This is just a photo post of our Christmas Eve Lasagna. Lasagna for Christmas has been something of a tradition for us, as we usually get our fill of roasted bird at Thanksgiving. I made a half-size recipe for the three of us and it was more than enough for 2 meals. You can see the recipe here. Happy Holidays!

So I have the rest of the 28 oz can of pumpkin to use up. I’m not a pumpkin pie fan, so I’m finding other, more clever uses for pumpkin puree. May I suggest Pumpkin Macaroni & Cheese? Sounds kind of crazy, but’s sooooo good!

Stovetop Macaroni with Pumpkin and Cheddar Sauce

2 cups Quinoa elbow macaroni
2 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup hot water
1 Tbsp mustard
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp salt
3 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups chopped broccoli (optional)
fresh cracked pepper

Combine pasta, milk, and water (if you want to reduce the fat, you can decrease the milk by one cup and increase the water by one cup) in a sauce pan over low to med-low heat. As it comes to a simmer, add the mustard and pumpkin and stir to combine well. Stirring constantly, cook until pasta is tender.  Stir in cheddar. Season with salt and pepper. I also added some leftover chopped roasted broccoli. It was amazing–even better than the regular stovetop mac and cheese that I posted a few weeks ago.

A friend gave me a giant can of pumpkin puree, so this morning I made some pumpkin muffins. Most recipes for pumpkin bread or muffins call for gobs of sugar, oil, and eggs. My friend was lamenting the insane amount of calories in the pumpkin bread she made. It occurred to me that you could probably use a standard Banana Nut Muffin recipe, and just substitute pumpkin for the bananas and add some spices. I found a recipe here that looked very similar to the Joy of Cooking Banana Nut Muffin recipe. My version is a veganized combination of the two.

Vegan Pumpkin Muffins

1 cup white wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp molasses
1/4 cup canola oil
2 Tbsp flaxseed plus 6 Tbsp water (egg substitute)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup soymilk
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 cup muffin tin.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl, mix together sugar, molasses, oil, vanilla, and flaxseed mixture. Combine well, then stir in pumpkin and soy milk. Stir well to combine. Add walnuts, if desired.

Then slowly add your flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture, stirring as you go, until just combined. Spoon into muffin tin and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes.

I believe in the power of manifestation. I believe that we can set our mind to something we want and then “let go.” Some call this prayer, or giving it to God. To some, it is setting your intention and then letting your higher self be your guide. Either way it is something I have found to work in my life, even before I realized what it was.

Several years ago, I wrote in a journal that I wanted to travel and paint and write. At the time I was working 50+ hours a week and that sounded completely impossible. I was too exhausted to paint even on the weekends. And travel? When? during the 10 days off I got each year? That wasn’t the “travel” I was hoping for. I didn’t know how it could possibly work out, just that I wanted it. And maybe because it seemed so impossible, I let it go. Then someone or something else took over and guided me down the path that led to my heart’s desire. At the time I never would have dreamed that the path would include a transatlantic relocation! But it all worked out. And now I have faith in that power of intention.

So, as I think about where I want to go, who I want to be in the future, there are some things that I’m fairly certain I want:

-a more pedestrian/bike oriented lifestyle (not relying on a car for daily travel)
-to simplify our home, paring down excess belongings, so that we can stay in our small(ish) house as our family grows
-to spend more time on what matters: art, reading, family, friends, music, food, and fun! and less time on annoying things like bills, paperwork, errands, and working just for the paycheck
-to nurture relationships with friends and family
-the resources to travel
-to work on my art as both a business and an expanding of my skill and talent
-to have access to healthy food (via farmers’ markets, garden, etc)
-to have more green features in our home

Those are some of the more specific, tangible things. Then there are some other things that are still just big ideas:

-I want to live a life that inspires others. We make the world a better place one day and one choice at a time.
-I want to find a good solution to the dilemma of education my children. I am frustrated by the quality of available schooling options.  I want my kids to learn to love learning, not to just memorize facts for a test.
-I want us to have Financial Freedom–the freedom to do what we love and have enough money to live comfortably. I don’t know what that means yet. I know part of it is reducing expenses. The lower your expenses, the less money you have to earn to pay them.
-I want to nurture my community and make it a better place to live. I want to give back. One idea I have for this is offering free community classes on cheap and healthy home cooking.

Those are my hopes and dreams, my intentions for the coming years. They may shift and change with time, but by understanding what it is I want (even if I have no idea how to get there), I set myself on the right path.

We’ve been in Italy for nearly 3 years now! Hard to believe. It has gone by so quickly. But at the same time, our old life seems a world away.

I’ve learned so much here about slowing down and enjoying life. I don’t think I’ll be the same as I was when I go back to that “old life”. There are a few ideas I hope to bring back with me from our time here in Italy: fresh food, a pedestrian lifestyle, and a more relaxed outlook on life.

The biggest change for me here has been my idea of good food. The food here, both raw staples and cooked meals at restaurants, is simply amazing. It’s fresh. It’s local. It’s delicious. I now love vegetables that I always thought I hated. I’m willing to try many more new things now, because I haven’t experienced many fresh foods that aren’t fabulous sauteed in a little olive oil and garlic. I’ve learned how to cook with fresh ingredients, which were so intimidating before. And my standards are much higher now! I can’t just go back to the states and fall back into processed food and month-old flavorless veggies. Yuck! That’s not to say I won’t indulge in my favorite fast food occasionally. But I’m now accustomed to eating fresh and my body craves fresh. When we get back to St. Louis, I’m going to work harder to find quality local food, and hopefully next summer we’ll have our own garden again! I want to learn to can and preserve food for the winter. I want to be more self-sustaining.

The other thing that has spoiled me here is being able to walk from our house to get basic necessities–fresh fruit and veggies, milk, pharmacy, post office, restaurants. That isn’t going to be quite as easy back home. St. Louis is not known for it’s walkability, though the neighborhood we live in gets a 63/100 on Walkscore. Not too bad for the energetic. We have great parks nearby, an okay grocery store less than a mile away, and several restaurants. The library is just under a mile and a half. There’s a big Target near there too. So, really I can get everything I need in less than 2 miles (each way!). That isn’t exactly close, but it’s doable. We were doing some walking to restaurants, and even to Target before we moved. Now that our habits have changed so much, it will be even easier for us. Our goal is to only use the car for special trips, like stocking up at Trader Joe’s or maybe a weekly trip to the farmers’ market. Brian is planning to bike to work, so we really won’t be using our car much at all. At least, that’s the plan. We had been discussing the possibility of buying a Prius. But when it comes right down to it, we’d be wasting our money. Sure, getting 50+ miles to the gallon would be nice, but if you simplify your life so that you aren’t relying on a car daily, you can save way more money by just not buying as much gas for your regular car. Even factoring in long trips to visit family doesn’t add up to as much as we’d spend on a new (or even used) car.

It’s good to take a step back and ask yourself, “what do I really need?” Life here in Italy is not focused on stuff. It’s about family and community. I will say this is becoming less true with the younger generations, where you see more American style consumption. However, family is still of utmost importance. Sundays are about going to “Mamma’s” and eating for 5 hours. That’s entertainment!

The idea is to relax. Stop going so much. That is what being here has taught me. Driving isn’t easy and tends to be stressful here, so I’m less motivated to get in a car and go somewhere. But that’s a good thing. Without all the running around, I found time to read, paint, and write. I want to preserve that as much as possible when I get back. I don’t want to get caught up in the hamster wheel again. A disclaimer: I tend to be a little anti-social. But when activities are just stressing you out, it’s time to cut back. With small kids on a schedule, you don’t really have a lot of time for running around anyway. Kids need downtime, oh, and adults do too! With downtime, you can do things that add to your real quality of life–spending time with friends and family or making healthy food for your family.

I often hear people say they don’t have the time to cook healthy food. I understand completely. When I worked full time I relied on lots of prepackaged convenience foods to get dinner on the table after a long day at work. But those foods aren’t good for you! The good news is that you can have healthy and quick weeknight dinners with only a little prior planning. These days I rarely spend more than 30 minutes preparing dinner and it’s all from natural whole foods.

Being home during the day, I can decide I want to have a bean dish that night and cook them during the day. However, if you work, you don’t have that luxury, so you have to plan ahead. If you can spare some time for bulk cooking on the weekend, you’ll have your meals prepped and ready to go for the 6 o’clock crunch.

You can prepare your time-intensive foods ahead of time and have them sorted by day in the refrigerator. If you go to the market for fresh produce on Saturday, you can spend some time washing and chopping the veggies so that they are ready to go. Same for things that have to cook awhile, like beans. Home cooked dried beans are so much better than canned! Most people don’t want to deal with them because it takes so long. And I used canned beans for somethings, too. But you can easily soak your beans overnight Saturday and then cook them for a few hours on Sunday. I’m talking about vegetarian options here, but you could easily do the same with meat, such as a pot roast, cooking it as a main meal on Sunday when you have more time and saving a third or half for use in other dishes such as stew or casseroles. Another great cook ahead item is pasta sauce, like bolognese or other meat (or “meat”) sauce. You can make a huge pot and then freeze in meal size portions. So then all you have to do move the sauce into the refrigerator the night before and then cook your pasta and a vegetable when you get home.

A sample meal plan could be as follows:

Saturday
Vegetable soup (you’re chopping up your veggies anyway, toss some in a pot and dinner is cooking!)
Cheddar garlic biscuits

Sunday
Freshly cooked pinto beans
Cornbread
Sauteed squash
Slow-simmered green beans

Monday
Quick Vegetable Curry
Basmati rice

Tuesday
Mexican pizza (with pinto beans and veggies)

Wednesday
Spaghetti with “meat” sauce (sauce from freezer)
Steamed or roasted green beans

Thursday
Bean Burritos
Mixed roasted vegetables (i.e. squash, peppers, green beans, potatoes)

Friday
Vegetable Risotto (with leftover roasted veggies)

So, the basic plan here is to use the weekend to prepare for the weekly meals. You shop Saturday morning. This example assumes a summer season, so you are buying squash, green beans, peppers, and potatoes (as well as onions and garlic). You then wash and chop your veggies. Then you sort them out by meal. So, a bunch go into the pot for Saturday evening’s soup. Then bag squash and green beans separately for Sunday, a large mixed bag for Monday, a small mixed bag for Tuesday, a bag of green beans for Wednesday, a large bag of (the rest of) the mixed veggies to cook Thursday (for both Thursday and Friday’s dinners). You’ve cooked your beans Sunday and get to use those in two additional meals that week, without feeling like you are eating the same thing. For the Mexican pizza, you can make a quick thin crust out of just whole wheat flour, butter, and milk–requires little kneading and no rising, so you just basically stir it up and roll it out. With the advance preparations, all of the weeknight meals can be made in about 30 minutes.
 

This is the creamiest and EASIEST macaroni and cheese ever! I used quinoa pasta but you could just as well use regular or whole wheat pasta. It makes a nice quick lunch for one!

Super Creamy Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese

Serves 1 (double or triple as desired!)

3/4 cup quinoa elbow noodles
1 cup milk
1 tsp mustard
1/2 cup shredded cheddar
salt to taste

In a small sauce pan, combine milk and pasta. Bring up to a simmer and cook, stirring frequently, until pasta is al dente and milk begins to thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in a tablespoon of extra milk if it looks too thick. Add mustard and salt, and stir well to combine. Then, add cheese and stir until melted.

Quinoa pasta cooks really fast, so this whole process takes maybe 10 minutes! You can plan for about 20 minutes with whole wheat pasta, but still, a good quick lunch!

It’s no coincidence that I dropped off the face of this blog after a mere 10 days of the Crazy Sexy Cleanse. Brian says we “conquered it” in half the time it takes most people. But we quit. It did make a positive influence on our meal choices afterward, but for whatever reason (we’re undisciplined people, maybe?) we just weren’t able to stick with it. Maybe because the wine flows like water here

But anyway, I won’t dwell on that too much. We recently returned from a long vacation through the Eastern Mediterranean. It was awesome, but also exhausting! So, I’m in recovery mode from that still. But hopefully I’ll be on a more regular posting schedule now (says the most undisciplined girl ever).

It’s Day 10, and I’m getting kind of sick of all this healthy eating! Ha! Part of that is hormones. All I want to do is eat chocolate and pizza, with a bottle of prosecco on the side, oh, and some fries.

Yesterday Alex asked for blueberry muffins (his favorite), so I broke out the gluten free flour and whipped up a batch using my normal vegan recipe. They were, well, interesting. I didn’t think they were worth the calories, but Alex ate two. I guess as long as he likes them they were a worthwhile endeavor. I think I will stick to my regular recipe in the future though. I’d rather have the real thing as an occasional treat than settle for some sub-par flavor on a regular basis.

I think that is true for lots of things. I am skeptical of any diets that suggest faux-foods. If you want to be vegan, be vegan. Don’t be a vegan eating fake cheese all the time. If you are dying for a grilled cheese sandwich, have one already! I speak from experience. I ate a lot of “fake” meat when I first went vegetarian, but ultimately that stuff is processed food and not healthy for you, at least not on a regular basis. So if you are only having it occasionally anyway, you might as well just have meat (with the caveat that you eat the healthiest meat you can find–raised humanely without added hormones, drugs, etc). We have turkey on Thanksgiving. I have no interest in Fo-turkey or To-furkey or whatever it is. I think if you can make a healthier replacement without sacrificing the flavor, then by all means do so. My vegan blueberry muffins are just as awesome as the ones with egg and milk. Meanwhile, our household is all dying for pizza. I don’t know if we are going to make it until the end of the 21 days!

I have reframed the way I look at meal time while on the cleanse. The extreme shift has been helpful in getting us un-hooked from our junk food habits, but it has also made me rethink how we can have our junk food in more healthy portions. Instead of ordering a bunch of pizza, order a smaller amount and have a big salad with it. Last night I made eggplant parmesan (with just a tiny bit of cheese on top!). Normally we’d have that with spaghetti. Instead, we had a big salad alongside and left the table feeling much less stuffed and much healthier. So, I can see a long term change in our eating patterns even after the cleanse is done.

Another good thing for me has been the morning smoothie ritual. I eat pretty light most of the day. Water first, then when I’m hungry a smoothie, then maybe a snack later if I’m still hungry, then a light lunch, my afternoon piece of chocolate, then dinner. I have found that if I start off eating too early in the morning, before I’m hungry, I eat too much all day long. We like having a nice big dinner, so it is helpful to keep the rest of the day’s food on the lighter side.

Tonight I’m going to try some lentil croquettes similar to some I had at this awesome vegetarian restaurant in Spain. I’m totally winging them, so that should be fun!

It’s day 8! We made it a week, with only a couple “cheats.” My first thought upon waking was, “a cappuccino would be nice. Maybe this can just be a one week cleanse. Or maybe I can keep doing the other things, but add in the cappuccino.” Uh-huh. Nice try. I got up and got on the scale. 5 pounds lost this week! Oh, okay, so maybe I don’t want that cappuccino after all!

In the book, Kris Carr suggests that the 7th day can be a fasting day, either partial or full—having just green juice or smoothies until dinner or all day. I was thinking of doing this, but by lunchtime, I was feeling hungry for something other than a smoothie, so I made some Coconut Curry Soup for Alex and myself. It was so good! So, here’s the recipe:

Coconut Curry Soup

1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
1 or 2 cups vegetable broth
1/2 zucchini, very finely chopped
1 carrot, very finely chopped
1/4 bell pepper, very finely chopped
1/4 cup tomato puree
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1-15 oz can coconut milk
1/3 pkg rice sticks (check the asian section of the supermarket for these)

Saute your onion in olive oil until tender and translucent. Add garlic and saute until it is aromatic. Then throw in the spice mixture and stir well, letting the spices cook a bit. Toss in the veggies and mix with the spices. Then pour in enough vegetable broth to cover the veggies, scraping up all the spices that are stuck to the pan. Allow to simmer until veggies are tender. This won’t take long since we’ve cut them so finely. Add in the tomato puree, salt, and coconut milk. Bring back to a strong simmer. Meanwhile prepare your rice sticks according to the package directions. Mine said to soak in hot water for 10 minutes, then chop. I soaked them until they looked nice and flexible, then chopped them into about 1″ pieces. Add the chopped rice noodles to the soup and allow the whole mixture to simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes. Serve hot and enjoy!