Whole Foods Hot Bar Plate <3

Mmmm. What a great midweek treat! Fresh chips with rice, black beans, roasted veggies, tofu, and a grain and veggie salad. Perfect lunch!

What’s new with me?
School and work is taking up about 80% of my life right now (as usual!) The other 20% of my time is being shared with family, friends, eating, Zumba fitness, The Big Bang Theory (new favorite show), and very rarely blog reading. I miss you guys!

Do you watch The Big Bang Theory?
If so, who is you’re favorite character?

I like all of them but obviously Sheldon is my favorite! 😛

WIAW [week 31]

What I ate at Whole Foods Wednesday.

Last week, I had family from NJ come to MI! I only see them once a year so it is always special. They stayed at a hotel about 45 minutes away. You know, just as far as the nearest Whole Foods is located. No biggy. It’s not like I drove down there everyday just to stop and Whole Foods after spending time with the family.

And it’s not like I was super excited to stop at WF two days in a row and spend half of my pay check at the hot bar.

It was just a coincidence. No big deal.

What did you eat today?

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?

Holy SALAD

Confession: I HATE typical salads. You know, the house salads with ice burg lettuce, cold tomatoes, cucumber, and carrots. Seriously, just thinking about it makes me want to barf! How boring!

I always tell people…  “if I’m going to eat a salad, it has to be really interesting”, like this one:

Holy SALAD!

Ice burg lettuce, red cabbage, quinoa, flax seeds, sesame seeds, and chopped raw almonds.

This salad beast was amaze. It was everything I was craving and then some, I was really impressed with myself.

The dressing:

• 1 T tahini
• 1 1/2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 T agave
• 1 squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Ever since I bought this red cabbage on sale, I have been craving a sweet & nutty salad like this one.

Lately, I have been incorporating a lot more raw foods in my diet. In the colder months I do a really bad job at this so I am so ready for this challenge! I feel like drinking my green smoothies every morning leaves me craving more raw veggies throughout the day. I am NOT getting sick of drinking these yet, I don’t think it’s possible! I thought it would be good for me to drink a green smoothie for breakfast everyday for a while. I’m not sure how long yet, I want to do 30 days but I might only do 21, we’ll see how this goes!

Today, after school, Scott and I are taking a PAID trip to Whole Foods (yes, we live 45 minutes away from the nearest WFs). Basically, a (quite popular) vendor at our FM sells ridiculously good salsa but apparently isn’t a good sales rep. So, Scott told him that he knows how to get his salsa into big businesses like Whole Foods and he was totally up for it. Hopefully Whole Food is interested so my boy can make a nice chunk of the salsa profit! But more importantly, it’s all about helping each other out. One of my favorite things about working at the FM is the vendors we work with. We all look out for each other and help each other when possible, it’s cute. Boy, I wish I could say that about my day job, huh? 😉

So yes, all you southern Michiganders better buy up this salsa if it starts selling at Whole Foods!

Remind me of anything I need to pick up at Whole Foods/ Trader Joe’s!

What is your favorite homemade salad dressing?

WIAW week 18

Heyhey it’s WIAW!!!

 

Nice new button Jenny 🙂

This is going to be like really random food porn from today and yesterday, I’m lazy.

So here is goes…

Drank…

I’m not a huge fan of the green one. I like the fruity ones more I guess. So far my favorite is citrus!

More Whole Foods yummahs: a monster slice of vegan chocolate cake with PB frosting, sunshine burgers (on sale), tofu from the hot bar, chocolate, coconut yogurt, coconut creamers, and a few other goof things that I cannot remember!

Check out muh MONSTER VEGGIE BURGER!

DANGGGG! Yes, I ate all of it incase you were wondering.

After this I decided on an iced mocha from a coffee place I’ve always wanted to try:

Caribou! Scott says there is one caribou in every cup. 😦 He’s a jerkhead sometimes! 🙂 So I think Caribou beats Starbucks by 100 points! This drink was soooo good! I only ordered a small but it was like a medium. Pretty expensive though, not impressed.

Today I ate cereal (I’ve been out of oats for like 2 weeks!), sunflower seeds, a huge salad, mac and NOT cheese, my cake… and that’s all for right now!

What did you eat today?

VeganMoFo = Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s Adventure

Happppy VeganMoFo! November is the month of vegan food which means everyone must blog about their VeganMoFo as much as possible!

Monday was a wonderful day. I only had to go to one class! So what did I do with all of my spare time that afternoon?

If you guessed that I went to Whole Foods & Trader Joe’s and spent too much money you are correct!

Trader Joe’s– The Goods:

Lets see…

I bought some tempeh because for some reason I stopped eating it. I guess I don’t really know how to cook it. I always burn it, kind of like tofu! How do you cook your tempeh? Any favorite tempeh recipes?

I also bought a huge bag of roasted soy nuts. I forgot how much I loved them and their high protein content 🙂

For lunch I bought some vegetable sushi and ate it in the car (It would be a bad idea if I went to Whole Foods hungary!)

This sushi roll was honestly one of the best I’ve ever had. Not that I doubt TJ, but I didn’t expect too much out of it. The roll was only $3.69 so I decided to get it a try. The nori was nice and soft and the rice was extra sticky; just how I like it. The roll had cooked tofu inside so it was nice and hearty for an early afternoon snack.

Whole Foods- The Goods:

Lots of Cheese! I have been craving pizza and baked mac n cheese, recipes soon to come!

I also got a huge salad from the salad bar which I have been eating with just about every meal. I have also been craving their vegan caesar dressing! It’s my favorite.

After my shopping adventure I was beat so I took a little nap and went for a nice two-mile nature walk as the sun was going down.

Lately for breakfast I have been mixing it up with some SIAB breakfast soup made with Coconut Kefier.

Kefier, cacao nibs, dried apple & sliced almonds

How are you celebrating VeganMoFo?

Stay tuned for how to make pumpkin seeds!

Fall Nature Walks

Are my favorite 🙂

After waiting for my 11am class for 2 hours this morning, I find out it was cancelled. At first I was angry that I wasted so much time waiting for my next class but then I realized, hey! I don’t have english today! Good deal. And that’s when I went for my walk. It was such a beautiful day out, I’m glad I had the chance to enjoy the weather.

So as promised, my full adventure from yesterday. We went out for lunch at Pei Wei for the first time. I was really excited when I saw their menu because they had tons of vegan options. Basically, you can replace any meat dish with tofu or veggies. Awesome, right?! I was so excited I finally got to eat sweet and sour tofu… or so I thought. When I ordered the sweet and sour ‘fu I expected it to look like the sweet and sour chicken I guess. You know, breaded, flavorful, different… I was wrong. The sweet and sour tofu was like stir fry with sweet and sour sauce.

If I wanted stir fry I would have saved $7 and made it at home. I mean it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted something nobody else has. The dish also had a very over-powering ginger taste that was not very pleasant and not to mention the brown rice was rather dry. I’m really glad that I also ordered the veggie springs rolls because at least those were somewhat good.

I think I would actually try this place again and order something completely different like pad-thai. They have a lot of good-looking choices on their menu so I hope to go back and find something spectacular.

Later we went to Whole Foods to do a little shopping. I picked up some new things to try like…

Ta-da! After hearing all the ranting and raving over coconut butter,  I finally bought some. Now what? Make a smoothie, bake with it, use it as a dip? Who knows. I’ll probably go and stalk some of your blogs to figure out something I can make with it. 😛

What a love most about Whole Food’s is their amazing salad bar, they have everything! I don’t even really like salad but their salad bar always looks amazing. Little did I know they also carry vegan caeser dressing!!! The dressing was really garlicy and creamy, I loved it. They made a good lunch for school today.

Kale, spinach, peas, red cabbage, quinoa, tofu, grape tomatoes, carrots, & almonds

After getting a few things at Whole Foods we went over to Trader Joe’s to do some more shopping. I found something I have never noticed before.

Lots of muffins! ❤

These were delicious. I normally would eat a muffin as a snack but I ate this for breakfast with a piece of PB’d toast and it kept me full for a long time. I would have bought more than one package of muffins but they all expired within a few days (hey! that must mean they are made with real ingredients!) Next time I want to try the carrot muffins!

I think I’m going to hang out around the house for the rest of the day and enjoy my day off of work. Maybe I’ll read some other blogs and get motivated to cook something, you never know. I hope everyone has a marvelous monday!

PS, did you notice my new ABOUT ME page? About time, huh? 😀

Apple Picking, Attempt 2

 Hello everyone 🙂

Like the new layout? I think I’m going to stick with this one for a while.

Today was a very eventful day… well, compared to the last few anyway. Scott and I went to Yate’s Cider Mill because I was under the impression that they had an orchard. The orchard was not a U-Pick orchard so if you wanted apples you had to buy them over-priced out of cardboard boxes. What kind of fun is that?

We did enjoy some delicious apple cider that tasted like it was made the day of. Probably the best cider I’ve ever had anyway.

We spent no longer than 20 minutes at the mill until we decided to move on. We stopped at a large produce stand on the way to getting lost lunch. They had lots of different types of squash including acorn, spaghetti,  and butternut. I never tried spaghetti squash but it looks yummy and nothing like spaghetti, oh well. They also had a bunch of pumpkins at the stand that I was excited to see. I love pumpkins! I can’t wait to make some pumpkin seeds and eat them when they are fresh and warm right out of the oven with a little pumpkin goo still stuck to them. I love sticking my hand into the pumpkin and playing with all the “pumpkin guts” and making a huge mess. So what if I’m 19-years-old… I’m going to play in “pumpkin guts” till I’m 62. Admit it, you do the same thing! I’m not a huge fan of carving pumpkin though, it’s too dangerous for me. I used to always draw a face on my pumpkin when I was a kid and then have my dad carve it out because nobody trust me with knives! I can’t blame them though I guess, nobody should trust a kid with a knife, look what happened to Chuckie! Dangerous stuff. I also remember how the day after Halloween we would throw our pumpkins in the yard and wait for the deer to come eat them, that was my favorite. What are some of your childhood experiences with pumpkin carving?

Don’t worry, I still will go apple picking one of these days. I want to pick me some big, juicy, honey crisps! I want to have so many apples that I wont know what to do with them all. Until then, here is a little apple trivia just to keep the excitement alive.

 

About Them Apples:

• Michigan is the top 3rd state for apple producing.

• The number one best-selling apple is the Red Delicious (Pssh, the grosses one..)

• Planting an apple seed from a particular apple will not produce a tree of that same variety. The seed is a cross of the tree the fruit was grown on and the variety that was the cross pollinator.

• There are over 7,500 different verities of apples grown in the world and 2,500 in the US alone.

• Apples are a great source of fiber. (about 5 grams per apple)

• 2/3 of the fiber from that apples is in the skin of the apple.

• Americans eat about 65 apples a year on average.

But wait, that’s not all! Stay tuned for the rest of my adventure! I went to a new place for lunch and then I did a little Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s adventuring! 

New Foods & Oatmeal Talk

Trader Joe’s & Whole Food’s

Diffidently worth the trip. I purchased lots of new fun foods from both stores on this trip like:

TINGSSS! I fell in love with these at Vegfest. They taste just like Cheetos’ without the nasty powdered cheese on top. And they are a lot healthier!

These are so fun! They taste like cheese puffs and have little flakes of dried seaweed in them.

How cute!

These are really good too. Most banana chips I’ve brought are thin and oily. These are thick and not too crunchy. They made a perfect post workout snack:

Carmel corn rice cake buttered with peanut butter and topped with almonds and banana chips

I bought a lot more food but I’ll have to show you later when I cook with them. One thing I did not photograph is all the sushi supplies Scott and I bought to make our own sushi! I can’t wait!

After shopping, we went to my favorite restaurant; Mind, Body & Spirits. I love growing here because all the food is not only outstanding but it’s all locally grown. When I say local, I mean they have a freakin’ greenhouse out back where they grow the foods to make your meal! The food is a little pricey but I am never regret eating here. I got a flat bread pizza with a tofu and avocado spread for “cheese” topped with black beans, plantains, greens and a sweet mango chutney.

I think this was my favorite meal at MBS so far.

So onto breakfast.  For breakfast this morning I had some tasty peach-blueberry oatmeal.

Oatmeal is my favorite. It’s so quick to make and so satisfying for breakfast.

So oatmeal is pretty healthy. But what about instant oatmeal, is that still healthy too?

Believe it or not, natural instant oatmeal provides just as much nutrition as the old-fashion slow cooked type. Instant oatmeal is still a whole grain therefore, a complex carb (aka good carbs). Oatmeal is a great source of fiber and helps keep blood sugar levels stable (and not to mention so fun dress up!) The only difference in the two is the glycemic index (GI). The Glycemic index is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. A high level of GI, such as instant oatmeal, digests a lot faster compared to old-fashion oats which would keep your tummy full longer! Instant oatmeal is processed to cook a lot quicker and because of that the oatmeal is broken down and digested faster by your body. Pretty impressive, right?

Well, that’s enough for today, time for work! Stay tuned to learn how to make sushi!