Cocopeacans

Today, I'm thankful....

...for this new snack I invented today.


(Yeah, it's blurry, I was kind of in a hurry to eat it!)  A couple of weeks ago, I very wisely decided not to keep anything sugary in the house so when I had a sugar craving earlier this evening, I searched my cupboards in desperation and grabbed three items:  peanut butter, coconut, and pecans.  I took a pecan, swooped it through the peanut butter, then dipped it in the coconut.  It did the trick and saved me from a mad run to the grocery store for sugar cookies.  Bonus:  all three ingredients are healthy and good for you.  Zippadee doo!


What should I call them?  Cocopeacans?  Albino Turtles?  

Helpful Kitchen Tip of the Day

Today, I'm thankful...

...that for whatever reason, magical or otherwise, running your fingers across a stainless steel surface under running water gets rid of garlic and onion smells.  


This is a trick I learned recently from another blog that I read.  I got my first "real" job when I was 16 at Little Caesars.  If only I had known that trick then.  Oh, the onions I sliced.  Hundreds of them.  Oh, the way my hands always smelled.  (Maybe that's why I always had difficulty hanging on to a boyfriend!)

November

Mini-Goal - Week

Major-Goal - Month

	Floss my Teeth	Meditation/Visualization Exercises
November 8	Done	Done – “Focusing & Performing your Best”
November 9	Done	Done – “Healing & Recovering Quickly”
November 10	Done	-
November 11	Done	-
November 12	Done	-
November 13	Done	Done – “Affirmations”
November  14	Done	Done – “Breathing”

It's the end of week 2 and November goals are sailing smoothly.  I missed a few meditation days, but I'm okay with that.  Since my new expectation is to complete the action more days than not, I'm still on target.  I'm very happy about flossing every day and feel like it's back in my routine as a daily habit.  (I had gotten out of the habit.)  Next week's mini-goal is to exercise every day.  That *definitely* needs to become a habit again.

French Toast Baked Tofu - Vegan MoFo Recipe #3

Today, I'm thankful for...

...French Toast Baked Tofu.  I got the recipe from Tina's Carrots 'n Cake blog and made it today.  If you want to see pretty pictures of all the steps, visit her blog.  Warning:  You need a *LOT* of prep time for this.  I had intended for this to be my breakfast, but it turned out to be lunch instead.  Guess I should read through the recipes first before deciding when to make them.  


The ingredients:

a package of extra firm tofu

a cup of vanilla soy milk

1-1/2 Tbsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ginger

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 cup brown sugar

1-1/2 cups shredded coconut (unsweetened)

(in lieu of the 3 spices...I used 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice)

Press water from tofu for about an hour.  (HUH?  I had to google "press water from tofu for an hour" to figure out how to do this.  If you need to learn like I did, click here.  I used a 5-pound weight.)

Then, cut it into cubes and marinate in a mixture of soy milk, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg for two hours.  Yep.  Two hours.

When half your day is gone and the tofu is done marinating, preheat the oven to 375 degrees, spoon the cubes out with a slotted spoon and put in a bowl with the coconut and brown sugar.  Toss to coat.  Bake for 15 minutes, then stir, and bake for 15 minutes more.

After it cooled off a bit, I ate it as is.  It was super yummy - the perfect amount of sweetness and the tofu cubes actually did resemble bread a bit.  You could dress it up a little with maple syrup or fruit toppings or something else yummy.

If you make it, I hope you like it.  Let me know...

Orange-Scented Quinoa & a little Skype on the Side

It's Sunday and as promised, I made Orange-Scented Quinoa in honor of Vegan MoFo.  Dee-lish!

I resisted the very strong temptation to drink this!

This is another recipe that's really easy to throw together and you can modify it in endless ways to suit your taste.  I got it from one of my favorite food magazines, Clean Eating.  The ingredients:

1-3/4 cup vegetable broth

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup orange juice

1 cup quinoa

1/4 cup dried cranberries (soaked in hot water for 5 minutes)

1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Cook the quinoa in vegetable broth with salt and orange juice.  Then just toss everything together & eat.  Tada!  That's it.  

So easy.

I really need to figure out a better organization system for this mess.

Today, I'm thankful for...

...Skype.  This is a picture of my Uncle Terry, my mom's twin brother (not the cute blonde kid, the old man ;).  I cropped this picture from this one:

I think I'm related to all these people, but I've never met any of them in person.  My mom was from Australia where my dad met her, proceeded to court her, and then whisked her romantically away to live in the far-off land of America.  I've never been to Australia, but I've kept in touch here and there with some of my mom's family over the years .  I bow down to Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook for making it possible to connect with my Australian family in a way that wasn't possible before.  Tonight, I went a step further and video chatted with my Uncle Terry via Skype for the very first time.  It was pretty incredible.


November Goals Status Update:

	Mini-Goal	Meditate/Visualize
	Walk at Lunch
November 1	Done – Bridge/Gilman Route	Done – “Opening the Energy Centers”
November 2	Done – Inside Stairs	Done – “Affirmations”
November 3	Done – Inside Stairs	Done – “Meditation Journey”
November 4	Done – Buildings Tour	Done – “Meditation Journey”
November 5	Done – Bridge/Gilman Route	Done – “Breathing/Meeting with Advisor”
November 6	n/a  - Saturday	Done – “Energizing your Mind & Body”
November 7	n/a - Sunday	Done – “Creating Confidence & Motivation”

Bean Dip and Wall Art

Just look at all those good, healthy ingredients.  Mmmmmmmm.

Tonight, as promised, I made one of my favorite standy-bys which qualifies as vegan -   White Bean Dip with Pita Chips.  I got the recipe from the Food Network's web site, but of course, modified it to my taste.  It's super quick & easy to make.  All you do is throw these things in a food processor & pulse until smooth:

can of white beans (rinsed & drained)

some garlic

2 tablespoons of lemon juice

1/3 cup of olive oil

1/4 cup Italian-style parsley

before

after

Tasty Magic

You can buy pita chips to go with it, or, if you're like me and enjoy being the maker of your food, you can bake your own.  Just cut as many pita breads as you want into any size, shape you want, put them into a big bowl & drizzle with olive oil; add salt, pepper and whatever other seasoning you like and mix it all around until the pita breads are good and covered with everything.  Bake at 400 degrees until desired crispness... about 8-12 minutes.

Eat together.

Today, I'm thankful for...

...Wall Art.  After living here for about 4 years, I finally found the perfect wall art to hang above my couch.  Yay!!!  I want to hang them up right now, but I don't want to give the nice old lady next door a heart attack from the noise.  She might be in bed already.  I'll have to wait until tomorrow.  Here's a close-up:

I LOVE it!

Small Victories

Friday was tough.  My motivation to do anything always seems to be the lowest on Fridays.  I almost rationalized my way out of the lunch walk & didn't do the meditation until about 9:00 last night, and truth be told, I think I slept most of the way through it.  ;)  But I did manage to actually do both, so I'm still at 100% for November.  That makes me happy.

I have to confess something here.  People who know me well know that I'm always setting goals, I always have these grand plans of change, and I usually stick with them for a while, but inevitably, I always seem to quit.  It's one of my biggest flaws & ranks up there in the top three that I dislike about myself.  


I try to cut the negative self-talk, I try to avoid thinking of myself as weak-willed or a quitter, but after repeating this behavior over and over, it's sometimes hard to resist feeling that way.  So, any little victory is enormous to me.  I purposely set my November goals pretty low on the difficulty scale.  I'm hoping that by starting small, I can build a foundation of successfully achieving goals that will help me when I get to the big ones:

Friday, I was thankful for...  

	Mini-Goal	Meditate/Visualize
	Walk at Lunch
November 1	Done – Bridge/Gilman Route	Done – “Opening the Energy Centers”
November 2	Done – Inside Stairs	Done – “Affirmations”
November 3	Done – Inside Stairs	Done – “Meditation Journey”
November 4	Done – Buildings Tour	Done – “Meditation Journey”
November 5	Done – Bridge/Gilman Route	Done – “Breathing/Meeting with Advisor”
November 6

...acting in my best interest even though I didn't want to.  Plus, it was finally "cool" enough to walk outside again (83 degrees).  

Vegan MoFo'ing for the Weekend

This weekend, in honor of Vegan MoFo, I'm going to make and share two of my favorite vegan recipes:  White Bean Deap with Pita Chips and Orange-Scented Quinoa.  Yum!

Vegan MoFo

I learned today that it's Vegan MoFo (Vegan Month of Food).  Over 500 food blogs have committed to blogging about vegan food for the month of November.  And while I'm not a vegan, I think it might be kind of fun to revisit some of my favorite recipes that I haven't made in a while and that happen to be vegan.  

Up first:  Roasted Vegetables (I can hear the collective... "mmmmmmmmmmmm!")

This is one of my all-time favorite "gotta empty the crisper" dishes and it's sooooo easy.  Basically, anything that's roastable can go in here.  Tonight, I used a zucchini, an onion, green beans, and 4 beets.

Chop everything up into bite-sized pieces and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Bake at 350 degrees until veggies are as tender as you want them to be, anywhere from 30 to 75 minutes, depending on the thickness and size of your morsels.  

Eat as a side dish, or throw in with some pasta, couscous, green salad, etc.  EnJOY!

Today I'm thankful for...

I'm grateful to live in a country where I get to vote.  I'm grateful for the many men and women who suffered, devoted their lives, and died in order for me to have this right.  I'm especially grateful to the women who fought for the 19th Amendment; their stories are seldom told, but they suffered a great deal at the hand of the general population for their efforts.  A large part of why I vote is because of what they sacrificed.  I can only hope that I would have had the courage to stand up for what was right as they did.

Butternut Squash with Walnuts & Vanilla

I tried this new recipe today using the butternut squash I got from my CSA box last Monday.  

Butternut Squash with Walnuts & Vanilla

YUM!  I love it when a recipe comes out better than you expected.  This one's going in my "to make again" pile for sure.  First, you chop up your squash.

Then you coat it in olive oil & sprinkle with salt, and roast for 20 minutes.

Then you toast the walnuts and add the butter.  When the butter melts, add the squash and coat everything in the butter.  Then add the rest of the ingredients:  ginger, vanilla, lemon juice, thyme and black pepper.  And you're done!

I suggest using about 1/2 the butter that the recipe suggests.  I used three tablespoons, and it was really rich.  Tasty, for sure, but really rich.

My Thank You for today is related to this recipe.  I have very limited counter space in my kitchen, and it's always tricky to figure out how to display the recipe conveniently without it being in the way or spilling something on it.  Today, as I was looking around the kitchen, a light bulb finally went off!  The perfect solution:

Thank you, little red magnetic clippy thing and just-big-enough-hinge on the cabinet.  You've made my cooking life a whole lot easier.

A Bountiful Harvest

Today went by fast.  Mondays never do that, what a treat!  I was busy all day at work, when I wasn't staring out the window at the cozy and comforting gray, rainy day that made me want to curl up on a couch with a blanket and a good book.

I love my office window.  It's good for daydreaming.

Today was CSA pick-up day and the harvest was bountiful this week!  Apples, oranges, pears, limes, tomatoes, potatoes, kale, red peppers, carrots, lettuce, avocados, zucchini, broccoli, and beets.  WHEW!  I had planned on just having a frozen Amy's for dinner, but with all this lovely produce, I was inspired to make a stir-fry.  

I cut some super firm tofu up into bite-size pieces, marinated it in a combo of soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic powder for about an hour and threw some brown rice in the rice cooker.  While that was all taking care of itself, I chopped up an onion, a carrot, broccoli, kale, red pepper, zucchini, walnuts, garlic and the mushrooms I got from the Farm Tour Saturday, and stir fried it all up in sesame oil and soy sauce.  After an hour of marinading, the tofu went in a 375-degree oven for 20 minutes.  Once everything was done, I threw it all together and finally sat down for dinner 2 hours after I started it.  Oh my YUM!  Lunches this week are going to be good.

I'm grateful for the pleasure that cooking gives me.  When I'm serious about cooking, I cook in silence... no TV, no music.  I pay full attention to the ingredients and to the sounds of preparation.  The chop of the knife, the slice of the mandolin, the sizzle of the oil when you put garlic and onion in the pan, the roar when you add everything else.  My favorite sounds.

(N)SD!

Testing 1, 2, 3

Ooops.  I forgot to post yesterday.  Well, I didn't exactly forget, I just didn't feel like it.  It was one of those days.  I did manage to stay sugar-free, although I came really close to not being able to say that.  My will power and commitment were tested to the nth degree.


Never, ever, ever go to the grocery store hungry!  I know this.  But I do it sometimes anyway.  After a lovely afternoon of a movie (The Social Network...great flick!) and a craft show with a friend, I stopped at Henry's to pick up just a few things - bananas, peanut butter, and milk.  I walked out with $100 worth of groceries.  Never, ever, ever go to the grocery store hungry!  Everything I bought will be used, so it wasn't a total catastrophe, but it almost was.  


Because I was hungry, and walking around all that food, I found myself super tempted to put sugary treats in my cart as I walked by them.  Henry's sells the best cookies.  I managed to get through the bakery section without putting any of them in my cart by telling myself, "Wait until you get in line, they always have those little baskets with individually wrapped cookies you can buy instead of these 12-packs.  You can have one of those, nobody ever has to know.  It'll be okay."  


That helped me get through the urge, and then when I got in line, I was semi-disappointed and semi-relieved that there was no little basket with cookies there.  Thank goodness!  I could have left the line to walk the 20 feet back to the bakery, but knowing how I'd feel about lying on this blog kept me from doing that.  Because there's no way I'm going to write, "I ate sugar".  And I'm a really bad liar.  Crisis averted!  You gotta wanna, even when you don't wanna - that was definitely my motto for yesterday.


Yesterday's Thank You:

Pippin, one of the lovely ladies that I met at the Squam Art Workshop last month, lives here in San Diego!  She had a booth at North Park Craft Mafia's Sunday, Crafty Sunday yesterday and I bought this piece from her.  I absolutely love it!  I'm grateful that a fellow Squam alum lives here and that I am now the very proud owner of this gorgeous piece of artwork. 

From Farm To Fork

I had a pretty neat day.  Today was the San Diego County Farm Bureau's first-ever Farm Tour Day, a fundraising event to help this self-reliant, non-profit organization advocate for their 1300 members.  For $20.00, I got to tour five local farms and sample some of their produce.  


After watching films like "Food, Inc." and learning more and more about nutrition and how foods, and the chemicals that some are made with, affect our bodies, I've been on a kick of wanting to "get more intimate" with my food and eliminate anything containing ingredients not found in nature.  When I saw this tour listed, I got so excited and was looking forward to it every day.  Funny.  I used to get excited about getting all dolled up and going to Poison concerts.  Now going to a farm gets my blood going.  Times, they change.


First up was Hillebrecht, an avocado grower.  I *looooooooove* avocados.  

I was tempted to hang back at the end of the group and stash as many as I could in my purse, but unfortunately my conscience wouldn't let me.  A lot of them had fallen from their trees and were just laying on the ground.  So sad.

Next was certified-organic Rockwood Ranch, citrus fruit and wine grape grower. 

Farmer Stehly is demonstrating how the ant traps work.  They buy "Gourmet Ant Bait" to fill the traps.  Nothing but the best for these pests!  He told us about some pretty innovative methods they've discovered to control their weed and pest populations.  

This may look like pesticide being sprayed around these plants, but in fact, it's 220 degree water!  Hot water helps control the weeds around the crops.  Amazing!  

Farmer Stehly also told us about the method they found to prevent deer from eating their fruit.  After dismissing ideas of building fences and electrocuting them, he read about one farmer who hangs bars of Camay soap on the trees.  The deer don't like the smell of the soap, so they stay away.  He tried it and it worked.  So now his wife makes regular trips to the 99-cent store and buys it by the shopping-cart-load.  Just ingenious!  Such a simple idea and win-win-win all around.

The third farm I visited was Altman Plants, a cactus and succulent grower.  This was the perfect opportunity to buy a plant that I wouldn't be able to kill in three days (no green thumb here).  The nursery was just beautiful.

They share space with another farm, a fruit-grower, where I learned about Dragon Fruit.  It's a gorgeous red color with a very unique look inside.  It tasted like unsweetened watermelon with a similar texture, but a little bit creamier.

The fourth stop was the most popular stop, Mountain Meadow Mushroom.  The very friendly and enthusiastic farmer could have been George Clooney's brother.  

He walked us through each stage of growing mushrooms, beginning with regular straw and then to the final product.  I had never really thought about how mushrooms were grown before.  I guess I just imagined they were harvested from the woods.  ?  Seeing how it's really done was fascinating.  He let us pick some right from the beds and taste them.  Best Mushrooms Ever, no question.  He said a lot of flavor gets lost in the transport to the store.  The mushrooms we had here were the most flavorful I've ever had. 

I love how he operates, too.  He's worked out a deal with the Del Mar Fairgrounds - they give him all their hay from the race track when they're done with it.  And then once he's done with the soil that the mushrooms grow in (once they've lost most of the nitrogen), he gives it away for free.  Schools, community gardens, various horticultural clubs and many other organizations routinely stop by and leave with truckloads of it.


And finally, the last stop of the day was at West Lilac Farms, citrus fruit and decorative plant grower.  A tram ride was part of this tour!  It brought back memories of hay rides back in the day.

It turns out that this grower is one of the suppliers to Be Wise Ranch, the CSA that I belong to!  How cool to actually meet the farmer whose food I'm eating.  This man grows my food:

Apparently, I get their avocados and their beets in my box every two weeks.  If you don't know what a CSA is, you should definitely check it out.  It's the smartest food-buying decision I've ever made.  Everything is fresh, nutritious and sooooo delicious.


This was a fantastic event.  It was very well-organized and everyone was super friendly and eager to show off their farms.  I was especially impressed by it because it was the first fundraiser they've ever organized.  They kept it very low budget and didn't do any paid advertising, just basically through word of mouth and about 120 people signed up for it.  I think it has the potential to get even bigger and better in the future and I can't wait for the next one!


(N)SD!


P.S.  By the way, this event was without question my Thank You for the day.  I'm very grateful for my local farmers, for the Farm Bureau, and for my CSA.