Vegan Comfort Food
Back in the day (as in less than a year ago) Joey and I used to be big fans of chicken nuggets. My opinion on them since has done a 180 but that doesn’t mean I don’t still crave some crunchy breading and ketchup.
Solution = Tempeh Crispy Strips. But we’ll get to that later.
Let’s rewind to breakfast time, which involved another pre-run GM of banana, vanilla almond milk, spinach, ice and a Skirt Chaser glass 🙂
I’m officially drinking a GM before my half marathon (which is in less than a month, ahh!) because they make me feel so so great and taste pretty good too 🙂
Speaking of feeling so so great, that is exactly how I felt during my 5 mile run.
- Mile splits: 9:49, 9:20, 9:28, 9:15, 8:43!!
- Total: 46:41
Came home and grabbed some dates and cashews. Tuesdays are weird because I eat lunch so early and it really throws off my schedule when I have to throw running and breakfast in before lunch at noon. Hence the quick breakfast and weird snacking.
After a lunch failure yesterday I was ready to redeem myself and bring enough filling food to last me until school and work were through!
Leftover clam chowduh x2
I picked a piece of shell out of my mouth at one point and tasted some grit at a few different points (gross?) but I thoroughly enjoyed this soup anyways…maybe my standards are too low?
Plus 1/2 a peach. Half because I couldn’t bear to use up my last peach so early in the week!
Stuffed. And it felt so good.
Class is so much more enjoyable when you’re not distracted by hunger!
Time for a snack before work.
Check out how thick and awesome that cinnamon vanilla peanut butter is!
Followed up my apple and pb with 2 little pieces of chocolate. This was the dark chocolate coffee crunch and crunch it I did.
Can all snacks involve chocolate?
I wish I could take credit for dinner but the truth is I left work late and was entering the first phase of hunger induced crankiness so I kindly asked Joey to take over.
What does a hungry meat-disliker eat instead of chicken nuggets? Tempeh Crispy Strips, of course!
Tempeh Crispy Strips:
- 1 8-oz. package tempeh
- 3/4 cup non-dairy milk (I Joey used vanilla almond and luckily you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t plain)
- 1T vinegar of lemon juice
- 1 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2t garlic powder
- 1/2t dried oregano
- 1/2t dried basil
- 1/2t salt
- black pepper to your liking
- 1/8t cayenne pepper or as Joey says “a couple sprinkles”
- Mix milk and vin and let sit 10 minutes
- Cut tempeh into strips
- Add strips to milk mixture and marinate for ~15 minutes, flipping halfway through
- Mix panko, spices and flour
- Preheat oven to 350*
- Coat the strips in the breading. It’s a little hard to get the breading to stick. We had lots of breading leftover but the strips still tasted plenty crispy!
- Spray strips with cooking spray to help the breading stick
- Place strips on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes on each side.
I decided to put myself to good use and cooked up some broccoli in a little olive oil plus salt, pepper, garlic powder and sucanat. The sugary taste really worked well!
I thought the tempeh strips would be weird. Sometimes I’m really turned off by the taste of tempeh. This was not one of those times. These were so yummy. They trump Tyson if you ask me. Joey might answer differently, but what does he know.
I’m thinking tempeh crispy strips plus vegan mac and cheese would be the best healthy comfort meal EVER!
What’s your idea of comfort food?
P.S. It’s Wedneday already and I for one am not complaining.
The Dangers of Undercompensating
Can an elaborate and tasty breakfast be assembled at 7 am in a library?
Why yes, it can.
For some reason I’m always afraid overnight oats won’t keep me full till lunch. They always do but still I have that fear! I think it’s because they don’t leave me as immediately stuffed as hot oats do.
Lunch was the opposite of breakfast. As in it never filled me and I was starving an hour later. I knew I hadn’t packed much of a lunch but I was feeling lazy Monday night and knew I only needed something to hold me over for one more class.
Greens with heirloom tomato
And dressing-in-a-baggy
Plus a Gala apple and hummus. I broke down and bought a giant container of Tribe. I couldn’t help it! Oh and these apples from the FM are SO good!!
In short, I’m an idiot for thinking this would hold me over. I raced home to Whole Foods because I need arborio rice for dinner
But because I was hungry I ended up with more than what I went for…
THEN I raced home and proceeded to stuff myself with cereal while I waited for this to chill in the freezer.
Cereal = best snack ever. Gotta love that crunch!
After removing all traces of hunger I popped in and out of the gym in 10 minutes. I prefer my lifting sessions to be short and sweet.
Dinner involved this baby.
And this recipe.
I cut the butternut in half, peeled the skin off, sprinkled it with s & p and baked it on 400* for ~50 minutes inside up. Then I ate a few pieces right out of the oven. Yum yum yum!
I’ve never actually made my own risotto from scratch so it was quite the event! I started out with 1/4 cup onion, 1 garlic clove and 1/2 cup of rice in a skillet with a little evoo. Meanwhile I had a pot of veggie broth and water (1 cup broth, 1/2 cup water) simmering. I added 1/4 cup white wine to the rice and waited for the liquid to absorb then added the broth mixture 1/3 cup at a time, waiting for the liquid to absorb before adding more.
You end up with a thick, gooey ricey concoction that smells awesome.
As the rice was finishing up I was slicing the squash plus 3/4 lb. cremini mushrooms. Then I threw them in a pot with evoo, salt and spinach.
Final step: Top the risotto with the mushroom/squash mix plus a dash of thyme and parmesan if you have it one hand (we didn’t, of course).
The dangers of undercompensating during lunch are that you will OVERcompensate once you get home and not be hungry for dinner till after 8 pm. Oops! Dinner was good nonetheless. The squash, despite being delicious on its own, tasted a little weird mixed with the risotto and mushrooms. Oh and I also ended up adding an extra 1/4 cup rice because I had a hungry boyfriend on hand.
Ever made risotto from scratch?
Easy 8
We knew from last week that running 8 miles during the day was not such a good idea so we got an early earlier start this week.
I got up in time to have a quick snack and digest a little before heading out around 8:45.
I was worried about how to eat before and after a long run in the morning, since we usually go in the late afternoon/night.
“Do I wake up early to eat my usual bowl of oatmeal?” “Do I eat a snack then eat oatmeal when I get back?” “What if we get back too late and it’s past acceptable oatmeal eating time??” Yes, these are the things I worry about, people!
The funny part is, I didn’t even end up eating oatmeal!
The Run:
- Mile splits: 9:54, 9:42, 9:49, 9:48, 9:48, 9:58, 9:51, 9:43
- Total time: 1:18:40
- Average: 9:50
I’m really proud of this run and myself 🙂 🙂 Not only did we stay under 10-minute miles, but we ran the entire time and I felt great. Last week I had a minor freak out when I started thinking about how much distance we had to cover so this time I made sure to just stay in the moment and not think about the distance ahead of me.
Took a while for me to decide if I was hungry again but around 11:45 I knew I needed food!
1/2 a peach, microwaved for a minute.
Half a tortilla spread with Justin’s Chocolate Hazlenut Butter (this stuff is like crack!) + soft/warm peaches.
I used the other half of the tortilla to layer with my Cinnamon Vanilla Peanut Butter and the other half of my banana from before the run.
Roll those puppies up!
Served with a side of apple and hummus. The apple was SO tiny and cute!
And no lunch is complete without a big glass of H2O. I literally can’t eat a meal without a glass of water. I also can’t eat a meal without putting chapstick on…
Look what I found at the grocery!
Oh the things that will come of this can.
Dinner was a keeper for sure.
Mama Pea’s “Cheese” Stuffed Bean Burgers
The cheese stuffing process was harder than it looked. The burger mixture was so sticky!!
Even harder than the cheese stuffing was the burger flipping!!
I started to get really frustrated trying to flip them so I called in reinforcements in the form of Joey.
We got them flipped but they kinda lost their shape. This made me a little cranky until Joey said…
“We make Wendy’s burgers here” and used the spatula to make them into squares. I had to smile.
Okay, these were fabulous. Thank goodness there’s 2 leftover burgers. I don’t think Joey was as wowed but he’s a real cheeseburger lover so his opinion is biased. I would choose this burger over any real cheeseburger!
And on that note I retired to reading for the rest of the night. Hope your Sunday was just as good 🙂
Lauren Loves Good Food 