A few nights ago I made some delicious tilapia for dinner. As I've said I am doing weight watchers and trying to eat healthy and exercise. I wanted something simple but delicious. I am also a vegetarian, but I do eat seafood (so yes, I'm technically a pescetarian). And since I'm very environmentally-minded I make sure to eat sustainable seafood (I am an aquaculturist after all). It's hard to keep track with all the fishing practices, so I look to the Seafood Watch by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see what's good to eat. They have a guide online, a printed pocket guide, and a smartphone app. So for tilapia, U.S., Ecuador, and Canada farmed tilapia is good. So that's what I got.
Ingredients:
Tilapia (I used a 6oz piece, which is 2oz more than a typical serving size)
Garlic salt
Old Bay seasoning
1/4 cup fat-free sour cream
1 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
2 tsp spinach, chopped (I used frozen that was already chopped, and just thawed it)
1 tsp reduced fat parm cheese
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Instructions:
Pan-Seared Tilapia (PointsPlus: 5)
Spray a non-stick frying pan with a small amount of cooking spray (a very small amount is all you need). Heat the pan over medium-high heat. Season the fish to taste on both sides using the garlic salt and old bay seasoning. I used a little less than a teaspoon of garlic salt on one side and about a teaspoon of Old Bay on each side. Once the pan is heated place the fish in the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes then flip and cook for 2 minutes on the other side.
Herb Cream Sauce (PointsPlus: 1)
Mix together the sour cream, parsley, spinach, parmesan cheese, and lemon juice. Serve on top of tilapia. This made more than I wanted on my fish so I didn't use it all.
I served the whole meal with some steamed broccoli and corn on the cob. Delicious, low-point dinner! Enjoy!
Note: For those of you who have said that you haven't been able to comment, I think I fixed that issue.
My Vegan Vacation: 4 Days in Melbourne, Florida
So I chose October as my month to go vegan because it didn't involve major food holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...) so I shouldn't run into many speed bumps. Well, I hadn't thought about the fact that I was taking a long weekend to go down to Melbourne to visit my undergrad for my sorority's alumni weekend. I had a fantastic weekend and was so happy to see so many of my Alpha Phi sisters. Love them.
Sunrise over I-10.
Food was complicated over the weekend. Thursday I drove down and brought food with me for the road trip (7.5 hour drive) so that was fine. Left super early in the morning, but I love driving before the sun is up.
Thursday night I went out for Mexican with a friend and easily found a vegan option, and the waiter assured me it was dairy-free. Friday breakfast consisted of a bagel and some coffee with a friend at Panera, of course. Breakfast was a little late so I didn't eat lunch. Dinner was the challenge. Alpha Phi was hosting the 3rd Annual Red Dress Gala, a formal dinner fundraiser to raise money for the Alpha Phi Foudation in support of heart health. My sister, Norah, who is wonderful and was in charge of the event worked so hard to get a meal I could eat. The hotel that the event was being held at clearly did not understand what it means to be vegan. My salad consisted of watered down lettuce with two slices of tomato. I say watered down because I thought at first that they had drizzled it with oil for dressing, but no they just soaked the lettuce in water. No dressing. I squeezed lemon juice onto it to add some flavor and ate the tomatoes last so that I got the most flavor at the end. I was a little worried about what would come next. The entree they served was a plate of vegetables. Just vegetables. They were delicious, and I was grateful to have them but there was nothing else. No rice. No beans. Nothing but veggies. I'm clearly a rabbit. My friend next to me has a bunch of allergies so she also got a special meal. They served her after me and she got a plate of veggies and rice. I looked at her plate and said "Why can't I get rice?"
Norah and I. She's awesome.
My plate of veggies. Delicious. Not fulfilling.
Saturday was a lot better for food. Lunch consisted of a BBQ at the APhi house. BBQ doesn't typically scream vegan, but my Little was awesome and made me a vegan dish. She made this pan-asian noodle dish which was delicious. There was also fruit, and a salsa dip that I could eat. That worked out well. For dinner I had a fantastic veggie wrap at bar and restaurant we were at for dinner. Thanks to the website barnivore.com I can easily look up alcohols that are vegan friendly so that is always helpful. Sunday was the drive back and I didn't really eat much other than chips.
I didn't have a chance to go food shopping since I got back until tonight. So Sunday night and yesterday consisted of leftovers. Tonight though I made a vegan version of Rocco Dispirito's Sweet and Spicy Linguine alla Vodka (which has no vodka in it...). The recipe calls for yogurt and I didn't have soy yogurt, nor was I able to go downtown to Ever'man's to get some, so I experimented and mixed a little bit of vegan cream cheese with some soy milk. It seemed to make the right consistency so I gave it a try. It was delicious. And I tweeted about it and Rocco retweeted it which kind of made my night because I'm in love with him. Maybe tomorrow I'll post my modified version of the recipe. It really was good and it's pretty low in calories. Rocco has really great low-cal recipes with his Now Eat This Diet.
The sauce came out great with my yogurt substitution experiment.
Finished product.
Put it in some tuperware and brought it to my office for dinner.
That's all for now. I had a fantastic trip and made the best of it as a vegan. I didn't starve so I'd say it's a success. Look for some more posts soon.
Okay so tonight I had the biggest vegan fail ever. Seriously, I made three different meals for dinner because the first two went almost directly into the trash. So I started off with some apple cider tofu. I found the recipe from VeganDad and it looked so delicious that I thought I'd give it a try. Fail. I used less apple cider vinegar than the recipe called for and all you could taste was vinegar. So after a bite of that I threw it out (there was no salvaging any of it) and moved on to the next try. I had some tofu noodles and I made a "cream" sauce. Cooked up the noodles, poured some sauce over them, and topped it with some vegan-friendly meatless meatballs. I learned that tofu noodles are rather disgusting. The sauce and the meatballs were great, but they were ruined by the noodles. So after that I was tired of cooking. Heated up some leftover chickpea cakes and a few more meatballs and that was my dinner.
Last night I had a successful dinner attempt with only one try. I made some stir fry with bean sprouts, baby corn, mushrooms, water chestnuts, tempeh, and served it over rice. It was rather delicious, something that was super easy to make, and another one of those foods that you can just use whatever veggies you have.
Delicious tempeh stir fry which I served over rice (and have several servings of leftovers).
So one day last week I had the realization that since it is now October it is Mallomars season. If you're not aware, Mallomars are a delicious treat from Nabisco that is basically a smores cookie. It's a graham cracker-like cookie topped with marshmallow and covered in a chocolate coating. They are delicious. Over 70% of them are sold in the NY Metropolitan area though, so they are hard to come across down south. They are also only made from October to May since they melt so easily in the summer months. I got a packed from Mama Ceal this week and of course it had a box of Mallomars in it because she always sends me some when it's Mallomars season. Well, at least they don't go bad so they will be an amazing treat after my Vegan Pledge is over.
Sad that I can't eat Mallomars. They will make for a great post-vegan celebration.
Last night (or this morning rather) I had the sudden urge to bake cupcakes. It was 2am. I almost did, but then my rational thoughts took over and I knew that as soon as I would put them in the oven I would have the sudden urge to sleep. So I passed on that, but I plan on making some more chocolate cupcakes this weekend and possibly some cocount cupcakes as well.
Haven't had any other exciting vegan cooking extravaganzas. I'm hoping for some deliciously successful cooking adventures this weekend. And maybe a meal out at Sluggo's.
Here's the trailer to Food, Inc. It's a great documentary that has encouraged me to be a conscious consumer. I'm not trying to turn everyone (or anyone) vegetarian or vegan, but you should know where your food comes from and how it gets to you. I think I may see a documentary day coming up soon. This weekend perhaps?
Hey look at this... two days in a row for blog posts! Go me!
So yesterday I had my first vegan baking experience. It went really well. Yesterday morning I went shopping at Ever'Man's in downtown Pensacola, which is a natural foods store. I was so happy there. They just have so many options for vegans and I loved it. Can't wait to go back.
Just out of the oven. Baked a minute or two too long.
I first made some chocolate cupcakes from a recipe I found from Oh She Glows. I baked them a couple mintues too long so they were a little overcooked on the outside but still so delicious. The almond "buttercream" frosting was delicious, but a little too almond-y for me. So I think next time I might do half almond extract and half vanilla extract.
Frosted. I even got some vegan sprinkles which were the ugliest colors ever, but still good.
I also gave chocolate chip cookie dough truffles that I found a recipe for from Chef Chloe. They were delicious. I brought them to my staff meeting this morning and people loved them. They were super easy to make too.
The best part about vegan cookie dough is that you don't have to worry about eating raw eggs.
Cookie dough in the freezer.
Halfway there. Look delicious.
Seriously so good. They were a hit.
I hadn't thought about dinner last night until I was hungry so I needed to put something together pretty quickly. I made a portabello mushroom burger which was delicious.
My delicious portabello burger. Threw on some vegan cheese, sliced tomato, and veganaise and mustard. Yum
Today for lunch I made myself a tofurkey sandwich. I had some Italian deli style tofurkey, along with some tomatoes that I sliced up, some vegan cheese, and veganaise and had it on wheat toast. I was a little worried about veganaise at first because it just sounds gross, but it's just an oil based spread and it tastes just like mayonaise. The sandwich was really delicious. It was a nice change for lunch.
Tonight for dinner I really wanted to make some soup. Today felt like fall so it was definitely a night for soup. I even wore jeans and a pair of boots today. I'm so happy the fall weather is here (I just wish I was up north to really experience fall). I made a simple vegetable soup. The thing I love about making soup is that you can just throw in whatever you have. So I used vegetable stock and water and added potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, celery, Great Northern Beans, mushrooms, and seasoned it up. It was delicious and I made plenty so I could freeze some of the leftovers to have another time.
I love to freeze it in individual serving size containers so that I have ready to go meals whenever I need them.
So here's the talk for today. Let me warn you first: it's a long one. It's about 20 minutes long, but believe me it's worth it. Mark Bittman (a food writer for the New York Times) talks about what's wrong with our diet. He touches on a lot of good points, reasons why I'm a vegetarian. What I like about it, though, is not that he's saying be a vegetarian (because he's not saying that), but that he's just talking about what is wrong with what we eat and how and why we should change it. Our country's agricultural system has gone to shit, which I mean figuratively of course (although quite literally when you think about livestock being raised while standing in their own feces). As an alumna of the National FFA (Future Farmers of America) Organization, I hope to see our agricultural system improve.
So I hope you watch this video in its entirety. I hope you'll eat organic, eat local, eat sustainable, but most importantly just eat healthy. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend the movie Food, Inc. It's a great documentary about the food we eat and the agricultural system.
Now onto the word of the day. An important word it is today...
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Agreement. Decision. I think it's time to come to a mutual agreement. I'm not so into this dual blogging thing I've got going on. My blog has agreed it is going in a better direction (clearly I made up a mind for my blog) and I've agreed that I hate building off of this one word thing. Agreed. Decided.
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Well, there you have it. I have decided (and apparently mutually agreed with the mind of my blog) that it's time to remove the one word aspect to the blog. I think that my blog is far better with these 30-day challenges now. So mutual is the last word I'll be using for my blog inspiration. It doesn't mean I'm leaving oneword.com behind. Seriously, give it a try. It really helps your thoughts to just flow. Which ironically, using it for my blog makes my posts not flow... If you're terribly upset by this mutual decision between me and my blog (again I apparently gave it a mind of its own...) feel free to let me know and I may consider giving it another go. Although, who actually reads this anyway? Especially after I just asked you to watch a guy talk for 20 minutes. So I applaud you if you not only read my blog, but made it this far.
On another quick note that goes back to the food thing, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, or just looking to eat healthy there's a few blogs that I think you'd be interested in. I think some of them are on the list of links on the right of my blog, but here they are anyway: Love and Zest (this one's by a registered dietician so there's some great healthy recipes and isn't specifically vegetarian but does have some v-friendly recipes) Green Gourmet Giraffe (all vegetarian, some are vegan and some gluten free) Simply Sugar and Gluten Free (recipes free of refined sugar and gluten, not specifically vegetarian, but some recipes are v-friendly) Vegan Dad (all vegan, but delicious)
