Going through withdrawal

I'm in withdrawal.

Two weeks ago, we started on our mostly-vegan meal plan here in my household. Lots and lots of vegetables, a salad every day, virtually no animal products. It's not been impossible, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy, and not for the reasons I anticipated.

I love to plan, so that's not the hardship. It's the boredom. I get lots of flavors, but what I'm missing is texture. Creaminess. Crunchiness. Roasting vegetables can occasionally give me the latter, but it's a lot harder to recreate the former. Since I'm trying to avoid what I think of as weird vegan substitutes and concentrate on whole foods, I'm limited. Cauliflower mash is the only one to fill that void so far.

There have been some great new recipes added to our repertoire, though. Thug Kitchen's roasted beet and quinoa salad is one. Last Friday, we grilled portobello mushrooms and stuffed them with artichokes and pesto. Tomorrow, I'm switching up my chicken saag recipe to make it with eggplant instead. I have high hopes for that one.

But nights of great food are interspersed with meals that are just to satisfy hunger. Simple things that don't take much effort in the kitchen at all. For someone like me who loves to cook, that's a rough one to deal with. I'm hoping that once I've discovered more variations on complex options that'll fix itself.

In the meantime, I'm trying not to take my irritability out on my family. The health benefits are already showing themselves. My skin is better. We've lost weight. It'll all be worth it.

It'll just be more enjoyable once I'm past the withdrawal.

Embracing Our Garden

We've made food changes in our household. To our friends, they seem pretty drastic. In some ways, they are. I certainly didn't see it coming. But health issues have reared their ugly heads, and when that happens, you do what you have to do.

My household has gone vegan. Mostly.

What that means is six days a week, we don't consume animal products or anything processed. No salt, either. Our big meal is always a salad, and water consumption has gone through the roof. Right now, I just can't do it every day, so I'm reserving Sunday as a day that's more omnivorous, but plain eating is still the priority.

So far, it's not going too badly.

Breakfasts are the hardest for me. I can't eat oatmeal every day, and smoothies do absolutely zero to fill me up, so I've had to work at finding alternatives. The first thing that's worked is this antioxidant-rich breakfast bar, which I was more than a little shocked I enjoyed. It's incredibly filling, too. I need that. Since I'm at home most of the day, it's too easy to snack on something I probably shouldn't.

Planning is the key. There are certain foods I have to work into our diet on a regular basis, and I'm the kind of person who gets bored easily. I want flavor. And I want a variety of them. I've subscribed to a few food blogs that look promising, so as I try things out, I'll be sure to share.

Cookbook Recommendation - Thug Kitchen

I'm a bit of a cookbook junkie. I love to cook, I love to try new recipes, and if something is pretty, I'll grab it. Seriously. I just recently did a culling because I was running out of room, and I still have 72 cookbooks I'm not ready to get rid of.

So when somebody recently suggested Thug Kitchen to me, I shouldn't have listened. I should've plugged up my ears, started whistling, and pretended I hadn't noticed. Except I did. And I went to Amazon. And I hit buy within sixty seconds of scanning the reviews.

It's a vegan cookbook, but I bought it anyway because my family and I are trying to get more vegetables in our lives in more interesting ways. It arrived while I was away, so I wasn't able to start trying any of the recipes until Tuesday. First on the docket was a simple quinoa oatmeal. I've been craving oatmeal lately, and I hadn't tried steelcut oats yet. It made the choice easy.

Verdict? Good. Easy. Try another recipe.

I picked out a recipe to fix for dinner last night that would require minimal shopping on my part. The winner was this roasted chickpea and broccoli burrito. It was a little heavier on the spices than I usually can tolerate, but I figured if it was too hot, I could just bury it in sour cream.

Turns out, I didn't need to, a fact I picked up on when I nicked a piece halfway through roasting:

Everybody devoured the burritos when they were done, even my thirteen year-old son. I am totally making these again. 

We already picked out the next recipe to try, a mushroom and spinach lasagna. I have high expectations.

But what makes this cookbook so much fun isn't just the recipes. It's the tone. For those unfamiliar with Thug Kitchen, it's unpretentious and no holds barred, definitely R-rated for language. I sat and actually read the first twenty pages of the cookbook (before the recipes) and laughed/smiled through the whole thing. It's a refreshingly blunt way of looking at vegetarian/vegan cooking, bringing it back to the food rather than the holier than thou atmosphere that often permeates this type of cuisine.

How can you not love a cookbook that calls salads, "plant nachos?"

Best Christmas gift ever

Bit by bit, I'm getting back into my routine. My daughter returned to school yesterday, my son goes today, and I am back to writing. I took the holidays off for the most part, so I could spend time with my family. That means, of course, that now, I'm rushing to get caught up.

I don't regret it for a second. It was quiet and cozy, and with my daughter a freshman in high school now, I'm relishing these holidays for as long as I can. Plus, I got a new toy for Christmas! I love to cook, and my husband surprised me by getting me a sous vide circulator. Don't know what it is? Well, sous vide cooking is about sealing food in vacuum bags and cooking it in a temperature-controlled water bath. It cooks more slowly and evenly, only up to the desired temperature, so in theory it's impossible for food to get overcooked. It's been used in the restaurant industry for ages, and we'd been dying to try it.

And now we have! Its most practical non-professional application is for meat, so since we were having beef tenderloin for Christmas dinner, it was agreed we would try it out on that. It was a risk, sure, but oh, so worth it. Instead of roasting, we cut the meat into 1" slices, sealed them in bags, and put it in the bath with the circulator for an hour. When I took them out, I gave them a quick sear on the stovetop with just salt and pepper.

Best. Beef. Ever. Seriously. We were able to cut them with butter knives, and for this gal who likes her beef on the rare side and usually gets screwed over with pieces more medium, it was perfect. We've tried it with ribs, which turned out very tender as well, and this week, I'm trying bratwurst.

What was your favorite Christmas gift this year? Was Santa generous?