New Year, New food!

I'm starting this blog now- finally- not as a New Year's resolution, but as an "I finally got around to doing something I said I would do a long time ago" resolution. As for the cooking, I've been doing that part for a long time, but only recently started keeping track, writing recipes, and taking pictures for the blog.

I've been a vegetarian for 6 years now, and I'm trying out some vegan recipes more in effort to reduce my carbon footprint and to shed some of the calories from sugars that come in dairy. The recipes I plan to share are vegetarian and sometimes vegan, but you can always adapt them for your food and diet preferences.

I have been a graduate student for a very long time, and so I'm used to semesters kind of dominating my schedule and not allowing room for taking care of myself. For those of you out there who know these schedules, I'm sure I don't have to explain. Just a week before I took my comprehensive exams for the Ph.D., I decided to take up running. I kept it up and slowly added more training, but I had injured my shoulder from poor posture, carrying a heavy backpack, slouching while working at the computer, and not strength-training. Eventually, I met with a nutritionist to get my weight back under control, and learned a lot about protein, fat, processed foods, and the benefits of exercise. So many of the things seemed like they should be common sense, but why did I ignore them for so long and treat myself so poorly for all that time?!?! And I actually thought I was eating rather well before I couldn't figure out why the pounds were racking up on me. I was wrong. I have to admit it. It is actually a long-term goal I've been working on for the last year to take better care of myself and my family, but this year I'm continuing that practice as sort of a New Year's resolution.

Today, I discovered almond milk. I put some in my coffee as creamer, and boy was it good! I made a cream of cauliflower soup last night that called for it as well, but since I didn't have it already, I omitted that and tried the recipe without dairy milk, too. It still needed something, and I think salt and pepper were fine to adjust the flavor. Since it's a white soup, the recipe called for white pepper, so as to avoid the black flecks in the white soup. Oh well, I did that anyway since I didn't have white pepper at home, and I didn't feel like paying so much for it at the grocery store. So, to keep trying to adjust the recipe, I went ahead and bought the almond milk today to get ready for some of the other recipes, and I added it to my leftover soup. It was very nice. Creamy, not too sweet, and only about 5 more calories added (35 calories in a cup of this stuff!)

In Skinny Bitch, all recipes are vegan, and many call for almond milk to replace dairy or lactose-free milk. I got the book recently, thinking I would end up adjusting the meat recipes for my vegetarian diet, and then noticed when I got home that it was actually a vegan cookbook. Life made simple- sort of! The nice thing is that the recipes are actually kind of simple, and the author motivates readers to buy fresh and locally produced items, and to make almost all things from scratch (no processed veganism allowed here!), so things are actually easy to find. I want to try the cupcakes in the book that have buttercream frosting made from Earth Balance (vegan, olive oil-based buttery spread, also sold in sticks) and Almond milk, and only a few other ingredients. I might have all the necessary ingredients now, so maybe I can bake some tonight.

Recipe posts to be continued . . .