I would like to apologize to all the readers of the Lazy Vegan blog. I haven’t posted since December. You know, I am lazy, but this is ridiculous!
A family member was sick at the end of the year and then had to be hospitalized mid-January. The stress involved ate up all my energy and brain cells.
My family member is doing alot better and things are getting back to normally. Hopefully, my posting to this blog will too!
Thanks for your patience!
Wishing the visitors to this blog a very happy holiday season!
Merry Christmas to all!
While roaming around Target the other day, I came across Kashi 7 Whole Grain Pilaf. It comes in a microwavable bag and cooks up in 60-90 seconds.
I tried the Our Original 7 Whole Grain Pilaf. It took about 70 seconds to cook in the microwave. It was fluffy and had a good textured. I mixed it up with a bunch of cooked vegetables and it made a pretty tasty meal. Our Original only contains grains–nothing else added.
It comes in two other flavors: Moroccan Curry and Fiery Fiesta. Since I have a volcanic digestive tract, I decided against these two. I don’t think I can handle it.
This is a good addition to the quick and easy meal category. The bag makes two servings. Mix it with some veggies and you might get three meals out of it.
When I was growing up, my Mom made string beans–alot. I hated them. I liked the little bean inside, but I hate the pod. I hated the way it felt on my teeth. It was gross!
As I aged, I learned there were so many beans out there. I found that I loved Kidney, Pinto, and Lima beans. I added Navy Beans to the mix. I’ve tried quite a few and found that I like most.
Now I’ve figured out that all string beans aren’t green! There’s yellow beans and purple beans. Each has it’s own texture and flavor.
I can eat green beans now as long as they are mixed with something else. But, I much prefer the other beans.
I have been cooking with a microwave for many years. One would think that I’d have caught on to the concept that things that come out of the microwave are HOT. No, not me! Every time, I reach in bare handed. At least once a week, I end up burning my fingers on a steamy tortilla or the vent hole of my microwave steamer.
I don’t know why I abhor pot holders so much. There is certainly nothing wrong with them. I have plenty of them, that’s for sure. I just can’t seem to bother getting one out of the drawer.
I tried the ANDI Chocolate Shake bar recently. I found it at an online gluten free store.
The ingredients include: Fruitrim® (brown rice syrup, organic grape juice), almond butter, rice protein, organic gluten-free crispy brown rice, organic flax seeds, stabilized rice bran, Vance’s Chocolate Dari-Free™, chocolate, salt. It’s dairy free and gluten free.
The bar has the consistency of a brownie. It’s chocolatey. I was expecting a fruity taste because of the grape juice, but I have to admit it tasted pretty darn good! There’s only 8 grams of sugar in the whole bar which is amazing. Usually fruit sweetened snacks are around 18-20 grams. It wasn’t bitter and tasted like a chocolate brownie.
The portion is good sized too. Some stuff I’ve ordered recently has low sugar but the size is so small that you probably need two to feel satisfy.
I haven’t tried the other varieties yet. It comes in Blueberry Muffin, Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Vanilla Shake.
If you ever tried to cook baby carrots in the microwave, you know that they usually end up two ways. They’re either hard as a rock or shrivelled up and lifeless.
I’ve attempted to cook baby carrots in the microwave many times. Most of the times I failed. I learned that they needed to be completely covered with water, but it wasn’t a surefire solution. Most of the time the bags would rot in my vegetable keeper because I didn’t feel like hassling.
I’ve recently become addicting to yellow baby carrots. Their a little tastier than their orange counterparts. Being the lazy person that I am, I decided to just throw them on my plate before I heated them up. They’d at least be warm.
You know what? Those were the best baby carrots I ever had! They were warm and softened just enough that they didn’t break my teeth. It looks like it takes about 1 minute with other food on the plate.
This is the only way I cook baby carrots now.
Found a new, little tasty treat for the chocolate junkies out there. It’s the Attune Chocolate Probiotic Wellness Bar. I know, you’re saying “healthy? yuck!” Oh, but you are so wrong!
Each bar has 10 grams of sodium and 8 grams of sugar. They aren’t very large. Maybe half the size of regular chocolate bar. They’ve got something the other bars don’t: 5 times the amount of probiotics (the good bacteria) than yogurt. I don’t really know how they keep the bacteria alive in shipping. I’ll take their word for it that it works.
I tried the Chocolate Crisp bar. It’s very much like a Nestle Crunch Bar. The texture is good and the chocolate is, mmmmmm! I’m a chocoholic and this bar hit the spot!
I’m going to try the dark chocolate and mint dark chocolate next. I’ll probably like those even more as I’m a dark chocolate freak. (They’ve got some non-chocolate variets but those are not vegan.)
Learn more about Attune bars at their website: http://www.attunefoods.com
Get ready for the revolution! Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. But, as a serious chocolate lover who is vegan and cutting down on sugar, finding any kind of chocolate that I can eat is simple a miracle. Oh, there are lots of vegan products with chocolate. Most are so laden with sugar grams that you might as well just suck on sugar cane like the old commercials.
My sister bought some Amber Lyn Chocolates when they had a food tasting display at CostCo. She was kind enough to share one Dark Chocolate Bar with me. Yeah, just one! Sheesh, what a sister.
The Dark Chocolate bars are dairy free and sweetened with wheat based maltitol. They contain 15 grams of sugar alcohol and no sugar grams.
After trying that first tidbit, I need more! I bought a mixed case from their website. I tried the Dark Chocolate, Dark Hazelnut Chocolate, Dark Mint Chocolate, and Dark Hazelnut Chocolate with Almonds. While all were tasty, the Dark Mint Chocolate was by far the best. I really couldn’t taste the difference between the Dark Chocolate and the Dark Hazelnut Chocolate. The Almond version as slightly less sugar alcohol grams than the other bars.
I’m not sure how sugar grams and sugar alcohol grams compare. I know the body converts them differently. I am dividing the bars into the threes and eating a chunk at a time, so that’s only 5 sugar alcohol grams.
If you’d like to check them out, here’s the website: http://www.amberlynchocolates.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=cb
I’m trying to cut back on my sugar grams for health reasons. It sounds like a smart thing to do. I love breakfast cereal. I can’t eat anything hot in the morning. Cereal fills me up.
So, I set out on the Internet and at the grocery store to find low or no sugar cereals. Oh, man! What a challenge!
First, anything labelled “no sugar” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Most of the time they replaced the sugar with two or three different sweeteners. Because of this, some of the healthy cereals had more sugar grams than your average overly sweetened children’s cereal.
Second, finding low sugar and no dairy was next to impossible. Evidentally, they add dairy to cereal to replace some of the taste lost from the lack of sugar. That’s what I’m guessing.
I eventually found four cereals that met my criteria of low sugar grams and dairy free/vegan. Just four! They were Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs, Rice Puffs (a couple of brands), Cheerios (1 gram per bowl), and Spoon Sized Shredded Wheat.
Well, I already knew I liked Cheerios. Rice Puffs are fine if I mix them with something, otherwise, I have to eat 3 bowls to get full. I haven’t tried the shredded wheat yet, but the Kashi was a pleasant suprise. It’s got puffs but also crunchy grains. It’s very tasty.
If you’ve found a low sugar, vegan cereal, post the name in the comments. I am eager to find enough alternatives to bring variety back into my diet.