Monday, September 26, 2011

So this is love....

Howdy people...

It's been awhile since my last blog post...  I first want to say sorry in advance. 

Work and school have been keeping me extra busy, but that is no reason to ignore my blog.  There is another reason my blog was ignored...  It's because I wasn't being very raw...

I'm not too proud that I turned my back on the raw stuff since I know that it is the way to go.  My problem was with my "all or none" mentality.  I either was going to eat perfect or I wasn't going to try to do good... at all...  It got really ugly.

Since then though, I have been rethinking why I do things.  I was having a conversation with a co-worker about how I thought our bodies are created to be vegan (he didn't agree, which is fine) and then it made me think...  If I really feel that way, what is stopping me? 

I'll tell you what was stopping me...  CHEESE/Dairy.

Yep, that's it.  I could totally go the rest of my life without meat, but the cheese and dairy stuff...  omg..  I'm in love with adding it to everything.  Obviously that comes with consequences though (cancer, heart disease, cheese on your nose, etc.)

So I decided to challenge for myself one day at a time.  Day one.  Vegan 100%.  Mind you, I wasn't eating 100% raw, maybe more like 45% raw.

Day one went pretty well, so I decided to carry the challenge over to another day....  Day two..  also went pretty well...

By day three though, I wasn't really craving cheese anymore.  So I didn't really think it was much of a challenge to avoid it.  So I decided I would challenge myself to make new vegan foods I have never made before (even if not raw, just vegan). 

..... I fell in love all over again....

I made a vegan cheese sauce, and had it with Ezekiel bread...  omg..forget about it.  I found it on vegweb.com and added a few little tweeks to it.

 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unbleached flour
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
(I also added a few dashes paprika, chili powder, scallions, and pepper)
 1/8 teaspoon dried yellow mustard powder
1 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons vegan margarine (I highly recommend Willow Run for this sauce)

Directions:

1. Mix dry ingredients, add water, whisk until clumps are gone.

2. Put in pot with margarine, and heat on medium until hick.

This is a very thick sauce as it is best suited for things like Alfredo, macaroni and cheese, etc. It shouldn't get as thick as mashed potatoes, though, so be careful. You can add more water if you make it too thick, but it's supposed to be pretty thick.

Mixing salsa with this for nacho cheese with chips is great; adding onion powder and extra margarine works great to use in a scalloped potato recipe; extra garlic, margarine and parsley for Alfredo. Try scoops of it on vegan pizza.

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Day 4 of my challenge brought me to creating a vegan reese peanut butter cup... (not for everyday consumption, but great for a treat) YUM...

What will day 5 bring?
So yea.... it's super yum, but obviously not raw.  So why am I posting it here?  Well, because I wanted to let you know that I am going to have 2 blogs now.  This way I won't keep having my internal conflict about being a bad person if I post something that is not raw.  So without making a long story longer, here is my new page... :)

http://rockstarvegannurse.blogspot.com/