Fabulous Vegan Recipes

Dinner is my most favorite meal of the day. I have the biggest appetite in the evening (I wish I didn't) and I love planning and preparing dinner. My dinners this week were filling, clean, nutritious plates of food that were mostly gluten-free. By the way, I don't set out to always be gluten-free but I usually end up doing that since whole grains are super clean energy sources and by nature are gluten-free. I usually buy quinoa or rice or both quinoa and rice pasta from Trader Joe's. They have spaghetti and rotini shaped pasta as well as penne.  They cook up slightly different than regular pasta (they take longer) but I love trader Joe's brand.

I was home this past weekend with the fam in the Poconos and my mom made mac and cheese the first night we arrived. It takes a while to make but luckily we weren't starving. The house began to smell delish and when we took the crockpots out of the oven, the mac was crispy and just perfect. My mom made a vegan version and a non vegan version.

So, remember the veggie and bean soup I made a few posts back?  I made waaaaaay too much of it and I didn't want the leftovers.  I wanted soup when I made it but then I was over it-I do that sometimes!  So, I made two dishes out of the soup-broth and all- and I want this post to show you that it's easy to make soup into a non-soup dish. For the soup, I used filtered water and spices for the broth and added a ton of veggies and some cannellini beans. My first dish was a pasta dish, I used the broth in place of oil and by the end of the cooking time, the broth was absorbed into the veggies.  I used peanut sauce for both recipes. Rice noodles with veggies and peanut sauce: 2 oz of dry rice pasta Leftover soup including broth 3 cloves of black garlic (explanation below) 2 tbsp of peanut butter 2 cloves of fresh raw garlic 2 tsp of powdered ginger Juice from 2 lemon slices Filtered water to thin it out Prepare the pasta according to the package.  Add the black

Hello beautiful people! Hope you had a fabulous weekend and are relaxed heading into a crisp fall Monday! I had a fabulous weekend with my Philly friends. We went to the Met and the Museum of Natural History, we had an awesome Mediterranean dinner on Saturday night of falafels, hummus, Greek salad, stuffed grape leaves and more. It's always nice having my friends and family visit. I'm conducting my first health and wellness workshop with my fellow yogi, Michele. Michele and I met during yoga teacher training over the summer and she was one of the first yogis to welcome me to New York City. Michele is a licensed marriage and family therapist and is also a certified yinyasa yoga teacher. We are presenting a self care workshop later this month to help you stay calm and in tune with your body this holiday season and beyond.

To say I'm loving this rawtill4 eating plan would be an understatement.  I lost another 3 pounds and I feel full at the end of the day.  I'm also keeping up with the yoga, running and weight lifting.  This weekend I'll be changing things up a bit because I'll be on a mini vacation in the Poconos but I plan to be as raw before 4PM as I can; I just need to stock up on lots of fruit before I go.  I won't have my blender though with me so I may take a break from the smoothies and nana ice cream, which is hard!

This is so simple!!  Takes under 5 minutes if you already have pasta made.  The tricky part is cutting out some of the tomato.  I used a knife and cut out the hard middle of the tomato and then just carved out some more of the tomato to make a bigger hole for the pasta and cheese.  You can save the carved out parts of the tomato for another dish or just pop them in your mouth while you're making this dish!  I wanted to make my carving super neat and even but it was hard :)  See below for the recipe:

I turned to many cheese alternatives when I first started my vegan journey. I missed regular cheese so much and being italian I put cheese on everything. Now I don't crave cheese as much and I try to stay away from the processed vegan foods. But sometimes you just gotta have mac and cheese!

I've been thinking all week about Italy because I've been planning another trip there. I was looking at the beautiful Cinque Terre area and dreaming about basking in the Italian sunshine and hiking along the beautiful hillside :) So of course I've been cooking a lot of pasta and I whipped up this cool bruschetta on a whim. I put a small avocado and 1/2 jar of artichokes in my food processor and blended. Then I spread the mixture on two pieces of Italian bread...it was delicious. Then I whipped up some brown rice spaghetti and topped it with kale in garlic and olive oil. Start out with olive oil and finely chopped garlic in a pan on the stove and then add chopped kale. It made a delicious sauce for the spaghetti. Yuuuuum!

Here are some dinner recipes now.  I've been obsessed with cabbage for a few months now ever since my mom bought Pagano's beans and cabbage salad over for dinner one night.  Cabbage is awesome.  It has a lot of nutrients and is gentle on digestion.  I make cannellini beans and cabbage a lot.  I also love using my crockpot to make cabbage soup, although now that the weather is getting warmer, I may put that on hold.