Category Archives: smoothie

Some Food, A Gift and A Giveaway Winner!

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Hey everyone! I’m back again with a whole ton of stuff to show you. Some meals I’ve been eating (low appetite again but I know the cause and it should go away in a few days if you catch my drift, ha!), a beautiful, thoughtful gift I received and it’s time to announce the giveaway winner!

First up, I’m happy to announce that Jessie is the winner of the Vegan Delish app from Carrie! Jessie, please e-mail me (xvavaveganx at yahoo dot com) so I can forward it to Carrie who will send you the code!

Now some food!

I have been craving smoothies like crazy lately. Especially my favorite strawberry, banana and pineapple smoothie. I wish I could take credit for the beautiful one above but I actually grabbed this on the road. It was SOOOOOO good. I want one now actually.

Ezekiel toast with almond butter and banana. I’m not sold on the Ezekiel bread yet. I don’t know if it’s because I am not used to eating this kind of bread anymore or if it’s just the flavor I am not sold on but I’m going to try it with different toppings as well. We shall see I suppose.

Had this meal a few times over the past few days. Giant half sour pickle with stuffed grape leaves and carrots. Really simple but really good meal.

And check out this AMAZING gift I received from the incredibly sweet and thoughtful Shen! You can imagine my surprise and delight when I opened the box and found this:

Check out this beautiful Vegan Dish plate!! It is such a pretty green and I LOVE the little heart at the top! It is so cute! I can’t wait to use it, it’s so perfect. Thank you so much Shen, it was so sweet of you!

That’s all I have today! I hope you’ve all had a great week. Just relaxing tonight and listening to some podcasts. Hope you all have a great night!

WIAW – Liquid Wednesday

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Hey everyone! Happy hump day! Hope the middle of the week finds you all well. I decided to do a What I Ate Drank Wednesday post today. I’ve been feeling yucky since yesterday and decided maybe I’d just drink my meals today to see how that works. I’d be able to sip throughout the day and I’d mix it up between juices and smoothies (with protein powders to bulk up the calorie count!) and see how I felt.

Before I get into my beverages for the day, I just wanted to show you two pics from yesterday:

Check out how gorgeous this breakfast is! I had a piece of my Cinnamon Oat Bread with raw pecan butter, strawberry and banana. I sprinkled the top with a little coconut and ate the rest of the banana on the side. It was pretty to look at, delicious to eat and filling in my belly. Perfect meal.

I just wanted to show you the cupcakes all dressed up and packed up to go. I was really happy with how these came out. :)

And on with the liquids!

Lots of green juice!

A cherry chocolate smoothie for breakfast. Seriously my favorite smoothie.

Some unpictured kombucha (not the one I got carded for ha!) is going to be consumed at work.

I’ll be having a Carrot Cake Smoothie for dinner tonight. This one is the bulkiest one of the day as it has oats, walnuts, raisins, carrots and vanilla protein powder. This one will fill me up for the night :)

I will definitely let you know how I felt after this experiment! It’s definitely not like a juice cleanse because there is plenty of bulk in the smoothie but I’m hoping sipping sits better with me than chewing ;)

Hope the day finds you all well! Have a great night and I’ll be back soon with some actual food that I chew ;)

Vegan MoFo Day 3: Cafe 118 Divine Cherry Smoothie

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Hello my friends!! Happy Hump Day! I guess Thursday is my new hump day as I work Tuesday through Saturday but for normal people it’s all smooth sailing from here :)

Today’s super simple recipe recreation is for a super simple smoothie. I’ve never tried it but it definitely caught my eye on the Cafe 118 menu! Cafe 118 is a raw food restaurant in Orlando. I found it when my friend and I were taking a stroll in the really cute Park Avenue neighborhood on one of my previous trips to Orlando (in February I believe). The area is so cute with tons of great restaurants and shops. Hidden up a side street is one of the few raw restaurants I’ve heard of in the Orlando area. We didn’t eat there since we had already eaten but I grabbed a menu with the plan to recreate some of their delicious dishes and drinks.

Isn’t it gorgeous?!

I woke up this morning not feeling super hungry and also with the plan to try and get some prep work done for future recipes. I decided to keep breakfast simple and for that, I decided a 3 ingredient smoothie would be perfect. I knew that the Divine Cherry Smoothie from Cafe 118 would do the trick.

Frothy and frosty, a perfect treat!

It has a pretty similar flavor profile to my Cherry Chocolate Smoothie but has even fewer ingredients. I used some of my fresh cherries that I froze over the summer :) Here is my “recipe.” I feel bad calling it a recipe because it is 3 ingredients and so easy but here ya go!

Cafe 118 inspired Divine Cherry Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen cherries

3/4 cup Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Milk

1/2 tablespoon Coconut Butter (I used Artisana)

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth and frothy. Enjoy!

Thanks Cafe 118 for the inspiration! I plan on making more of their drinks and smoothies in the future. This is such a treat, you can definitely have this as a sweet treat for dessert too. Or put it into molds and freeze into a popsicle ;)

As I discussed on Monday, I participated in a Birthday Care Package Swap with the lovely Gabby of the Veggie Nook. You can check out the package I sent her here!

Hope you all have a great day! I did lots of prep today so hopefully it’ll be easier for me to get meals together over the next few days. I’m looking forward to what I have planned over the next few days :)

Wednesday September 5, 2012

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Hi everyone! Hope you are well! Sorry my posts have been so sporadic lately, I’ve just been so busy! I forgot to mention that while I came back with amazing memories of my friend’s wedding, I also came back with a nasty cold. Luckily I’m already feeling much better but I just have to be extra diligent with taking care of it because I working until 9 Tues-Thurs of this week. I’m trying to do so with some nutritious meals :)

Breakfast was a cherry chocolate smoothie packed with tons of spinach!

Unpictured morning snack will be a banana with peanut butter (I have to get a banana on the way to work :X)

For lunch I’m going to have a delicious tofu scramble packed with even more spinach! Since gluten free tortillas tend to harden up quicker than regular tortillas I made mine into chips and packed up some salsa for dipping :)

Afternoon snack is a lemon larabar. Yum!

And for dinner I have the obligatory hummus plate :)

Definitely time for a Whole Foods run. I have had avocado in almost a week! Yikes! ;)

I hope you all have a great day!

Fun Friday

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Hey everyone. Sorry I’ve been weird lately, been going through a lot here. My little problem has turned into an all out war and will result in some drastic measures being taken. I’ve been lied to over and over and I’m pretty much over it and I’m going to try and get my money back a different way and then it’s time to cut ties.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks and I’ve been getting through them by focusing on all of the small things that I’m looking forward to and that I’ve been able to enjoy in this time. I figured I’d share some of them with you for this Fun Friday post.

I have wanted to read this book since Bianca started talking about it and posting about the recipes. It’s about Scott Jurek who is an ultramarathoner. He talks about his training and his running and also provides super yummy sounding recipes. While I can’t run because of the impact I think this will be super inspiring and I’m looking forward to trying the recipes.

My friend told me about this book about a year again and then I heard about it again when Sage mentioned it. My friend is letting me borrow a copy (hopefully I’ll get it tomorrow!) and I can’t wait to read it. I feel like I’m stuck in a rut right now and I’m hoping that this book will help me to flip the switch and start living a more fulfilled life.

Check out these cool DIY Necklaces! I love them and I can’t wait to try and make one :) I am hoping to try it out soon since I feel like crafting may help me get into a zen place.

The ladies are going at it again tomorrow when Sarah Kaufman and Ronda Rousey will fight the main event title fight in tomorrow’s Strikeforce fights! Of course I’ll be working when it’s on but I’m going to DVR the fights so I can watch them later. I’ve been looking forward to this fight for a while!

Finally, for this week’s Healthy Vegan Friday I’m submitting my Carrot Cake Smoothie recipe. This smoothie is so delicious, it is by far one of my favs! I hope people will try it because it is amazing and the healthiest way I can think of to eat carrot cake!

Sorry I’ve been kind of down lately but I’m just drained from this whole experience. It makes me sick that all of my hard work can just disappear in a second by the hand of a greedy company. Hopefully I’ll get some resolution soon… I guess if I don’t I have to suck up a major loss. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

I don’t think I’ll be able to post tomorrow since I’ll be working a wedding and moving my groceries and clothes for the week to my brother’s house. I will see you here on Sunday though! Hope you all have a great night and a great day tomorrow!

Tuesday, August 14

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Hi everyone! Hope all is well with you :) I’m so glad you liked yesterday’s recipe! I was unsure about posting it but it seems like you guys liked it! I’m so glad! I appreciate your patience and kindness about my tough schedule. I am excited to have some time at my brother’s house to experiment and play in the kitchen. Hopefully I’ll have some fun new recipes to share here!

Last night I spent some time on Youtube checking out videos. You know how Youtube works… I started off watching a video from the Tone It Up girls and then and hour later I had watched a ton of videos and was then watching raw food videos. It’s so funny, Youtube is like a vortex, it just totally sucks you in and the last video you watch is a totally different topic from what you started on! Anyway I watched some videos from Easy To Be Raw and learned about the 80/10/10 diet. This basically says you should eat 80% carbs (from fruit), 10% protein (from greens), and 10% fats (from nuts and seeds). She looks great but I can’t imagine eating that way. The volume that you need to eat seems really overwhelming and it is mostly fruit! Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to eat tons of fruit all the time but it seems weird to think you have to limit your greens. I’m really curious about it, I feel like it would be a really interesting way to cleanse your body but I don’t know if I’d ever be able to keep it up for a long time. Maybe I’ll try it for a week at some point and see how I feel.  Have you ever heard of the 80/10/10 diet? What do you think about it? 

Cherry Chocolate Smoothie for breakfast. Another day, another color :)

Dinner tonight is yet another hummus plate. Hummus, stuffed grape leaves, grape tomatoes, roasted cauliflower and carrots. Yum, this is going to be good!

No clue what I’m going to make for lunch yet but I have a feeling it will end up being a tofu scramble. You know what that looks like by now :)

I know the meals are getting repetitive but I’m going to try and remedy that soon! I need to try and take some time to brainstorm some new meals to get some new ideas. If you have any ideas I’m all ears! :)

Have a great day everyone!

Delicious Sunday

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Hi my friends! I hope that you are all well and that you enjoyed your weekend.  I was pretty productive today which was surprising because I thought I’d be a lazy ass but I actually got a lot done! I’m glad I did everything I had to do so I can rest between work and my training session tomorrow. I’m really excited about it because I really enjoyed my last session on Thursday! We incorporated more MMA type workouts without any of the impact so I still kind of felt like I was fight training! It helped a lot too because it showed me that I’m still strong even with an injury :)

I am so excited to show you today’s meals! I was really focusing on eating all of my meals and snacks and drinking tons of water. As of now I’ve had about 80 oz of water plus all of the water in the fruits and veggies I ate! Pretty good!

For breakfast I had my Good Morning, Sunshine smoothie! As you can see it came out a little thick because I didn’t measure my frozen fruit (oops) but it was so good! It was like eating soft serve for breakfast ;)

An absolutely delicious plum for my morning snack. It was so good.

Avocado toast for lunch with the other half of the avocado from yesterday. It was a perfect avocado! I’ve had bad luck with avocados lately but this was a good one.

For snack I had some of my garlic and herb roasted cashews (I totally forgot I had them!) and some roasted seaweed sheets.

This was the perfect end to the day! I think it was definitely my favorite meal and probably one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. Now I know I said I was done with tofu for a while but tofu scrambles are so good and a really good, quick meal. I figured I don’t eat soy otherwise really so I got some tofu for some scrambles. This one is my new favorite with lots of spinach and a cocktail tomato (very good by the way), and I ate it with some roasted cauliflower and a carrot. Such a perfect meal.

Yesterday the lovely Gabby over at the Veggie Nook tagged me in a Hope Blog Relay. I’m always one for a challenge and like Gabby mentioned in her post, writing like this is a challenge for me. It is so difficult to choose the right words to discuss a topic like hope but I figured I’d give it a try for you :)

For me, hope is a choice. It is a leap of faith. It is believing that you can have anything you want in life. We can all choose to have hope. We can live our lives knowing that we will one day reach our fullest potential, and we will work harder in order to do so.

It is so easy to become overwhelmed by the hardships that life throws at us. Conversely, it is incredibly difficult to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and to carry on, knowing that it will all work out in the end. It shows incredible strength to be able to make that choice. I know that I am guilty of making the wrong choice from time to time and I get stuck in my rut, believing that the unhappiness and hardship that I experience are my destiny. When I sort it out and realize that I deserve happiness, health and to be on the path that I envision for myself, I’ve made the choice to have hope. Right now, I have hope that I will be able to reclaim my health and that I will one day be doing what I am meant to do in this life.

I hope (ha) that makes sense. This was a tough one to put into words! Thank you for the challenge Gabby :)

Now, as this is a hope blog relay, I’m supposed to tag some of you, my lovely readers. You are not obligated to participate!

Caralyn @ glutenfreehappytummy

Sage @ Sweet and Sage

Ingrid @ Ingrid Improves

Molly @ Vegan Flower

Mary @ Veganfully Me

Rachel @ Miss Rachel

Also, there is still time to enter the Giveaway! You can win two e-books written by Cassidy, the owner of Pura Vida Pantry in Costa Rica! Any living food/juicing fans will want these e-books, trust me!

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening! I’m looking forward to a great workout and yummy meals tomorrow!

Monday Fun(?) Day

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Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. Sorry I didn’t post at all but I just decided to take a break and just relax. My brother had a block party on Saturday so I was there for most of the day. Then yesterday I decided to just lay low and watch the Olympics. I am so inspired by all of these amazing athletes and the timing is perfect as I finally got to start training again today! Tonight was my first training session in a month and while I definitely need to get back into the flow of it, I feel so good knowing I’m doing something good for myself again. In case you missed it, I decided to take a month off from my training sessions so I could try and let my jacked up neck and shoulder heal a little. I have only been doing non impact cardio and while I’m glad I didn’t stop altogether, I felt a bit lazy. Today was pretty good though. I owned all of the ab exercises but when we got into upper body I definitely felt it in my shoulder. It’ll be a slow process but I’ll get there.

I’m still not doing impact workouts because I really don’t want to risk herniating my disk. In fact, one of our friends at the block party just had surgery on his neck for disk herniation and I just don’t want to ever have to do that. I’ve been questioning whether or not I should do Tough Mudder because I’m so afraid of falling the wrong way and I haven’t been able to run because of the impact. I still have some time to decide but I am just so weary of injuring myself even more. I’ve had to give up boxing for a while (I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again, especially with the same skill and stamina as before. It is pretty devastating because I really love it) and it would suck to let this go as well but my health and safety come first I guess. My Dr. had also advised me not to do it…

OK, enough with the boohoo talk ;) Let’s get into some yummy eats!

My mom’s boss was nice enough to send me this beautiful zucchini that she grew in her garden. Looks good right? Nice normal zucchini.

OK or the biggest zucchini I’ve ever seen in my life! I decided to put a regular sized banana next to it so you could see the scale of it. This zucchini is literally the length of my arm from wrist to shoulder! I can’t wait to use it!!

OK so on to today’s meals :) For breakfast I enjoyed a yummy cherry chocolate smoothie. It still amuses me that it is a different color every time I make it.

For a morning snack I had unpictured clementines. So yummy!

For lunch I had some rice and beans and veggies from the deli next door. I didn’t get a photo of it but I had this one so imagine a smaller portion of this (like half of it or a little less) for $3.00. Yum!

After the gym I wanted something fresh for dinner so I made this hummus sandwich with lots of fresh veggies. I used a gluten free tortilla as my bread then crammed it full of spinach, tomato, cucumber, carrot and sun dried tomato. There is a thin layer of hummus on the tortilla and I ate the rest of the carrot that I peeled on the side. It was really yummy but very messy. It basically fell apart as I ate it but it was fine. I’m so full!

I’ve been craving sweets lately so I made myself a big bowl of watermelon and cherries to enjoy later as I’m watching the Olympics. Good stuff on tonight: swimming, diving, gymnastics… definitely going to be good! I’m still stuffed from dinner but this will be a nice treat a little later on.

OK that’s all for today! I hope you all had a great Monday and that Tuesday treats you well. This will be a good week as I am going to be getting out early all week so I’m hoping to get to the gym an extra evening or two this week :)

Have a great night!

Planning for Success

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Hey friends! Thank you all so much for helping me count down to my glorious day of freedom last week :) Your kind words always help me get through the busy times! I enjoyed my day off by spending some time with Delilah and then relaxing and watching a bunch of TV. Probably not the most productive way to spend my time but I was able to rest my body and I was happy to be able to do that.

Today’s post has a little bit of everything I think! I have a meal from yesterday, some planning for the week and some inspiration :)

Last night’s dinner was really yummy. A home made Chipotle bowl with rice and beans, salsa, daiya and avocado. I served with with a tortilla since I’m too much of a spazz to roll a decent burrito that actually stays together. After this meal I put the rest of my Daiya in the freezer because a) I’ve been eating it too much lately and b) It seems to be lasting forever! Seriously the bag just won’t end!

The perfect bite!

Today I took a ton of time to get a lot of fruit ready for smoothies for the week. I really want to get back into the habit of drinking smoothies every day and being prepared is key. I added 4 more bags of cherries to my other two in the freezer (I’m going to make these last!) as well as some strawberries. I had the bananas already and just added them to the pile so you could see how much fruit I have ha! I also have half a bag of frozen blueberries as well as some frozen pineapple. I think I’m set on smoothies for a while!

While I was cleaning I found this old fortune and thought it was so perfect for the headspace I’m in right now. “You’ll never know what you can do until you try.” This is so true!
So I have a question. I just tried to upload another photo and it said that I’m out of space in my Picasa account or something. I didn’t even know I had a Picasa account and when I clicked to get details it said I had 5 GB of drive space that I wasn’t using. I’m confused I guess and if I don’t upgrade does that mean I can’t upload any more photos at all? Has this happened to any of you, and if so did you just pay to upgrade? Please let me know, I’m so confused! 
I hope that you all had a great day and that Monday wasn’t too tough for you!

Working for the Weekend

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Hey everyone! I’m sorry it has been a few days since I’ve posted. As you know I had a very busy weekend and I was feeling the effects of that yesterday. My entire body was sore and I was incredibly exhausted. Other than working a few hours in the morning I barely got out of bed. I’m going to grit my teeth and get through this week and then I can finally enjoy some time off this weekend.

On the plus side, I’ve been eating some great meals. Today’s meals are exceptionally yummy.

Breakfast was a delicious and refreshing Cherry Chocolate Smoothie. The fresh cherries that I froze are absolutely amazing and this breakfast tastes more like a decadent treat than a healthy breakfast smoothie.

For lunch I made myself another tomato and spinach tofu scramble. The seasoning is so simple but so delicious. All I use is salt, pepper, garlic powder and nutritional yeast. It was so flavorful! Served with a brown rice tortilla and a peach.
For snack I’m going to bring some seaweed snacks and a larabar. I really need to make sure I eat every few hours to keep my energy up and my metabolism firing.

Dinner will be this dish of stuffed grape leaves, pickles and carrots. I ran out of hummus, I need to make sure I get to Trader Joe’s this weekend!
My appointment with my Dr. went well other than the fire alarm and subsequent evacuation of the building. She said my blood work results were excellent and I’ve been doing all the right things to take care of my shoulder. She told me that I need to be on top of my nutrition and that skipping meals (unintentionally… it happens because of my schedule) is not an option and that planning is key. So, I plan on planning :)
OK friends, hopefully I will be able to pop in throughout the week with yummy meals to share. I’m so excited about having the weekend off! I’m planning on relaxing and hopefully prepping lots of meals for the week. Just have to get through the next few days and then I can enjoy my freedom. :)
I hope you all had a great weekend and that Monday treated you well :) Have a great day!