dinner
…but where do you get your protein?
0Arguably one of the most frequent questions I (and vegetarians in general) get is “where do you get your protein?” I have found, in my 1.5 years of experience, that with a little planning it’s not terribly difficult to get enough protein. There’s protein in pretty much everything! You just have to be willing to branch out a bit. Continuing to eat the typical american diet of sugary cereal, iceberg lettuce and french fries will get you nowhere fast.
So. To demonstrate, I documented a day of eats and now I’m about to list the protein content of everything*. Ready? Here’s what I ate yesterday..
breakfast:
popped amaranth (1c = 28g)
walnuts (1c = 4g)
rice milk (1c = 1g)
maple syrup (nada)
snacks:
greek yogurt (6oz = 15g)
protein bar (1 bar = 10g)
greek frozen yogurt (1c = 12g)
lunch:
rainbow rice salad:
wild rice (1c = 6.5g)
black beans (1 c = 14g)
corn (1c = 5g)
peas (1c = 8g)
peppers (1c = 1.5g)
carrots (1c = 1g)
dinner:
hummus (1c = 12g)
pimento cheese (1c = 25g)
whole wheat pita (1 pita = 6g)
cabbage (1c = 1g)
mixed greens (1c = 0.5g)
balsamic dressing (nada)
other favorite sources:
hard boiled eggs (1 egg = 6g)
quinoa (1c = 24g)
lentils (1c = 18g)
peanut butter (1c = 64g)
any other type of nut/seed butter (35-50g)
nutritional yeast (1c = 85g)
chickpeas (1c = 12g)
white beans (1c = 19g)
any other kind of bean (1c = 10-20g)
This by no means is a comprehensive list! As you can see, there are many excellent, healthy, tasty sources of protein. It’s all about finding a balance and what works for you. While peanut butter is an absolutely wonderful source of protein, it’s also unfortunately a more excellent source of fat. I wouldn’t recommend downing a cup of peanut butter daily but a few tablespoons here and there are not only delicious but an excellent way to sneak in protein!
What are some of your favorite sources of protein?
*note: serving sizes listed don’t reflect my actual servings. I normalized everything to around one cup for comparison purposes. Although I probably could down a cup of pimento cheese if I didn’t believe my arteries would immediately clog.
Dramatic Potato
0I feel like there is just something dramatic about the following photo.
Anyway.
I’ve noticed potatoes sliced up like this all over Pinterest, so I decided to try it myself. I made a bunch of thin slices not-all-the-way-through the potato, baked it in the oven for a bit, and topped it with some tastiness.
Melty jack cheese and spicy chili.. mm. Next to a bed of greens, I had an easy, semi-fast dinner.
I actually couldn’t eat the whole potato, so I had some for lunch the next day. Just as wonderful.
In other, random news, I can’t stop listening to Paper Route.
Hope everyone had a happy Columbus Day Monday!
Vegetarian Pulled “Pork” Sammies
2Living in the south, I’m constantly surrounded by delicious dishes like pulled pork and shrimp and grits.
Honestly, before I went vegetarian, those were two of my favorite foods. I let the craving for pulled pork get to me tonight and indulged.
Vegetarian, of course!
Vegetarian Pulled “Pork”Sammies
Need:
1 block extra firm tofu
barbecue sauce
hamburger buns
additional toppings; slaw is highly recommended
Do:
- Slice the tofu into long strips. Bake at 350F until it just starts to brown. You don’t need to press the tofu if you’re baking it this way. It usually takes about 30-40 minutes to bake.
- Put the tofu in a food processor. Gently pulse 3-4 times, until the tofu crumbled but isn’t pulverized.
- Mix the tofu crumbles with your desired amount of barbecue sauce. If you like it saucy, slather it on. If you’re a bit more conservative, use a little less. It’s up to you!
- Spoon tofu + barbecue mixture onto hamburger buns, dress with toppings and enjoy your sloppy southern meal.
I used store bought light barbecue dressing and it was freaking delicious. I had Annie’s organic barbecue the other day and while it was good, there was something a bit off. This version hit the spot and wasn’t too terrible on the ingredient list.
While I was researching vegetarian pulled pork, I found this ridiculous thing called a jackfruit, which apparently makes a pretty decent substitute? It’s supposed to have a mild taste and a similar texture to pulled pork. I’m a little skeptical but Greenville does have an Asian market, where I can supposedly find said jackfruit. I might need to take a little gander and see if I can whip up a better version.
I’ve also seen some versions made with seitan, which I have yet to try (!!).
Now if someone could just figure out how to veg-ize low country boil and shrimp & grits, I’d pretty much love you forever.
Whole Wheat Gnocchi
2Everything is better homemade, right?
Think about it. Your mom’s recipes taste just that much better when she makes them, rather than you trying to re-create. Dishes at a restaurant can taste divine, but they taste just that much better when you can make it at home. Christmas gifts, birthday cards, cake, cookies, pie, donuts.. all better homemade?
At least that’s what I’m telling myself so I don’t go nuts.
Making gnocchi can be a nightmare. Especially without a potato ricer. This is the second time I’ve attempted the complicated little pillows, and it wasn’t terrible so much as time consuming. I had some time to kill the weekend my BFF, her hubby and adorable baby came up so I decided to try my hand at gnocchi. Again.
Whole Wheat Gnocchi (inspired by madness and adapted from the Italian Vegetarian)
Need:
1 pound russet (baking) potatoes
1/3 c whole wheat flour
1/3 c all purpose flour
salt
Do:
- First, you basically make mashed potatoes. Cook the potatoes (roast, boil, whatever.. I boiled) until they’re mushy and then put them through a ricer. If you don’t have a ricer (like me), you can just mash them but you will end up with some chunks in the gnocchi.
- Let the potatoes cool to room temperature before you sprinkle the flour over them. Work the mixture into a dough. If the dough is sticky, add flour as needed, up to 1/4 cup more.
- Shape the dough by rolling out long “snakes” of dough, then cutting into little pieces. Shape the little pieces by pressing it up against a fork and flicking it off. I still have not mastered this skill so don’t fret if it seems impossible; it basically is.
- When all the gnocchi is shaped, drop about 20 gnocchi into a large pot of boiling, salted water. When the gnocchi float to the top, they’re done so scoop them out and set them aside. Repeat until all the gnocchi has been cooked.
- I like to finish off my gnocchi by pan-frying in a bit of butter or olive oil. Totally optional but it makes the exterior crispy while the inside remains pillow-like.
Once I got over the fact that my kitchen was now 302 degrees and I had just spent over an hour cooking potatoes, molding them into dough and then cooking them again, I mixed the gnocchi with goat cheese, basil and cherry tomatoes a la Eat, Live, Run.
Totally worth it. Totally homemade.
Gouda Pizza
2Stop the presses.
There are no words in the english language that convey how much delicious this pizza holds. Sweet barbecue sauce, caramelized onions, nutty goat gouda and chickpeas come together to create one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth. Yes, it’s seriously that good.
I followed Jenna’s recipe exactly, down to the whole “make your own pizza dough” thing, and it was so, so worth it.
This. This right here is why I love cooking.
Goddess Goodness
0I must profess my love.
I can’t keep it inside any more.
I’m in love.
With this salad dressing.
I’ve gone through two bottles of it in two weeks.
It’s just so.so.good.
Natural too, with a respectable ingredient list. Vegan.
Must. Keep. Eating. It.
If you haven’t had it yet, go out and get some. Pour over a Hugh Jass Salad. You won’t regret it.
Kitchen Mishaps
2Who all remembers my blender blunder from about a year ago?
Disasters in the kitchen are sometimes unavoidable. I’ve definitely had my fair share of kitchen mishaps, but luckily it’s never been anything too serious. It’s mostly just been me being stupid.
Speaking of stupid, look at this dumb outfit I wore the other day. Navy blue camo shirt, pink running shorts and Tom’s shoes. Dork.
Anyway.
One time, when I was a senior in college, I was rushing to get ready for work. I was starving and knew I had to eat before I left. I decided to cook up a turkey burger (I was on some sort of turkey burger kick for like a month straight). Well apparently I put the burner up too high because the burger started smoking and the fire alarm went off. Since I was living on a college campus, the fire department was automatically contacted. I couldn’t get the alarm to go off and I couldn’t wait for the fire department to show up, so I just left. Not the smartest idea in the world. The burger was still raw on the inside but burned to a crisp on the outside, so I just had to throw it away. As I was leaving, the fire department was pulling in. Since none of my other roommates were in the apartment, they were knocking and knocking on the door, trying to get in. I ended up calling one of my roommates to come back from the library to deal with the firemen. She was not happy, but the situation was handled, I wasn’t late to work, and all I got was a “fire violation.” Basically, a warning that says “don’t burn anything in the apartment again.”
Fast forward a year. I’m living in my current apartment and Sam is over, we’re making dinner. We want something grilled and I had just purchased a mini-grill a few days before, so we decide to light it and cook up some stuffed bell peppers. Everything is fine, we’re cooking away when there’s a knock on the door. I normally don’t answer the door for anyone I don’t know, so I sure wasn’t going to answer for this big manly stranger. Sam walks out onto the balcony to check on the food and when he comes back in he simply says “uh, I think you should answer the door. There’s a fire truck outside.” Turns out it’s technically illegal to grill within 10 feet of an apartment building, and it’s especially illegal to grill on the third floor balcony. The firefighter was nice enough, he had me carry the grill down to the street and then they fire hosed it off. Yes, they used the big gushing water on my dinky little grill. It was actually kind of funny to watch. All the neighbors were obviously outside at this point, gawking at these two adults getting scolded for using a grill. One even came up to us and expressed how ridiculous she thought the whole situation was. I was so very lucky to get out of that with a warning because I could have landed a huuuuuge fine. As in, two grand huge. Yeah. No thanks.
Wrong. Oh well. You live and you learn.
Lessons of the day: don’t blend hot soup in a blender, turning up the heat on a turkey burger will only make it burn and don’t try to grill on your 3rd floor balcony.
Please tell me I’m not the only one with a stupid/dumb/silly/oopsie cooking story?
Join me as I attempt to celebrate all the ridiculous food holidays! You can laugh at check on my progress and learn all about the challenge here.
West Coast VI: The Beach, A Taste of Little Italy & Driving to LA
1We had decided that on Wednesday I would come over to Coronado and lounge on the beach while Sam finished up work.
I stopped at cute little Whole Foods type market on the island called Bayside. There I had the most delicious Thai Tofu Peanut Wrap I’ve ever had in my life. Dare I say it was the best wrap I’ve ever had? The sauce was creamy, the tofu and quinoa were perfectly cooked. Everything about it was glorious.
I also had an edamame salad and a berry smoothie. Lunch of champions!
After stuffing my face, I parked myself on the beach for a few hours.
It was seriously so relaxing.
I could sit on the beach all day long and be perfectly happy. What can I say? I’m still a Jersey girl in there somewhere.
The beach is neighbors with the navy base, and every so often planes would zoom above my head and land just a couple hundred yards away. I was even able to experience the joy of permanent hearing damage, courtesy of two jets!
Sam and I took the ferry back and got ready for our food tour! Taste of Little Italy was so.much.fun. I highly recommend it to anyone in San Diego during the tour. Sam and I spent the entire 4 hours walking from restaurant to restaurant, taking in the samples that we were given at each place.
Fusilli with mushrooms and peas in a brandy cream sauce – so creamy and comforting.
Pipian crusted brie with jalapeno jelly. Pipian is kind of like salsa verde. This was on some sort of shortbread cookie thing. It was an odd combination of flavors, but it worked.
The Spicy Pickle was the furthest walk, so they had a huge pickle on one of the corners, encouraging people to stop by.
I’m glad we did because their grilled vegetarian panini was to.die.for. I want a Spicy Pickle in South Carolina!
This was duck breast topped with cherries served on a slice of sourdough toast. I took the meat off and tried to just eat the cherries and bread, but it wasn’t good. Sam liked the duck, though.
I found that most of the stops either were vegetarian or had a vegetarian option, so I wasn’t too overwhelmed by meat. I either ate around the meat or gave my sample to Sam when the option included meat. Luckily that only happened once or twice.
One of the stops was a brewing company, where we were able to sample two beers. So tasty. The bartender was super sweet and gave Sam a bit more because he’s in the military.
The Burger Lounge was in.cred.ible. We originally weren’t going to go because we thought it was all beef burgers, but it turned out that they had a vegetarian option. It was made with organic quinoa, brown rice, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, garlic, panko, parsley, chipotle, and Monterey Jack cheese. It was seriously the best veggie burger I’ve ever had.
After the Burger Lounge, we took a quick stop back at the hotel to let our stomachs digest. We were only halfway through but we were SO FULL!
The rest of the tour went unphotographed because it was getting dark. We did take a fun video that I will be posting later!
I’m so jealous of this barista’s ability to make latte art. I worked as a barista for a little over a year, and I always wanted to learn how to do it!
Thursday was a little bit of a blur, as nothing major happened. Sam went to work, I returned my rented bike, packed up, checked out of the hotel, took a cab to the rental car place, picked up a rental car, and drove to the navy base to pick up Sam.
This is what Sam ended up packing for our LA trip: envelopes, a coffee pot, laundry detergent and his blue navy hat. Clown.
We visited with some of Sam’s friends, Jordan and Mariah, who just had a baby three weeks ago! So precious. After hanging out with them for a bit, we hit the road for our not-quite two hour road trip to LA!
We arrived safe and sound (courtesy of our Sirius radio– SO awesome!), albeit tired and ready for bed. Of course we had to park in spot 35!
So excited! Not. Stay tuned because tomorrow we go to DISNEYLAND!
West Coast VI: The Beach, A Taste of Little Italy & Driving to LA
1We had decided that on Wednesday I would come over to Coronado and lounge on the beach while Sam finished up work.
I stopped at cute little Whole Foods type market on the island called Bayside. There I had the most delicious Thai Tofu Peanut Wrap I’ve ever had in my life. Dare I say it was the best wrap I’ve ever had? The sauce was creamy, the tofu and quinoa were perfectly cooked. Everything about it was glorious.
I also had an edamame salad and a berry smoothie. Lunch of champions!
After stuffing my face, I parked myself on the beach for a few hours.
It was seriously so relaxing.
I could sit on the beach all day long and be perfectly happy. What can I say? I’m still a Jersey girl in there somewhere.
The beach is neighbors with the navy base, and every so often planes would zoom above my head and land just a couple hundred yards away. I was even able to experience the joy of permanent hearing damage, courtesy of two jets!
Sam and I took the ferry back and got ready for our food tour! Taste of Little Italy was so.much.fun. I highly recommend it to anyone in San Diego during the tour. Sam and I spent the entire 4 hours walking from restaurant to restaurant, taking in the samples that we were given at each place.
Fusilli with mushrooms and peas in a brandy cream sauce – so creamy and comforting.
Pipian crusted brie with jalapeno jelly. Pipian is kind of like salsa verde. This was on some sort of shortbread cookie thing. It was an odd combination of flavors, but it worked.
The Spicy Pickle was the furthest walk, so they had a huge pickle on one of the corners, encouraging people to stop by.
I’m glad we did because their grilled vegetarian panini was to.die.for. I want a Spicy Pickle in South Carolina!
This was duck breast topped with cherries served on a slice of sourdough toast. I took the meat off and tried to just eat the cherries and bread, but it wasn’t good. Sam liked the duck, though.
I found that most of the stops either were vegetarian or had a vegetarian option, so I wasn’t too overwhelmed by meat. I either ate around the meat or gave my sample to Sam when the option included meat. Luckily that only happened once or twice.
One of the stops was a brewing company, where we were able to sample two beers. So tasty. The bartender was super sweet and gave Sam a bit more because he’s in the military.
The Burger Lounge was in.cred.ible. We originally weren’t going to go because we thought it was all beef burgers, but it turned out that they had a vegetarian option. It was made with organic quinoa, brown rice, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, garlic, panko, parsley, chipotle, and Monterey Jack cheese. It was seriously the best veggie burger I’ve ever had.
After the Burger Lounge, we took a quick stop back at the hotel to let our stomachs digest. We were only halfway through but we were SO FULL!
The rest of the tour went unphotographed because it was getting dark. We did take a fun video that I will be posting later!
I’m so jealous of this barista’s ability to make latte art. I worked as a barista for a little over a year, and I always wanted to learn how to do it!
Thursday was a little bit of a blur, as nothing major happened. Sam went to work, I returned my rented bike, packed up, checked out of the hotel, took a cab to the rental car place, picked up a rental car, and drove to the navy base to pick up Sam.
This is what Sam ended up packing for our LA trip: envelopes, a coffee pot, laundry detergent and his blue navy hat. Clown.
We visited with some of Sam’s friends, Jordan and Mariah, who just had a baby three weeks ago! So precious. After hanging out with them for a bit, we hit the road for our not-quite two hour road trip to LA!
We arrived safe and sound (courtesy of our Sirius radio– SO awesome!), albeit tired and ready for bed. Of course we had to park in spot 35!
So excited! Not. Stay tuned because tomorrow we go to DISNEYLAND!
San Diego Video
0I’m 346% sure that I am the only person that finds this video hilarious. However, if you want to watch me make a fool of myself in San Diego, I invite you to be my guest and view the gem that is below. 
