Tag Archives: what I ate wednesday

Vegan Mofo 2016 Day 2: What I Ate Wednesday #4

November 2, 2016

I know it is only the second day of Vegan MOFO and I am taking a break from the prompts. I like using this blog sometimes as a way to remember things, so keeping up with some of my pregnancy posts is important to me. Granted, this post IS about vegan food, so it is still in the same spirit. It just doesn’t have the theme of the go-to-impressment meal. I won’t lie- you will be getting a preview of future Vegan MOFO posts. XD But let’s move on-

shake

As always I start my morning with a shake. Yup, I’m boring. I usually am so busy doing remaining dishes from the night before, and prepping ~~my husband’s~~ our lunches that I really like having quick shakes that I don’t need to think about. So this shake is one I featured before in my first and second WIAW posts. They turned out looking more brown looking. I guess it large depends on how much greens I happen to add that day. XD The photo looks extra pretty today since I was taking a photo for a Vegan MOFO prompt.

latte

Before heading to work I had to stop by Wegman’s to buy some peanut butter since we ran out. How will my husband live without his PB&J sandwiches?! XD So I figured I would pick up an almond milk latte as well. I am always surprised how much a latte will fill up my belly until lunch time. I figured I would take a photo of my “drink station.” Keeping my work area clean is SUPER important. Like 99% of the stuff we get at the frame shop isn’t worth much. Many things are digital photos or a $40-100 print. But some things are one of a kind- like needlepoints, old family photos, kid art. And now we are getting increasingly more and more expensive art, ranging from $1,000-80,000! No joke, the other day we got a call because a customer thought we lost his $80,000 print we framed, and I went white. I had no idea that piece was so expensive. Turns out he forgot that he brought it an appraiser to make sure it was authentic. Side note guys- if you think you have $80,000 print, get it appraised BEFORE getting it framed. They are most likely going to have to open it back up and reseal it. I know how many of my readers are sitting on expensive art ^__~

wrap

Lunch rolled around 12:30, and I ate my cut apple and a wrap with crumbled pumpkin black bean burger, radish greens, carrot shavings, and some Just Ranch dressing. The wrap was okay, it was a little dry. I also ate a few handfuls of tortilla chips because my boss took them out while we were eating. How do people NOT eat chips when the bag is opened?

So I didn’t photograph the apple and chips (use your imagination guys). I also didn’t photograph the two rolls of smarties and one of the new Nut Filled Clif Bars. I actually had the Coconut Almond Butter, and it was pretty good. I am not sure how much of a fan I am of them. I think I will stick to the originals, but they are still worth the occasional splurge.

burger

Before work I took some photos of the Pumpkin Black Bean Burgers (will be posted tomorrow) so I figured I would wrap up one of them and eat it as a mid-day snack. It was actually a pretty nutritious snack- gots some extra beans, pumpkin, and radish greens! I added some roasted garlic hummus to the bun, but I wish I could of added more since it was a little dry… and cold.

dinner

Dinner is going to be featured in an upcoming Vegan MOFO, I wonder if anyone will be able to guess from the photo? It is kind-of a stretch for the prompt. XD I rarely make meals like this, but I know I should start getting use to it as I plan to have kids. It isn’t too hard to make three separate things, especially when you can just shove the tofu in the oven. I had a little brown rice, curried beets, and tandoori tofu from Vegan Eats World. I saw that My Cat Loves Daiya tried it out and it just looked so yummy I had to do the same.

Then I wrapped up the night with a Pumpkin Spice Macaccino Cupcake. Again, something I will post on the blog for Vegan MOFO. I didn’t take a photo since I ate one of the first batches where I mixed in chocolate chips and had a crumb topping. The topping- uh…. melted. So they looked pretty nasty before I took any photos. So I made a second batch without those add ins. Baking is never perfect the first time right?

So how did I do? Well, I ALWAYS point out, everyone is different, and needs different amount of calories. I am 8 1/2 months pregnant, so yeah, I’m eating a lot XD Just click the chart to enlarge it if you can’t read it. Out of all the days I think I hit the most of the nutritional goals. As always, the packaged goods aren’t very accurate, I mean the clif bar didn’t register most of the vitamins and minerals, which is a bummer since the regular clif bars usually show up.

I know it looks like I ate A LOT of sugar, but I have my specs registered for 50 grams of sugar, the suggested amount. About half of the sugar that is being registered are naturally occurring from the banana, apple, beets, and carrot that I ate. Yeah, not the greatest that I have doubled the amount from smarties, clif bar, latte, and a muffin/cupcake. And let’s not forget all those sneaky added in sugars in dressings and breads and such.

I can’t believe I am getting to the end. There might be ONE more of these What I Ate Wednesdays before the baby comes. And if I try hard, I might do a few more to show the food recommendations for breast feeding. The good news is that I can freak out a lot less about iron! YEY!

What are you guys eating today?

Posted by Jennifer in Pregnancy, Vegan Mofo, Vegan Mofo 2016 Tags: clif bars, pregnancy, Terry Hope Romero, third trimester, vegan eats world, Vegan MOFO, vegan mofo 2016, week 34, what I ate wednesday, wiaw

4 comments

What I Ate Wednesday #3

October 12, 2016

Let me first point out- today is such a nicer healthier collection of foods than the past few days. Yeah, I’ve been scarfing down lots and lots of sugar. Hello pumpkin spice oreos and birthday cake flavored target-os. Oh a cookies and cream filled doughnut, the broken smarties from halloween candy, you know, anything I can get my hands on really. It is so easy to eat carbs and sugars since they are shelf stable and quick to make. Bagel and cream cheese? Easy and satisfying. Vegan boxed mac and cheese? Pretty filling. My acid reflux has been AWFUL the past few days, which I think has made me reach for the super junky foods. It also might be making leftovers filled with veggies less appealing. Part of me wonders if the things I am craving with the reflux (read: sugary snacks) are what is causing it.

breakfastshake

But let’s start with my shake. I just wasn’t feeling spirulina this morning. I wanted to taste more of the chocolate so I took out the spirulina and blended up a small beet from my CSA. I love how it makes the shake turn a deep shade of pink. I pretty much made the same shake I always do- soy milk, banana, cocoa powder, stevia, brown rice protein, kale greens, and chia seeds. Super tasty and yummy.

latte

I was feeling a little peckish before heading out to work so I quickly made a macaccino using some ripple chocolate milk. I really love the consistency of ripple, it is so thick and creamy and possibly a little gritty. Target keeps having sales for them so I keep snatching the small ones.

lunch

Around 12 I got too hungry and ate my lunch. I ate two very small golden delicious apples and a cluster fuck of leftovers. I made a red curry that was very thin. It made quite a lot so I kept trying to make the leftovers a little different each time. It kind-of morphed into a bland linguine dish that had some angel hair pasta as well. I pretty much just plugged 1 1/2 cups linguine, 1/4 cup white beans, 1/8 cauliflower, and 1/8 green beans into Cronometer. Seriously, no clue what the nutritional/calorie count would be for that. My bosses also opened a bag of corn chips, and I might of eaten a few handfuls of those.

hinderfork

So I clearly didn’t eat this- but I didn’t take photos of many things I ate (2 apples, corn chips, or raw cookies) so I figured I would share this interesting piece we just got in at my work. It is a fork from the Hinderburg! One of our clients said he was scoping out the field for work and his co-worker accidentally kicked it around. The backside of the fork has a lot more melting going on. It is hard to see in the photo, but on the burnt part there is a little logo (you can see a close up here.) For the record- I did NOT use this fork for my lunch.

Then I got hungry again around 3, and ate the rest of the Rawdical Raisin Cacao Cookies with Oats I made. I really didn’t like them much, which is weird since I really like a similar dish from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen. I think it is the coconut oil that Emily adds to hers, it just is icky to me. Plus Ani puts hers in a dehydrator, which I think makes them a little more intense in flavor. I ate about 2.5-3 little cookies worth.

dinnerbaby

Then for dinner I made a recipe for the Vegan Mofo Blackest Dish challenge. Funny because I love this dish, it is very dark, but compared to the black rice, the stir-fry looks so brown. XD I thought the super metal dish matchy my spoopy shirt. So you guys get some tummy action. And you’ll just have to wait for the recipe for this. But it does use chunjang, a Korean black bean paste. I also used eggplant and broccoli from my CSA and a can of vegan abalone that I’ve had sitting around forever.

I might have a snack- thinking maybe half of a pumpkin mocha scone that I made from Protein Ninja. It’s the first time I made scones before, and I think I added too much flour to them. I wish she gave weights instead of cups for measurements. I plugged half a scone into Cronometer, just incase I decided to eat it before going to bed. As always, the numbers are off. The black rice and ripple didn’t have a full nutritional profile, nor did the canned abalone, I used miso instead of black bean paste, and so on. So I fell short, though I am sure I would of been off anyways.

As always, got all the calories I need- and hey I have 45 calories left! JK I had half of a broken package of smarties. I mean I can’t give it to trick or treaters right? Just got my fats requirements, all my carb, and pleanty of protein (160%, who says vegans don’t get protein?!) I am getting a lot of sugar though. I know I ate a banana and two apples, but there was a good amount of sugar in the ripple milk and in the raw cookies I ate which used agave. I am still short on a lot of various vitamins, but again, some food didn’t get fully registered, and it might of added to the totals.

Anyone else get their Halloween candy yet? And do you have a strong will to not eat the whole thing?

I know I’ve got the will to not eat the ones I can give out. XD

Posted by Jennifer in Pregnancy Tags: macaccino, pregnancy, rawesome vegan baking, ripple, ripple milk, third trimester, this rawesome vegan life, week 31, what I ate wednesday

5 comments

What I Ate Wednesday #2

September 28, 2016

I wanted to do a What I Ate Wednesday at least once a month during the pregnancy, and I am almost running out of time to do my September post! It has been a pretty busy month, so I figured it is now or never. Sadly today is a little boring in my selection of food, there are lots of leftovers and repeats.

I started the day with my usual chocolate spirulina smoothie. I went back to the powdered spirulina since I found the spirulina tablets more expensive and annoyingly you need to take 6 tablets to get 1 tsp of powder. The tablets are annoying to swallow, and aren’t very pleasant to chew either. What I do like about my chocolate spirulina smoothie is that hits so many of the nutritional needs for pregnant ladies. I get about 50% of the calcium (from the greens and soymilk) and 61% of the iron (from all that cocoa and spirulina) that I need for the day. I also get about 30 grams of protein with only adding 2 tablespoons of protein powder to the whole thing. I should probably post this bad boy on the blog because I think this is a great shake. And the greens I used today? Some beet greens and a little bit of swiss chard.

I’ve been obsessed with fizzy drink as of lately. I think it has to do with the fact that I can’t really have beer or cocktails. I’ve been getting by with non-alcoholic beers, tonic water with shrubs, and seltzers. And if I am honest I am always have a sugar-free soda at work, which I know, isn’t the best, but for awhile I was bringing my own seltzer into work. I also have been bringing in powder mix packets to mix with my water. I really like the Target brand mixers because they use both sugar AND stevia making it only 15 calories. I like how they don’t use coloring in the mixes, the drink ends up being a pale white-ish or completely clear. But they do use artificial flavors. I also really like Madhava’s powder mixes, though I usually find them a little stronger than I prefer. Just like the target ones, they use a mix of stevia and agave powder but they tend to stay away from artificial flavors. But I think I mainly wanted to show my wonderful new wall color ^__~

It was nice a chilly this morning, so chilly I got to wear a sweatshirt while getting ready. I was in the mood for something warm and comforting, and didn’t want to make a cup of coffee (just in case I needed a caffeine kick in the afternoon.) So I made a little latte using Macaccino. They are a new coffee replacement that is on the market, and I think it works best as a latte rather than with just water. I made my own latte by mixing a tablespoon of macaccino with 1/4 cup of hot water. Then I added 8 oz of hot soy milk and a tablespoon of a pumpkin caramel syrup. It was pretty amazing, and perfect for the weather.

Lunch consisted of watermelon, the last watermelon of the season! It was nice, this year we had yellow, orange, and red watermelon. But I think my favorite has been the red watermelon. It was just perfect this year. I ate a curry burrito with it. I used white rice my Mother made from a previous night. It was weird rice, I have a feeling my Father bought instant rice and didn’t tell my Mother. The other half is a South Indian styled chickpea and eggplant curry from Vegan Richa‘s cookbook. Sorry the photo is so crummy, I was trying to take a photo discreetly since my bosses were there. They nicely offered me some corn chips, and ate a small handful as well.

After lunch I eventually had a snack bar that I made. I forgot to take a photo- plus they were ugly looking and nasty tasting. I was trying to make a bar using tahini, cranberries, and lime coconut chips. It was a MASSIVE fail. Oh well. I drove by Wegman’s on the way home from work to pick up some veggie dogs for Jon on Friday. He is going to a Mets vs Phillies game and his office is doing a tailgating thing. I opted out since there are so many reasons why a pregnant woman shouldn’t be at a baseball game. No beer, uncomfortable seats, peeing every inning. Besides I am not a huge baseball fan. I was pretty hungry at the end, and grabbed a small bar to nibble on before dinner. I am a huge fan of these Raw Rev bars, though I only get them on special occasions.

I originally was planning on going for a run afterwork but it was raining a little and my hamstrings were pretty tight from a workout from the day before. But I kept with the plan of eating leftovers and had some brown rice noodles with leftover massaman curry from Vegan Eats World. The curry is filled with green beans, sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes, and baked tofu. If you’ve never had a massaman curry before it is pretty much like a peanut butter curry. It’s awesome. Sadly, after dinner I got a lot of acid reflux, so I am not sure I will be eating anything else for dessert. It is seriously up in the air.

So how are my nutritional stats? Well, for one I noticed some foods didn’t really track any nutritional information other than what is on the label. So I might have been a little closer to some of the nutritional goals. But that is also why I take prenatal vitamins ^__~ And FYI cronometer is a little weird. I always get a lot of red because I have it in weight gain mode I guess most clients are trying to loose weight. But if you read closely, it says I can eat 210 more calories. I already ate 2400 calories! I got 100 grams of protein, 273 grams of carbs, and 90 grams of fat. I am a little shocked about the fat since I tend to have a low fat diet. Not really intentionally though.

Well, I am off to watch some TV with the hubs and count kicks for the doctors. Ugh. It’s so sad, it is always within 10-15 minutes I count 10 kicks. Plus I tend to ignore the small ones, depending on how interested I am in the TV show.

What are you guys snacking on today?

Posted by Jennifer in Pregnancy Tags: macaccino, pregnancy, raw rev glo, third trimester, vegan eats world, vegan richa, week 29, what I ate wednesday, wiaw

6 comments

What I Ate Wednesday #1

August 3, 2016

I really like reading posts that people do of “what I ate” posts, whether it is for the day, week, lately, whatever. I figured, some people are wondering what I pregnant vegan eats in a day, so I thought I would try really hard to take a photo of my food before gobbling it all up. And share some of the nutritional information.

Almost every single day has been a chocolate banana shake since I found out that I am pregnant. I was using spirulina (and chocolate) in the shake to up my iron, but the powder spirulina ended up being more expensive than the tablets, so I am making the switch. Which has been nice because I rarely have a “pure” chocolate shake. It’s always spirulina chocolate, fruit and chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate, etc. It’s made with soy milk, chia seeds, collard greens, some greens powder I got from Vegan Cuts, brown rice and pea protein.

Before heading to work I made myself a small iced cafe au lait. I had leftover coffee from Rook and added some soy milk since I keep hearing how I need so much calcium. So I figured why not? Snapped a quick picture next to the flowers at my work’s garden. It seems nice and quite but there was a lot of construction going on. My boss is building a deck for her backyard and is laying lots of new cement around the building, so today was a little crazy.

Since work was pretty all over the place, I didn’t even notice how hungry I was and had a late lunch. I had a green apple, which I always pre-chop and stashed in a Blue Avocado baggie. I love these reusable bag, because unlike Lunch Skins, these baggies have a zip seal so they are perfect for holding fruits and veggies. Sorry if I sound like they a sponsoring me, but I just really love these bags. Although if Blue Avocado approached me…. ^__~

Clearly I didn’t JUST eat an apple for lunch. I also had some leftover Dragon Noodle Salad from Isa Does It. Since rice noodles get hard the next day I ate it hot, and tossed in a few cherry tomatoes from my CSA since I wasn’t eating it over lettuce. It is by far NOT the most attractive dish to take a photo of, but it is pretty tasty. And I even got to use brown rice noodles, so I get a little credit for a whole grain right?

Then around three I was starting to get crabby, and was like “oh yeah, I’m hungry again.” Jon got me three months worth of Vegan Cuts boxes as birthday gift, joking that I would be a snacking monster. He was kind-of right. Each time I got one I took all the snacks and brought them into work to eat when I was running on empty. I picked this bar by Kutoa, and I’ve never had one before. It was pretty good, I liked how it wasn’t too sweet, and had some crunch from the chia seeds.

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When I got home I went for two mile run (about 3o minutes) and was hot sweaty, and still hungry. I quickly gobbled up a black bean brownie from Minimalistic Baker and took a shower. This mostly was just to hold me off while I took a shower and finished up dinner.

So what’s for dinner? I prepped some pickled eggplant on Monday specifically for this Hummus Bowl dish. Jon and I aren’t big eggplant fans, but our CSA is kind-of having a weak year combined with they are transitioning from spring crops to summer crops. Every year it’s a little slim picking at this time, but this year seems notably bad. So I picked an eggplant, and figured I would try the pickling and roasting method. It has been… interesting? The whole bowl was a little too acidic overall, at least for acid reflux prone pregnant me. I made the hummus as instructed on the site, and tossed the couscous in some soy yogurt. Since I didn’t have any falafels, I used some frozen hemp beet burgers from Protein Ninja.

So what does all this food look like nutrition wise? Well, I do plan on eating more. I just haven’t picked out what yet. Bagel with tofutti cream cheese? Maybe. Homemade purple basil ice cream with blackberries? Very possible. Wegman brand oreos? Yeah, that might happen too. So some of the stats are wrong, I am probably adding another 300-400 calories to my day. Plus, I am not getting the specifics for the bar I ate, and I just used a generic hummus instead of plugging all the ingredients in Cronometer. It isn’t perfect guys. But it gives you a general idea of nutritional intake. I excluded the shot of protein because I hit 100% on all the specifics, BORING.

Clearly I am not quite hitting all the B Vitamins I need, but if I eat the bagel with tofutti cream cheese I’ll end up hitting all my nutritional requirements. I was low on iron today, because well, I am not including spirulina in my diet like I use to. I am waiting for my tablets to arrive in the mail. But if I eat a bagel, I should get 100%. I have hit my requirements for vitamin C and calcium which are also common things that people stress about with diets for pregnant women.

Also, take note that I am using Cronometer to track my nutritional intake. Their information is only so accurate. Some foods don’t have all the nutritional information available. I also selected an option that changes my nutritional requirements. It recommends I have a food intake of roughly 2,000 calories, and I usually ignore that suggestion and go for more.

Posted by Jennifer in Health, Pregnancy Tags: blue avocado, breakfast, cronometer, dinner, isa does it, kutoa, lunch, pregnancy, Rook, Rook Coffee Roasters, Snacks, the minimalist baker, vegan, what I ate wednesday, wiaw