Okay…day 5 of my veggie journey.  So far things are going good.  I ended up not eating the salmon last night and instead I stuffed an acorn squash with all kinds of goodness and had that for dinner…then I had leftovers for lunch.  Very yummy.  Tonight for dinner I was rushed but made a hearty dinner.  I had a veggie ‘italian sausage’ with peppers and onions, 3 small baked red potatoes, some baby asparagus, 1/2 cup chick peas w/ 1 tbsp vegan butter and some roasted (baked) cherry tomatoes.  So far my food for today has put me at 1700 calories…so I decided that I could spare a little and have a hot cocao with rice milk before bed.  Yummy….chocolate.  Mmmm.

I will post more tomorrow.  I have been busy lately.  Big meeting this week with a big-wig…I have a lot of work to do at work to get everything perfect and then I also started class up again today.  Grrr…winter break is over.

Good morning friends! Well today is another meat free day.  I am still really tired today.  But hopefully if I can get to bed early tonight I might be able to ward off a little of the sleepiness.  I have done pretty good with my vegan/vegetarian research.  Today I just finished the book Skinny Bitch.  I have to say this is a great book for anyone interested in getting healthy.  Even though I am not going 100% vegan I am still giving up a lot of animal products and this book provided me with a lot to think about.

Tonight I am making salmon for dinner.  I don’t know if I am eating it but I know the husband is having it.  I have not decided yet.  Part of me wants to see just how long I can go without eating any meat but the other part of me wants to do what I said I was going to do…keep fish and eggs in my diet.  Hmm…I don’t know.  I think I will read a few more vegan blogs to see some new ideas for dinner.  I don’t want to resort to a veggie burger every time I turn around.  Since I am home for dinner I want to try to cook.

Here is what my foods look like today.

• Breakfast – 1/2 c dry oats, 1 tbsp flax seed, 2 tbsp hot cocao, 1 tbsp raw sugar (I added 1 c boiling water to this)
• Lunch – Gardenburger Portabello Burger w/whole wheat bun and mustard.  1.5 c romaine lettuce, 6 black olives, 6 cherry tomatoes, 1/2 avocado.
• Snack – Odwalla Blueberry B Monster fruit smoothie

Ideally…if I eat the salmon I think I will have salmon, 1/2 baked acorn squash, zucchini w/ onion and garlic.  On the other hand, if I don’t have the salmon…I think I will take some quinoa or brown rice, mix it with veggies (onion, garlic, carrots and zucchini) and stuff the acorn squash.  Ya know…I think that is going to be my plan.   I will run it through my bodybugg site to calculate calories/protein and see how it looks.

Somehow you just helped me determine my dinner!  Thanks!

So as far as I can tell I don’t even miss meat.  Yesterday I had some Morningstar Farm soy sausage patties with toast…it was GOOD.  Tonight we had tacos for dinner.  The husband had some ground beef while I had two kinds of tacos.  The first was a lentils taco (first time trying these) and then I had a ground soy (kind of like ground beef) taco.  These were both pretty good.  I topped them with lettuce, tomato, soy cheese, salsa, green onion and black olives.  With a flour tortilla to wrap them up it was super tasty.

I have been fairly tired lately.  I thought I was getting enough sleep but I still get tired during the day.  Nothing new there.  I have had problems falling asleep once I get to bed though.  It seems that my mind has been rambling on and on.

Well…it is 10:30pm and I need to find my way to bed.  Oh and I have been wearing the bodybugg to capture all of my ins and outs.  :-)

I was so hungry when I went to bed last night.  I wanted to tear into anything…I would have even settled for a salad.  But bed time last night I really wanted some solid food.   I am surprised that I did not dream about food it was so bad.

Anyways, breakfast this morning was fan-freaking-tastic!  I made a berry smoothie with light soy milk, cherries and blueberries.  Then I had two pieces of wheat toast, 1 tbsp vegan butter and 2 pcs morningstar.  It was SO good.  I also had a cup of tea with 1 tsp of honey.  In total it was 400 calories and some change.  I logged it on the bodgybugg website.

I have some veggies in the over roasting and pot of quinoa on the stove top cooking up.  I think I will probaby have a salad with the veggies on it…any maybe add some quinoa…not sure.  I have options so I am forced to decide right now.  I have found so many good vegan/vegetarian blogs that I have found some great ideas for lunches and dinners.

Oh and I am going to make some chocolate fudge babies today.  They are a creation of (super vegan) Katie.  I cannot wait to try them.  For me they are kind of high in calories.  I swapped out the walnuts (yuk) for some almonds and then plan on dividing it into 6 portions.  ….it is still almost 180 calories but they are healthy calories.  Depending on how much the recipes yields I might divide it up even further.  I have also thought about making some crackers from Angela’s Oh She Glows website.  I don’t know if I will make them exactly like she did.  I do not have all of the same ingredients but I think I can add some other things that will make them just as healthy and yummy.

Ok enough for now.  Back to watching more of the biggest loser

Hey guys!  Don’t worry I have not dropped off the face of the earth (again).  I was just away from my computer for a while.  Anyways I have just started watching the last season of the Biggest Loser.  I DO NOT KNOW WHO WINS!  And I don’t want to know until I finish the show.  I have to admit that just watching this show is so motivating.  I just look at the people on the show and tell myself that I DON’T want to end up like them.  I about bawled my eyes out when Tracey had issues at the beginning of the show.  I am only 15 minutes into the show so I don’t know what happens to her.  Then…we have Abby’s story…good grief!  She lost her family and now she is battling her weight.    My mom has already watched this season and she said it is brutal.  Only time will tell.

Anyways…back to the whole meat thing…I gave tofu a try again this past weekened….yeah, this time it was not so good.  I took 1 oz whole wheat pasta, red pasta sauce, tofu, onion, mushroom and spinach…oh and some veggie shreds cheese.   It was okay.  I picked out most if not all of the tofu out.  I did not like the texture of it at all.  I know people say that it will pick up the flavor of what ever else is in the dish…but this didn’t.  Tasty really plain and kind of gross.

I have not had a chance to make the lasagna for my husband without dairy/meat.  He was around the house a little much.  Today’s food was not TOO bad.  I am getting in my few favorite meat dishes.  Today I had an Odwalla Berry GoMega smoothy for breakfast.  Then for a snack I had a single serving pack of gummy life savers….about an hour after than I had about 1/3 c pistashios.  Lunch was a true farewell to meat   I had a sloppy joe with a slice of american cheese on a white bun….onion rings and a small (1/2 to 3/4) cup of tortilla soup.  Three things I will not be eating again for a while.  Afternoon snack was skittles….I am not sure why I am on a candy kick lately.

I have to say that tonight’s dinner is healthy   I am making some white fish with seasame seeds, rice and veggies.  IF hunger strikes I have 94% fat free popcorn as my snack.  I am looking forward to the fish!

So today I had two meal completely meat free and I feel surprising good.  I have not had my normal cravings like I have when I eat junk.  I did have some junk in my diet but it was not too bad.  I had 1…1 donut this morning.  I was heading to the grocery store and I knew I need to eat something before I left otherwise I would want to pick up fast food on the way home.  So I had a donut.  And then stepped away from the box.  I was not tempted to go back for more.  :-)

Lunch was great!  I took some tofu and marinated it in soy sauce, liquid smoke and assorted seasonings.  Then I sautéed some veggies and stack everything up on a tortilla.  I added some mayo (it looked dry) and sprinkled it with a SMALL (very small I promise!) bit of cheese.  These veggie wraps were FANTASTIC.

I also did a bit of grocery shopping today.  I got a LOT of veggies and some veggie burgers.  I picked up fruit for smoothies and squashes for roasting.  I also picked up stuff for the husband…he is gonna stick to meat.

Oh and I did some book shopping too.  I picked up the Skinny Bitch…it is a book all about cutting out junk (animal products) and eating what nature gave us.  I will take it with a grain of salt as I read it.  I know I am not cutting out all animal products…most but not all.  I also picked up a cookbook…I think it is the Compasionate Chef or something like that.  It is all about meat free cooking.  The recipes looked really good.

Tonight for dinner I had to try to eliminate some leftovers.  Chili  and some fried okra.  It was a good dinner but I felt really full afterwards.  I have drank a lot of water today too.  Oh and I picked up some vitamins too.

Did I mention that we got a pretty good amount of snow today?  It was pretty cool…snowed really hard all day long.  The sucky part was that I had to dig out my car afterwards.  But there is still a lot of snow out there.  My hopes is that it will start snowing again and again so that there is no work tomorrow.

Well….while I have been doing my research on becoming veggie I have found so many good websites.  The one I am hooked on right now is VeganDad.  There are so many good recipes on this blog!  And I don’t even miss the meat in these dishes.

Speaking of meatless dishes….hehehe…I am going to make a vegan lasagna this weekend.  I found a vegan ricotta substitute and I will use a soy veggie crumble to replace the beef and/or sausage I would have used.  I am going to try to sneak all of this past the husband and see what he thinks.  I will post back after I make it.  I might hold off until Sunday.  He has to work during the day so I could make it without him peeking in the kitchen.