it also boasts nut-free and peanut butter-free. I'm glad I don't have to worry about those allergies!

Now back to my original topic, the dark chocolate! I found a whole wall of milk chocolate and dark chocolate mixed together. How organized, eh? Fortunately they each had the cacao percentages boldly labeled, so that made things a bit easier, until I couldn't find anything between 70 and 85. I had already established I didn't like anything above 85, and anything below 70 probably has milk product in it.

So I took a look on the bottom shelf and found a chocolate bar with pretty wrapping. Caught my eye. I'm totally the kind of guy to judge a book by its cover. But even if it's a plain cover, as long as it looks beautiful or intriguing, I'm hooked. Anyway, this wasn't a plain cover; it had some pretty images of orange slices and the logo of the brand was appealing to me, too! After seeing the cacao percentage was only 70% I was a little hesitant, but the ingredients satisfied me, so I bought it! It was pretty good! I'll definitely be trying more flavors from this company, Theo, after I finish this chocolate bar. Definitely recommended. (Note: after referring to the website, I found the bars are definitely non-dairy (vegan) and also free of soy, with the exception of the milk chocolate bar).

In summary, after some research, chocolate shopping became simple! :)

Strawberry and Banana Smoothie

Just an experiment I made tonight and it was delicious! It's nothing new that strawberries and bananas taste great together... but throw in Silk's Very Vanilla Soy Milk and hot damn... a delicious smoothie. That's all!

Whole Foods makes being vegan even more simple

A common misconception I keep being asked about from people, is the relation of veganism to expensive eating. Very very untrue. Think of it this way, all the money you aren't spending on dairy products and meat is just going to cost effective foods. For a fair amount of money, you'll be buying ingredients that will last you a long time. Instead of spending maybe $10 a day on food by going out to dinner or fast food, you'll spend maybe $75 to start yourself off with key ingredients that will last you a couple months, and maybe $30-$40 a week on the weekly groceries such as produce or canned beans, etc.

Even if you don't like cooking, it's so simple to make vegan dishes from scratch it really won't be an issue. And if you do happen to have some extra money on a given week, then you can splurge on pre-made vegan food! And that's what I did tonight at my favorite health food store (as if there are so many to choose from right?), the very vegan friendly Whole Foods!!!

I buy most of my groceries at Albertsons, Ralphs or Vons. You don't need a health food store around you to be vegan. Any grocery store has fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, rice, soy milk, bread, pasta, potatos, soups, sauces, hummus, pita, tortillas, chips, spices, etc. What you will need a health store for is if you want to start getting a little fancy (and albeit, more processed) with stuff like vegan mayonnaise, tofu sour cream, quinoa and other more obscure grains, sea vegetables, international produce like umeboshi plums, almond milk, rice milk (which you may find in your standard grocery store as well) and other miscellaneous health food items.

That's where Whole Foods comes in for me!!

I love cooking but sometimes I need something simple. If I didn't every once in a while go simple and stop cooking for a second, I think I'd get exhausted by being vegan. So tonight I bought Vegan Spinach and Mushroom Pizza, which OMG was friggin' amazing. I'm finishing the last bite now actually... brb... okay I'm back. Once again, OMG! By itself it was absolutely delicious, but I did add some stuff myself. I add pepper, garlic and basil to everything and this pizza was no exception.

I also decided to indulge a bit and buy a square of Vegan Chocolate Brownie, and Vegan Peanut Butter Fudge. Both absolutely delicious. I think perhaps the best Brownie I've ever had. At $3.50 each, both of those desserts will last me a few days. Now see, that's where the wallet starts coming out. And those four slices of pizza were about $6.50. Altogether, $13.50 that will last me two meals, and a few days worth of wanting a sweet delectable bite.

Money well spent when it's not something I splurge on often :)

A veg diet will save the planet! (or at least help)

"Meat wastes water, creates greenhouse gases and could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving" says the article as published on The UK's The Guardian. To read an article that skims the surface about how not eating meat or dairy will save our planet, click here!

I love hash browns

Grilled pieces of potato! Fantastically delicious with the right seasonings and extras. I like to make mine very crispy on the stove, either using cubed or shredded hash browns, and with olive oil. Next, add garlic, pepper and salt and voila! Yum.

Then, you can either leave it at that or go for a burrito like I do! Inside of a whole wheat tortilla, add tomato sauce and spinach or any other sort of green leafy substance. Roll up and enjoy. Simple, eh?

Açaí, the natural cure-all

No that's not a picture of blueberries! Those are Açaí berries (pronounced ah-SIGH-ee), the fruit of a type of palm tree found in Brazil. I was first introduced to the word "Açaí" by my sister who sells the juice made by MonaVie. She boasted of its health benefits at a time I wasn't too concerned for my health, so her preachings fell on deaf ears.

I finally tried MonaVie and honestly, I was a little turned off by the taste. However, after becoming a bit more health conscious and finding out just how amazing Açaí is for you, I started to be a bit more receptive to MonaVie and the taste isn't so bad... well... okay yes it is, but whatever it's a lifesaver.

Açaí is known for being an antioxidant (but beware! If the reason you are drinking Açaí juice is for its antioxidant purposes, be sure to drink juice with lots of pulp. Most, if not all of Açaí's antioxidant properties are lost without the consumption of the pulp) as well as serving as a helper in battling cancer, heart disease, obesity, inflammation, and diabetes.

I'm curious to find some recipes I can use with Açaí, or maybe even try to find another Açaí Juice that I can drink a bit easier. Once I do, I'll talk about it here!

Jason Mraz, Raw Food-ist

Jason Mraz is one of my favorite musicians ever. I've seen him nearly two handfuls of times in concert, his voice and lyrics just absolutely soothe me. Now upon discovering he's also gone green, I love him a bit more!

Click here to read a little interview he did with Vegetarian Times. Below is a snippet!

Q: What inspired you to try a raw diet?
A: A guy in my band found out that he had type 2 diabetes and felt that the only way he could help himself was to go raw. I did it as a partner for him so it wouldbe a little easier. In the meantime, I got hooked. It was so easy to make the world's most delicious salads. We had a raw food chef on the road with us for a month who turned us on to making our own hummus and cheeses and a bunch of alternatives to dairy, bread, and sugar. Once you kick sugar, you won't want it, because there are so many other sweet things to eat. Raw desserts? Forget about it!

Strawberry & Baby Springs

A favorite salad of mine that I make frequently is a combo of spinach and mixed springs with freshly chopped strawberries. Sometimes I’ll use fresh squeezed orange juice as a dressing, and it tastes remarkable. But why stop there? Throw in some blueberries, nuts, black beans and have yourself a delicious, simple, healthy salad. I couldn't find the perfect picture, but this a beautiful one so I'm posting it anyway.

Strawberries are one of the best fruits for you, and undoubtedly the most popular of all the berries. Packed with nutrients, vitamin C and natural antioxidants, strawberries have been known to help arthritis and have also shown to help decrease the rate of cancer deaths. Who knew? A simple cure, right?

Twice Baked Potato

Now I don't have my own professional camera, and there's something about pictures of food I take from my Blackberry that doesn't quite give it justice - so I keep stealing pictures I find on Google image search. Fair enough?

Okay anyway, I originally got the idea to do this from Tal Ronnen's cookbook, The Conscious Chef, when I was planning my holiday cocktail party. They turned out absolutely delicious but I did make some adjustments of my own. Head on over to his website for the actual recipe...

I'm not a fan of horseradish, so I simply substituted that out for something I love to add to everything: Basil!! Basil makes everything taste wonderful, the right amount at least. I also threw in this organic herbal seasoning my sister got from Costco. At some point I'll find a link for that seasoning since I use it for everything as well. Anyway, I think Tal's recipe gave me the groundwork for what turned out to be an amazing appetizer. If I wasn't so picky I'm sure horseradish would have made it just fine!!

I think the inside of the potato is kind of free for all, just do whatever you do when you make your own mashed potatoes. For the dairy eaters out there, give vegenaise a shot - you won't taste the difference.

Aside from not leaving the potatoes in the oven long enough the first time and having minor difficulty scooping out the potato "meat", this recipe was definitely rather simple!

Apple Waffles (look yummy)

From The Post Punk Kitchen, this recipe I have yet to try, but looks so amazing. I don't have a waffle maker myself, but I'm gonna try to turn this into a pancake recipe. Should work right??

Click here for the recipe.

Lots of fun ingredients, but the prep looks simple enough!

Time to get started!

To get the ball rolling on the purpose of this blog, I'm going to recycle some posts from my failed blog, "Belle, je t'aime". I think the reason it failed because it had no direction and was just a blog where I pressured myself to post about anything and everything and use every option, which sounds fun right? I guess it was, actually. But my computer broke and I stopped and now I'm just starting fresh with this blog. I'm sure I'll continue "Belle je t'aime" when I have more free time.

For a split second I wanted to turn this blog into more than just veganism and being green, but I need to stay focused. That's hard for me. While doing everything is fun and fulfilling, there is an element to direction and focus that is very rewarding. So when it came time to decide whether I wanted to simply have fun and be all over the place stay collected and determined to be able to accomplish something, the choice was simple :)

It's the holocaust of the animals!

Why do I feel like animal rights activists are regarded as crazies and wackos? We're an animal aren't we? Just because we can talk and are "civilized" doesn't make us any better than the animals that are tortured on a daily basis. It's so disgusting. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm new to this whole thing... but that doesn't make it any harder on me at all, it's actually very easy.

Most people know what's going on. Ask any adult with half a brain about slaughter houses and they know that animals are killed inhumanely and needlessly. However, don't expect those people to tell you that you don't need meat or dairy. The meat and dairy industries have brainwashed Western civilization to think that we need animal products to live. That's completely false.

A few weeks ago I attended a film festival and saw a film about the environmental footprint humans are leaving on earth, and at the beginning of the film, they showed the natives of Alaska killing animals to eat. I kind of understand that. I wish it wasn't in the film I chose to watch, but I get it. It's so cold in Alaska. As far as I know they don't have access to farmland and being able to grow crops the way we do in the lower 48. They are probably killing animals as their only means of survival. Sure, they can import, but if you don't have the money to do that, then you're stuck.

But here, we have access to so much agriculture. We have healthy foods right at our fingertips yet we continue day in and day out to make bad food choices and needlessly harm animals that should symbolize love and harmony, not a dollar sign or a meal plate.

Why does that sound tacky? Why do animal lovers have this lame stigma?

So let's forget about that. Let's just think in terms of health.

Why do we want to consume cancerous, bloody, hormone infused, cardiac arrested, diseased, mutilated animals anyway? Addiction? The blind confusion that we need it? It's all about consciousness. How can we spend an hour making the decision to wear a sweater or jacket (a decision that ultimately in the grand scheme of life doesn't matter), but refuse to spend a fraction of that time to learn about what's going into our bodies? Is it a subconscious knowledge that we already have that we don't want to face? Is it pure laziness? Or is it that we're so brainwashed to think that eating meat and drinking milk is good for us, that it doesn't even phase us to think about it?

Now let's forget about that. Let's pretend that we know all of that stuff. Let's pretend I'm a meat eater who knows how bad animals are being treated, who knows how bad this meat and dairy is for me given the conditions of the animals and just by default (cholesterol, etc), what now? Shouldn't the choice be simple?

Well I was that meat eater. I learned what I needed to learn, and the choice was simple.

:)

Hello :)

First of all, let me start off by saying that I am new to this whole vegan thing. As of this writing, it’s been a mere two and a half months that I’ve given up meat and dairy. This blog will serve as a journal to be able to chronicle my journey, as well as a platform for me to share anything I come across in the green world. From sharing my excitement at finding soy candles at Target, to information about environmental awareness events, to vegan recipes; this blog is my canvas.

After reading Alicia Silverstone’s book, “The Kind Diet,” I couldn’t help but agree more that being vegan is the best thing anyone can do to save the planet. If everyone was a vegan, we would live in peace and harmony with earth and so many of the big problems we have on our planet would diminish. It came only natural to me after reading a few chapters to make the decision to stop doing what is hurting me, the animals and ultimately the planet.

Since I’ve started living the kind life I’ve experienced two wonderful sensations: weight loss and joy. I don’t know exactly how much weight I’ve lost. I’m estimating about 20 pounds or so. The joy comes by default in knowing that what is going in my mouth is purely healthy and good for my body, and is only doing a service to the well being of my life and to the well being of the planet. Gardens should provide our satisfaction, not salughter houses. And everything we fuel ourselves with should be rich in vitamins and nutrients - not cholesterol, fat, sodium, and the worry of salmonella, mad cow disease or other parasites and bacterias.

But enough of that. If you’ve come to this blog, you’re probably already versed to an extent of what is good for you, what is bad for you, and you’re probably already vegan or open to the idea - so there’s no use in preaching is there? What I will do though alongside my journaling, is simply share information I find along the way. There’s a magazine I bought a few days ago, “Dr. Andrew Weil’s Guide to Healthy Eating” - and oh my god, it has some of the coolest information I’ve seen in a while. I’ll share the knowledge I’ve picked up in the magazine, as well as in Alicia’s book, and other resources I’m educating myself with. I picked up the best cookbook the other day, “The Conscious Cook” by Tal Ronnen. I also can’t wait to share my cooking experiences, a la Julie Powell in “Julie and Julia“.

Things will be slow for a bit as my computer access is limited, but it will pick up. I’m very excited. Thank you so much to those who are reading J

Anthony.