Gluten-Free Grilled Cheese for Breakfast

My camera seemed to like the sandwiches in the back row better, but hopefully you can see the contents of these yummy, albeit blurry, morsels. This morning I was craving something substantial for breakfast and so I started thinking about grilled cheese. Of late, my diet is more carefully curated that usual, so I feel a little guilty about including gluten-free bread and daiya non-dairy cheese. These qualify as "filler" foods on the new plan, which is more nutrient-dense. To make myself feel better about eating this I decided to incorporate some delicious, decadent veggies. I sauteed half a red bell pepper and sliced half an avocado -- these scored for rainbow vegetables and healthy plant fats. Since my gluten-free bread slices were tiny, I decided to make two sandwiches -- vegan, gluten-free grilled cheese "sliders" really. Delish!

To avoid a soggy interior, I started by toasting the bread while the pan was warming to medium-low. Next, I distributed the daiya shreds on all four slices, then put a lid on the pan for about 3 minutes. The closed heat melts the "cheese" more effectively, gluing it to the bread sooner so the bread doesn't burn. I added the veggies next to only one side so putting the two sides together later would be less of a mess. I put the lid back on for another couple of minutes to be sure the "cheese" was pretty well melted, then I put the cheese-only slices on top of the veggie-ful sides and flipped the sandwiches over until well-toasted. It is best to use a low - medium heat for all this since the daiya is slower than dairy cheese. This was a wonderful breakfast and it only took about 8 minutes.

This is Vegan Junk Food

If I were Catholic, I guess this would be my confessional. I've veered off track from my usual beans/greens/whole grains formula that normally keeps me in top form and at peace.

I guess it all started with our travels for the wedding, but then, back at home, we've struggled to create a new routine, in this "summer but not really" season. You see, my 17 year old son, who you may remember missed a lot of school last year due to chronic migraines, has luckily received three incompletes out of his 6 junior year classes (instead of failing the classes). This means he has until August 1 to finish the classes. He feels grateful for the extension, as do I, but being close to adulthood, he bristles at any attempt on our parts to create any sort of routine. He wants to do the work when he feels like it. Well, this won't work, so we have negotiated a settlement with him which involves various sleep schedules and accompanying consequences that he may choose from day to day according to how he feels. Recounting the details of the arrangement would be tedious. We figured out he needs at least 4 hours of work per day to meet his deadline. Hans has been very good at following the guidelines thus far, but the variable nature of the arrangement involves a watchful eye by me. I need to get up at night to make sure he is going to bed when he says he is. So I'm tired. And you thought it would get easier once they are older? Nope, just different problems.

Most of us vegans get clear signals from our bodies about what is needed to achieve balance. But if we ignore or misread the signals, they are of no benefit. I have been misreading my tired signals as cravings for carbs. Oh, you're right, I really knew better, I just wanted an excuse for some vegan junk food.

The photo above is a couple of lovely toasted cheese sandwiches (I'm still in my Anglophilia phase from the Royal wedding, so I will call them that instead of the American "grilled cheese"). The bread is a delicious sunflower seed bread and, yes, it is white flour, and I don't know if there are eggs in it or not (confession). The cheese is daiya -- non-dairy, made from tapioca. It is not animal fat but it is still fat. These were delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed the ten minutes it took to consume them, but then felt overstuffed and miserable for an hour.

Here is some more recent vegan junk food in which I've indulged:

Herbed smashed potatoes! Yum -- boiled potatoes, some peeled, some not, mashed with plenty of earth balance and tofutti sour cream, salt, pepper and a big handful of herbs from my garden -- in this case Italian parsley. White carbs again and plenty of vegan fat. The result? Pretty much the same as the toasted cheese -- ten minutes of joy and satiety, followed by an hour of discomfort, with no residual energy.

It occurs to me that my dietary rebellion mirrors my son's responsibility rebellion. But as our pendulums swing, equillibrium is what we ultimately crave. We know what to do to achieve it, and the rewards are much longer lasting.

Beach Food

You're looking at what I ate at least once a day while I was living in the beach condo. It would have been better on a couple of pieces of Eziekiel bread, which I couldn't find at the beach, but I wasn't complaining. This is six grain bread, spread with hummus and stuffed with kale that was rubbed with plenty of lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper. It made a handy picnic lunch to eat on the veranda or with my toes in the sand. Eating the same thing for a while might not float your boat, but personally, food like this never gets old. Raw, dark green leafies, especially paired with a protein such as hummus, beans, whole grains or avocado are what I crave. One day, as I took a big bite while sitting in my beach chair, one of my friends said, "That looks GREAT, Cheryl!"

Another, meat-eatin' friend said, "No, that does not look great, and by the way, you've got something in your teeth!" He was only razzing me -- I had nothing in my teeth. Here he was later in the day while I was still going strong from my nutritious lunch:

Besides my fabulous green sandwiches, I also ate a few great restaurant meals, not without the need to educate local Florida Gulf Coast chefs ("yes, parmesan does count as cheese, but that's okay, I'll wait for you to make a new one!")

Otherwise, I enjoyed fresh sliced tomatoes on "buttered" bread and made a big honkin' bowl of fresh salsa to share with everyone, along with some jicama and red peppers in lime and cayenne for dipping. I also made a bowl of fresh guacamole that did not last long enough for me to snap a photo.

Mmm, the simple basics go perfectly with an effortless beachy existence!

Odds -n- Ends

Lest I lose track of some of the deliciousness that has been happening around here, I thought I'd better document some of it. This is a lovely, easy salad of mixed greens and herbs, topped with my aforementioned Israeli Couscous Salad, avocado and raw skinless almonds in olive oil and sea salt. I just drizzled a little blood orange olive oil over the salad for a dressing. Yum. The couscous salad had lost its lovin' feeling to me on the fourth day, which was the day after this salad ( the raw broccoli's flavor had soured from the moisture) so I gave it to the pups. They LOVED it!

A simple sandwich -- sourdough toast with vegenaise, roasted red pepper, cucumber and arugula, salt and pepper. Crazy delicious and decadent, if you can believe it! I want another one right now!

A recent lunch out highlights two approaches for a vegan-unfriendly menu:  If you will recall, my plan was to come to the lunch toting a baggy of oil-massaged kale and almonds. So here is my house salad before:

And here it is after my alteration:

I plopped this pile of yum upon the restaurant salad when nobody was looking. I got a kick out of the server's quizzical expression each time he walked by thereafter. He knew something was different. This approach did work for me, but the bottom half of the salad was not very fresh, obscured as it was by such a lovely tangle of fresh carrots.

Finally, to continue in my random selection of photos, I was driving home the other day and saw heaven opening up above, so I hopped out of my car in the middle of the road and snapped it:

I was struck by the unfolding sky and acted impetuously. I wouldn't recommend such behavior unless you live on a cul-de-sac like I do and there's no other traffic around. I did put my car in park before hopping out. While this photo captures the most stunning portion of the sky, I wish you could have seen it in full context. The rest of the sky was dark grey with roiling storm clouds. Very humbling and awe-inspiring!  Thanks for indulging my odds and ends today.

Restaurant Meals

Remember Taco Mac? That's where we hold our kids hostage so they have to sit and talk to us instead of texting or facebooking in their own corners of the house. It's not as bad as it sounds. Once we are all together in a booth they do actually enjoy our company. It's fun. Great news for this vegan: Taco Mac has actually added a Black Bean Burger to their menu!  No, not a burger with black beans on top, a burger made out of black beans! It is wrapped up with some tortilla chips, salad ingredients and mustard. It comes with fries, but I subbed broccoli because I was craving it and felt there was plenty of empty carb content with the crunchy chips. I will be ordering this again, soon.

Here's more broccoli. I'm pretty sure this next outing was the same weekend as the Taco Mac trip. I guess my body was loving broccoli then! This giant bowlful was half of my dinner on a date with my husband at a very fancy Steak house. My husband ordered the unmentionable, and I shared part of my broccoli and mushrooms:

with him. The broccoli was perfectly clean and delicious. The mushrooms, as you can see, were swimming in butter, which I drained and blotted a bit. I'd have preferred them with my own earth balance at home, but I don't think they made me feel as bad as cheese or cream would have. I did not finish the mushrooms, but I was a member of the "clean plate club" with the broccoli (that's the carrot my parents alway dangled when I was little to get me to eat my food!) Obviously I had no protein here, which I had planned ahead for, eating quinoa and chick peas at lunch.

I am not going to stop going to restaurants just because I'm vegan. I won't eat only a lame salad now that I know how good a salad I make at home can be. So I do my best with whatever else I can find on a menu. In the case of the above restaurant meals, it is interesting that the casual restaurant was more vegan-friendly than the more upscale one. My hope is that, by spreading around the notion that some of us don't eat cheese and butter, I will somehow effect change. Strangely, folks get the idea of not eating meat a lot more easily than the notion of not eating dairy. Aside from vegans, aren't there lactose intolerant folks out there?  Maybe they are not so vocal, given the more personal nature of their malaise. Something to ponder . . .

I am going today with my girls to a fun restaurant which unfortunately puts cheese on everything. I'm craving more dark green leafies than ever, so I'm planning on walking in toting them. Yes, I'm going to rub some kale with oil, lemon, salt and pepper and put it in a plastic bag. I'll also throw some raw almonds in there. Then I will have something good to put onto the lame cheeseless salad I plan on ordering! We do what we need to do kids!

I Win Some, I Lose Some

Lately I've noticed there are some benefits to being the only specimen of one's kind, i.e. a midlife vegan in the deep south. I'm exaggerating, of course. There must be others in similar circumstances, but I've not yet met them.

The other day I was shopping at Kroger for a few items that cannot be found at Walmart, and I got a couple of freebies. I like to check myself out since I have a lovely reusable shopping bag the check out clerks tend to struggle with. I can more expeditiously do it all myself.  With produce, there is a procedure for typing in the name of the item while weighing it. The last time I did this, I found no radicchio (!) and no watercress. The attendant had to come over to assist me in finding the codes.

"Well, I guess we haven't gotten around to coding these yet, so just take 'em," she said.

This didn't feel right, so I suggested she just assign a fair price.

"No, that would mess with the system too much."

Okay. I left with my free leafy veggies. Still, there was an uneasiness in the back of my mind . . .

Do you believe in karma? I find that, whenever I receive something seemingly unfairly, an unsavory result will surely follow. On a couple of occasions in my life I have found $20 bills lying on the ground, unclaimed.  When I have kept them, both times the following days were pretty rough. It could be my imagination, but the result is the same. The photo above is what happened to my free radicchio. Isn't this sad? It's supposed to look like this:

You remember my "Yoda-food" as my son calls it. It has been the stuff I dream about -- so delicious with the mild, wilted radicchio, tofu cream cheese and truffle oil. Eye-rolling good. But the free radicchio was different. I recognize there is an element here of human error. Yes, I burned the pizza. It's the occasional collateral damage of a vegan cooking for herself and also a pack of carnivores. I've sometimes got too much going on in the kitchen. But here, after I trimmed and discarded the charcoal-encrusted portions, the radicchio was bad too. I had worried as I was removing the first few slimy leaves from the little head, and rightly so. I think it was just old. Radicchio is a bitter "green" (really purple) but shouldn't be this bitter. It was thoroughly unpalatable. I am sad it has quelled my craving for Yoda-food for the time being.

Sometimes we really do get what we pay for. But other times:

Here's my free watercress. Yes, you have seen this photo before. It is what became of the other free greens, and it was lovely and delicious. I am grateful for this portion of my free bounty.

To continue to wind down this post in a more positive vein, here are some recent yummy sandwiches:

This is marinated, baked tofu from the Natural Foods Warehouse, on eziekiel toast with vegenaise, avocado and a pile of arugula. Sublime.

And here is more of the aforementioned tofu, this time in a multigrain wrap with hummus, black olives and arugula. Delish.

There, see? There's always plenty for which to be grateful.  Mistakes are bound to happen (or karma) so gather ye watercress while ye may!

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

You all know me -- I believe that, as a vegan, I should never find myself in a state of want. In other words, I believe the lifestyle is a gift to myself and never want or expect to feel deprived. Nevertheless, a busy life sometimes does not afford the planning and organization needed to be fully stocked.

Though our family is just about out of the woods with my son's health crisis, we are still not back to a normal routine, spending a lot of time even now in doctors' offices. So I'm not shopping very often. I have availed myself of vegan frozen convenience foods on several occasions recently, and, while I am grateful for the wholesomeness and convenience, I crave my own basic creations.

Today I opened one more box of convenience, a vegan soup by Pacific: Thai Sweet Potato, but also created my own wrap from what I could manage to glean from my larder.

These two turned out to be an odd combination. I was not expecting much from my multigrain wrap of hummus, arugula, brown rice, sesame seeds and pickles, but is was surprisingly delicious, and rendered the little soup bland and flavorless. Thai soup, bland and flavorless? Yes, unfortunately, when compared to the rockin' flavor of the Wickles Pickles I piled into the wrap. I'm not convinced Wickles are vegan, but the ingredients list looks okay. They are very sweet and VERY spicy -- an addictive combo. I guess they would make anything taste good.

I finished the lackluster soup for its nutritional benefits, and savored the remainder of my odd pickle-loaded wrap. I promise I will be more creative tomorrow!

Bioavailability

We are still in a season of lazy vegan eating around here as creativity is taking a sabbatical while my focus is necessarily upon matters other than food. I do feel rumblings of that old vegan mojo, however. I'm finding myself interested in learning more about nutrition and planning some fresh experiments when time is again mine.

When I was in Kroger looking for baby bok choy and hemp milk, I saw a little carton of these crunchy sprouts, comprised of adzuki beans, lentils and green peas. It is clear that these three sprout at different rates since the peas seem to be the most robustly sprouted and there is nary a sprout upon an adzuki. Still, the mix is different from anything I'd ever eaten and is very satisfying. The price tag was a bit hefty for a tiny little carton -- $2.79 or somesuch, but the purchase was worthwhile to me for educational and inspirational purposes. I bet, with a little research, I could cheaply sprout any manner of seeds.

Why sprout?  Well, I'm sure I will have more info on this topic after the aforementioned research, but I do already know that a sprouted seed is more bioavailable. In other words, the nutrition is more readily absorbed into the system and less of it is wasted. Also, once a seed is sprouted, the body treats it as more of a "plant food" than a starchy "seed". I look forward to learning more about this subject when I am afforded the time for a new project.

The photo above is of one of my lazy, simple lunches. It is a flatbread spread with spinach hummus and topped with arugula and the crunchy sprouts.

Here's another version of almost the same thing, in a different format:

In this case, instead of bread and hummus, I have cannelini beans, leftover steamed cauliflower, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and of blood orange olive oil. Otherwise, I again feature the arugula and crunchy sprouts.  Both meals were very agreeable and easy to throw together.

For you regular readers who may be interested -- We are nearing the end of my son's health crisis, I think. Today was his first day out. He drove his own truck and met us for lunch at Taco Mac (which now features a black bean chipotle burger btw! Yippee!) He was overjoyed to be out of the house without a headache. I am cautiously optimistic. If I can get him back to school on Monday I will know we are out of the woods. Thanks again for all your prayers and good wishes through it all. You are much appreciated.

Update

Well, we've got the boy home from the hospital. There's no diagnosis, but there was nothing life-threatening. Apparently the consensus is that his whole system seized up when we abruptly stopped a migraine preventative medicine which was no longer working. Everything is back in working order now, but he's slow-moving (detoxing from the narcotics he got at the hospital, no doubt) and we still have the migraine issue. He's not back at school yet. We are starting the next preventive medicine today to see if it is a match for him -- this is truly a process of elimination.

Obviously there is much more we can do once he is stable, i.e. going to school on a regular basis, but there is no point in going the holistic and nutrition route until it looks like we will have some compliance. My Integrative Medicine M.D. is a miracle worker, but she is not cheap and is not covered by insurance.   My sweet, smart, wonderful boy is not himself when he is not well. He sometimes becomes someone only a mother could love. And I do! (teenager+extreme chronic illness=we pick our battles) I feel confident that once we maneuver the migraine medicine maze my son will be more open-minded about what else he can do to ensure good health.

I want to thank all of you who were with us in spirit through our crisis. I have no doubt it contributed to getting our boy home.

I've obviously not been in the kitchen too much lately, but I wanted to give you a pretty picture today. This is a wrap I fixed pre-crisis with the same lavash bread I've been eating lately. It was delicious! I sauteed a sliced shallot and a sliced portobello mushroom cap in olive oil. I did not marinate the mushroom. I personally don't care for marinated portobellos that I've had at restaurants -- all I could taste is balsamic vinegar! I prefer the flavor of the mushroom, but that's just me. Once the mushroom and shallot are cooked, I let them cool a bit while I spread the hummus on the bread (hummus is an excellent "glue" for wraps!) then I arranged the mushrooms and shallots over the surface of the bread and topped it off with plenty of arugula, and rolled it up. It was simple and delish!

Thanks again for all the good wishes, and for bearing with me as I use my blog as therapy. What a wonderful way to "shrink" myself, right in the comfort of my own home!

Mindless Eating

In the kitchen or at a party, one might find oneself nibbling on something within reach without consciously deciding to do so.  Before vegan, I usually found myself savoring a flake or two of finely shaved parmesan cheese while preparing Italian food.  Indeed, while acclimating to my new diet,  I caught myself mid-reach toward a tub of cheese on more than one occasion.  Since changing everything February 11 of this year, I have been fascinated by the chemical transformations which have occurred.

The first couple of months, the whole detox phenomenon is shocking.  Why was I such a grouch?  Why so many pimples?  I would have rethought the decision based upon these effects if the weight hadn't been falling off without effort (all while eating more food than ever!)  This was enough to keep me committed until the day I realized I was no longer grouchy, and couldn't remember when the last pimple had gone away.  I was at peace, I had energy, I could think straight.  I've been hooked on not eating animals ever since.  Personally the dairy was the most difficult to avoid, but early on I had the ironic blessing of accidentally eating a pasta salad with parmesan in the dressing.  When I wound up with intestinal distress, I realized I am lactose intolerant, but had developed a bit of a tolerance for it over years of its consumption.  Being clean of dairy for a month or so at that point, the unmasked effects of the lactose intolerance were unmistakable.  I asked my physician and she agreed this was probably the case.  She asked if I have more energy now that I have given it up.  When I said yes, she confirmed that, besides intestinal upset, the prevailing symptom of lactose intolerance is fatigue.  To think of the years I have wasted being exhausted!  Dairy is one thing I no longer crave.  Unbelievable but true!

Last night my husband and I sat on our patio with a glass of wine, talking about the day, and I had to laugh at myself as I thoughtlessly reached over to one of these little iron boy-and-girl planters, and pulled a sprig of marjoram off the plant and popped it, unwashed, into my mouth.  The whole thing took a second, and was exactly the way I used to mindlessly nibble cheese or cookies.  I honestly didn't notice until the leaves hit my tongue.  What a surprising journey this is turning out to be!

Still being mindful of which veggies need to be used up first, for lunch today I dug a zucchini out of the crisper.  Not even an organic one, this zucchini cost me $1.68!  Something strange must be going on with the zucchini crops.  Too much rain?  In any case, the expensive price for one little veggie has me looking forward to my own zucchini harvest (currently in blossom).  So I wasn't going to waste my expensive squash.  I sliced it thinly, sauteed it in olive oil, and along with jarred roasted red pepper, made a grilled "cheese" sandwich.  I used fresh multigrain sourdough bread and "Follow Your Heart" vegan mozzarella.  This veggie cheese boasts, "It melts!" which is true if you grate it, but these thick slices were such a lovely flavor, that I didn't mind them only very slightly melted on the outside edge and warm throughout.  Delicious!  Have a wonderful day!