We are city transplants who ditched our fast paced careers, mind boggling traffic, and the ridiculously high cost of living for a more peaceful and conscious lifestyle out in the country. While our blog may be slapped together in between toddler tantrums and pre-school freak outs we hope you enjoy this little peak into our lives. - Out in the(m) Sticks.
I'm LOVING trying all these new recipes right now. It's really encouraging. I'm learning that meals can be quite tasty under my new, plant only parameters. Provided I keep portions in control, meeting salt requirements is doable.
These spicy portobello tacos are awesome, awesome, awesome!!! I found them here. I modified the recipe to be reduced sodium and low fat (I took out the olive oil and replaced it with some water.) I also used the baby portobellos I had on hand because they were on sale. I think next time (because there is so much sodium in the peppers packed in adobe sauce) that I will exclude the tamari all together or use only 1/2 of it.
It's important to note that these tacos are spicy, so they aren't necessarily appropriate for kids. I suggest making a bean and veggie taco for them instead. I made only 1/2 the recipe for Nick and I. These came together in a hurry and are Nick approved. I was shocked he didn't even want sour cream or cheese with them. He topped his with lettuce and salsa. I about fell on the floor with excitement over that!
Ingredients:
Portobello Mushrooms, 16 oz. minced (i.e. (2) 8 oz. packages of babies or 4 to 5 large portobello)
Water 2-3 TB
100% Whole Wheat Soft Taco Tortillas, 8
Reduced Sodium Tamari Sauce, 2 TB (I'm going to reduce this to half next time)
Maple Syrup 1 1/2 TB
1/4 tsp. smoked paprika
Colgin Liquid Smoke, 1/2 tsp (or more if desired)
2 Chipotle Peppers packed in Adobe Sauce, minced
Top with salsa (I made homemade pico for myself) and/or lettuce!
Directions:
In a small bowl put the tamari sauce (or soy sauce but this will increase sodium), maple syrup, liquid smoke, chipotle peppers and mix together. Mince (2) 8 oz. packages of baby portabella mushrooms. Add water to a non-stick frying pan and put it to medium heat. Add minced portabello mushrooms and cook until water is released from the shrooms. When done, add the spice mixture from the bowl. Cook only long enough to blend the flavors, about a minute or so. Top as you'd like! You'll need lettuce and tomatoes for volume, the shrooms pack in the flavor.
Serving Size: makes 8 tacos
Nutritional Info:
Servings Per Recipe: 8
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 152.7
Total Fat: 1.2 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 397.2 mg (it will be 300 if you reduce the reduced sodium tamari to 1 TB)
Total Carbs: 29.2 g
Dietary Fiber: 1.9 g
Protein: 6.1 g
Cost Breakdown:
(1) 8 oz. packages of baby portabellos $2 (they were on sale at HT this week for $1.47!)
fat free refried beans (for the kids) $1
whole wheat tortillas $3
chipotle peppers in adobe sauce $1
incidentals $1
old lettuce in the fridge, lol $.50
tomatoes $1
pre-made salsa (nick's must) $2
=$11.50/4 or $2.80 a serving
Today's experiment ended up quite delicious. I made juicy, meaty portabello steaks with potatoes (seasoned with a no salt seasoning) and some garlicky greenbeans (again no salt). The result was YUM! Thanks again to Happy Herbivore for the portabello steak recipe! There were a few things I changed to the recipe. I used reduced sodium tamari sauce in lieu of soy sauce and I didn't use any sherry/mirin nor any additional salt to sprinkle at the end. The meal was tasty enough without!
I will be adding these to the rotation for sure. The entire "steak" is a whopping 55 calories. I was thinking, being the frugal person I am, I should include in each blog post a cost analysis of each meal per serving. I'll go back and edit the old posts too.
4 portabello steaks - $6
some regular potatoes - $1
1 small onion - $.50
3 garlic cloves - $.25
green beans (premium frozen packaged) - $2.20
=about $10 for the meal or $2.50 per serving (not including incidentals)
Portabello Mushroom "Steaks" with roasted potatoes and green beans.
Today I'm at 1,700 mg of salt for the entire day. That is AWESOME in my book! What's better is that even if I wasn't on a plant based, low sodium diet, I'd make this meal! This get's the Nick stamp of approval.
Today was a bit of a "cheat" day for me. We like to go out once a week to a restaurant of some kind and to be honest, I like that part of the week! We love Qdoba because the kids eat free on Sunday and we get out of there cheap and the food is fresh. We actually tried Chipotle in town first but the line wrapped around so long and there were no tables available. So on to Qdoba we went.
The old me would order the You Pick Two Combo with tortilla soup and 2 chicken tacos without cheese but maybe a dash of sour cream for flavor. The new vegan me went for the veggie burrito with black beans and no sour cream nor cheese (and I ate only half of the tortilla and picked out some rice at that.) In hindsight I should have maybe stuck to the salad as there was way too much refined, white flour and rice in the meal even taking off half the tortilla. I went to the Qdoba website and calculated my salt intake, calories, etc. and the meal had a little over 1,000g of sodium and 580 calories. Yikes on the salt!
When we got home after a day out and about, including church, lunch, a few grocery stores, and a nice afternoon walk, I was exhausted. So I made this easy meal thanks to Happy Herbivore:
"Meat"balls in marinara sauce on a whole wheat hot dog bug with a heaping side of broccoli
The ingredients were pretty simple. Leave me a comment with your email addy if you would like the recipe. I didn't follow the recipe exactly as I didn't put the soy sauce in it to reduce the sodium content. To make the marinara quickly I started with my favorite pasta sauce (fire roasted Classico) then added 1 large can of tomato puree. As it is pretty much a 1:1 pasta sauce/tomato puree ratio, you essentially cut the salt in half. I won't lie, it's not going to taste like the same old salty marinara.
That said, I thought it was really tasty, low cal, low fat, and EASIER TO MAKE than the meat version.
Cost Breakdown:
Gimme Lean Sausage Roll $3.50
Hot dog buns $1.50
marinara sauce $1.50
2 slices whole wheat bread for breadcrumbs $.25
1/2 c. non dairy milk $.25
Side of broccoli $2
2 TB nutritional yeast $.10
mustard, ketchup, soy sauce, seasonings (incidentals)
= $9.10/4 (plus a little fudge for incidentals) = $2.50 ish per serving
Before this lifestyle change I would often go meatless on fajita night, so that is nothing new. I even went with the whole wheat tortilla. The only thing I'm not doing differently is not adding sour cream and cheese and salty seasonings. I'm also now adding mashed seasoned (little to no salt) beans to the fajita to help add dimension and flavor.
I made some fresh homemade pico de gallo in a flash using Bragg's Amino Acids in lieu of salt.
I used two roma tomatoes
1/4 of a sweet onion minced fine
a pinch of onion powder
a pinch of garlic powder
a pinch of ground cumin
a squeeze of lime
Bragg's amino Acid in lieu of salt
Voila!
It was a virtual cornucopia of veggies last night between the pico, the New Mexico green chile peppers (Anaheims), and fajita veggies.
I already eat a low fat diet with a decent amount of veggies. I was half veggie when I met my husband. But Nick could never go for meat free anything and over the years we have incorporated meat into just about every meal except weekday breakfasts. That said, the guy is way more open to food then when I met him. He didn't used to like tomato sauce, pasta, chili, squash, etc. He's come a long way.
I'm was surprised at how open he's been to this new lifestyle upon seeing the data. I was turned onto this by a friend named Jill in ABQ who has been doing the lifestyle too after she attended a seminar by a cardiologist at Whole Foods. Jill is in crazy good shape already but her husband has issues with heart disease in his family too.
To give this lifestyle a real shot at curing my high blood pressure, I decided to go feet first (though I'm not enforcing it with the kids or Nick except at the dinner table). The book suggested a more subtle approach, but I'm not that kinda gal. I went cold tofurky onto the plant based diet on Wednesday. It was really rough the first day because I didn't know what in the world I could eat. I mean, low fat only, low salt, no eggs, no dairy, no meat, no fish? What can you eat?
Well, you can eat a lot of things. You just need some planning. With every meal you must first begin with a grain and/or beans. Then you build with a heaping pile of veggies from there. An example meal might be 2 small corn tortillas (grain), fat-free-no-salt pinto beans mashed, and then add a heaping pile of sauteed onions and peppers. This is a great combo because it's very, very filling and actually quite tasty. That has been one of my favorite meals so far because it's super quick for a weekday lunch.
Not all my attempts at vegan meals have been great, however. My first attempt at vegan, low-sodium chili came out kinda awful. I have made plenty of Veggie Chili in the past and never even told me husband what he was eating to great success. But without much salt, chili is boring... at least until your taste-buds wake back up and become sensitive again. I read that it takes 3 to 4 weeks. I'll have to check back with you on that one! Needless to say, it didn't go over well. I hoped the next meal would be a little more lively.
Thankfully, the next dinner was! I made a cheese-less pizza with the whole wheat pizza dough I always make. I just thawed the pizza dough I made a while back out of the freezer, made it without the cheese and meat and it was delicious. I only use whole wheat flour for my dough so it fit the Engine 2 bill. I sprinkled some nutritional yeast on top the pizza and it was awesome. Yes, nutritional yeast is AWESOME in my book! It sounds weird, but don't knock it until you've tried it! I have always served pizza with a huge heaping side of steamed broccoli because I tried to avoid eating too much pizza and broccoli fills me up. No difference there!
I ordered two cookbooks from the Happy Herbivore from Amazon in hopes of getting some help in creating some other dinners that fit the Engine 2 lifestyle. (I hate the word diet.) The way my chili turned out was just SO pitiful, I wanted to avoid a repeat. I was beyond delighted to receive the book just two days after ordering them because I had went with standard 5-8 day complimentary shipping. It was a nice surprise to get them so soon and they really helped take the pressure off when it came to making dinner for the family. The Happy Herbivore books are great because they fill in where the Engine 2 book is lacking, i.e. in the recipe department!
The first dinner I made with Happy Herbivore were these mushroom burgers (see photo below). I made them exactly as she suggested. They were difficult to flip, but otherwise they were easy to make. They tasted pretty good for being low salt. I had another for lunch today and they were even better the second day! I'm loving leftovers with this lifestyle change because who wants to cook at every single meal? Even I, who loves to cook, needs a break from the kitchen and the dishes!
Mushroom Burger (topped with a bunch of veggies) by Happy Herbivore
The Cost Breakdown
Mushroom Burgers
8 oz. Mushrooms- $2
1 can beans $1
100% whole wheat buns, pack of 8 $1.50
some seasonings and sauces (somewhat negligible considering amounts) but let's go with $1
=$5.50 for 7 burgers or $.78 ea.
(a box of 4 frozen vegan burger are $5 for 4 and that's not including the buns!)
To round out the meal:
Sweet Potatoes made into oven 'fries', seasonings, pam $2
Broccoli or other seasonal veg $2
=$9.50/4 =$2.40 per serving (keep in mind we had a TON extra for lunches)
This may or may not be something I do for the rest of my life. For now, I'm seeing where this takes me and the family. I think it's more likely something I can do 80/20 or 90/10 in the future as realistically I may need a cheat day here or there. And I think that's OK. Who knows, I may like the way I'm feeling (maybe my blood pressure will lower) and I'll keep at it? I'd love that!
If you are interested in learning more, here is a link the books I've been using on Amazon:
When I was pregnant, towards the end my body didn't like the strain of the extra 36-42 lbs I put on and I had pre-eclampsia every time. It's not shocking... my mom and sister both had the same ordeal, though mine did seem to be less severe (which I attribute to a lot of exercise, like jogging). By 4 weeks post partum my blood pressure would go back to normal except this last time it didn't!!!
So, doc said I needed to be put on BP meds for the time being, at least until I lost the 20 lbs of extra baby weight I was carrying. Thankfully, through breastfeeding and running I lost that weight plus an extra 4. Yay! So I went off the medication and my BP skyrocketed right back up. I was having complications (a dry cough) with the last medication, so I was switched to a new one. The small doses didn't seem to have an affect so now I'm on a full dose of Cozaar. Not cool!!
So, I'm conducting an experiment and I am putting the Engine 2 Diet/Forks Over Knives lifestyle to the test and see if I can't get off the full dose of Cozaar. It's very scary to me to be on so much medication when I'm only 35. My mom had similar issues though she weighed twice as much me and her BP's would often be in the 200's with medication. Craziness.
For those of you who have never heard of Engine 2 or Forks Over Knives, I encourage you to click on the link. Basically, I'll be following a plant based only, no dairy, no eggs, low to no fat, low salt diet. Y'all are welcome to join me for the ride for the next month as I try to stick to what may seem to others, very strict! Let's see how it goes.
Wow, what a wonderful few weeks! I'm both sad the holidays are over and happy that things will resume as usual again. Happy New year to all! May this year be the best one yet!!
We had a beautiful, peaceful Christmas. The big kids were really into santa this year (though I'm still torn about it). The joy in their eyes was absolutely wonderful. Ladybug got a dollhouse and GreenEyes got some monster trucks.
For Christmas Eve this year, I learned to truss a pork loin. I brined a whole pork loin, filleted it, then stuffed it with a pesto-garlic mixture. Then I roasted it atop a root vegetable medley. Good stuff. (Thanks to Guy Fieri.)
I also got two new lenses with my Zazzle/Cafepress earnings. I can't stop taking photos of late, much to my family's chagrin. I got a 35mm/1.8f and a 55-200mm/4.5f . I really love the fixed lens. It rocks my world. It's been a year since I've had my DSLR and I've just started to get my sea legs so to speak with my camera in manual mode.
Below are a few shots without people in them.
(lots of noise though, next time I'd use my tripod and a long shutter speed)
I just love this pic of my little girl's tea party and one of her favorite friends, Miffy.
Believe it or not, the pic below was taken in mid-October. We've long since completed the tree house (phase I). Sure, we still need to paint and add some accessories, but it's pretty much done. I've just been plain ole lazy when it comes to posting about the project.
Nick putting on the roof.
All the windows have been put in (well, except the cutsie arc window which is a bit of a story).
The hatch was installed....
(sorry for the blown out photo... I'll replace this at some point)
.. and finally, the door and trim. We've had it this stage for over a month though Nick just recently installed the actual door nob. Not bad for an old recycled door, huh?
Now... if only the kids would remember to shut the door...
and the kids would stop tracking mud in the house.
The kids use it just about everyday and they use it to gather and store all sorts of goodies for the bears. They love to make stinky cakes (a concoction of mud, sticks and rocks) as well as acorns and pine cones. The kids were out on it yesterday and believe it or not, they still didn't need jackets outside?! It was a beautiful 60!! We didn't think we'd be using it much this late into winter, but so far, so good and it is definitely paying for itself with play.
I'm so excited for tomorrow. I'll be helping out at my daughter's preschool Christmas party. I am in charge of drinks and dessert. I went through a million different dessert ideas on Pinterest before I settled on this one. These Christmas tree brownies seemed REALLY easy and yet super cute.
GreenEyes decorating his own. Notice the glob of sprinkles in the middle.
We had a good ole time today making them and eating a few of the extras. This idea was so easy, I didn't even read the directions which was kind of dumb because getting them out of the pan would have been much easier if I used foil on the bottom like the directions said, lol. It still worked out fine.
It's almost 13 years now since my mom left the Earth. The anniversary of her death is just days away. She died on Dec. 8th, the day before my dad's birthday. I can't believe it's been so long. Thirteen years. It was such a tough time for me (and still is) but I remember getting a bit of comfort from her side of the family. My aunts and uncles assured me that they'd still be there for us and that they were just a few hours drive. One of my aunt's, Aunt Bea, even went so far as to say she'd be a mother to me since my mother couldn't be around. It really touched my heart that day. It made the hurt a tinsy bit less though my heart was still pretty heavy.
I took Aunt Bea for her word. I was in college and I was getting along good enough. I'd call Aunt Bea occasionally and sometimes she'd call me. But I was never really offered or extended an opportunity to spend any actual time with her. It was a lot of, "maybe we'll get together some time" sort-of-stuff. "No biggie, she must be busy," I thought.
Then, somewhere along the line my Aunt Bea had a falling out with her siblings. My mother was the second of four children leaving behind a brother and two sisters. The four of them were always in some sort of drama to be honest. But this time my Aunt Bea ultimately disowned the remaining siblings. She didn't want to have anything to do with that side of the family any more. To this day, I have no idea why. She didn't want to talk to her siblings anymore nor any of their children, a.k.a. my cousins. But she was still OK to talk to my sister, brother and me, the children of her deceased sister.
I found my husband (then fiance) Nick and was elated to share the joy with her. But she called me and told me that she didn't want to attend my wedding because doing so would be difficult for her with the other family members there. I admit, it kinda hurt me. But, I couldn't force her to attend and I couldn't make it better.
She asked in our phone conversations that I never, ever mention their names again. Ever. She didn't want any info relayed to them or vice-versa. I honored that until the VT massacre happened. You see, her son, was attending VT at the time (he was a freshman) and I was asked by my other cousin (then and still ex-communicated, cousin M) if I would e-mail Bea and ask if he was OK. I did. Then I forwarded the reply from Aunt Bea to cousin M. But I made a huge mistake. I accidentally hit reply-all and she saw that I had forwarded the info, i.e. that cousin D. was OK and accounted for, to my cousin M. I may have also inserted that I thought it was silly that us cousins, having nothing to do with the generation's before squabbles, were forced to communicate this way. In essence, I betrayed her trust by simply relaying to my cousin that her son was alive and well.
She wrote me that she didn't think it was "silly" and that I had no idea how awful the situation was and that she was cutting me off. The VT shooting occurred in April 2007. I haven't heard from her in almost 5 years now. In the past, I've sent cards, called and left messages of apology with no return, announced the birth of my first two children, etc. So much time has passed and I still have received nothing in return. I have cried and cried.
I felt horrible. I felt like dirt. I made a mistake and I was not forgiven.
It was only a year ago around this time that I realized how empty her words were back when my mom died and how you can't lose something you never had. She may not remember her promise to me the day of my mother's funeral 13 years ago, but I do. I would have been better off if she had never made that promise and she'd just drifted away like I feared would happen when you lose an important link in the family. Broken promises hurt. What she did, and is still doing, is hurtful.
Last year, was the first year I didn't send her a Christmas card and I didn't send her a card announcing the birth of my third child either. It was hard to do. I'm surprised it so easy for her to cut me out when not sending a card is so hard for me. But it was her choice to cut me out and it's also her loss.
I'm sure for whatever reason, she was hurt by these other family members, but to bring me into it and use it as an excuse to cut me out of her life is plain old wrong. I deserve better than that.
Anyway, despite it all, I wish her well. I pray for her health and happiness and all the good things of this life and the next. I really do.
So, why am I airing this? Because I have to get it off my heart and give it to God. Sometimes you just have to let it out to feel better.
I'm a landscape architect now SAHM to three cuties and wife to a painfully witty analyst. I spend most of my time experimenting in the kitchen and garden, keeping active as best I know how (to keep the lard from taking up permanent residence on my ass) and chasing after three little dirt devils. I don't do either job very well as you will soon find out with this blog!
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