In preparation...

Food Food Food.

I feel like I'm always thinking about what I want to make and what I need to make it.  I think I have finally found and collected in one way or another all of the obscure ingredients listed in these plant-based cookbooks.

The trickier ones to find were full fat canned coconut milk, tahini, tamari (which is gluten free soy sauce, I think).  I am most excited about the tahini.

Walmart wins were flax seeds, chia seeds, almond butter, cashew butter and almond milk.  At Aldi I found medjool dates (they are called for in smoothies frequently) and some multi-colored baby carrots as an addition to lunches.

Ordered from amazon are raw cashews which apparently are used to make dairy free cream sauces.  I haven't gone completely dairy free.  there is a little cottage cheese and some mexican cheddar in the diet.  In a pinch I'll have fried eggs for dinner.

The food of the week is rolled oats.  While they don't look very good (having missed the baking soda step, I was forced to improvise) these are tasty and I will definitely try them again.  They are a baked "cookie" made of oats, almond butter, a little coconut oil to hold them together and of all things, blueberries.  If someone would have told me to put blueberries in peanut butter cookies I would have called them crazy.  But, almond butter is just light enough to be able to pull off blueberries.  They are, in fact, delicious.  I haven't looked up the calorie content.  They are sweetened with maple syrup.  Even if the calorie count is high, they are healthy calories rather than empty ones.

This is the treat for tomorrow's breakfast- overnight chia oats. Coconut and almond milk, cinnamon, oats, chia seeds again sweetened with maple syrup.  I'm hoping they will be a little more filling than the total cereal and blueberries because I tend to feel really hungry around 10:00.

I have no idea what chia seeds are or what they will do but I love oats.

I also baked some potatoes for a little variation in lunches next week.  I'll use low-fat cottage cheese as a sour cream replacement.  If it gets really boring I'll find some taco sauce or garlic salt to spice it up.

I've got salad fixings for dinner and I made the refried bean/tortilla lasagne for dinner for a couple of days.  It's so easy to make, tasty and I think relatively healthy.

I also bought real black beans that have to soak overnight to see what the difference in those are.  I'm looking at some black beans with "real" black beans and brown rice later in the week.

You can never really tell with the scale/clothes/time of day combination but the highest last two digits of the scale were once 69 and I've seen 56 a few times. I'm still call it +/- 10 lbs for now.

All else is status quo and I believe that healthy cooking may be my new hobby.  I hope I grow to like it a little better as I go along.