Sage, the Wise and Wonderful, Part Deux!

I try to walk Sage to school as often as I can.  It is a great way to start our day together and it gets us outside for a nice, and usually relaxing, walk.  



This morning, we got to Sage's school and beside the door were some flowers.  I said to Sage, "hmm, I wonder what those flowers are for?"  And his response was, "they are for smelling mom!"




He reminds me that we have to stop looking for further explanation and just accept things for what (and who) they are.  Everything is created exactly how it should be and everything has a purpose.  Thank you Sage, I love you! 

Weekend in Boston

Last week, on the 22nd, was our nephew, Kaleb's, first birthday and his celebration was on Saturday, so we packed up our Routan and pointed the beast east Saturday morning.  After dropping Rocco off with Gloria, we met up with mom & dad on I90 at the first rest stop in Mass.  They were hauling our niece & nephew, Anna & Reid with them.  It was nice to caravan with them because we have never been to this area near Boston and they had a GPS with them.

My handsome nephew enjoying his birthday cupcake.

Kaleb's party was at Michael and JoAnne's friend's house, Jamie & Geoff because their little boy, Travis, was also celebrating his first birthday.  Michael sent me a text Friday asking what kind of food they should get for us.  I did not want to have them go out of their way, so I said fruit and salad fixin's would be just fine.  We brought a good amount of food with us, just in case.  We had nothing to worry about.  At the party, they had plenty of veggies, lots of hummus, and lots of fruit.  Jamie also made a nice platter of tomatoes and basil for us (I really wanted the fresh mozzarella on the other platter, but I did good and resisted my longings for the sweet, delicious cheese).  There was one other item that I really wanted and that was the cupcake!  They had regular yellow cupcakes, and then I noticed there were some that looked different.  Holy cow, they were angel food cupcakes with strawberries on top!  Geesh, I really wanted one. I love angel food cake, and to have my very own little one, heaven!  I ignored the cupcakes as best as I could, took some pictures of kids eating them, but did not indulge in one myself.  

Kaleb's best bud, Travis, lovin' the chocolate.

We left the party, battled some good ole' Boston traffic on 93, and ended up at my brother's new apartment in Dorchester.  Their new apartment is beautiful with granite counter tops, travertine tile in the bathrooms, and windows everywhere.  Their old apartment was also very beautiful and in a great Cambridge neighborhood, but it was a lot smaller.  For dinner Saturday night, JoAnne made us quinoa with kale, summer squash, and zucchini.  She normally makes this dish with two slices of bacon in the kale, but she decided that they could live without it for the night.

                                                                

So incredibly yummy!

It was really delicious and it was something that we all enjoyed.  Michael and JoAnne love eating meat, but the great thing about these two is that they really know how to cook.  I love going over to their place because I always learn something new about food.  I also love how they do not really make us feel weird for not eating animal products (though JoAnne kept referring to us as their "vegan friends," which we think is hilarious.)  They even bought us soy milk, not really knowing if we drink the stuff or not, but they got it just in case.  They were thoughtful and extremely caring and it makes me feel all warm & fuzzy.  Thanks guys, we love you!

Just an update on my tushy, it is still very tender, so unfortunately, I think I will be taking one more week off from running and yoga.  I am totally bummed and I am missing my outlets.  Maybe it will be better by Thursday, then my dad and I can take our weekly run.  That would be nice, but I am not pushing my luck.

 

The Fattening Ingredient

My mom sent me an email forward that really struck me.  The subject was "The fattening ingredient" and the body read:


"What is the most fattening thing that you can put into a double banana split?

....a spoon"

If you're anything like me, you definitely got
the answer wrong on this one!

Echoing what my wife posted earlier about Sage choosing apples over chips is that, no matter what food we have around the house, it all boils down to our own choice of action and what we ultimately eat.  We can be surrounded by all the unhealthiest of choices in the world, but they are only bad if we choose to eat them.

I wish I could say my food choices are driven by the healthy option, like Sage.  Sometimes I'm strong enough.  Other times I opt for the spoon.

How's your will-power?  What do you do to say no to the spoon?  This is a tough topic for me, so I appreciate any advice you can share.

Sage, the Wise and Wonderful

Just a quick note on one of our boys.  

Sage, our oldest, taught me a lesson today on nutrition.  After eating our lunch, he came up to me and said that he was still hungry.  Now, I had just poured some salsa into a bowl and was about to get out the blue corn tortillas when he came over.  I thought he was going to ask for this as a snack. but when I asked him what he wanted, he said. "an apple please!"  And then he asked for another when his bowl was emptied.  This small thing shows me that I created a child who prefers to eat delicious crispiness instead of a different sort of crispiness.  However, I do not know if that apple would have stood a chance up against a cookie, but I still think this is awesome.

Eating yummy curried veggies and lentils over rice.

That was DELICIOUS!

Maybe the next time I am feeling like a snack, I should follow Sage, the wise and wonderful, and get an apple out of the fridge.





















Together we can create a world full of children who think that exercising is fun and eating healthy is delicious.

21 Day Vegan Challenge, Day 5 Recipe

For day 5 I made a tofu and vegetable stir-fry with a peanut sauce.

1 lb tofu, cubed
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
~2 cups peas
ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
~1/2 cup peanuts, roughly chopped
3 Tbsp peanut butter
~5 Tbsp water
2-3 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp soy sauce or tamari
olive oil

Pan-fry the tofu in a non-stick skillet pan until the tofu is lightly browned. 
In a wok or large fry pan, add oil and stir-fry the onion, peas, and carrots until the onion is translucent.
In a small sauce-pan, add some oil, garlic and ginger.  Cook for a minute or two, then add the peanut butter, water, lemon juice, and soy sauce.  Stir well, until the mixture is smooth.
Add the tofu to the veggies in the wok, pour the peanut sauce on top.
Serve over rice.

Sage looked at this and said, "I don't like this!"  When he says this I ask him to try a few bits and if he doesn't like it, then he doesn't have to finish it.  Usually, his plate gets emptied.  That was not the case for this dish, but he did eat half of what I gave him.
This dish is really rich and filling, so I think he just got filled up sooner than normal.
Enjoy!

P.S.  I would love to hear some of your amazing vegan dishes.  Please share.

21 Day Vegan Challenge - Day 4

Today is day four of our Vegan challenge.  My main goal in setting out on this task was to see if I could do it, and to see how it made me feel.  There are so many stories out there about how good this way of life makes you feel and I wanted a piece of that.  One expectation I didn't have was weight loss.  I thought I could expect to lose a few pounds, but I wasn't sure how much since I've seen plenty of pictures of plump vegans along with pictures of the skinny ones.  

So, that expectation was out the window, until I stepped on the scale this morning and it read 176.0.  On Sunday, just 4 days ago, my weight was 184.4.  

I've been eating about 2000 calories a day and exercising 1 to 2 hours while drinking about 3-4 liters of water daily. I haven't felt deprived at all.  Last night I even had a beer.  Tonight my wife made an amazing vegan enchilada dish.  My comment was that if I new vegan dishes could be this good, I could have gone vegan long a go.  Seriously, they were the best enchiladas I've ever had.  

I'll keep you posted on my results, but already I feel really good.  I feel like I have more energy and just better in general.  Extra weight loss is just an added bonus.  

~Rich

Vegan Enchiladas...Yum!

Black Bean, Spinach, Sweet Potato Enchiladas

1 onion, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1 sweet potato, chopped

few big hand fulls of spinach, chopped

1 lb black beans or a couple of cans, drained and rinsed

1 bell pepper, chopped 

lime juice

1-2 tsp cumin

1 tsp cayenne powder

salt to taste

approximately 3 cups of enchilada sauce

olive oil

chop the sweet potato & steam until tender.  in saute pan, add olive oil and chopped onion.  cook on med-low heat until the onions are translucent.  add minced garlic cooking together for a few more minutes (careful not to brown them).  add sweet potato, spinach, and pepper, along with spices.  cook together for ~5 minutes.  add ~2.5 cups enchilada sauce.  let cook for approximately 5 more minutes.  

spoon 1-2 cups of mixture in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish.  spoon ~1 cup of mixture into tortilla wraps and place on top of mixture.  yields approximately 6-8 enchiladas.  pour the remaining enchilada sauce on top.  bake in oven, heated to 350 for 20 minutes.  we put super yummy guacamole on top of ours when they came out of the oven and served them with rice.

Rich claims that if he knew that food like this existed, he would have become vegan much sooner.

What is left of our dinner!