Tag: spinach

Lovely spinach salad with cannellini beans

Adventures, Recipes, Vegan Recipes, Weight loss journey

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The thing about getting back to my normal diet of rabbit food and beans is that I am always hungry! It sucks! I put a half cup of rinse and drained cannellini beans on top of my salad so I’m hoping it hold me over at least until after the gym.

Either way, I am already feeling lighter and that’s what I really want.

The recipe is as follows:
Two three handfuls of baby spinach (romaine would have been good, too)
One tomato
One carrot
Handful of fresh flat leaf (Italian) parsley
Half cup of cannellini (aka white kidney) beans
For the dressing:
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp Olive oil
Salt & pepper
Ground cumin

I tossed all except for the beans in a large bowl and tossed. Then I piled the beans on top. That’s it!

I did a calculation using myfitnesspal.com and this huge salad is only 210 calories! Not bad! With the calories that low, guess who’s having a homemade chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich later?

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A vegan lunch for old college housemates

Adventures, Menu, Recipes

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I really lucked out when I shared a house with two girls while going to college at the University of Arizona. I found the house on the dreaded Craigslist, met the owner of the house, but did not meet the girl who would be living across the hall and sharing a bathroom with me until after I moved in! Here we are today, graduated, doing big things, and still friends. What could have turned out to be a miserable year turned out to be the beginning of a great friendship and a bond created over both of our love for FOOD. Devynn Hawley, your the best!

On December 29th, 2012, we made plans to get together for lunch, coffee, whatever… we just knew we wanted to see each other. Sure, we keep in touch through facebook, etc, but there is nothing like an in-person hangout.

I decided I would cook lunch for my amiga – just like old times! We both wanted something light and healthy after overindulging over Christmas. So, what better than a nice, nutrient-filled, vegan lunch? I decided to make acorn squash filled with a whole wheat couscous mixture of cranberries, walnuts, parsley, and green onion. I paired this with my favorite spinach salad that I used to make for Devynn all the time at the old house. It consists of grilled or sauteed onions, spinach, apple, walnuts, cranberries, and a simple dressing of apple cider vinegar and olive oil (oh, and salt and pepper of course).

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To wash it down, I made a mocktail of Trader Joe’s Cherry Cider, Hansens Diet Soda in Tangerine-Lime, and apple slices. For dessert, we had a couple of those no-egg chocolate chip cookies I made the night before.

A vegan lunch for old college housemates

It was awesome catching up and gossiping about boys and such. I made a friend for life while living in that house and at the core is, once again, food.

Let me know if you want any of these recipes and I will gladly post them!

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Light Monday Night Dinner

Everything else

Light Monday Night Dinner

Another easy-peasy recipe. I always like to pound out my organic chicken breast before I put it on the grill – I think it cooks faster and more evenly that way. I don’t have a meat-pounder-thingy so I just use a heavy sauce pan and it works like a charm. Olive oil, salt, pepper and Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute and that’s it on the chicken. For the salad, it was a simple mix of spinach, arugula, shaved carrot, cucumber, and peas. The salad was dressed simply with olive oil, sesame oil, lemon, salt and pepper. Simple, light and delicious.

Clean-out-the-fridge Scrambled Eggs

Everything else

Clean-out-the-fridge Scrambled Eggs

This was our delicious Sunday morning breakfast last Sunday. I cleaned out the fridge and chopped up all my leftover veggies – spinach, mushrooms, onions, hatch chilis, green onions, and cilantro. On the side are delicious flour tortillas from a Tucson tortilleria (tortilla store), Estrella bakery. This meal easily held us over to dinner and curbed my impulse to buy everything at the grocery store.