Huge Relief!

Maybe I'm just a big baby, but I am exhausted from studying this week! I only had two exams, one bright and early at 7:30 this morning and one yesterday, but I am drained, for sure. It is a huge relief to have them over with, without another test anytime in the near future! The silly part of being so "busy" is that I "banned" myself from the internet in order to devote more time to studying, but somehow I found myself sneaking online to read your blogs anyway.

And somehow I convinced myself I didn't have enough time to write a blog entry myself.

Sometimes I feel so greedy, relaxing and reading blogs but going so long without returning my own written contribution. But, after a rather long break, I am finally back!



I am a Texan girl, it is true. On my way southbound, coming home from university at the end of last semester, I was ecstatic to stop at Spiral Diner, a one-hundred-percent vegan eatery. While my dad is a good sport, my other immediate family members aren't the most adventurous people when it comes to food, so I decided to omit the small detail that there would be no meat at our food stop. (As if any one of them would die without meat, anyway.) I merely told my dad and sister, "My friend Katie told me that there is something for me to eat at this diner place in Fort Worth!" So we stopped and my sister practically had a heart attack when she saw the huge letters spelling V-E-G-A-N on the window of Spiral Diner. Teehee. I am so sneaky.

You can read up my last post on Spiral Diner to learn more about that particular experience, but as for this visit? This time we stopped at Spiral on our northern trek back up to college, and this time I got my food to go.



I never eat meals on-the-go and make a point of it to have a sit-down meal, every meal in order to be conscious about what I am eating and truly appreciate the food I have. However, I was more than happy to agree to eat my Spiral fare in the car as we adhered to our strict driving schedule! I started off my meal with Ramsey's Perfect Protein Platter, a generously sized portion perfectly spiced quinoa and black beans mixed with the diner's homemade salsa. It came topped with avocado and with a side of tahini dressing.

Let me tell you, while a simple meal like this can go wrong quite easily, these plant-based proteins were not bland in the least bit! I was so incredibly satisfied after this meal and I could have skipped five miles from all the feel-good energy it gave me. But I had to sit on my butt in the car instead.

I entertained myself further with this bebe:



That's right, folks, one heck of an incredible brownie, period. This is only the second vegan brownie I've had in my lifetime, but it was perfection. It was nice and big and walnutty. You can only imagine how happy I was for the duration of the car ride! All in all, this trip to Spiral was much better than the last, and two for two at that -- my entree and my dessert were both winners over last time!

I will leave you with a recipe for my new favorite breakfast these days. Over the summer I was not craving oatmeal the slightest bit, but my hunger for it has come back full-force. This new concoction is a conglomeration of my old carob-oatmeal pudding (recipe here), Kath's oatmeal template, and the oatmeal-raisin pudding recipe posted by Miss ChocolateCovered Vegan. I have made this lots of ways now and have probably had a version of this 20 out of the past 30 days of my life...

Just to warn you, the recipe's kind of long and particular. Even if you don't make this, you can at least be amused at how silly I am about my oatmeal.

My Favorite Breakfast



Serves one

1/2 cup quick oats
pinch sea salt
1/2 cup bananas, sliced thinly
3/4 cup unsweetened soymilk (we add our maple or agave later for some sweet)
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground flax
2 teaspoons toasted walnuts
1 tablespoon almond butter or peanut butter (to tell the truth, I use a heaping tablespoon, but do what you want)
2 teaspoons maple syrup or 1/2 tablespoon agave nectar
2 tablespoons crunchy toppings (optional) – could be granola, crumbled grahams, or dry cereal like Annie’s Cinna-Bunnies; if you want chewy you could even add wheatberries

Cook quick oats with 1 cup water and a pinch of salt in the microwave for a minute and a half to two minutes. Transfer to a pot with soymilk and 1/2 cup banana slices and heat over medium-high on the stovetop. Stir. Once soymilk begins to bubble, turn heat down to medium. Stir occasionally, whipping the bananas so they break down and are evenly suspended throughout the oats.

Sift cocoa and cinnamon directly into the pot and stir. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir more to prevent cocoa powder from burning. Remove from heat once mixture reduces to a thick consistency, which can take 10 or up to 20 minutes. Stir in flax and walnuts and pour into serving bowl. Drizzle maple syrup or agave over the top of the oatmeal and gently stir into the top layer (not too deep or you won’t be able to taste the sweetness – by just leaving it on top we can get away with less sugar grams – yes!). Sprinkle crunchy toppings on, if using.

Serve with a spoonful of nut butter. I portion out all of my nut butter first, set it to the side, and scoop out a teaspoon or so of the nut butter into my spoon and keep refilling from the original portion with another teaspoon until I run out. The trick to this is spreading the nut butter evenly over the spoon and taking a small bite of it with each bite of oatmeal, which is collected in small amounts just on the tip of the spoon. This is my very favorite way to have oatmeal, and it is so delicious and filling.

Once you reach the bottom of the bowl, the chocolate taste starts to become more bitter because the liquid sweetener only permeates a little past the top layer. I don’t mind this at all – I have this method down to a science and this is just the way I like it – but if you’d prefer a sweeter end to your breakfast rather than the bitter/dark chocolate taste, add another teaspoon or so of agave or maple once you get to the halfway point. The sweetest bites definitely happen at the top layer of the bowl.

Also, Kath from Katheats.com mentioned that she eats her oatmeal from one side to the other, which is what I do now. It is so fun! That way, I work my way all the way to the bottom on one half, pick at the (less sweet) bottom of the newly revealed half, and then pick at the sweet top again as I go. I like eating my oatmeal methodically -- it helps keep me awake and alert and entertained early in the morning! It definitely prevents mindlessness, that's for sure.

Here are some other ways I have enjoyed this recipe:

• Eat the oats with dry roasted unsalted peanuts instead of nut butter. Just stir those nuts in after cooking the oats – it is a really yummy variation! When my uncle saw me eating it one morning, he gave me a weird look and said, "What is that? A Peanut Buster Parfait?!"
  
• This is sooo good with Justin’s Maple Almond Butter. It's my favorite nutty butter on the planet -- I can't wait until they start making it in jars instead of squeezy packets!
  
• Adding Annie’s Cinna-Bunnies cereal as a crunchy topping is so satisfying, because the bunnies melt after you stir a little, and they get a little soggy the longer they hang out underneath the oats – they taste so good that way!
  
• You can make this with roasted leftover butternut squash or canned pumpkin or even baked leftover sweet potato. Add it to the pot along with the banana. For this, I omitted the cocoa powder and decreased the sugar, but I bet it would be good in a chocolate-y form, too.
  

Enjoy!