Mango and Swiss Chard

serves 1

• 1 cup water
• 2-3 leaves swiss chard, stems included
• 5 oz frozen pineapple
• 5 oz frozen mango
• optional: extra water; agave or stevia

1. Add the ingredients in the order listed to a high power blender.
2. Blend. You may need to add extra water. You will probably also have to use your tamper to get everything to blend.
3. Taste for sweetness.

I’ll be posting more green smoothies in the future!

Version 2 can be found here.
Version 1 can be found at The Picky Vegan.

Cherries & Greens, Version 3

serves 1

• 1 cup water
• 5-6 leaves green leaf lettuce
• 1 frozen banana
• a handful of frozen sweet cherries
• a handful of frozen blueberries
• a handful of frozen strawberries
• optional: extra water; agave or stevia

1. Add the ingredients in the order listed to a high power blender.
2. Blend. You may need to add extra water. You will probably also have to use your tamper to get everything to blend.
3. Taste for sweetness.

I also wasn’t feeling great this morning. Not anything specific, just out of sorts. I was glad I had soup.

Breakfast: banana with flax
Snack: Kiwi
Lunch: Part of a green salad (leftovers from yesterday), red lentil and carrot soup (very filling!)
Dinner: Black bean soup and rice

Yes, I should have had more fruit and more veggies today. I just so didn’t feel like it today. I wanted warm comfort food. I’m feeling again today that this is hard.

The good news is, I’m done with this in a month.

Turns out it contains salt. A fair amount of salt. The thing is, I figured this out before I used it, and I used it anyway, because I really wanted to try it. Man, that salad tasted awesome, with just a sprinkle of vinegar…

It was also a tough day. I overslept (forgot to reset the alarm after shutting it off for the holiday yesterday), woke up to a ton of ice all over my car, and was really busy once I got to work. It was a hard day for taking the time to eat. I was able to eat my breakfast (I usually eat before I get to work these days, but today I didn’t have much choice) and my salad at lunchtime, but it wan’t easy. I didn’t get to eat all the other fruit I brought with me, but after yesterday, I think that might be okay.

Breakfast: Banana and flax, coconut water
Lunch: salad (chard, mixed greens, carrots, onion, red pepper, cucumber, rosemary, parsley and grapes, with the last of the strawberry dressing from the weekend) and chickpeas
Snack: Honeycrisp apple, 1/2 oz walnuts
Snack: Chickpeas with spicy tomato sauce
Dinner: same salad as above with the aforementioned vinegar, red lentil and carrot soup with 1/2 cup rice

Breakfast: Banana, flax, blood orange and kiwi
Lunch: Salad- mixed greens, spinach, carrots, onion, cucumber PLUS 1 blood orange, 1 clementine, 1 kiwi and 1 mango, 1/2 oz walnuts
Dinner: salad (mixed greens, carrot, onion) and chana massala (I promise, quick and easy recipe coming soon), with 1/4 cup of rice
Both salads had a bit more of that strawberry dressing from yesterday (whole strawberries, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar).

That would be SEVEN whole fruits in one day. I think that may be a record for me!

The last few days have been quite doable. I won’t say that I don’t want other foods, but I’m not feeling like I’m starving or anything. I think one of the things that I have to work on is not feeling like I have to have something now because I subconsciously feel like I won’t be able to have it again.

When I was a kid, I was already overweight. Always have been. My younger brother was not. So, my mom bought junk food for him, not for me, and I got into the habit of food hoarding, because I wanted junk too. So when it was available, I would scarf down as much as I could. When I first went vegan, I didn’t have access to a lot of vegan junk food, both because of where I lived and the fact that a lot of the (vegan) junk foods hadn’t been developed yet. Now that we have so much vegan junk available, I buy up way more than I need whenever I see it. So, instead of buying one “treat” for the week, I buy six treats. I’m not sure if that’s because I think I won’t be able to get back to the store for a while (which is bogus, I probably go to the grocery store an average of two times a week, with the different stores I go to for different stuff), or because I just don’t notice how much it is when I’m buying one of this or one of that, but I definitely buy too much.

Heck, I’ve overdone with the buying on the veggies over the last week. I know I need a lot, but I end up buying too much, and with veggies, they’ll spoil. (So far haven’t had to toss too much, but that’s due to using every trick I can think of to extend the life of veggies). It’s a problem. One I need to figure out.

Breakfast: banana, flax, blood orange and kiwi
Lunch: large spinach salad with pinto beans, spices and balsamic vinegar
Pre-dinner snack: large green salad (with other veggies) and asparagus; both with a strawberry dressing I made out of whole strawberries, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar
Dinner: Red Lentil and Carrot Soup with 1/3 cup of rice

I also had some pomegranate tea in there somewhere.

I will be doing a post on the soup sometime this week on The Picky Vegan. It’s awesome! And hopefully, today’s post will be up a little later.

Today showcased the dangers of letting oneself get too hungry. About two hours after breakfast, I was starving, but was supposed to go out. An emergency salad and beans were had which saved the day, but if you don’t have much available on hand that can be made quickly, you might want to do bad things, like go have a melty vegan cheese-y veggie burger and fries. Which I wanted to do, but did not. Otherwise, today was fine. Plus, I ate salad greens like potato chips. I won’t say they were better than chips, but they weren’t bad.

Breakfast: Banana and flax, with a kiwi. (wondering how I eat the “banana and flax” everyday, since it might seem weird? I mash the banana. It probably says that in an earlier post… I usually add some cinnamon, too).
Lunch: Green salad (herb greens and baby spinach) with lemon juice and pinto beans.
Snack: Granny Smith apple.
Dinner: Chana massala with 1/2 cup rice (yes, again. It’s awesome and easy to prepare. Recipe to come soon!)
Snack: Greens, eaten out of the box while watching TV. Like potato chips!

Breakfast: banana, flax and an apricot. Well, half of an apricot, because the apricot really wasn’t very good.
Snack: Clementine
Lunch: more chana massala, plus a salad with cucumber, romaine and purple cabbage; kiwi
Snack: Honeycrisp apple. I also had part of another clementine, but threw the rest away, because it also was not very good. It had a lot of tough pith. Not a good day for fruit!
Dinner: More chana massala. Also, green beans with a little Bragg’s.
There was also some tea and a coconut water in there somewhere.

I can’t say that I’ve stopped wanting other food, but it really is getting better. And I really do have more energy!

I do really need to work on eating more greens in relation to the amount of beans I eat. There was a little bit of rice in all of the chana massala, but not more than 1/2 cup over all. I think I could go without, and not notice any difference in taste.