Orange Ginger Dipping Sauce

Happy Hump Day to everyone!  This week seems to be going by fairly quickly for me.  Most of our free time this week has been spent relaxing at home watching Netflix or reading on the couch.  Yesterday evening we met up with some friends at our regular bar that sells pints of Alaskan beer for $1, a poor recent-graduates dream hehe!

Afterwards, we brought the party over to one of Kevins favorite restaurants in town, Flamin Joes, a place that specializes in spicy wings.  Weve been there over a dozen times in the last couple of months, but this time Kevin finally decided to take their "Code Red Challenge", also known as the "Widow-Maker" (comforting, I know...).  He successfully ate a dozen of their hottest wings in 4 minutes, with a 4 minute waiting period afterwards of not eating or drinking anything.  While this awesome culinary feat won him a t-shirt and his picture on the wall, I couldnt help thinking how terrible this is for him.

Late last night Kevin woke up with horrible stomach pains: "Like someone punched me in the stomach."  I felt so terrible for him and tried suggesting anything I could think of to help elevate the pain.  I finally settled on getting him a glass of water with a bunch of lemon juice in it.  My thoughts were to hopefully reduce the acidity in his stomach with lemon juice, which is acidic outside of the body, but becomes alkaline within.  It made him feel slightly better, but he still tossed and turned all night.

This whole event got me thinking this morning about what foods really do to us inside of our bodies.  When you think about the whole concept of eating, it is actually quite strange.  We are making the conscious decision to take a foreign object, which was once a functioning organism, and put it into our bodies to utilize the caloric energy and nutrients for ourselves.  When someone gets a tattoo, or their hair cut or dyed, usually a lot of thought goes into the permanence of it, and how it is going to affect you in the long-run.  But with food, most of the time we dont think twice about what we put into our bodies or how it is going to affect us long-term.  Nothing can be more permanent than what physically builds us.  Well, just some food for thought!  Now on to the food....

Ingredients:

• 1 c garbanzo beans
• 1 orange peeled
• 1/2 c peanut butter
• 1 to 4 Tbsp rice vinegar (to taste)
• 2 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 2 tsp minced ginger (more to taste)
• red pepper flakes, as desired
• 1 tsp sesame oil (optional)
• non-dairy milk to thin
• sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in a blender, except for the red pepper flakes and almond milk.
2. Blend on high until smooth, adding almond milk to thin if needed to obtain desired consistency. 
3. Lastly, add the red pepper flakes as desired, and give it a quick stir in the blender.
4. Serve chilled and topped with sesame seeds as a dip, or thin with a bit more almond milk and use as a salad dressing.

Amys Notes:

• Depending on how tangy you like your dips or dressings to be, add as much rice vinegar as you would like.
• 2 tsp minced ginger gave me the small hint of flavor that I was looking for, but others that are more crazy about it can make it more of a stand-out flavor by adding one or two more teaspoons.
• I added about 1/3 cup of almond milk to reach the consistency that is pictured.  Ill be adding a bit more to some of the leftover sauce to create more of a dressing to have on a salad this afternoon.
• This recipe makes a significant amount, so I would suggest maybe trying out a half of the recipe.
• I enjoyed my dipping sauce with some spring rolls I made for lunch yesterday.

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Orange Carrot Cashew Dressing

Have I mentioned that I am making my way through Dr. Fuhrmans new book, The End of Dieting? Probably not.  Im a gruelingly slow reader and I often cheat abandon take breaks in the middle of books to read short fun things on the side.  Lately Ive been switching between The End of Dieting and Are You there, Vodka? Its me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler (hilarious!).

Although I have read Eat to Live (thrice?), Super Immunity (twice), and watched most of Dr. Fuhrmans PBS specials, I felt like I wanted a refresher with The End of Dieting book.  It has been just that: motivation to get my butt back into gear with eating more vegetables.  A lot of times I get caught up in the "Oh! This is vegan?" or "Awesome! That is plant-based?", that I forget to make it my focus to eat high nutrient-dense vegetables.  It has helped me to remember that, although foods like one cupful of dates is technically vegan and plant-based (which I have used this amount in a dessert recipe before, yikes!), it is a ton of sugar and I would get so many more nutrients AND feel fuller on a quarter of the calories and five times the volume of cooked and raw vegetables.

Do you find yourself falling into the "well I guess this is vegan and technically plant-based" trap?  What helps you to get motivated to start adding back in more veggies?

Im a little over halfway through EoD, and I was inspired to make this dressing that is similar to one of Dr. Fuhrmans favorite dressings that he talks about in just about every book he has written. Rather than bothering to look up a recipe this morning, I just threw this together with what I had on hand and sounded good.  In the rush of the morning I let this dressing blend while I was chopping salad ingredients (kale, red cabbage, red onion, carrots, broccoli).  I stopped the blender to check the consistency and taste after a while, and O... M... G... this dressing is amazingly yummy and satisfying!  I just had to share it with you :)

*Note: I have provided an Amazon link to The End of Dieting book below.  If you happen to want to purchase it and you use my link, I get a tiny bit of money from the purchase, which goes towards a new camera for the blog that I have been saving up for.

Orange Carrot Cashew Dressing
Time: 5 minutes
Servings: 6-8 servings

Ingredients:
        1 orange, peeled
        1/2 cup raw cashews (sub white or cannellini beans for less fat)
        1/2 cup plant-based milk, more to thin
        1 raw carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
        2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
        2 tsp ginger paste, or 1 inch fresh ginger

Instructions:
1.)  Throw all of the ingredients into a high-speed blender and blend on high until smooth, adding plant-based milk to thin to your desired consistency.
2.)  Serve chilled as a dip or delicious salad dressing.

Amys Notes:
Here is my salad from this afternoon that I topped off with the dressing.  I cant remember the last time I looked forward to a salad this much!

How was everyones 4th of July holiday weekend?  I watched the Spokane fireworks from my downtown office balcony with some friends.

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Kale Orange Creamsicle Smoothie

Hello all!  Very sorry I wasnt able to post my daily log yesterday.  My day was jam-packed with errands and a lot of fun.  First, I woke up and did some household chores before my mom and I were to have a girls outing.  My mom ended up canceling, unfortunately, because she is a substitute secretary at a local school district and had accidentally gotten signed up for a shift when she had thought she had marked out for the day.  Bummer!

I then stayed around the apartment in the morning doing a bit more housework and rearranging the living room.  Feng shui anyone?  I also finally hung up some pictures that had been sitting in the corner since we moved in over a month ago :/.  After that, I made Kevin lunch and brought it to him at work since when he went to make it himself this morning his deli meat had gone bad (I think thats a sign he should go Nutritarian with me, dont you?).

After making Kevin his lunch and I made myself a green smoothie to-go (see below).  Once I brought Kevin lunch, I went to run some errands for the rest of the afternoon.  This included getting a new screen protector put on my iPhone, getting a birthday present for a friend, going to a local spice and vinegar specialty store, trying to get Rip Esselstyns newest book My Beef With Meat (which I decided to probably just get on my kindle iPad), going to spend a gift card at a novelty store, and getting some things at Target.

At Target I was browsing the clearance clothes rack and decided to treat myself to a new dress to wear out last night since I have been well at sticking to my 6-Week challenge.  I posted the picture on Facebook to the group Dr. Fuhrmans Eat To Live - Nutritarian Plant Based Diet.  I got a lot of great responses and encouragement from the group.  Later, when my mom had seen the picture online, she told me she was so surprised that that was me and that I was looking so great.  Thanks mom, for always being my #1 Cheerleader :).  Here is that "progress" picture:

After running errands, I did a small workout (more about that in my daily log below), then got ready for our fun evening out... you guessed it, in my new dress that is one size smaller that I would have been two weeks ago!  First, we parked at my work that is by the Spokane Arena, and walked across the Downtown Riverfront Park to go to dinner downtown at The Steelhead Bar and Grill.  It is an upscale gill that makes great fresh food. 

Normally, while eating out, I would try to get a salad, but all of their salads here had meat included.  I know I can ask for no meat, but Im always worried that I will still get charged the meat price for the salad even though I ask for it off.  I dont think thats fair, do you?  Instead, I ended up ordering a portobello sandwich with a side salad.  It was a big sandwich, but this ended up being my lunch and dinner, so the portion worked out perfectly.

After dinner, we went back across the park to the arena for a Spokane Shock indoor football game. Since Spokane doesnt have its own NFL football team, we have the Shock instead, which is essentially  a team with fairly professional-grade players on a field about a quarter of the size of a normal football field.  That means lots of action, lots of scoring, and lots of crowd fun!  My dad was able to score us ticket is one of the suites through his work, so we got a great view!

During the game they had a raffle toss where you donate $5 to a local charity, and you get 6 small footballs (think tiny stress-ball size) to attempt to throw into a car that drives slowly around the field with its windows down between the 3rd and 4th quarter.  The balls that make it in get put into a raffle to win half of the money from the proceeds.  From where we were seated, this is nearly impossible, but we gave it a shot anyways.  I threw two of them, Kevin threw three, and one we gave to another guy in the suite that is a client of my dads.  It turns out that the client had thrown the ball down to the lower seats, and someone has picked it up and tossed it in.  We surprisingly won the raffle!!!!! We ended up walking away with over $300!

Luckily, that night we were also going to the casino for a friends birthday.  No big money was won, but we did have a lot of fun.  We didnt get home till later in the night, so there was no blog post, and I will report my weekend log on Sunday or Monday.  Now, my daily log, and make sure not to miss my smoothie recipe below!

Food Log:

• Breakfast: Kale Orange Creamsicle Smoothie (recipe below)
• Linner: Portobello sandwich on a focaccia roll and a mixed greens side salad
• Extras: 2 beers at the casino

Exercise Log: 1 mile outdoor run, abs, push-ups 

How I felt:  Yesterday I felt very confident and happy. For the first time in a long time, I felt good about how I was eating and my body image.  At no point during the day was I temped to eat any SAD (Standard American Diet) foods, although there were plenty around.  Today (Saturday) will be a bit more of a challenge, as I am going to a friends BBQ in the evening.  Instead of grilled meats, Im opting to bring two corn on the cobs to grill for myself. Yum!  Hopefully the BBQ will have a couple of healthy sides.  I did hear that someone was bringing hummus!  Now on to my recipe....

Kale Orange Creamsicle Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup raw cashews
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 handfuls of chopped kale
• 3 small oranges, peeled (about 1 cup or so)
• 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed (optional)
• Several ice cubes

Instructions:

• Place all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Add more ice to achieve the thickness you desire. 

Amys Notes:  

This was the perfect serving side for a meal on the go.  For this, I used cashews and water because I didnt have any non-dairy milk, but you could easily substitute 1/2 cup+ for that portion of the recipe.  Also, feel free to leave out the kale if you want more of a traditional orange creamsicle taste.  The great thing about this recipe is the oranges are sweet enough that extra sweeteners (dates, stevia, etc.) are not needed.  I put my smoothie in a to-go water bottle since I was running out the door to Kevins work.  Green smoothies are great for a meal on the go!  Enjoy!

How often do you enjoy green smoothies?  

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