Together again

Hello Dear Readers!
Thank you all for your patience as I was away this last week traveling and working. My trip was fantastic, and now I am getting settled back in at school. So last week i performed a bit of an experiment. Some days i completely ignored the vegan diet and other days I tried to stick as close as I could and it was incredible how much better I have felt being on a vegan diet! This week I am back and going strong. As a matter of fact when re-stocking my kitchen for the fall semester I shopped completely vegan!

Talk about an exciting adventure. Having access to stores like Costco, Whole Foods, and fresh Market have made this journey ten times more exciting, cheaper, and way more fun. This weeks menu is entirely vegan and I am stoked!

So here is to the start of week three and a whole new part of my exciting adventure!!

Be Back Soon!!

Hello my wonderful readers!
I will be taking a break from writing on the blog for the next week, since I will be working a vendor event for my business this week! Thank you for all of your support!!
Much Love!

Baking is a Passion

So, I'll admit, the one thing I have tried to avoid doing during this first week of my adventure is bake. I have a love for baking that goes pretty deep, but the idea of baking vegan is something that seemed intimidating and a little scary to me, but today I decided to break that wall down and try baking one of my all time favorite desserts, and the dessert that I get asked to make for people all the time, and try it vegan.

It. Was. Awesome!

I decided that I would share with all of you this wonderful recipe that I love so much. Yes, I cheated this time and got gluten free cake mix, because living in Alaska it was the cheaper option, and easier for the time constraint that I was under.

Once the cakes were baking I made the raspberry sauce for the middle of the cake. All that took was a bad of frozen raspberries in a pan to reduce them. Once there was a 50/50 ratio of still whole berries to juice I added 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup organic sugar and let that simmer for a few minutes. Then I put that in a bowl and stuck it in the fridge to cool.

Next I put together the frosting. After spending about 20 minutes on Pinterest I found one that I decided to try, and let me tell you, it was the most amazing chocolate buttercream frosting I had ever tasted, and it was totally vegan. I can't do it justice, so I will share the link to the frosting recipe below.

http://www.picklesnhoney.com/2014/10/08/how-to-make-vegan-buttercream-frosting/

Besides looking at and trying their frosting recipe you should also take a look at the Pickles and Honey blog, it's awesome!

Once the frosting was done I kept it at room temperature to keep it smooth. Pulled the cakes our of the oven and stuck them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. After that I put the raspberry sauce in the middle of the two cakes and frosted it and stuck it back in the freezer until I was ready to serve it. It was SO GOOD!!!

Took it to work today and it was a winner. So happy that my first try baking totally vegan was a complete success. :)

One new adventure down, many more to go :)

Week One...Complete

I can hardly believe that it's been one whole week since I began my journey! It has been such an awesome week! I have tried so many new things, and fallen in love with cooking vegan. The flavors and the way that everything combines is incredible. Whoever said that vegans don't have good food, or food that tastes like anything, they were completely mistaken.

The biggest and most exciting part of this first week for me, though, was that in the last week I lost three pounds! After months of trying to eat healthier and struggling to find what worked for me and left me feeling great, I have finally lost a few pounds. As small as that may seem, it's huge when you've been trying so hard.

Overall my experience this past week has been amazing. A lot of support from friends and family, and a ton of encouragement to keep going. With week two staring me in the face I know that there will be more challenges, especially as I will be vacationing for a week and will have to be creative with my eating choices.

Once again, I do want to take the time to thank all of you who have been encouraging me as I go through this adventure. Thank you for your kind words and for the recipes you have shared and even the stories of your own journey. That is truly the encouragement that helps me stay strong through each day. So, until tomorrow. Stay strong, stay healthy, and of course Have a great evening! :)

What to Bring to the Party

So, you're on this new vegan diet and you get invited to a dinner party. You're of course feeling like you should bring something, it's potluck style after all, so you sit down and begin to ponder what to bring. Here are a few things I learned about what to bring to a dinner party long before I decided to go vegan.

1. Pick something easy. It doesn't have to be complicated to be dinner-party-worthy.

2. Pick something fun. Boring dishes never got anyone, anywhere.

3. Pick something you want to eat too. If you are seen eating it, the masses will follow.

This evening I was invited to a dinner party with my wonderful crew from work, and of course found myself stuck in the too-tired-to-cook rut, but also the not-wanting-to-buy-crap-at-the-store rut. I began to work my way through Pinterest recipes and it hit me, duh! Make a vegan hummus! And to top it all off I looked up beet hummus, and I came across a new tasty treat!

My friends, beet hummus, I'm telling you, it is the way to go. It literally took be 5 minutes to put together. It tastes great on absolutely everything, and everyone loved it! So, thank you Pinterest for saving the day, once again, and providing a wonderful vegan treat for this evenings dinner party. :) Of course, I have to share this recipe with all of my readers, so I am attaching the link to the recipe in the post, on the Facebook page, and on the Pinterest board! Enjoy!!

http://www.glutenfreeveganpantry.com/roasted-beet-hummus-vegan-gluten-free/

A New Kind of Yum

I am a total coffee addict. Really. Ask any one of my friends and they will be right up from with you that those T-shirts that say "All I need is coffee and mascara." pretty much sum up who I am as a person. Being a coffee person there has never been a tea that has stood out to me as something that I need to, much less want to, have on a daily basis. This summer, though, there was tea that was introduced to me that i fell in love with, not only because it's delicious, but also because it actually benefits me, as a drinker of this tea.

Traditional Medicinals makes an awesome tea called "Throat Coat." With a little bit of licorice taste, which I would normally hate, and a slightly sweet after taste this tea has found its way into my daily ritual of beverages that I drink. I fondly associate this tea with my time in the Misty Fjords. Not only is it tasty it also helps keep my throat in top working order. Traditional Medicinals also has a few other teas that I have experimented with and have come to love. One in particular called Smooth Move, which tastes like chocolate and help digestive health, has actually become a nightly ritual for me as I switch my diet.  A few weeks ago I also added their "Nighty Night" tea to help me sleep better at night, and besides being totally natural it also worked faster than any Tylenol PM or Z-Quill would.

I would highly recommend these teas to anyone, not just for taste, but also because this company knows what it's doing and their product does exactly what they say it's going to.

Breakfast Smoothies!

They say that the most important part of your day is breakfast. I will admit that my least favorite meal of the day is Breakfast. I hate the idea of within 30 minutes of getting up you have to be coherent enough to come up with something to stuff in your mouth that is nutritious and will give you the energy that you need to last until lunch time. Before this last week I found it easier to just skip breakfast than to take the time.

With my new vegan journey, though, I decided that my lack of interest in this first meal of the day needed to change. One thing that I read a lot about was smoothies, easy to make, extra yummy, and there are so many to choose from.

Out of all of the ones that I have tried my all time favorite is my banana/blueberry smoothie. Full of antioxidants and fiber it keeps you full and gets you energized, does almost as much as two cups of coffee. Also, having a breakfast smoothie allows me an easy way to get in my servings of fruit with my busy work schedule. Plus, it's filling so one smoothie can easily be split into Breakfast and an afternoon or evening snack.

All I do is stick frozen blackberries, blueberries, and a whole banana with a cup of cran-raspberry juice in my vita-mix with ice. Blend it up and pour it in a cup. I prep my breakfast smoothies the night before so all I have to do in the morning is grab and go. There are so many variations like mango/ orange-juice smoothie or even the strawberry/green grape smoothie. I've also tried adding 1/4 cup of dried oatmeal to the smoothie to give it more volume and sure enough it did and it tasted great. Even adding a cup or two of spinach to your smoothie can add to the nutritional benefit.

Breakfast smoothies, seriously the best creation known to man-kind. Highly recommended. Highly tasty. Highly nutritious. Have a smoothie recipe you love? Post it on the Facebook page or in the blog comments below or even send it to me on Pinterest and I'll pin it onto the Whole Lifo board! Excited to try more smoothies and I always welcome new and exciting recipes.

Thanks again for reading and following!

Portobello Steaks and Feeling Great!

Day three has come and gone! I can't believe how excited I still am about all of this. My favorite part has definitely been exploring the new and exciting recipes that I am getting off of Pinterest and from friends. So far I have experimented with breakfast smoothies, two different quinoa salads, which were both out of this world, and tonight for dinner I made Portobello mushroom steaks.

Spent some time chatting with my roommate tonight about how much I am already noticing the effects of changing my diet. Only three days and already I feel better than I have felt in a very long time. Last night, for the first time in months, I fell asleep without using any night-time sleep aids, and I slept the whole entire night, a full 8.5 hours without waking up once. I felt rested and wide-awake all day today, for the first time in forever. I haven't had a single migraine in three days, which is a record. Plus I feel healthier. It is so nice to know that already I am reaping some of the benefits of switching.

Tonight's dinner was so fabulous I can't help but recommend that anyone try it. Besides being delicious, it was also so easy to make! All we did was boil up some organic, gluten-free pasta, and combined that with some Tomato and Roasted Garlic sauce. Then we sautéed Portobello mushroom steaks with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and  a little bit of soy sauce until they were tender. A fabulous, and filling combination! I highly recommend trying this one night when you don't have any plans for dinner.

Tomorrow I will write a little bit about these fabulous breakfast smoothies that I have been trying! Thank you all for reading and for your support on my journey!

Link to the Facebook Page

Here is the link to the Facebook page that I promised :)

https://www.facebook.com/Veganadventuress?success=1

But What About the Coffee Creamer?!

So, I am pretty sure that I have made it through two of the hardest days of this journey yet! Days 1 and 2. Day 1 was not even half as bad as I thought it would be, and today has been even easier. Of course when you decide to do something like this there are many people who have questions for you. All of them are excellent questions. The most asked question I have had over the past week, as I was pondering whether or not to do this, was, "Well I guess you'll have to give up Starbucks then."

I'll admit, m affinity for Starbucks and its delicious coffee drinks could easily qualify as an addiction, so I couldn't help but panic a little whenever someone said that. I have learned though, that vegans do not have to give up their love for any coffee shop, much less coffee and all of the magical goodness that it has to offer. As a matter of fact, as I spent some time hunting for those yummy dairy alternatives I have come across a few that I am excited to try and a few that I already love!

Almond milk. Some people cringe when other people talk about almond milk, but honestly it's awesome! Vanilla and chocolate flavored, silky goodness. No funky after taste and way less calories. Plus the fact that there is more calcium in a cup of almond milk than in actual milk really caught my eye.

Coconut milk. I have yet to try this, but there are several things made with coconut that I am interested to try. I've never had a true love for coconut, as a matter of fact for quite a while I was pretty sure I was even allergic to it, but not any longer! Hooray! Not only are there many different flavors of coconut milk, there are also coconut coffee creamers and coconut butter substitutes!

The neat thing about these specific two dairy-alternatives is that there are even ways to make them right in your own kitchen from ingredients you already have. Talk about an affordable alternative choice! It's even cheaper than buying a gallon of milk!

All that to say, my dear followers, that I can in fact have my Starbucks and drink it too! And my iced caramel macchiatos taste even better! And, in case any of you wanted to know, some Starbucks have a caramel made without dairy as well! Truly a win/win situation.

Once again, thank you all so much for following me on my journey, it means so much to me. I also have a Facebook page that you can come and like where I will be sharing recipes that I find and really like and of course the links to new posts! So stay tuned!

The Journey Begins

Well, here I am about to start probably one of the most daring and exciting journey's that I have ever decided to take. Today, I am going on a Vegan diet for 30 days, one month exactly, to see if everything that everyone is saying is true. Why? Well, there's a story behind all of this craziness.

Once upon a time there was a 15 year old girl who wasn't the skinniest or prettiest girl in school, and who also struggled with several different health ailments. Constantly plagued by colds or the flu or by pounding migraines she suffered quite a bit with keeping herself healthy. Her Junior year in high school she decided it was time for a change, so she cut all bread and sugar out of her diet for five months, and lo and behold, she lost 20 pounds, 2 pants sizes, and she felt better! Her senior year living on this diet was much harder, and instead she began to just eat less, leaving her body starving most of the time, and constantly leaving her feeling bloated and self-conscious because of her inconsistent weight.

Entering college was a whole new diet adventure. All four years of college she struggled with healthy eating, staying consistently active, and battling the health problems that she faced on a daily basis. The migraines became worse, and this time they came with other horrific side effects, loss of appetite, insomnia, stomach pain, and the list goes on and on. After seeking attention from medical professionals, to no avail, she gave up.

So has been my life for the past year, going on and off of "healthy eating" diets and workout programs. This summer has been a wake-up call. My body has fully rebelled and so I decided it was time to do some research. So, after hours of research and conversations I have decided to give this vegan lifestyle a try. I hope that at the end of this 30 day journey I will be a better and stronger person, that I can once again prove to myself that I can be self-controlled in the area of food, and maybe I will even come to a point of discovering what works for me and my body to stay healthy.

I hope to use this blog as an encouragement to those who struggle in the same ways that I do, and also that I could share the things that I am learning along the way with all of you. I am excited to share with you all the things that I come to love, and the things that I struggle with. Maybe through this journey I can encourage someone else to take the plunge and do what they have not dared to do for quite some time. Will you join me on my journey? Who knows what awaits!