Vegan & Gluten Free Donuts

Yes, I finally jumped on the baked donut band wagon.

I asked for the donuts pans for my birthday which was a little over 2 months ago. I was so excited to start baking my own donuts but because of the weight loss challenge and trying to form better eating habits I decided that I’d hold off for a few months.

Eating just one is such a challenge, I’ll have three 🙂

Then I realized making my own donuts would be a lot healthier than most dessert I allow myself to eat now.

Gluten free sprinkles!

I have been saving Mandiee’s vegan donut recipe this whole time! I made the donuts out of Bob’s Red Mill GF flour (plus a tablespoon of oat flour). When you think about it, this donuts aren’t really all that bad health-wise. Flour made out of grains and beans, lower sugar, and healthier topping options such as a melted dark chocolate bar.

My favorite part was frosting them

After I made these I left them out on a plate for my family to enjoy. Forgetting that my brother hates dark chocolate, I offer him one. He immediately spit it out and washed his mouth out, rude! Maybe next time I make them for other people I’ll add a little agave to sweeten them up?

So spongy and fluffy!

He did like the vanilla icing I made out of vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and hot water.

Do you have a donut pan yet?

This is why I pack my lunch.

One hour break =

One iced pumpkin spice latte: $5.06

One trip to the health food store: $10.46

(tempeh walnut salad, vegan egg salad, tofu noodles, one expensive chocolate bar)

Some days I need to leave me wallet at home!

Feature Friday: OOAP.

That’s right, OOAP.

It’s the cool way to eat your oats!

(On a plate)

It all happened last week when I was going through my usually breakfast dilemma.

Tofu scramb again? Maybe I’ll have a  green smoothie? But, I want something sweet with chocolate. Do I want oats or do I want pancakes? WHAT TO DO?

Obviously, what to have for breakfast is the most difficult choice of my day. 😉

I came up with a favorite past-time dessert (more on that below) as a perfectly balanced breakfast…

First, I decided to make a chocolate-fudgey version for my favorite oats.

Brownie Batter Oatmeal

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup non-dairy milk of choice
• 1/2 cup 1 minute oats
•  1 scoop chocolate hemp protein powder
• 1 T chocolate PB
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1 t maple syrup

1. Bring milk and water to a boil
2. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and reduce heat.
3. Cook for about 4 minutes stirring occasionally

Breakfast didn’t stop there. It still needed something.

Then I made, banana soft serve!

banana soft serve with vanilla and cinnamon

& Ta-da! What a beautiful breakkie. 🙂

Applebee’s Triple Chocolate Meltdown= 810 calories.

Hot Fudge Brownie OOAP= less than 300 calories.

Have you ever had oats on a plate?

 

Market Recap Monday week 9

Photo’s from the market:

More produce than last week!

Clear skies! It was HOT. 96 degrees I think, I was sweating!

I took some of your advice and made bigger signs for some of the desserts. This was the sign for my granola! When people wonder why our granola id $8 a pound now they know about all of the great ingredients in that pound of granola!

Because my mother is part of the art council, she get to help kids make different crafts at the market!

Art booth…

 

Spin art hummus

Roasted garlic hummus

…more samples.

That’s about it on the photos for this week.

What do you add to your granola?

What I did Thursday

Hey hey, it’s What I ate Wednesday!

Hey hey, it’s What I did Thursday! 😛

Thursdays are always fun, maybe that will be the next blog sensation?

Anyway, what an eventful Thursday! I am pooped. So much running around today I love my days off!

I really wanted to go to Whole Food’s today but then I remember that I am broke as a joke.

So, I cashed a few checks, gathered up some change, and said, “hey, I can pay those bills next week!” (you probably think I am joking but I am so serious.)

Might not be much change but it turned into $23!

Whole Food’s/Trader Joe’s:

Two favorite flavors right thurr.

Yummy finds from the salad bar!

Money saving tip: When at the Whole Food’s Salad Bar, be sure to load up on the good stuff. For example, I never get lettuce! I usually take my salads to-go so I can add whatever greens I have at home instead of paying $7.99/lbs for lettuce. Same goes with tomatoes! They add a lot of weight.

Veggie sushi!

Raw pumpkin seeds!

After our Whole Food’s/Trader Joe’s adventure we were STARVING.

We spotted a sushi place we have not noticed before and decided to stop in and check it out. Scott and I are HUGE fans of sushi, we eat it just about every week! We love trying out new places for a good roll or two. (or three?)

We started off with some miso soup:

Which happened to be cooked PERFECT! Crunchy green onions on top were awesome!

Next I ordered the veggie lunch combo which included the sweet potato roll and the asparagus roll:

Sweet potato rolls are always a win for me 😉

I also ordered a another roll because I was HUNGRY! This roll was called Veggie Heaven: Mushroom and avocado in a (vegan) tempura roll with ginger sauce. Topped with sweet soy and spicy mayo.

This is totally vegan! This fancy roll originally came with a spicy mayo, which I forgot to ask to not have, but since he knew I was vegan he gave me this yummy carrot and onion sweet sauce that was so creamy! Best roll ever. The mushroom and avocado literally melt in your mouth, delicious!

I ate 19 pieces of sushi.

(3 rolls)

I honestly think this was the most impressive sushi restaurant I have been too. Not to mention how incredibly friendly and helpful the staff were! That seems to be hard to find these days. We will diffidently be going to Sumo Sushi & Seafood next time we are in the area.

After this lovely afternoon of foodie goodness I met up with my bestie for a long nature walk:

Then sat at the Starbucks sipping on some green tea with lemon aid for quite some time.

Heather had the lovely idea of making some banana soft serve at my house. I’ve actually never made this before! I couldn’t wait to try it out in the Vitamix:

We looked up a few recipes but then decided that it would be best to make our own.

& What flavor would we choose?

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, duhh!

• 2 1/2 frozen bananas, chopped
• 1 glob PB
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips

Blend the nanerz until creamy. Add the PB and choco chips than blend for another minute.

Enjoy!

After this, she helped my bake some cookies for the market on Sunday. We made Espresso Chip Oatmeal Cookies, yum! I wonder how they will sell.

Have you ever had banana soft serve? If so, what do you add to yours?

Green Smoothie Challenge (10 day recap)

Has it really been 10 days? Wow, this green smoothie challenge isn’t as hard as I thought, I actually really enjoy it!

Basically, I’ve been drinking green smoothies or green juices for breakfast every morning for the last 10 days.

Notes:

• Energy level is about the same as a regular day.
• Hunger level has been slighty increased  on days that I didn’t finish my smoothie because it was chunky or just didn’t taste good.
• I need a new blender 🙂
• Knowing exactly what I’m going to eat for breakfast saves me time, money, and stress.
• Frozen spinach RULES!

That’s about it, I mean, I figured this would be a struggle but it’s actually not hard at all so I am going to keep going.

Today was a good day for a picnic

Or at least just eating picnic-type food anyway

Sesame bagel w/ vegan cream cheese, giant tomato slice, cucumber, and spouts (which I spouted myself!) with a pear.

Today I did some baking:

more espresso fudge brownies

more chocolate chip cookies!

Yumm.

Too bad it’s almost time for me to go to work, I was really enjoying this!

The Perfect Date

So basically, I love dates.

They are so much fun to bake with because they are unique and full of health benefits such as Vitamin A, antioxidants, fiber, and they are a good source of natural sugar.

One way that I like to eat dates is though eating a Larabar. However, we all know Larabars can be quite costly.

But who needs Larabars anyway? Get some dates, get some nuts, and get some dried fruit then throw it in the food processor and roll them into pretty balls.

Seriously, try this. I will post recipes for my balls as soon as I perfect them! These were so much fun to make, I cannot wait to experiment with new flavors.

What’s your favorite Larabar flavor?

I hope everybody had a great weekend 🙂

Me Gusta VEGANMOFO

So sad it will come to an end shortly 😦

Remember when I said I don’t trust mexican restaurants and I probably will never go to another one in my life? Well, I lied. I decided to give a new Tex-Mex restaurant a shot and it couldn’t have turned out better.

What is this magical place you ask?

(Source)

Don Pablo’s had a great menu with lots of options for everyone, even vegans. The waitress was extremely helpful with answering all of our questions from if the beans were vegetarian to what the rice was cooked in. We were so grateful to have such a knowledgeable waitress! She told us about all of the vegan options because she gets asked these questions a lot. She recommend the portobello mushroom fajitas and I said no more:

This dish was amazing. It came with all sorts of toppings and side dishes and filled me right up quickly. No seriously, I was so full I wanted to throw-up. Not fun. Diffidently worth it though! I already want to eat my left-overs.

& Now for dessert:

Chocolate Mousse

 

You’ll need 16 ounces of SILKEN tofu, 8 ounces of chocolate chips, and 3 T of agave (Don’t have agave? Use maple syrup or just leave this out and the mousse wont be as sweet)

1. Blend the tofu until smooth

2. Melt the chocolate chips using a microwave or a double boiler

3. Add the agave to the melted chocolate

4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the tofu and blend until smooth

5. Chill the mixture for at least 20 minutes

6. Serve with your favorite fruit or eat by the spoonful

I’m thinking about taking this to Thanksgiving because it’s so tasty and this recipe serves quite a few. I could make cute little dessert dishes using the mousse and pretend like they’re not made out of tofu. Have you ever noticed that tofu seems to scare everyone? Poor ‘fu. I also plan on feeding some to my momma when she comes home from FL today. She hatesss tofu! Although I don’t think she has ever tried tofu.

Why do people “hate” things they don’t try?

Earthling: one who inhabits the Earth

Hello hello! I’ve missed you…

I haven ‘t been too busy lately but, I have not been in the posting mood even though I’ve had so much to tell you! Well, not really.

But I have been making lots of cookies to sell at the store my boyfriend works at. I made two kinds so far: Oatmeal raisin with cranberry & Chocolate trailmixers made with agave. They are going for about $2 each because they’re so so huge!

Chocolate Trailmixers

I totally winged this recipe and I was so afraid they wouldn’t turn out! Next time I bake these I’ll be sure to get the recipe down so I can share it with you 🙂

Another dessert I made was chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. I did this by melting a dark chocolate bar, adding the pom seeds to the chocolate mixture, scooping them out and placing them on parchment paper and letting them cool in the fridge.

The best part? Getting two poms at the store for .50 cents each! Whoop whoop!

     What’s to love about pomegranates?

Said to be good for reducing plaque in the arteries

Improves oral health

 Loaded with antioxidants (3 times as much as green tea)

Improves circulation

  

Yesterday I finished watching Earthlings. (See the link to your right under “New to veganism”) This movie was so heartbreaking that I tried to watch it so many times but I couldn’t finish it until now. The hardest part to watch was (the whole thing?) the first part of the movie about pets. If you watch it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Every human that chooses to consume meat need to watch this documentary. Everybody should be aware of the hell that goes on behind the scenes. If you care about anything other than yourself, this movie will affect you and hopefully you can begin to start making small changes in your life.

The world is in our hands

Have you watch Earthlings? If yes, what did you think? If no, why not!?!?

Peanut Butter Blondies

As promised, new recipe! 🙂

(Stolen from: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar)

You know how much I love PB. These little guys are such the perfect dessert! Although they don’t hold as well as I’d like they still taste amazing. Next time I might try to mold them into balls the roll them in the nuts so they look prettier. But who cares what they look like, they taste great! These are super easy and cheap to make. They are also super addictive, so be careful.

What you’ll need:

• 3/4 cups peanut butter (I used creamy)
• 1/3 cup oil (I used safflower)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup dairy milk (I used almond)
• 2 t pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t sea salt
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/3 cup peanuts

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a metal 8 x 8-inch baking dish.
2. In a mixing bowl, stir in all ingredients (expect nuts) one at a time.
3. Knead the dough until soft then transfer to baking dish and mold into place.
4. Sprinkle the peanuts on the top.
5. Bake for 25 minutes then let cool for several minutes before cutting/serving.