Monday Miscellany

Monday morning means two things to me: yoga and juice (actually, it means #@!%^&$* but I'm trying to set a good example for my son :) Admittedly, I wasn't much in the mood to get out of bed this morning, but my back and neck were feeling a little cranky so I was hoping that yoga would help. Thankfully, the yoga did help stretch things out a bit, although my typical Hunchback-of-Notre-Dame posture helped erase the benefits by noontime. Sigh.

Ah well. Yoga is still good for the mind, body, and soul, and that's why I enjoy it. Plus, it's easy for me to do in the comforts of my living room while my son plays around me and treats my inverted poses like tunnels to crawl through. It always makes me smile and laugh :)

After yoga, it was time for my juice. Today's concoction was another one that had me singing "Well, you're not hardcore...." :) This one contained a bunch of collard greens, cilantro, beet, carrots, celery, cucumber, ginger, and lemon. I equate the hardcore-factor of my juices to how dark and green they are - witness the evidence:

Now that's hardcore ;-D

As usual, I followed up my juice with another Monday fave, a Carrot Greens Smoothie (recipe here). My hubby commented yesterday that he could never drink smoothies with spinach and kale and collards in them. I told him how you don't even taste them, and with a Vita-Mix, it blends it up so well that you don't even "feel" them. I think baby spinach adds a subtle sweetness to the smoothies, so I add it to almost every smoothie I make!

Lunch was leftovers from last night's dinner, the Wild Rice Salad with Oranges and Beets and Basic Baked Tempeh from Appetite for Reduction. Silly me, I forgot to take a picture last night, so here is my lunch in all its glory:

Big plate of pink deliciousness

Yeah, tempeh doesn't always look that great, but it tastes AMAZING!

The salad was even better the next day, since the flavors had a chance to meld overnight. The salad is cooked and cooled brown & wild rice, sliced baked beets, spinach, oranges, and toasted sesame seeds tossed with an orange-sesame vinaigrette. I heart beets (heart beets...heartbeats...ha! I just got that!) so I knew I would enjoy this salad. And I did! It was great. And I heart tempeh too so I loved this simple preparation. My son loves tempeh so he enjoyed that, but I think the salad was too...avant-garde for him, so he just ate a few bites of the beets and called it a day. No matter. I love that my son is willing to try almost everything I've given him. All I ask is that he take one bite and try, and he does, 99% of the time. Sometimes he surprises me with what he likes, and sometimes he surprises me with what he doesn't like (such as millet - why? I've had him try it 10 times and he still spits it out...must be a texture thing!), but the important thing is that he tries. I think that's a good lesson for all of us!

This afternoon, I was starting to get a bit of a caffeine headache, so I decided I should remedy that and make a Chocolate Mint Smoothie:

Chocolate Mint Smoothie
Makes 1 large serving or 2 small servings

1 1/2 cups water
1 heaping tablespoon raw cacao powder
1 droppers-full of peppermint liquid stevia
1 large frozen banana
1 tablespoon raw almond butter
6-7 ice cubes, to taste
Optional add in: large handful of baby spinach leaves

Blend on high until smooth and creamy.

By the way, that's only half of the smoothie - when I say one large serving, I mean one LARGE serving - two pint glasses for me!

Since I was kinda tired today, I really didn't feel like doing my big weekly shopping trip to Stop & Shop, so I just made my weekly trip to BJ's after my son's nap. As such, I'm running low on supplies and had to search my cookbooks for something to make for dinner. Fortunately, I had almost everything I needed to make something out of another favorite cookbook, 1,000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson. This book has never let me down, and it didn't let me down tonight, either. I'll post the details tomorrow!

Oh, and by the way...I had the other half of the Red Velvet Cupcake yesterday afternoon. And it was freakin' delish:

I was feeling charitable so I let my hubby eat 75% of the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcake, pictured below:

I wish I'd taken an inside shot of it, because this baby was filled with a luscious peanut butter cream filling. He'd eaten half of it yesterday and I let him have half of the remaining half tonight for dessert. Why does this feel like an algebra test?? Oh, and I ate the other half of a half (that's a quarter, folks) right alongside him. And it was deeeee-licious!