Dinner at Cafe Spice

I spotted these yummy looking snacks in Whole Foods Tuesday and just had to try them.  Notice how it says they are "cuddled" in peanut butter and a bustle of oats?  And what's a "bustle" of oats?  Unfortunately, I should know better than to buy something like this, because by the end of the day the bag was almost completely empty!  Whomp whomp.  Seven servings?!  More like 1 1/2! 

For lunch I enjoyed yummy leftover vegan lasagna.  Sadly, that's the last of it.  Until I make it again ...  Luckily it was so easily and delicious I definitely see lots more vegan lasagna in my future. 

After work my boyfriend and I had made plans to go rock climbing at the gym, but neither of us really felt up to it, so we decided to skip it and make the most of the evening by heading out to dinner at Cafe Spice.  This place is probably our favorite restaurant in all of Baltimore, so we'll really miss it when we move down to the DC area.  While we're still here, we're trying to get in as many visits as possible. 

The restaurant is beautifully decorated, and the owners even said the next time they go to India they will pick up some of these beautiful umbrellas for customers who have expressed an interest in them!  I think I'll be putting myself on that list! 

Every time we go we always start out with the Gobi Manchuri appetizer - spicy fried cauliflower.  It doesn't sound all that special, but trust me ... it is! 

And for our entrees we ordered Malabari Kofta and Bhindi Masala - two dishes we'd never ordered there before.  I loved the Malabari Kofta, but we both thought the Bhindi Masala was a little bland.  Oh well.  That's why you try new things ... to remind yourself that you really prefer your old favorites!

The only sad part of dinner was when the complementary dessert came out ... rice pudding.  I had to just sit their and envy Josh while he ate the whole thing by himself!  I think I'm going to have to try to make vegan rice pudding sometime soon ...

 

Red White and Blue French Toast

Happy Fourth of July!  I'm actually watching fireworks out the living room window as I type.  Gotta love high rises.  To celebrate our nation's birthday I thought I'd whip up some red, white, and blue French toast using strawberries, bananas, and blueberries.  (Well, the bananas are more light yellow, but what are you going to do? ...).  They were delicious.  Plus, as Josh pointed out, we really never would have won the American Revolution without the French, so it's only fair to honor them too! 

 

Hope you're enjoying the beautiful weather and the day off work!  Back to the grind tomorrow ...

Crazy Morning and Vegan Goulash

Tuesday morning started out interestingly.  I was woken up by the sound of Panda trying to cough up a hairball.  I stumbled out of bed and tried to chase her into the kitchen so she could throw up on  the tile instead of the carpet.  Of course she took this to be an act of hostility.  She started running around the apartment with her tail poofed up, hissing and growling.  Oddly enough with all the running around she seemed to forget that she ever intended to cough up a hairball.  Or at least I never found one ...

Since I was up so early I decided to take the opportunity to get in a good morning workout. Once I was finished and cleaned up I got to work on my morning protein shake.  This one was going to be good - using the Silk dark chocolate almond milk.  Of course no sooner had I made it then I promptly spilled the whole thing all over the kitchen counter.  This wouldn't be such a problem if we were more organized people, but my boyfriend and I have tons of junk mail covering the counter.  Which then ended up covered in chocolate protein shake.  Yuck!  It took forever to mop up all the shake.  So then of course I barely made it on time for work.  Ugh!

Mid-morning I snacked on some pistachios.  I've always heard these are a good snack because they're slow to eat (because you have to shell each one), which keeps you from downing too many.  That doesn't seem to be the case for me.  They might have slowed me down, but not so much that I didn't still eat about a million of them. 

For lunch I had delicious leftover lasagna.  Lasagna's one of those foods that's just as good (if not better!) the next day.  It's perfect for lazy mornings when you don't have time to make a lunch.  Or maybe for those mornings when you have a few other things on your mind ...

Mid-afternoon I needed another little snack, so I munched on some dried mixed berries. 

When I got home from work I was in the mood for a more involved dinner preparation, so I decided vegan goulash was the perfect dish. 

 

 Everything you need for delicious vegan goulash ... The crucial missing ingredient in this picture?  Marsala wine!  I forgot to take it out of the fridge before I took this photo and didn't get it out until I'd used up or put away the other ingredients.  (Just picture it sitting in that empty space next to the paprika ... )

The goulash turned out amazing, as usual.  Rather than the egg noodles I used to use, I decided to try using shell pasta instead.  The substitution was great, and made the whole thing vegan! 

 

After dinner I needed just a little something sweet, so I had a small bowl of chocolate tofu.  This stuff is seriously addicting.  I know it looks just like ice cream, but it's more like a firmer version of chocolate mousse.  And it comes out of the fridge looking like that ... Weird, huh?

The Birthday Pushup Challenge

My 30th birthday is only three and a half months away.  Eek!  I wanted to come up with a goal to mark the big occasion.  I'm guessing I won't manage to become a millionaire, so there's no sense fretting about that one.  And there aren't a lot of milestones I'm eager to hit by then (I don't want to have a kid and I already have a job and a wonderful partner).  So I decided to set the much more manageable but still significant goal of doing 30 pushups on my birthday.  That's real pushups, no "girl" substitutes! 

To get a baseline, I did as many "real" pushups as I could last night ... which was 5.  Not so great.  But I followed it up with 15 "girl" pushups.  My plan to increase my pushup numbers is to continue doing as many "real" pushups as I can each night, and then follow that up with "girl" pushups up to 30.  (Which means last night I should have done another ten "girl" pushups ... oops.) 

With any luck, by the big day (Oct. 18) I will be doing 30 "real" pushups in a row. 

I may have to get older, but I can get stronger too! 

Vegan Lasagna

I ate really healthy most of Monday and then came home and pretty much ruined it all with a delicious dinner and dessert.  And I regret nothing!  The morning started off with a delicious and healthy strawberry banana protein shake. 

 

Then for lunch I ate a cucumber sandwich made with sliced cucumbers (the last leftover from gazpacho), Earth Balance butter, and a bit of salt.  Mmmm mmmm. 

 

On the side I snacked on some grape tomatoes. 

 

And mid-afternoon when I just couldn't help myself, I snacked on some mixed dried berries. 

With such a healthy day, of course I came home starving and wanting something substantial for dinner.  I had been thinking for a while that the same cashew cream I used in the best pasta ever would be a great filler for lasagna, so I decided to test my theory.  I started by sauteeing some mushrooms and zucchini, to which I added some Yves Good Ground meatless crumbles. 

 

I assembled the lasagna using Barilla oven-ready lasagna noodles, cashew cream, the meatless veggie mixture, and Whole Foods pasta sauce. 

 

Then I finished it by sprinkling some Parmela vegan Parmesan on top. 

 

The best part of the whole endeavor is that it bakes so much faster than cheesy lasagna because you don't have to wait for the cheese to brown in the last step! 

 

The result was so delicious, I never would have known it didn't have cheese if I hadn't made it myself!  The only downside is that it came out a bit thin, so I think a fourth layer is really called for next time. 

After dinner I still needed a sweet treat, so I had some chocolate tofu for dessert!  This stuff is seriously delicious for a weird tofu mixture.  Who would have thought?  I really need to explore the dessert possibilities where tofu is concerned.  

Not So Lazy Sunday

After our busy, busy Saturday my boyfriend and I wanted nothing more than to have a nice, relaxing Sunday with no obligations, nowhere to be, and nothing to do.  We slept in (or at least I did) and once I got up I made us some delicious vegan French toast.  This great recipe uses bananas instead of eggs, so the French toast ends up extra sweet and delicious.  The only problem is it doesn't "crisp" like you normally expect from French toast.  I like a crisper texture, so next time I will have to remember to toast the bread before I start. 

 

After brunch we had a few ends of bread loaves built up, so we decided to head down to Canton Waterfront Park to feed the ducks.  When our bread supply was exhausted we went for a short run along the water.  It was really hot out, but there was a bit of a breeze coming off the harbor, so it was bearable. 

 

Once we'd cleaned up from our run we headed out to the movies to watch World War Z.  I'd read the book twice and loved it.  And even though all the talk said the movie was nothing like the book, I still wanted to lend my support.  Especially because it was the first attempt at a big-budget, quality zombie movie in quite a while. 

 

Before we walked into the theater we realized we were already starting to get hungry again, so we popped into Barnes and Noble to look for snacks to stash in my purse.  There weren't a lot of vegan options, but I came away with a Kind Fruit & Nut bar in almond and coconut flavor.  Even though it was small, the almonds made it pretty filling, and the combination of sweet and salty was just perfect. 

 

After the movie we hit the batting cages to try to work on my swing after my complete and utter failure at softball earlier in the week.  You could choose between baseballs and softballs, and also the speed of the pitch.  I used all my tokens on softballs at the slowest speed.  My problem wasn't really hitting the ball (I could almost always make contact), but I wasn't making the ball go very far.  Fortunately, Josh was a great coach and gave me lots of great pointers that really improved how well I hit the ball.  By the end I was hitting it well and far pretty much every time!

 

After batting we headed straight over to Josh's parents' for a pasta dinner with marinated tomatoes on the side.  It was delicious!  Not exactly the lazy Sunday we had planned on ...

That Time We Bought a Car and Vegan Pizza Day

Saturday was a completely crazy and jam-packed day.  My boyfriend's car overheated on the way to work last week, and after taking it into the shop it was still having issues, so he decided it was finally time to replace it.  And because most car dealers are closed on Sundays, that left us with basically one day to do it.  So we got up bright and early Saturday morning and I made a mango banana protein shake and took it to go as we set out. 

 

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, my boyfriend had already compiled a list of cars he was interested in and gotten quotes, so we just had to visit each dealership to test drive the cars and see them in person.  Our first stop was a Toyota dealership to look at the Prius C and the Prius Two. 

 

After pretty much ruling out the Priuses we headed to VW (conveniently located just down the street - luckily dealerships tend to cluster) to take a look at the Jetta Hybrid.  Apparently the Toyota and VW dealerships get their balloons from the same people ...  

 

After VW we were getting pretty hungry, so after hunting for a while for a "nicer" lunch option we finally settled on Qdoba for a quick and easy lunch. 

 

I ordered myself a vegetarian burrito bowl and topped it with corn and habanero salsa, lettuce, and guacamole.  Sadly, they really skimped on both the salsas and the guacamole, which are the best parts of the whole thing!  Still, I left lunch full (which is the point, after all), and we were ready to head out on our search again. 

 

After lunch it was on to Honda to test drive the Civic Hybrid and then to Acura to look at the ILX Hybrid (which we couldn't actually look at, because apparently they're phasing those cars out).  Once we were finished we headed home to rest a bit and ponder before my boyfriend made his final decision.  I took the opportunity to enjoy a cool glass of horchata, which was delicious! 

 

 

It didn't take long for him to decide what his favorite car had been, so we weren't home for long before we headed back to make the purchase. 

 

And ... drumroll ...  He decided to buy the Jetta Hybrid!  It was a really nice car, and the value for the price way out-classed the other options.  It wasn't up to me at all, but I think he made the right decision! 

Of course actually making the purchase took us another 2 1/2 hours at the dealership.  And after all that running around all day we were in no mood to do much of anything when we got home.  Fortunately, Saturday was Vegan Pizza Day!  It really would have been wrong to eat anything else for dinner.  So we ordered a half-cheese-half-no-cheese pizza from Papa John's topped with green peppers and onions, and stayed in for the rest of the evening watching Cloud Atlas - not a very good movie, and incredibly long (2 hours 52 minutes!).   Good thing the pizza was delicious!