Beautiful Food and Regular Food

We saw The Grand Budapest Hotel last night. The scenery was breathtaking. Wes Anderson's films always have such great color editing and framing. I die. Before the movie I whipped up a little dinner of sauteed kale, garlic, peppers, 'shrooms, and cilantro with a couple of poached eggs on top. Now that I'm not pregnant I eat a minimum of two poached eggs a day. I've been trying to transition back into veganism, but the eggs are calling to me. so runny....ugh, sooooo runny. It's my non-vegan vice.

-R

Vegan Stuffed Shells

Two recipes in one week! 

Not to mention two meatless recipes....

nice.

Behold:

VEGAN STUFFED SHELLS

(with a delightful tofu ricotta)

saute mushrooms, onions, and garlic 

puree tofu and spices

boil and drain shells

sh-mix

stuff und sauce und bake

burn toast, eat brucetta without it

Unlike the vegan meatloaf (which I happen to love and have made twice since), this was a huge carnivorous success. I tweaked the original recipe and added mushroom and onion to the filling. I'd definitely use the 'ricotta' in a lasagna or something again, it had a very subtle (if even existent) soy flavor....

Recipe found here

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 16 ounces extra firm tofu
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 box jumbo shells
• 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

Instructions

1. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Crumble into the bowl of a food processor or high-speed blender along with olive oil, salt, oregano, garlic and nutritional yeast. Process on high until smooth and “ricotta-like”.
2. Add the defrosted spinach to the blended tofu mixture.
3. Cook shells in boiling salted water until el dente. Drain
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour about ½ cup pasta sauce into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Stuff shells with 2 T of filling and place in pan, seam side down. Repeat until all shells have been stuffed.
5. Pour remaining pasta sauce over shells, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Serve!

Number of servings (yield): 6-8

live it, laugh it, love it-

racha

5 for 5: Hannah's 5 Reasons Being A Vegetarian Ain't So Bad.

Mmmk. I'm on Day 5 of being a vegetarian and I'm not going to lie... I'm kind of rocking it out.
For realz. I am dominating the veggies and ignoring all meat. It's no bigs.
And while I'll admit, I was definitely dreading giving up that specific source of protein... I've found myself pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this week as actually been...
**gasp**

So- without further ado... My 5 reasons this week hasn't been half bad.

1. I feel like I'm making better choices about what I eat everyday and finding easy veggie inspired options.

photo cred

2. I actually do feel cooler. Kind of like this kid...

3. Eggplant... anything... oooh! I forgot how much I love eggplant...

photo cred and recipe

4. Rachey Pooh is happy!

5. I've been feeling really healthy and am getting more and more excited about my half marathon with these two in October!

 

So... did anyone else rock it our vegetarian or vegan style this week? 

Don't forget about our vegan inspired GIVEAWAY we have going on! 

Wishing you heaps of eggplants-

Hansie.

Dietary Collection Agency: Vegan Giveaway

I collect diets.

I think what I love about it is the information and immersion into a different culture that you get to experience. When I was kosher, I learned how many of the biblical dietary laws were a way to keep germs at bay during a time before the knowledge of bacteria. When I was pescatarian I learned all about overfishing and the sustainability/ necessity of farmed fish. And when I was living on the "$5 a week" diet, I learned how gassy human beings get when they only eat beans and rice for three months.

Plants. Exciting!

Now that I'm making my foray into veganism (and Hannah's week (more like weak...jk but seriously) long "adventure" into vegetarianism) we wanted to kick off this new knowledge hunt with a little vegan treat giveaway!

Here's what's up for grabs:

Your very own 

VEGAN SMORES KIT!

It includes-

vegan mallows (made in Hansies hometown of Chicago)

three kinds of vegan chocolate (peanut butter cups, toasted coconut dark chocolate, and 91% cocoa dark chocolate)

and teddy grahams (because they were the only thing close to traditional graham crackers that didn't have honey in them....free the bees)

To enter you must: 

1. Be a public follower of this blog (just click "Join this Site" on the left) and leave a comment below.

For extra entries:

2. Like us on Facebook (leave a comment below)

3. Tweet about the giveaway (leave a comment below)

4. Become vegetarian or vegan for a week (if you already are, leave a comment below for an extra entry!)

5. Blog about the giveaway (leave a comment below)

We'd love to hear about any experience you guys have had being vegan or vegetarian or really anything that amounts to a sort of "non-convential" diet.

We're into it....

or, at least, I am.

vegan love-

racha

p.s. We'll use random.org and will announce a winner next Thursday!