Tofu Scramble With Cheezy Sauce

For dinner last night I made a tofu scramble with a whole lot of veggies.  Michelle suggested we make a cheezy sauce from the Veganomicon (one of our favorite cook books) to put over the top.  It was delicious.

This high protein meal included tofu, carrots, broccoli, peas, russet potatoes, a green pepper, and diced onions.  I started with frying the potatoes, carrots and onions in about a tablespoon of olive oil until the potatoes were tender.  Then I threw in all of the other veggies and crumbled a block of tofu into the pan and cooked everything until it’s heated through.

You’ll have to buy the Veganomicon for the whole cheezy sauce recipe. It involved some vegetable broth, flour (we used rice flour), a tiny bit of oil, garlic, nutritional yeast, tarragon, yellow mustard, and some turmeric.  It is really good and thickens up like a nacho cheese.

Here is the end result:

It was so good, I added a little ketchup to mine which really add to the flavor in my opinion.  Michelle lucked out and got to take the leftovers to work today.

Weigh In, 1/21/2011

I got on the scale this morning and it said 249, I have lost a little over 1 pound in the past week.  This was a bit surprising, I didn’t think I did that well this week.  It’s hard looking back to the first time I dropped below 250 and how exciting it was, I didn’t think I would be here again.  But, I am moving forward, I’m gonna keep loosing and continue to be positive.

What I have done for the last three weeks in a row, is go to the gym for three days.  That’s right, I have been to the gym at least nine times in the last three weeks.  Some people say that you have to do something for three weeks in order to create a habit.  Hopefully I can stick with this habit and keep up the good work.

One of the things that has been keeping me going is that I can feel and see my body changing.  I can see slightly more definition in my arms and shoulders, this is a great incentive to continue working out.

I will be going to the gym tonight with Michelle for an excellent full body workout and am looking forward to more weight loss next Friday!

Weigh In, 1/14/2011

I guess it’s time I fess up and explain why I have not been putting any weigh ins on the site in a while.  After making a conscious decision to take a break over the Holidays I got home from vacation and I weighed 258, I was ashamed.

I let myself go and I shouldn’t have.  Every new day is an opportunity for becoming healthier and I made a lot of poor decisions concerning food over the week and a half that I was back in Maryland visiting family.  Initially I was hoping that it was water weight or something like that and that I would be back to under 250 in a week or so, then I would put a weigh in up on A Healthy Vegan.  A week went by and I did loose some weight, I went down to 252.4, a pretty big drop in a week.  I have no doubt that this weight loss is do to my personal training (Thanks Michelle!).

Then we arrive at today, my “official” weigh in day.  I stepped on the scale, sucked in and I had lost a little under 2 pounds since the last Friday.  The scale said 250.2, I am disappointed but at least I am still loosing.

I will check in with you next week, I promise.

Weigh In, 12/3/2010

Thanksgiving did a number on me.  For quite a few weeks now my weight has remained pretty stable around 243 and I was content with that for a couple of reasons.  Today though I weighed in at 248.4, I am not content with this.  248 is dangerously close (I know 243 kinda is too) to my first big goal of 250.

Over the years I have become quite an expert at being able to ignore certain problems; like my weight, eating habits or lack of exercise.  Since hitting 250 and congratulating myself I have sort of been ignoring the fact that I still need to loose a serious amount of weight.  I feel kind of like a broken record writing this lately, blah, blah, blah I am slacking off; blah, blah, blah I can’t get motivated.  In a way this here blog has kind of backfired a little bit.  I created it, in part, to have some accountability with friends and family and now I don’t write when I think it will be boring to read.  But, this will change.

I have started doing some small things to get back on track with my weight loss and fitness.  First of all I have been walking to the T stop from work everyday (unless it is rainy).  The walk is a little over a mile and according to an application on my phone a leisurely walk burns almost 150 calories, which I know is not a lot but it adds up write?  In addition I have gotten back onto green smoothies for lunch and breakfast.

My big problem lately is hunger.  I get home from work and I am so hungry that I go on these binges and it seems as though I can’t stop myself.  Sometimes I will do awesome at work, drink lots of water have my smoothie for lunch and then I get home and it all goes out the window.  This has been the hardest thing for me to tackle of late.

I am planning on getting my butt to the gym this weekend and I have found that the more I work out the more I am willing to make better food choices so hopefully that will help.

Weigh In, 11/19/2010

This morning I weighed in at 243.8 not much change from a couple of weeks ago.  I may be a little too optimistic for my own good but I’m kinda happy that I have stayed at 243 for some time now.

Unfortunately staying at 243 is not my current goal though that would be nice.  My goal for now is to weigh 199 pounds and if I am going to get there I need to get to work, I need to find motivation, I need to pay more attention.  I also need to forgive myself and be able to move on from my mistakes.

It seems like every week I plan to start fresh on Monday and then Monday comes along and it life gets in the way.  This needs to become a priority in my life, it needs to become part of my life.  It’s on my mind everyday, I just haven’t been putting it into practice.

There’s always tomorrow.

I’m Coming Back

It’s been almost a month since my last post and that was just a picture of a gym visit.  After ending my September raw food thing early I went through kind of a bad period with food.  It backfired, I was too rigid and I was too constrained and when I admitted to myself that I could not do it for a full month I broke down and started eating with reckless abandon.  I would go on binges when I got home from work.  I started to drink a lot of soda again and began eating really crappy things for lunch, like fries from the cafeteria or whole bags of pretzels (which contain way more than one serving by the way).  I stopped getting on the scale for fear that I had just eaten myself back up in weight.  A couple of weeks in a row of not getting on the scale allowed me to continue to eat carelessly because there was not going to be any consequences.  Of course I wasn’t posting on the blog at all, what would you all think of me.  But, I am coming back, with my tail between my legs.

Slowly, I have begun to emerge from this black whole of food and I am struggling again to make healthy decisions each day.  Today is Friday, my normal day to get on the scale and check my progress but I am gonna put in hold for one more week.  Next Friday I will get on the scale and we will assess the damage together.  I am going to begin counting calories again and even though each food choice will be a chore I will get back into the rhythm of things.

I hope you will continue to join me on this journey.  Sorry that I left you hanging for a while.  My big goal right now is to weigh less than 200 pounds, no matter how long it takes.  

Labor Day Weekend

With the passing of Labor Day 2010 it is the unofficial end of another summer, much to the dismay of teachers everywhere.  What a beautiful weekend it was though.  I continued to practice my raw food experiment with some adjustments, hey I can make adjustments it’s my experiment.  I’ve decided that during the week I will eat High Raw and on the weekends I will open it up to eat some more cooked foods while still focusing on whole foods.  Some of the cooked foods I’ve decided to eat are things like quinoa, beans, brown rice, and fermented foods like tempeh.  There are some foods that I have decided to strictly avoid for this month, like bread, sugar, and processed vegan food (like hot dogs).

I hope you are interested the kinds of things I ate over the weekend, cause I am gonna tell you.  Friday night I decided to cook some quinoa and mix it with some raw cut up veggies which included some massaged kale.  Kale is one of my favorite foods, I love the flavor and how good it is for you, but it is not always palatable raw.  But, it can be made a little tastier by massaging it.  Cut up your kale into bite size pieces, drizzle a teaspoon of olive or flax oil on it and grind some coarse sea salt onto it.  Then using your hands massage the kale, I know it sounds weird, just do it for a couple of minutes and soon you will have slightly wilted kale, almost like you have steamed it, but none of the nutrients are gone.  We also had a huge salad on Friday night while the quinoa was cooking.

On Saturday we had smoothies for breakfast and were out most of the day working to complete our list of summer tasks.  By the end of the day we were both kind of tired and extremely hungry so I decided that it was ok to go to our local Chipotle.  I was able to get a burrito bowl which essentially means a bowl of rice, beans, fresh salsas, lettuce and guacamole.  The only thing that disappointed me about this meal was the white rice.  This is when I came up with my set of new rules.  We actually went back to Chipotle last night and I just got extra beans instead of rice.

Sunday was a raw fruit breakfast of a bannana and an apple, but dinner was the highlight.  It is a treat to go out to eat and get raw food, one of the few places in the Boston area that serves raw food is The Other Side Cafe.  For an appetizer we got Spicy Lettuce Wraps which is a raw pate made of nuts and seeds wrapped in some romaine, they are so good.  For my entree I got something from the appetizer section they call Nature Boy which is essentially a raw mock chicken salad, the pate from the lettuce wraps, and another mixture of nuts and seeds surrounded by a generous portion of sliced beets and carrots to dip.  It was so good and although I was stuffed I did not feel bloated.

I know some people would say, “that was your dinner, it seems so boring,” but I assure you it was far from it.  For dessert they have this raw chocolate mouse with fresh fruit.  It is made out of raw cacao and avocado, it too is amazing.

When labor day came around we decided to have a cookout, it is labor day after all.  Before hand I had decided i would fore-go some of the raw food and grill some cauliflower and tempeh.  I was still planning to stick with the whole foods and not the veggie dogs we got for some of the other people coming by.  Well I relearned something I have known for a while but have been trying to ignore.  It is not good for me to drink when I am trying hard to avoid certain foods, my inhibitions lower and I say to myself “It’s OK, just have one hot dog.”  So, that is exactly what I did.  I had a couple of beers and then I ate a hot dog and it’s bun, with ketchup, mustard and relish, it was so good.  At first I felt extremely guilty but, I made the choice and I can just pick right back up where I left off and continue on my way.

I will leave it at that, I hope you had a great labor day weekend, mine ended up being pretty relaxing which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Day 2 of my Raw Food Month

Yesterday, September 2nd, 2010, was my second full day of eating High Raw for a month and it started off great.  For breakfast and lunch I had a green smoothie of two apples, a banana, blueberries, and a whole head of romaine, it was delicious. 

I discovered when I ate raw for a week is that it is very important to have some raw snacks available, you know for snacking.  You could cut up things like carrots, celery, cucumbers, peppers, etc. for easy snacking.  Fruit is of course super easy, grapes and strawberries are portable and delicious.  Raw nuts and seeds are of course an excellent option that have loads of protein and nutrients.  But, if you have a local health food store or whole foods there are other options for snacks as well.  One that I have discovered is Kale Chips.  I have seen several different brands on store shelves, but I found one at my local health food store, Good Health, that I really enjoyed.

Essentially it’s deliciously seasoned kale that has been dehydrated, the kale ends up crispy and satisfying.  This particular brand has three flavors, Cheezy, Salt & Vinegar, and Barbecue.  I tried the salt and vinegar flavor and the flavor was great, just like their potato chip cousin.  Occasionally there are some stems in the bag that are perfectly good to eat they just end up a little crispier than the leafy part of the kale.  So, kale chips are one pre-made raw snack that I have been enjoying.  They are rather expensive (I bought them on sale) but if you have some cash to spare they are so satisfying.

For dinner last night we had raw pasta made from some organic green zucchini that I spiralized.  We have been keeping our veggies in the fridge in order to keep them fresh in the warmth of summer.  In order to have warm pasta (nobody likes cold pasta raw or cooked) I mixed some extra virgin olive oil with the noodles and put them in the oven which was set at the lowest temperature.  This way they would get warmed up without being cooked.

Next I made a raw tomato sauce.  Remember yesterday when I said that I had the tendency to improvise recipes and sometimes they don’t turn out so well.  Unfortunately, this has happened several times when I am using raw tomatoes to make a soup or a sauce.  It just never came out right, something about the raw tomatoes.  Well, I finally discovered what I was doing wrong and my sauce last night turned out amazing.  Turns out when you cook tomatoes they become a little sweet.  In order to sweeten my sauce I added some medjool dates to the blender and then some raw agave nectar.  Here is the recipe I came up with:

Ingredients

• 3 Medium Tomatoes
• Juice of half a Lemon
• 2 Medjool Dates
• 1 tablespoon of RAW Agave Nectar
• 1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast
• Onion Powder to taste (I used about a teaspoon)
• Garlic Powder to taste (I used about a teaspoon)
• Kelp Powder to taste (Again, I used about a teaspoon)
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Several Leaves of fresh Oregano (from our garden)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Dried Basil to taste
• Dried Basil to taste

I think that’s about it, just blend everything up in a blender until smooth.

If you let the blender run for a minute or so on high the sauce will actually warm up a bit because of the friction.  I like my tomato sauce smooth, if you like it chunky you can stir in some diced tomatoes.  The noodles had been in the warm oven for the whole time I was coming up with the sauce so by the time I was done they were ready.  I mixed the sauce with the noodles and topped it with some salt, pepper, and crushed red peppers.

I had some diced tomatoes ready to put on top, but I completely forgot about them.  So, I ate them later.  Day two was a big success, my raw pasta dish even got Michelle’s seal of approval!

Yesterday’s Raw Food Meals

Even though yesterday was a little hard at the start in the end it turned out awesome.  For lunch I made it to the salad bar in the cafeteria here at the Boston Medical Center where they actually use (according to them) local foods that are picked the day before.  I had a lunch of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, carrots and a banana.  Surprisingly, it kept me pretty full for the rest of the day, along with a lot of water.

For dinner I took stock of what we had in the fridge from the local farmers market, which included corn on the cob, tomatoes, some romaine lettuce and cucumbers.  I cut the corn off the cob and diced the tomatoes and cucumbers and mixed them all together.  My plan next was to improvise a sauce using some more tomatoes and spices off the top of my head.  Michelle, my wife, having experienced some of my improvised recipes implored me to use a recipe.  After some grumbling and pushing my pride aside I looked in a book that I have used for a couple of recipes called Raw Food Fast Food by Philip McCluskey.

I ended up making a Thai inspired sauce, here is the recipe;

Ingredients

• 2 TABLESPOONS BRAGG’S OR SHOYU
• 2 TABLESPOONS OLIVE OR FLAX OIL
• 1 TABLESPOON RAW APPLE CIDER VINEGAR
• 1 TABLESPOON LIME JUICE
• 1 TABLESPOON RAW HONEY OR AGAVE NECTAR
• 2 CLOVES MINCED GARLIC
• 2 TABLESPOONS HEMP BUTTER
• 1 TEASPOON SEA SALT
• 2 TEASPOONS KELP POWDER
• 1 TABLESPOON CRUSHED RED PEPPER FLAKES
• 1 TEASPOON CHILI POWDER

Directions

Mix sauce ingredients with a whisk or fork in a bowl until well combined.

Luckily I had all of the ingredients.  Hemp butter is very hard to come by and it is expensive, so I make my own.  Raw hulled hemp seeds are available at most health food stores and Whole Foods.  Throw a cup or so of hemp seeds in a food processor until it becomes creamy, then you have hemp butter!

So after I whisked all of those ingredients together I mixed it carefully mixed it with my corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers to they wouldn’t get crushed up.  It tasted amazing.  Initially I intended to out this salad that I had just created onto crispy romaine pieces and then eating like a taco.  It turned out the romaine was not as crispy as I wanted so I just cut it up and we ate the whole thing as a salad, topped with some diced tomatoes.  It was amazing and surprisingly filling.