Insta-Foods Take 5

I have been the absolute worst in updating the blog. I'll admit, I fell off the blogging wagon - and that is all thanks to my last show. Being involved in theatre is time-consuming, hard work, and sometimes so stressful you'd rather not do anything but the work, sleep, and eat. So I ended up just not having time. But the show ended April 1st...

So the rest is just my lazy self. And in part finishing out my junior year of college, but let's be honest. I was lazy.

Let's hop back into it with something easy - another instagram foods report!

 

 

 

1. One of Chocolate Covered Katie's chocolate frosting shots, made for my mother as a little mother's day treat. This stuff is delicious - a smooth, chocolatey (and healthy!) chocolate mousse.
2. Oh She Glows's version of vegan mac-and-cheese. This has pumpkin in it! And nutritional yeast instead of expensive non-dairy cheese :) With kale and pea mix-ins. Soooo good.
3. My first meal from Sweet Pea Cafe, a restaurant I'd been meaning to try for awhile. It's all-vegan and my new addiction. This is a "cheez" quesadilla with sweet potato fries, which are to die for.
4. Brunch at Sweet Pea! Breakfast tofu scramble quesadilla with roasted potatoes. My mouth waters just thinking of their food (their black bean quinoa burger is THE BEST).
5. Home-made blue corn tacos - black beans, salsa, avocado...yummy.
6. Soul Veg's BBQ tofu plate with sweet carrots and hebrew rice...avec a side of cornbread. All vegan...and so.so.so good. It's hearty southern soul - made vegan!
7. My roommate and I made a pizza together. Using the Peas and Thank You crust recipe and topped with simply sauce, mushrooms, and olives. Yes please.
8. Mom and I stumbled upon a cute little cafe last weekend while walking in town and I was pleasantly surprised to find this roasted veggie wrap on the menu. I asked to do it without the cheese, and the guy making it was very understanding since he's also lactose intolerant! It was a great find for sure.

You know, looking over this it's odd because...9 times out of 10 I eat at home and make my own food! I guess restaurant food is just much prettier. That and I eat a lot of the same stuff...don't want to bore anybody ;)

Well thank you for reading! Expect more posts soon - product finds, restaurant reviews (what can I say? visiting the parents means I eat well!), maybe even some recipes...

Home Life: Going to the Farm

I am a big supporter of local, organic farming and produce. I know it's not always plausible (believe me, I know - college student here) to buy fresh and organic, but it can be very beneficial to your health and taste buds to stop by a local produce market once in awhile. My mother and father are lucky enough to have a local organic farm in their area, which they subscribe to. My mom goes once a week!

During my break last week, I was lucky enough to make the trip with her, my sister, and my niece. It's a lovely operation with tons and tons of delicious and colorful produce. They also sell homemade goat cheese, goat's milk soap, jam, and fresh farm eggs. Plus, they even had baby chicks this time!

 

D'awwh.

They didn't have any of my favorite (sweet potatoes) left (sad face), but we got plenty of awesome goods. I picked out some lettuce, swiss chard, yellow squash, and beets that were of course taken back to college with me. My sister got some corn to take home with her, and we also picked out some nice tomatoes and broccoli for use in salads that week. Nom nom nom.

Oh, and a cucumber shaped like a crescent moon...really brings me back to my Sailor Moon days.

Seriously. Veggies are so good fresh and straight from the source. It really makes a difference! It's really sad to me that it's so much harder to find and buy organic produce when it's crazy better for us and better tasting. My mother, who has a strong distaste for raw broccoli, loves it from the farm! Also, some produce from the supermarket is so inundated with pesticides and other chemicals that it can make us sick if we consume a lot of it. And you need a lot of veggies.

...or I do, at least ^_^

And farms are just great places to be sometimes. Ahh, nature.

And my niece loves it, too!

Crazy for Coconuts

 

So for awhile now it's been a deep wish of mine to drink a coconut. Yes, drink a coconut. I also want to try coconut butter and buy myself a jar of coconut oil and just eat coconut (but I mean, I'm not obsessed or anything...) but mostly I have been trying forever to get a straw and a coconut and go to town.

Here's the story: in my home town there's a little outdoor market on Saturdays where the "coconut man" sets up his booth and dishes out coconuts in which he's cut holes. It's like a little tropical drink, no cleaning up cups required! But we always go to the chiropractor first and we always miss him.

But yesterday, luck was on my side:

And I ended up with my heart's desire:

Mmm. A dream come true. It actually seems pretty easy to do yourself, so I guess if I stumble across any coconuts in my local supermarket I can try it. I'll let you know what happens. With that and with the leftover coconut ;)

Oh, and Saturdays at home also often mean a Whole Foods stop. I piled so many different things in there, I honestly couldn't tell you what some of it is. I know there's cranberry cous-cous, hummus & cucumbers, a mango and hearts of palm salad, balsamic tofu, basmati rice, asparagus, black-eyed peas, and kale hidden somewhere...

Gosh I love Whole Foods.

What are some of the foods you can't wait to try?

Sonja

PB Crave Review

So, via the twittermonster, I was given a rather exciting opportunity. I'll admit that when I first got a twitter I was dubious - and peer pressured into it - but I'll give a hearty thumbs up to anything that gets me closer to peanut butter. That's right, ladies and gentleman, twitter helped me receive free peanut butter. And we all know how I feel about nut butters.

PB Crave, previously known as PB Loco, has come back with four new flavors and an exciting charity project. They asked via their twitter if any bloggers would be willing to review their product in exchange for free samples - and who was I to turn away this PBlicious opportunity?

Anyway my samples arrived in the mail only a few days ago and I was so excited I immediately tore into them to discover not any mere sample - but four. beautiful. jars.

And I had a spoonful of each on the spot. So let's get started.

#1: Coco Bananas

This is the PB I was most excited for, because there is very little I love more than a PB/Banana/Chocolate combo. I have PB and Banana together almost every morning, and certainly every day.

The Verdict: It's good, but it surprisingly ended up being my least-favorite flavor. Like all four flavors, it had an excellent creamy quality (possibly due to the melo honey) and I adored the little chocolate chips inside. The chips, as opposed to cocoa flavoring, added a nice texture and pop of chocolate. However the banana flavor was not all how I hoped it would be. It is an all-natural flavoring, but it still leaves sort of an artificial aftertaste. Still delicious, but a bit disappointing.

#2: Choco Choco

The double-chocolate peanut butter. I am all for more chocolate. Those little lumps are the chocolate chips! :)

The Verdict: Yum. Yum yum yum. I had this one (and coco bananas, as pictured above) on some toast after the initial taste test and I adored how easily it went onto the bread, and how some of the chocolate chips melted into the spread and added an extra kick of chocolate to it all.

#3: Razzle Dazzle

This one had white & dark chocolate along with raspberry flavor. I apologize for not getting a better picture of the texture of it, I realized last minute I'd not taken one when I taste-tested! Shameful. And then I had to leave my apartment for the day...so I snapped a quick pic in order to get this post out ASAP.

The Verdict: I really liked it - it had a nice light fruity pop. The flavoring did still left a bit of an aftertaste like the banana one but it wasn't overwhelming. And I'd never seen a berry-infused PB before! I was very impressed by the creativity in this PB recipe.

#4: Cookie Nookie 

A cookie dough flavored PB...uh, count me in. Admit it, doesn't this idea intrigue you?

The Verdict: My favorite. I love it. It's got a nice decadent flavor, which you'd expect from the name. It doesn't lose its PB-quality while still having a great chocolate chip cookie punch. I want a spoonful...like now. Excuse me, I have to run into the kitchen.


The Health Stats


A disclaimer, guys: these PBs are not vegan. I know my blog is very vegan, but I don't consider myself a stringent vegan I was not going to turn down free PB. Anyways, I consider my diet more plant-based than vegan, meaning I stick to plant-based and whole foods whenever possible, but I don't restrict myself. And I have honey every day. So. Non-vegan PBs. Onwards.

All four peanut butters are all-natural, made with Mel-o honey and Belgian chocolate. They are free of gluten, added sugar, trans fat, and high fructose corn syrup.

They are all 180 calories per serving (2 Tablespoons). Naturally most of those calories come from fat - it is peanut butter after all. But I firmly believe a bit of peanut butter is a good, filling snack or addition to a meal. Fat is not necessarily bad for you guys. Unless it's all you eat. And treat yourself with the added chocolate!


The Charity

PB Crave gives a minimum 2% of their profits to Project Peanut Butter, a charity whose goal is to treat and save malnourished children. This, I think, is the best part of their company and the strongest reason why they are worth trying.  So many children go without what we mostly take for granted, and we can help with these small gestures. And give our taste buds a little treat as well ;)

You can also vote here in Walmart's Get on the Shelf competition to help them further this goal: www.getontheshelf.com/product/4878/PB-Crave 

So there you have it. Expect a cookie recipe using one of these PBs soon! I'm thinking maybe Razzle Dazzle...


*disclaimer: I was not paid for this review of PB Crave's products, and my opinions are entirely my own.

Insta-Foods Take Four

yes I only do these when I am running out of time for anything else

 

 

 

1. Blended PB & Banana Oatmeal - a very typical breakfast of mine, especially on chilly mornings.
2. Endangered Species Chocolate Bars: Turtle (dark w/ blueberries) and Lemur (dark w/ raw cacao nibs) - been craving them for awhiiiile. Noms.
3. Vegan strawberry cupcake, made & consumed for V-Day.
4. Vegan strawberry pancakes! Had to use up those strawberries somehow ;)
5. A salad of mixed greens, olives, tomatoes, snap peas and hummus/apple cider vinegar dressing, topped with black beans.
6. My rainy day treat to myself: a grilled banana-almond butter-apricot jam sandwich.
7. Cucumbers, carrots, green beans, & homemade brown rice chips - all for an excuse to eat a ton of hummus, of course!
8. Seasoned black beans on a bed of spinach and quinoa. With a side glass of carrot juice that I'd already consumed most of...along with a slice of Ezekial bread toast (I am loving Ezekial bread right now) coated in apricot jam.

The Alien Spawn

Seriously. If I handed one of these to you with no explanation, you would totally think I'd discovered an extraterrestrial life form, wouldn't you? Or perhaps an alien's noms.

But no, this is a real vegetable. My mom brought it to me straight from the organic farm she subscribes to back home. It's called romanesco broccoli, and is also known as Roman cauliflower. Which is a very apt name, since that's pretty much what it tastes like. A broccoli-cauliflower fusion. My roommate ended up dubbing it "cauliccoli" 'cuz the name's been a bit hard to remember, and I like it.

Since it was my first time trying "cauliccoli", I didn't go too crazy and simply roasted it at 400 for about 10 minutes. All that adorned these crazy cauliflower kids was a drizzle of olive oil and some of my prized himalayan pink salt.

Honestly, I'm not OCD about my food touching, this was just for photographic purposes.

I had the maybe-alien veggie alongside a vegan mushroom-rice veggie burger (topped with another product new to me, nutritional yeast, which I approve of - and some ketchup and pickles for the burger). I ended up utilizing the ketchup for the cauliccoli as well, which hey...everything's good with ketchup.

Pretty much, anyway.

So have you made any new food/product discoveries lately?

Sonja

A Weekend With Mommabear

A review ... in noms. ;)

Homemade banana bread :)

My lovely mother was in town for a visit this weekend, which of course meant a weekend full of great company, and great food!

She rolled into town Friday around 3, which gave us plenty of time to grab dinner before my night rehearsal. We decided to go to Soul Veg - a completely vegan cafe downtown. I'd only had the pleasure of going once, and my mom had never been. Now, while she's not a vegan/vegetarian like I am, she loves her veggies and rarely eats meat anyway. So she was totally open for it!

We both chose their "live salad platter" option - I chose the toppings of seaweed, cous cous, and spinach. She's not such a spinach fan and chose bean curd instead. It all was served atop of salad of greens, tomatoes, and onions. (She also had a ginger-citrus punch that was.so.good.likeomg.)

As you can see, we loved them so much we plowed through them before I remembered to take a picture! Oops.

But I did take a picture of the amazing vegan apple pie we snacked on for dessert...

To quote my mom, "This is not missing a thing!" More proof that a vegan diet is not a boring diet!

On Saturday we tried out a new coffee place in town, where I decided to spoil myself by ordering a (definitely not vegan) nutella sandwich on cinnamon-raisin bread along with my traditional morning tea. Hey, you only live once, and there wasn't any Justin's Chocolate-Hazelnut butter around!

One of these days I'll remember: picture first, eat later.

My mom loved her Peru Coffee. Not so jazzed about her sandwich. Perhaps it was the extreme excess of onions...?

Seriously, the onions owned this sandwich. They probably planted a flag somewhere in there.

For lunch...it was Earthfare salad bar all the way (cuz I just had to get tons of healthy, yummy groceries while my momma was in town!). I won't even go into my three (!) bags of groceries, but om nom salad bar + juice bar.

Honestly there was a lot piled on here that I don't remember exactly. The highlight was the cranberry quinoa and kale. Sounds weird, was delicious. And I loved my juice (a carrot-beet-cucumber-ginger combo) as well. Oh oh, and the brussel sprouts. No, I'm not kidding.

For dinner Mom and I elected to cook a recipe from Peas and Thank You, Mama Pea's falafel with tzatki sauce.

Honestly...I wasn't super impressed. The sauce was too garlicky and the falafel not very flavorful, although I did enjoy it leftover dunked into ketchup. The biggest letdown was Food For Life's Brown Rice Tortillas...very chewy and stiff. But I saved the day by cutting the rest up and making them into delicious chips!

And for Sunday breakfast we had some good old oatmeal from the coffee place. I can always count on oatmeal. It is my bestest breakfast friend ;)

...and then she had to go back home. Boo! I love it when my parents are in town, and it's always sad to see them go. But hey, I'm an adult and that's how it is, right? Right. Totally an adult over here.

What are your favorite types of places to eat out or take your parents/friends/significant others for a treat?

Sonja