The Promise of Noms to Come

I have been MIA! We are having huge issues with our internet that began when we moved back in June. We are going on a month without internet in the apartment so I am online much less often. What has happened in that time?

Drake the cat has been helping us set up the nursery.

• We have eaten delicious homemade food- without the internet, we have spent a lot more time cooking and baking.
• I bought and fell in love with the Peas and Thank You cookbook. Everything has been delicious and I am saving these meal photos for a separate post.
• I re-visited an old cookbook- College Vegetarian Cooking. It is simple to vegan-ize all of these recipes and with most we have had great luck! 
• I stopped eating dairy after having cheese for a few months. The exception right now? Nutella. :o/
• My diet has become a lot more raw and heavy on fruits and veggies in an attempt to do a low salt diet because my blood pressure is starting to send up some red flags. 
• Second trip ever to Whole Foods. Worth the two hour drive! My only qualm is how expensive the buffet food was, but it was delicious, especially the Indian options. 
• Our old slow cooker broke and my mom has given us hers! Lots of slow cooker meals in our future for yummy fall food especially now that I am working again. 
• I have been planning many blog posts and I promise to upload them soon!

Cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

I think we are finally over our muffin-phase. These are peach cobbler muffins!

Not the prettiest food, but hubby loved this slow cooker chili with TVP!

Morning Smoothie- How To

A lot of blegan voggers have done smoothie posts lately- and why not?! Spring time is an amazing time for eating smoothies! I am going to do a few posts on a smoothie I have been eating throughout winter.

Since January, I eat a smoothie every  morning for breakfast. The next post will be a recipe. I eat it for dinner occasionally as well.

When I first started doing breakfast smoothies, I realized I had to make the whole process more timely. It takes SO much more time to make a smoothie than to grab a granola bar or piece of fruit or bowl of cereal. Here are some of the things I did to save time:

1) Have your fruit ready to go. Most smoothies include some type of fruit. I use bananas in mind as a type of binder. In summer, I'll use more fruit as it becomes available.
Prepare your fruit ahead of time 
I peel bananas when ripe, cut them in half, and store them in the freezer. Other fruits can be cleaned and prepared and frozen for easy access.

2) Measure out and mix dry ingredients ahead of time
I use a pyrex container and stir together the dry ingredients for 10 days. Just remember the proportion of each so you know how many tablespoons to use. That way, you can store the dry ingredient containers out of the way.

3) Slack on the cleaning 
Hopefully this does not seem gross. Every day, I rinse the blender, tablespoon, spatula, and glass with water. I only fully clean them with soap and taking apart the blender once a week. That might not be ok with everyone, but it's fine by me and saves a lot of time.

Remember to unplug the blender when you are done or it will use phantom electricity. Also, I turn the ice maker on in the freezer once a week and it provides enough for a week of smoothies.

Hope this helps!

One of my first raw smoothies. This one is not green.