The Leftover Barley Dilemma

I cooked a cup of barley last night, but I only ate about 1/3 of it.  And naturally, tonight, all I could think about was junk food.  I wanted fast food...my vegan splurges (curry takeout or salad bar gluttony) were totally unappealing.  Not to mention that cold leftover barley sitting in my fridge.  UGH.

I overcame my cravings, but I would need to cook something that made me feel like I hadn't given anything up by skipping the junk food.  Snow is in the forecast tonight, so I decided that some roasted veggies and a fire would fit the bill.  Somehow, that idea morphed into cooking up a yummy mushroom gravy to put on the leftover barley.  Based loosely on this recipe, here's what went down.

First, to compensate in my head for not giving into the fast food temptation, I bought my first vegan substitute.  So far, I have avoided buying vegan cheese, fake meats (not counting tofu), etc, but the recipe called for vegan margarine, so I decided to go for it.  Why not.

I started by cooking down 1 lb of mushrooms.

After they had given off a good bit of their liquid, I added a chopped onion, some garlic, and a couple tablespoons of the Earth Balance.  After the onion cooked down a bit, I added 2 tbsp of soy sauce and a bit more than that of sherry.  Finally, I added about 1 cup of veggie stock and 3 heaping tablespoons of flour. I let the mixture (below) cook for 6-7 minutes.

Then I added a couple more cups of veggie broth, salt, pepper, and thyme, and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.  Served over leftover (i.e. not wasted) barley with a side of asparagus and a crackling fire, I call this a success.

Vegan Thai Green Curry

Check out this recipe for Vegan Thai Green Curry, then head to the grocery store to buy stuff to make it.

Cost $15 to buy the ingredients - 4 servings.
Took 1 hour to make.
Taste is a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.
LESS THAN 400 CALORIES a serving, including 1/2 cup cooked brown rice!!

I was prepared for this to be a calorie splurge, but using lite coconut milk, all these ingredients added up to only 339 calories when the recipe was divided by 4.  Including all that rich milk, sugar, soy sauce, and sweet potato.  I'm stunned.

 I want to eat this every. single. day.

Spa Week Food Yearbook

 Some things that kept me full and energized this week!

My vegan go-to dish, beans and greens.  These beans are garbanzos, and the greens are 5 oz baby kale.  1/2 cup beans, 5 oz kale, sauteed with a little diced onion, some garlic, veggie broth, red pepper flakes, served with a splash of red wine vinegar, and under 250 calories.  Mega win.

Dinner tonight was kind of amazing.  15 Minute Creamy Avocado Pasta from my absolute favorite blog, Oh She Glows.  Salad was spinach, a few chickpeas (leftover from lunch), shredded radishes, finely chopped (with the food processor) raw broccoli, green onions, and dijon vinaigrette.  So good!  Warm, rich pasta with that fresh, tangy salad.  

Beating the broccoli nearly to death with the food processor has made me eat so much more raw broccoli!  I was inspired to do this, again, by Oh She Glows, where broccoli, cauliflower, and other veggies become confetti.  I was amazed at how much raw veggies I can eat this way.   Processing my broccoli ensures it gets eaten.

Day 1 lazy lunch with my boss.  Veggie Thai red curry.  REALLY good.  Trying to convince my boyfriend we need to go here tomorrow night.   Not 100% sure it was vegan, but I know it was close.

Synergy drink, Black Chia.  These are too expensive to enjoy regularly (at my local natural foods store, they are $3.29), but I'm sipping one now after a killer exercise class this afternoon.  I haven't had them regularly enough to notice any health benefits, but they are delicious and loaded with Omega-3's.  The texture of the chia seeds is almost like runny jello.  I like it, but most of their flavors are chia-free, so if that texture sounds like it will freak you out, don't get the chia ones.

Not Pictured

I'm bummed at the pictures I DIDN'T take these last few days.  It's like the most popular kids at school missed picture day and didn't get in the yearbook.

My morning Green Monster smoothie.  Many many many variations on this, just google it.  I keep it simple.  2-3 cups spinach, 1 banana, 1 cup unsweetened almond milk, 1 splenda packet, and 2 tbsp ground flax.

Black Bean, Sweet Potato, and Red Quinoa Soup.  This one's the biggest bummer of all because it was my favorite dish and definitely the prettiest!  I can't believe I ate it for three meals and didn't snap a picture even once! The wonderful thing about it was, my soup was just as pretty as it looked in the pictures on the blog.  So go check it out.  I used white quinoa instead of red.  Even my boyfriend loved this one.  Which is good because I left onions out of it specifically for his picky self.

Random meals that make me happy because they're so simple and doable.  One night I feasted on roasted mushrooms and broccoli, and it was as delicious as anything else I've eaten this week.  Sprinkled a sliced apple with cinnamon last night, and voila, dessert.

Copious amounts of Lilly's hummus (roasted jalapeno and kalamata olive flavors) and dill seasoned Triscuits.  The guiltiest pleasure of the week.  KILLER.




The only thing I really have to watch out for eating this way is to not eat too many carbs (rice, other grains, etc) every single meal, and limit oils.  Because I do want to lose a little weight, I can't have the carefree attitude about calories and fats that other vegans seems to express.  The night I ate broccoli and mushrooms for dinner, the veggies themselves were 64 calories, but I had triple that in olive oil.  I want to learn more about cooking without oil.  Especially roasting, which is my favorite way to prepare my veggies.  I won't give it up totally, but I am definitely mindful of it now.

Soup

Soups are the best.  I am never more satisfied than when I make (and enjoy) a delicious soup.  The best thing about soup is, the simplest ones are always the best!

I had a big soup victory this Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving (can we coin this something, like Blue Wednesday?)  I have been fighting "the crud", one of those mysterious not-really-sick-sicknesses, ever since last week, and I thought Wednesday would be a good day to make some soup.

Soup is nearly impossible to make to make in small quantities.  Even though I only used one chicken breast, by the time I threw in all my random use-em-or-lose-em veggies, I had a whole stock pot of soup going.  I usually feel bad for throwing out the leftovers, but this turned out not to be a problem.  My boyfriend (Thomas) came over for lunch and ended up spending the afternoon at my place while I ran errands and went to class.  He went nuts over this random crappy soup I made and ate the whole pot over the course of the evening.  Why?  Because it's addictive, feel good, guilt free tastiness.

Do you know how to make soup?  Like, if you wanted to throw a soup together, do you have a good starting point?  Here are the two soup recipes that have trained me to throw one together on the fly.

Chicken Noodle Soup
Vegetable Soup

Having made every variation possible on that chicken noodle soup, I've learned that it's pretty much infallible.  Blue Wednesday's version was a chicken breast (thrown straight in frozen), 1.5 cups shredded carrots, a few stalks of chopped celery, garlic, a small can of corn, a small can of green beans (from this time that someone told me they lost a ton of weight eating tuna and green beans for lunch...those green beans sat in my pantry for 2 years), all the herbs in the recipe, some bouillon, and....I think that's it.  No noodles or rice.  It was AWESOME even as weird as it was, and I finally used those freakin' green beans.

Are you feeling snobby about bouillon?  I hear ya.  It's a ball of (delicious) sodium.  I have made that chicken noodle recipe with homemade slow cooked stock, and it's wonderful.  And if you have time to do that regularly, do it!  But bouillon is key to doing this stuff fast, and honestly, I don't remember the last time that bouillon was the worst thing I'd had in a week.  It's like corn.  Corn has such a bad rap lately, but one of my favorite salads I make has spinach, radishes, corn, chickpeas, and a splash of red wine vinegar.  I realize there isn't much good about corn, but if corn is the worst thing I eat in a week, that's a pretty good week.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for selling Thomas on the wonders of soup.  Tonight, I got cocky and decided to try again.  In our post-Thanksgiving state of shame, we are trying to eat healthier this week, and I remembered that he bought a bag of lentils and some ham last time we went to the store together.  So, I went to his place and made lentil soup.

All this went into the pot:
Rinsed 1 lb bag lentils
bag of cubed ham (don't know how much, probably 1.5-2 cups total)
8-ish cups of water
a couple bay leaves, some dried oregano, basil, and thyme
Half a bag of shredded carrots (I almost always have these on hand...I hate chopping carrots more than I hate the weirdness of using shredded carrots in everything)
Chopped celery (1-2 cups.  Bought it pre-chopped, didn't measure it, just dumped it in)
Onion powder (use a real onion if your soup-eaters will eat one...mine will not)
2 extra large Knorr chicken bouillon cubes

Then, after the lentils were done (45-60 minutes), I added about .5 cup of tomato sauce.

So.  Good.