Vegan Days 7-10: Burgers, Enchiladas and Lasagna

Well, it never fails - every time I start eating really healthy or exercising a lot, I come down with a cold or a cough or the flu. What gives?! I've developed this dry, hacking, annoying cough that's driving me crazy. A lot of people are saying it's allergy related. I've started taking some cough medicine so I'm hoping it will clear up soon. I was up coughing for a good portion of the night, so I had to skip my morning workout in favor of what little sleep I could get.

I should mention that today marks 100 days fast food free! I have not visited/consumed food from a fast food restaurant once in 2013.

So I'm now in the double digits for my vegan diet, and things are going great! I truly feel more energized and healthy. I've also realized that I'm not craving unhealthy foods. The other day, my co-worker ate fries from Portillo's right in front of me and I had no desire to eat one. Also, the only dessert I've had in 10 days was that vegan cookie from Whole Foods on Saturday. Since I've been eating more fresh foods, I feel more satisfied and I just want to keep eating this way.

On Sunday, I used my food processor for the first time when making my black bean burgers - absolutely in love with it! It worked like a charm, chopped up my onions and green pepper in seconds. I found a black bean and quinoa recipe that I was going to try, but when I read the ingredients, I really just wanted to stick to my favorite recipe, so I did. I used the Ener G egg replacer for the first time - it's just a powdery substance that you mix with water to use in place of eggs. I also added half a cup of cooked quinoa to add some extra protein. This bulked up the amount of "burger" I normally have, so I was able to get 6 patties out of it instead of the usual 4. Great for lunch for the week!

They look like giant cookies, don't they? I love these, they are so tasty! I also cut up a couple of sweet potatoes to make oven baked fries. I love those too, but boy sweet potatoes are a pain to cut up! I swear I almost cut my finger off twice.

On Monday, I tried a new recipe I found on PETA's website - vegan chick'n enchiladas. I've never made enchiladas before, so this was a new experience all around. Dan helped me load the chick'n mixture into the tortillas, which made it a whole lot easier to roll them up. These were actually pretty easy to make - minus hot vegetable oil splashing on me when I added the frozen Gardein chick'n cutlets. Happens to me every time I cook something in oil. The enchiladas were really yummy, and we got a lot of food out of this recipe! It made two pans worth.

These were really good and Dan and I liked them a lot. Interestingly enough, I thought they tasted much better as leftovers the next day than when they were fresh out of the oven.

On Tuesday, I had to work both jobs so I had leftovers - a black bean burger for lunch and enchiladas for dinner. I planned on making falafel pitas tonight, but since I forgot to purchase about a quarter of the ingredients and my spinach might go bad soon, I decided to make another recipe I found on PETA's site - spinach tofu lasagna.

Once again, my new food processor came in handy with this recipe. It blended the tofu to a perfect, creamy consistency. This lasagna was also very easy to make. My Pyrex pans are getting a lot of use this week!

(Alright, even though I've saved these pictures horizontally, they keep uploading vertically...what gives?! Oh well.)

This recipe was another hit! You would never know it was tofu instead of ricotta cheese. I also used Daiya shredded mozzarella vegan cheese on top. Vegan cheese is pretty lousy by itself in my opinion, but melted in a recipe I don't mind it all! There was one itty bitty slip up in this recipe though. After I started cooking the lasagna noodles, I took a look at the ingredients list on the pasta box and saw:

"MAY CONTAIN EGG." 

Um. Whoops. Have to read labels carefully! It does say "may", so that means it might not be in there, right?! Well, I'm still doing a good job overall. I knew it would be a learning experience in many ways!

On another note, I recently said, um, F bees. A few days later, I heard a story on the news that honeybees are dying off in huge numbers lately. It turns out we really need them to help with pollinating many fruits, vegetables, and plants. Yikes! Now that fact was not completely new to me - I mean I did go through biology class like everyone else! - but I kind of overlooked that they do serve a pretty big purpose. I apologize, bees, for saying no one cares about you. Truce?