Vegan Thanksgiving

My family celebrated Thanksgiving a week early.  So, if you're looking for a few ideas of what to serve at your celebration, here's what we had:

Broccoli recipe from vegancoach.com -- broccoli sauteed with shallots, walnut pieces, and a tiny amount of olive oil and soy sauce.

 Stuffing made by my sister-in-law's mother -- yummy with cranberries!

Field Roast celebration roast.  We also had a Tofurky, but that had been polished off before I took a picture of it.

Sweet potatoes!  My sister-in-law Mary Ruth made these.  They are far healthier than you would think from their amazing taste!  She mixed sweet potatoes, applesauce, and a little bit of Earth Balance spread, and cooked it in a crock pot.

Homemade cranberry sauce recipe courtesy of Chef AJ -- cranberries, oranges, and date paste whirred in my Vitamix blender.  Don't mind my brother's maturity in the picture below.

Mashed potatoes and Tofurky gravy.  I mix the potatoes with unsweetened soy milk, just a little bit of Earth Balance, a pinch of salt, and lots of pepper.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Get Healthy Challenge!

The staff at my office has talked about how they want to get healthier, and if you read down a couple of posts, you can hear a bit of my own frustration of maintaining my weight when not training for a major event.

As a result, I started the West Hills Multispecialty Office Get Healthy Challenge!  It is a five week challenge to eat better, adopt positive healthy habits, and lose weight.  The challenge started yesterday with a weigh-in.  I've offered up a $100 prize to the person who loses the most weight.  I've also given everyone a copy of the book Skinny Bitch for inspiration, since no one quite says it like Rory and Kim.

Each day, I am providing a health tip.  Today's tip:  Pack a lunch so you're not tempted by unhealthy choices around you.  Yesterday:  Soda has 100 calories per eight ounces -- cut it out!  I think I'm also going to have a "Skinny Bitch Potluck Lunch in a couple of weeks.

Nine people in my office are participating, and so far there's a lot of buzz..  I'm really excited!!!!

Cookin' With Chef AJ!

Chef AJ is a plant-based chef who prepares unprocessed foods with no sugar, oil, or salt. I've taken some of her classes and have loved her food, but have never prepared any recipes, until now.

This is my Vitamix, and in it I am making her "Dream of Tomato" soup.  It includes tomatoes, red peppers, lemon, and some spices.  I love the "Hot Soup" function because it blends everything and at the end of a few minutes, you have.... guess what?  Hot soup!

To make it my own, I added flax seeds and a cup of soy milk.

And, here's her Cranberry Relish.  At Thanksgiving, I make cranberry sauce every year.  It has orange juice, which is very sugary, and then even MORE sugar added.  AJ's version is simple:  Cranberries, oranges, and dates.  And psyllium husk, which I didn't have, so I didn't use, but it doesn't need it.

I love this stuff.  I'm going to make this for my family for Thanksgiving, but for them I'll probably add a few extra dates to make it sweeter.

Learn more about Chef AJ's classes:  http://www.chefajshealthykitchen.com/