Moving On Up!

Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday! Well, I have some big news for you my friends :)

I have decided to move my blog from Blogger to my very own domain. I would love for you all to come join me at thisiswhatieatvegan.com!

I have discussed my reasons over there in my Welcome post. I am really happy with the decision even though it is a bit scary.

Although I have moved my Blogger archives over to the site I will be leaving this space active as well. Hopefully all of my new friends that stumble upon this site will also come join me over at This Is What I Eat.

Thank you all so much for all of your support over the past few years! I know that things will just get better from here and I am so excited to share more fun recipes, workouts and DIY projects with you.

I'll see you over there! ;)

Planning for Success

Hey friends! Thank you all so much for helping me count down to my glorious day of freedom last week :) Your kind words always help me get through the busy times! I enjoyed my day off by spending some time with Delilah and then relaxing and watching a bunch of TV. Probably not the most productive way to spend my time but I was able to rest my body and I was happy to be able to do that.

Today's post has a little bit of everything I think! I have a meal from yesterday, some planning for the week and some inspiration :)

Last night's dinner was really yummy. A home made Chipotle bowl with rice and beans, salsa, daiya and avocado. I served with with a tortilla since I'm too much of a spazz to roll a decent burrito that actually stays together. After this meal I put the rest of my Daiya in the freezer because a) I've been eating it too much lately and b) It seems to be lasting forever! Seriously the bag just won't end!

The perfect bite!

Today I took a ton of time to get a lot of fruit ready for smoothies for the week. I really want to get back into the habit of drinking smoothies every day and being prepared is key. I added 4 more bags of cherries to my other two in the freezer (I'm going to make these last!) as well as some strawberries. I had the bananas already and just added them to the pile so you could see how much fruit I have ha! I also have half a bag of frozen blueberries as well as some frozen pineapple. I think I'm set on smoothies for a while!

While I was cleaning I found this old fortune and thought it was so perfect for the headspace I'm in right now. "You'll never know what you can do until you try." This is so true!

So I have a question. I just tried to upload another photo and it said that I'm out of space in my Picasa account or something. I didn't even know I had a Picasa account and when I clicked to get details it said I had 5 GB of drive space that I wasn't using. I'm confused I guess and if I don't upgrade does that mean I can't upload any more photos at all? Has this happened to any of you, and if so did you just pay to upgrade? Please let me know, I'm so confused! 

I hope that you all had a great day and that Monday wasn't too tough for you!

Cookies!!!

Hey everyone!! Happy Saturday :) I hope you are all enjoying the day. I'm getting ready to head out on my last day of work before one day of freedom! I know it's hit or miss on whether or not I post on a day that I work a wedding but I had something fun to share with you so here I am!

I mentioned last week that it was my friend's birthday and that I had put together a relaxation kit for her. Included in that was two little packets of face mask powder, tea bags (special bags that brew in cold water and make iced tea! She said they were great and very refreshing!), a plastic to go cold cup (to hold said iced tea), face and body creams, home made trail mix (in a mason jar obviously) and a bottle of wine. I was going to make her a batch of cookies but as you know I worked every day and barely had 10 minutes to breathe so I just couldn't. Since I'm working with her today (I'm assisting someone else but she is the second photographer on the job) I decided to push myself to make them even though I was exhausted.

Check out what I made!

Check out these gorgeous Chocolate Coconut Thumbprint cookies! I asked the birthday girl what her favorite flavors are and she said chocolate, coconut, raspberry and pumpkin. I know that chocolate thumbprints would be a great way to incorporate most of those flavors!

I used Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Chocolate Thumbprint cookie recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.

The only change I made was I rolled the cookies in coconut before I baked them the first time to add another one of her favorite flavors in. They worked out perfectly! 

If you want to make a Chocolate Thumbprint cookie definitely try this recipe. It came together really fast and cooked perfectly :)

I also had to show you this yummy meal. I wanted to eat the last of my tofu so I can move on from this soy frenzy I've been on and I figured why not go big? ;) I made a tofu scramble with tons of spinach and then topped it with Daiya. I covered the pan and let the Daiya melt for a few minutes then put the scramble on a tortilla.

My finished breakfast burrito (eaten for dinner). I bet it would have been even better with avocado!

That's all for today. I hope that you all have a really great day! I'm off to work a long ass day and then tomorrow I enjoy some freedom! :) Have a great day friends!

Fun Friday! Treating Myself

Hey everyone! I hate to start off my fun Friday post on a bit of a down note but I can't really gloss over the news I woke up to. Pretty much as soon as I woke up I heard about the horrific shooting in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater in the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. I was completely horrified to think that someone could do something so heinous and disgusting. My thoughts are with those impacted by this tragedy.

Later on today I was running errands and ran into a TON of traffic. I finally passed the source of the problem which was a 4 car accident. They were all in one lane. I obviously didn't see what happened but my guess is that the first car either stalled or just stopped at a green light and the others just crashed right into each other, one right behind the other. It didn't look too serious, I think everyone was ok but one of the cars was completely smashed in the back and had quite a bit of damage in the front. I'd be surprised if that car hits the road again. Luckily the passenger areas of that car didn't look damaged.

What's my point in all of this? At the risk of sounding morbid (and that isn't my intention, I promise), you don't know how long you have on this earth. For this reason, we need to make sure that we live every day to the fullest with no regrets.  I know how easy it is to let life pass you by, letting your dreams get away from you and wishing you had spent your time differently. I'm totally guilty of it myself. However, there is no excuse for it anymore. It is so scary to take risks but we are all here for a reason and we should not be afraid to embrace that. So for me, I'm going to stop making excuses and start making changes in my life. I have spent too many years being unhappy and it is time to start making moves toward happiness and fulfillment. I owe it to myself and I'm worth it, and you are too! Life is way too short my friends.

OK. I'm sorry if that was morbid or depressing but I was just incredibly moved by today's events and wanted to touch on it. I'm going to turn the tone of this post around right now though! Today's Fun Friday post will feature some presents I bought myself this week (I've been working hard, I totally deserve it! ;]) as well as a few random things I'd like to share :)

The first gift I got for myself was inspired by Gabby! I saw them on her blog and immediately was obsessed with them. How adorable! I just got them in the mail yesterday. They came in a set of 4, can't wait to use them! Photo courtesy of Amazon :)

I got each movie for $9.50. Can you believe I didn't have Fight Club in my collection yet?! My movie collection is severely lacking anyway so I'm hoping to buy one movie per month to bulk it up a bit. You know, for rainy days ;) I caught Zombieland randomly one night on tv at like 1am and loved it so decided to add it as well :) 

This purchase was inspired by Sara and her travels! A few years ago I was in Destin, Florida for my brother's wedding. We decided to fly in and out of New Orleans and drive to Destin so I was able to spend one glorious day and night in New Orleans. It went by waaaaay too quick and I fell in love with it immediately. We ended up at Cafe Du Monde because it's kind of a must when you are in New Orleans. I wasn't vegan yet and enjoyed a cup of their coffee (iced naturally) and it was AMAZING. I still think of that coffee. I had no idea that they sold decaf and then I saw that Sara had picked some up! I had actually been thinking about ordering some for months and knowing I could get decaf sealed the deal. I ordered it immediately!

Now, as you all know I kicked my pretty intense coffee habit a few months ago. I am so proud of myself for not picking it back up. Right now I treat myself to one DECAF coffee (typically a decaf soy latte) once a week, typically on a Sunday morning. I recently read this post which discussed a topic that Gabby had discussed prior on her blog as well. I basically learned that cold brewing coffee will result in a smoother, less bitter taste AND the coffee will be almost 70% less acidic!! That is great news! I plan on cold brewing this coffee as soon as I receive it in the mail :)

That's it for the gifts I bought myself :) I found a few other things I'd like to share though!

I remember that you guys were amused when I said I was going into "beast mode" and had to share this with you! Apparently I'm not the only one that says that ;)

How adorable are these "Train Like a Beast Look Like a Beauty" tanks! I think Cassey from Blogilates is doing a giveaway with these tanks but I just wanted to show you because I thought they were awesome!

Finally, another Pinterest find! How cute are these little mason jars with pre-mixed cocktails! No need to spend all that time behind the bar when you can mix your drinks, pour them separately and let your guests grab when they want to! Love this idea and you know I'm a sucker for a mason jar ;) Original post here!

Thanks for bearing with this long post and sorry it was a little depressing in the beginning. I hope that you had a good Friday and that you enjoy your weekend! One more day until I get to relax!

Whole Lotta Whole Foods!

Hey everyone! Happy Thursday :) It's so close to Friday which is awesome! Unfortunately my weekend off has been cut in half as I was contacted by a photographer last minute to work on Saturday. So that will be my 13th straight day of work, 6 of those days being 10-12 hr days.  As you can imagine, I can't wait for Sunday ;)

I wanted to go see Delilah after I got out of work today so I decided to make my Whole Foods run early and be there by 8am when they open. I got an awesome haul and some great meals out of it!

Check out the haul first!

Produce haul: HUGE container of spinach, carrots, baby bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower and two avocados.

I also got strawberries which I forgot to put in the other photo. Stuffed grape leaves, Vega Choc-a-lot, garlic and herb cashews, cashews & peanuts (for trail mix), dried fruit (for trail mix), brown rice crackers, 3 larabars (key lime pie, coconut cream pie, lemon) and an apple Pure bar.

Since I was going to be at Whole Foods, I figured I'd just grab breakfast and lunch there too. Every single meal and snack I've eaten today (all ingredients in dinner too) was purchased at Whole Foods :)

For breakfast I grabbed some steel cut oats and topped it with my own cinnamon, stevia, raisins and walnuts.

2 plums for snack that were purchased the last time I went to Whole Foods.

Wouldn't you know it, I commented on Shen's post just yesterday that I wished my Whole Foods had Tofu Scramble in the morning. Of course when I look today they had it for the very first time... well at least that I had seen! I decided that it wouldn't be right to just squander this opportunity even though I had vowed not to eat tofu today ;) I grabbed some scramble, a teeny bit of potatoes (on the left side of the container at the bottom... those teeny tiny pieces are tiny cut potatoes and onions) and I decided to add some fresh veggies and grabbed some tomato and cucumber salad. Such a great lunch!

Dinner was a gluten free tortilla pizza with lots of yummy spinach and some Daiya. So delicious and pretty too! And all ingredients were purchased at Whole Foods ;)

Thank you Whole Foods for fueling my day and my week! Today was a pretty good food day. Hopefully the next two days will go quickly! Hope you all have a lovely evening :)

Hump Day Grub

Hey everyone! Happy hump day! Once I get through my long day today it is smooth sailing to my weekend off :) I can't wait! I'm still feeling exhausted so the rest will definitely be good.

I'm trying to be good about planning my meals and I think I've put together a pretty good day of food! I'm bringing 4 of these 5 "meals" with me to work since I'll be there all day so it takes a lot of prep and planning but it'll be worth it when I have enough energy to sustain me through the day!

For breakfast I had a banana with some raw buckwheat cereal and almond milk. So delicious and super filling!

Late morning snack will be a red plum.

For lunch I made a homemade Chipotle bowl. I put the homemade guac separately and I'll add it to the brown rice, beans and salsa after it is heated.

For my afternoon snack I'll have a Pure bar.

Dinner is another tofu scramble, this one with a more green hue. It has onion, spinach, broccoli and zucchini and is seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and nooch. I have been eating more tofu recently than I normally would but I desperately need to get to the grocery store. Hopefully tomorrow!

I hope you all have a great day! Any suggestions of fun, healthy things I can make this weekend to last for the week? Also, I would love some suggestions for healthy snacks that I can bring with me, especially high protein snacks. Thanks!!

Working for the Weekend

Hey everyone! I'm sorry it has been a few days since I've posted. As you know I had a very busy weekend and I was feeling the effects of that yesterday. My entire body was sore and I was incredibly exhausted. Other than working a few hours in the morning I barely got out of bed. I'm going to grit my teeth and get through this week and then I can finally enjoy some time off this weekend.

On the plus side, I've been eating some great meals. Today's meals are exceptionally yummy.

Breakfast was a delicious and refreshing Cherry Chocolate Smoothie. The fresh cherries that I froze are absolutely amazing and this breakfast tastes more like a decadent treat than a healthy breakfast smoothie.

For lunch I made myself another tomato and spinach tofu scramble. The seasoning is so simple but so delicious. All I use is salt, pepper, garlic powder and nutritional yeast. It was so flavorful! Served with a brown rice tortilla and a peach.

For snack I'm going to bring some seaweed snacks and a larabar. I really need to make sure I eat every few hours to keep my energy up and my metabolism firing.

Dinner will be this dish of stuffed grape leaves, pickles and carrots. I ran out of hummus, I need to make sure I get to Trader Joe's this weekend!

My appointment with my Dr. went well other than the fire alarm and subsequent evacuation of the building. She said my blood work results were excellent and I've been doing all the right things to take care of my shoulder. She told me that I need to be on top of my nutrition and that skipping meals (unintentionally... it happens because of my schedule) is not an option and that planning is key. So, I plan on planning :)

OK friends, hopefully I will be able to pop in throughout the week with yummy meals to share. I'm so excited about having the weekend off! I'm planning on relaxing and hopefully prepping lots of meals for the week. Just have to get through the next few days and then I can enjoy my freedom. :)

I hope you all had a great weekend and that Monday treated you well :) Have a great day!

Planning Ahead

Hey everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your Friday and are having a great start to the weekend! As you all know, I'm on day 2 of a 3 wedding weekend so I decided to theme today's post on planning ahead. I've been struggling with this for a while now but I paid extra attention to it this week and I think that I'm headed to success! Now, not only am I just planning meals, but I also have to plan around eating what I have since I won't be home enough to really go through a lot of my produce. I kept this in mind while I went to Whole Foods Thursday night and went light on the produce haul. There is nothing worse then buying gorgeous produce then not getting to it in time! Now I know exactly what I have and have planned my meals accordingly.

So of course there was some menu planning involved. Ideally I'd have a book so I can just write everything down but until I can get one I just used a blank sheet of paper and wrote down my meals for the next three days. I included Monday since I won't have time to on Sunday and I don't want to get stuck on Monday! The goal is that I just don't have to think when I'm super busy, everything will be right in front of me. It will also help me get nutritious meals in me without having to reach for convenience.

My dad is really awesome and got me a ton of cherries! Of course the timing isn't great and I won't be around to eat them that much so I pitted them, stuck them in snack sized baggies and put them in the freezer! Cherry chocolate smoothies here I come! I still have a ton of fresh cherries left to snack on so we'll see if I have to add another bag or two to the freezer :)

You all know what a smoothie looks like so I'll just show you my AMAZING lunch from today!

Before I show you my lunch I just wanted to show you these gorgeous baby roma tomatoes I picked up from Whole Foods. They are perfectly ripe and so delicious and they are much smaller than they look. You better believe they made an appearance in my lunch!

Inspired by Ingrid's beautiful tofu scrambles, I made myself a spinach and tomato tofu scramble! I seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic and some nutritional yeast. This was the PRFECT tofu scramble. Super fresh and so delicious. I served it with avocado and in true Ingrid style, a brown rice tortilla. Best meal I've had in a really long time! And a perfect, hearty meal to power me through my second long day!

The perfect bite! Thanks for the inspiration Ingrid!

OK I'm off to finish getting ready for work. I hope you all enjoy your Saturday! I'll be back tomorrow with some more work day meals :)

Fun Friday!

Hi friends! I'm sorry yesterday was a bit of a bummer but I promise today will pick up! I've been a little bummed that I haven't been feeling well and that I haven't been able to exercise but you know you can always count on Pinterest to lift your spirits! This round of Fun Friday is going to be based on some fun and inspiring things that I've found on Pinterest recently :) Trying to stay positive and tell myself that better things are on the horizon!

I don't know why but I thought that this was really beautiful and perfect. The idea of this instantly makes me happy and puts me in an better mindset. 

This just makes me laugh my ass off. It is so simple but perfectly hilarious!

I found this quote really inspiring because I can be guilty of this. I tend to let a bad day linger and I can blow it out of proportion and/or take it out on people I care about. It is so important to remember that a bad day is just a bad day. Things will get better. And it they don't then you know that it is time for a change!

This is what I try to do every day :) I love this, I kind of want to find this or make one for my bedroom.

I repinned this from Sage who always shares the best advice.  This is so inspiring to me because it is so true. I've been afraid of chasing my dreams for so long and constantly make excuses as to why I shouldn't or CAN'T. Can't should be considered the ultimate four letter word because it carries so much more weight than "fuck" or "shit." Seriously. Anyway, it's time to pursue my dreams. And I know what the first step is to take ;)

Um, can we talk a little bit about how AMAZING and HILARIOUS these rings are?! I don't know where this whole mustache craze came from but it is so funny. I love the guy on the right with the hat.

I'm pretty obsessed with these super cute DIY glasses! She just used the back of a paint brush to dot acrylic paint on the glasses. Then she put them in the oven (I can give you specific instructions if you are interested, or just check out the pin! ;]) and check out these super cool glasses! I think I definitely need to make these.

Alright friends, I'm off to run some errands before my wedding today. Yes, I know it is 8:30 am but alas this is the only time I have :) I like it better too because the stores aren't crowded. It is my good friend's birthday tomorrow and I'm working with her on Sunday so I am putting together a super fun gift so I need to go and grab a few things for it :) I'm so excited about this gift and I'll definitely show you guys what I came up with... probably on Sunday! I hope you all have a great Friday and I'll definitely do my best to pop in and keep you updated on my busy weekend and the yummy food I'm eating to keep my energy up :) I think I have next weekend off too which is great motivation for the next week as well!

Happy Friday friends! Hope you all enjoyed this Fun Friday post! :)

Thursday July 12, 2012

Hello my friends. I'm sorry my posts have been kind of boring and uninspired lately. I haven't been feeling to great. I'm super tired all the time and my whole body hurts pretty much all the time too. When I wake up my entire body is stiff and hurts a lot. Luckily I have an appointment with my primary care physician on Tuesday so hopefully she can shed some light on what may be going on. Until then I'm going to try and get as much sleep as possible and eat the best food possible to fuel me through the next three days of weddings!

Today's meals were pretty standard.

Avocado toast and strawberries.

Stuffed grape leaves, pickles and carrots.

I will have a chopped salad for dinner that I picked up for $5.50.

Been feeling a bit bummed about not being able to work out but hopefully I'll get this all sorted out and get back to it sooner rather than later. I will try my best to post throughout the weekend even though I have weddings tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. I will definitely do a fun friday post tomorrow though! I won't forget this week, I promise! ;)

Hope you have all been having a great week. I'm off to Whole Foods to restock with yummy, nutritious foods :)

Bikram Yoga - 1, Sarah - 0

Hello friends. I'm going to apologize in advance but I have a feeling this post will be short. I took my first Bikram Yoga class in a year and a half this morning. I expected it to be brutal because that first class always is... but this morning was the worst I've ever felt it. The room was 107.6 degrees when I walked in. I had to sit out a few sets because of severe dizziness and nausea. I walked out with a pounding headache, bad nausea, more dizziness and feeling 100% drained of energy. I felt like shit basically. Oh and to top it off, my shoulders were super fatigued and my left arm hurt.

I came home and obviously jumped in the shower immediately. I feel like I sweated out 90% of the water in my body so the shower felt good. Then I got into bed and literally could not lift my head off the pillow for an hour. It was horrible. I know from past experience it does get better but at this point I don't have time to feel this shitty. The next time I can get to a class is Friday before my first of 3 weddings this weekend. There is no way I can risk feeling like this on Friday! They just started Vinyasa yoga classes there so I'm thinking about trying that instead.

The goal for today was hydration hydration hydration! I drank a ton of water and whatever food I could get down was hydrating, clean, and high alkaline. Yes, I'm aware it isn't much but it's more than I thought I'd get down!

Those of you that may have taken a Bikram Yoga class know that one of the top rules is DON'T EAT BEFORE CLASS! I'm glad I didn't, I can't imagine how much worse it would have been! I made this smoothie before the class and kept it in the fridge so it would be ready as soon as I got home since it was a bit late for breakfast (I drank it at 11:15am). I focused on getting hydrated and recovering so this one has banana, coconut water (both great for replacing electrolytes), pineapple (anti inflammatory), vanilla vega powder and spinach (alkaline!).

My second meal needed to be light since I was not feeling like ingesting anything after that smoothie so I made another hydrating drink by blending watermelon with the juice of 1/2 lemon (also super alkaline!) and had some plums and seaweed snacks.

Dinner was a ton of veggies with hummus and stuffed grape leaves. 

And since most of you put in the request, here's 2 of my 3 tattoos. I don't have a pic of the third.

This was my second tattoo and the only decent pic I have of it. It's cherry blossoms in wind and pretty large as you can tell :) 

I have this little guy on the inside of my left foot. It's pretty small and I love it :) A little bit of bad ass I guess. 

My third one (the first on I got actually) is a hibiscus flower on the back of my ankle.

OK guys I'm super tired and am ready to relax so the party must end here. I'm bummed that I had such a bad experience this morning (and all day actually) but maybe Vinyasa will work out better for me.

I hope you all had a good day!

Fun Friday... On Monday!

Hey everyone! I just realized that I've neglected my Fun Friday posts for 2 weeks! That is totally unacceptable so I'm halting everything and bringing a special edition of Fun Friday on Monday :) No theme this week, just some fun stuff that I'm into.

I really wish I could take credit for this but I found it on Pinterest and thought they were so beautiful! These are definitely the epitome of summer in a glass!

I just thought this was true and hilarious :)

Haha so as I talk about being unstylish I'll show you this skirt I just picked up in Old Navy. It's one of the rollover jersey skirts that are so comfortable. The color is SUPER pretty and probably one of the main reasons I got it. I've been working hard so I decided it was time to buy myself another present ;)

My new "gym bag/" I've shown you the contents of my gym bag before (boxing and mma gloves, etc.) but now I'm trading that in for my yoga mat and this no slip towel for Bikram Yoga. I found the towel on sale thankfully because these things can cost $75! That's insane!

I've mentioned before that I want to get a half sleeve tattoo. It is hard for me to verbalize what I want but then I found this! It has the same general idea of what I want but I'd definitely make a few changes to make it more my style. I also wouldn't have it start on my back (I already have a large one on my back) but I love this one :)

I now have this crazy obsession with mason jars. I want to put everything in a mason jar! I just chose this photo because they are so small and adorable and fresh squeezed lemonade sounds amazing right now.  I love the lids too! I have a feeling that if/when I start a business it will definitely feature lots of mason jar packaging :)

OK I think that's all for Fun Friday... on Monday :) Sorry I forgot, been so crazed lately! I confirmed that I'm working Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week too so it'll be another intense weekend. If anyone has any suggestions of ways to keep up energy I'm all ears. I'm going back to a very alkaline heavy diet too, especially since I'm starting Bikram yoga tomorrow too. Hydration will also be key!

I hope you all had a great day! More food tomorrow :)