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“I just moved and everything I own is in boxes pie” inspired by Waitress, the musical.

(Coconut Raspberry Lime Frozen Pie)

A lot has happened this week y’all. First of all I moved out of my college studio and into my first Big Professional Lady Apartment. Second of all I got to see the new musical adaptation of Waitress at the American Repertory Theater in Harvard Square. Third of all there was SO MUCH DRAMA on Bachelor in Paradise this week! But only those first two things really apply to me.

If you haven’t seen the movie version of Waitress, it’s about this incredible lady trapped in an abusive relationship whose girlfriends and coworkers support her until she’s strong enough to get out. And she’s a kickass pie maker, who channels her life situations into baking. In short, it’s amazing.

And now, thanks to Sara Bareilles, it has a soundtrack to boot. And it’s beautiful. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to make myself a pie.

So here it is, my “I just moved and everything I own is in boxes pie.” My kitchen is not even unpacked, so I thought to myself, what is the easiest pie on earth I could possibly make? Pre-made crust, plus five ingredients, and I figured it out. No baking, and normal pantry items. The only thing I actually had to go out and buy was the graham cracker crust, which by the way, is almost always going to be vegan unless they use honey to sweeten it and that’s not your kinda thing.

I removed my pie from the freezer, and did not bother to let it thaw. It’s August. It’s hot and humid outside. And frozen coconut lime raspberry pie is perfect straight from the freezer.

Ingredients:

1 pre-made graham cracker crust

1 can full-fat coconut milk

2T coconut oil, melted

Zest of two limes (one tablespoon)

Juice of two limes (about 1/4 cup)

1/4 cup agave (this makes a very sweet pie, feel free to use less)

Frozen raspberries, to garnish (optional)

Steps:

Blend coconut milk, coconut oil, lime juice, 1/2 of the zest, and agave in a blender until smooth. Poor into pie shell, sprinkle with remaining zest, and leave in the freezer for several hours to set.

Let thaw on the counter one hour before serving if you want to be normal, or eat frozen if it’s really hot out like it is here. Sprinkle with frozen raspberries before serving.

#waitress #waitress the musical #musical #pie #vegan #vegan pie #lime pie #key lime #key lime pie #raspberries #frozen #dessert

Pineapple Mango Soft Serve with a Secret Ingredient + a Giveaway!

In case you haven’t heard, I graduated college this year and started my first real-person job as production assistant for America’s Test Kitchen! It’s been a big (read: exhausting) year so far. The next big change will be moving out of my college studio apartment and into a real-person apartment in a few weeks! It has a dishwasher! And AC! And a washer and dryer! And counter space! It’s a big upgrade y’all.

But between the summer heat, selling most of my furniture, and trying to find enough moving boxes to fit all my books in, I haven’t needed or wanted to cook lately. Enter Sunwarrior and my freezer to save the day.

I’ve talked a lot lately about throwing together smoothies in a pinch, but you can do a lot more with frozen fruit! Like smoothie bowls, and soft serve. Okay so maybe they’re all still smoothies in various forms of being frozen, but they’re delicious zero-effort meals in a minute, plus being an adult means I can make myself dessert for dinner without thinking twice about it. Right?

Anyways, I’ve told y’all about my love for Sunwarrior protein powder in a world of gross, chalky, expensive powders. But Sunwarrior has a new product for the first time in three years, Classic Plus. It’s USDA Certified Organic, raw and plant-based with whole-grain brown rice, pea, chia, quinoa, and amaranth protein, and it has a complete Amino Acid profile.

I added a scoop to my dessert-for-dinner the other night, because if a dessert has a full Amino Acid profile you’re allowed to eat as much of it as you want. I’m making that executive decision now.

Check out my recipe for Four Ingredient Pineapple Mango Softserve below, and enter for a chance to win a Sunwarrior Starter Pack! It includes a blender bottle and samples of a ton of their plant-powered products. Entries are open until Monday, July 27th!

Enter the giveaway on Rafflecopter here!

Four Ingredient Mango Pineapple Soft Serve

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen pineapple

1/2 cup frozen mango

1/2 cup almond milk

1/2 scoop Sunwarrior Classic Plus Vanilla Protein Powder

Steps:

In this order, add pineapple, protein powder, mango, and almond milk to a blender. (This helps the protein powder dissolve.)

Blend until smooth.

This recipe has very little liquid, so you may need to pause your blender and stir ingredients a few times, especially if you have a low-powered blender.

You can also add an additional 1/2 cup almond milk for easier blending, but you’ll want to put the smoothie in the freezer for an hour to reach soft serve consistency.

#serves: 2 #time: 10 minutes #sunwarrior #giveaway #vegan #vegetarian #smoothie #soft serve #desserts

Do you think the hclf vegan lifestyle only works for certain people?

I don't think that there is, or ever will be, a single diet or lifestyle that works for everyone.

Hi Madde! Im looking to spice up my grocery shopping this week and want to know what is on your vegan shopping list? Any favorites or something new to try? What are your staples? Thanks :D

Hi! Here’s what my grocery list was this week:

Baby carrots

2 Cucumbers

2 Bell peppers

Salad mix

Tomatoes

Shallot

Spinach

Parsley

Avocados

Olives

Strawberries

Cherries

Plums

Bananas

Hummus

Pretzels

Potato chips

Box of couscous

2 Baguettes

This is a pretty typical week for me.

For breakfast I either make a smoothie, or eat a banana and a plum at work if I was running late, which I almost always am.

I also bring two giant ziploc bags to work every day to snack on, one filled with sliced veggies (baby carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers) to eat with hummus and pretzels, and one filled with fruit (strawberries and cherries). This started out as a joke to see how many fruits/veggies I could eat because the bags look ridiculous they’re so full, but it works really well for me!

For lunch, I usually make one large batch of something grain-based. This week it was greek couscous inspired by a friend. It’s really just couscous combined with chopped tomatoes, minced shallot, chopped spinach and parsley, and sliced olives. Super simple but also super filling and delicious. Other weeks it’s a quinoa bowl or pasta salad.

My afternoon/evening snack when I get home from work is almost always popcorn that I make on the stove or some potato chips, and then a light dinner involving bread and something with a side salad. I’ll make avocado toast with tahini and lemon, or just have buttered (I use earth balance) bread with a salad. My dinner motivations are less about health and more about minimizing clean up and general exhaustion, baguettes and salad mix don’t require many dishes!

Of course I realize this makes me sound like a health freak, but this is just my weekday routine. My weekends involve going out for A LOT of Mexican food and fries usually.

Summer Orange Smoothie

Summer for me means eating smoothies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I own the world’s least-reliable window unit, so air conditioning is a rare commodity for me, only to be found in Starbucks and my friend’s apartments.

And at a certain point, I have to stop spending hours in Starbucks getting 4 iced coffee refills just so I can sit under an AC vent. (Or do I?)

I’m a self-proclaimed smoothie queen, but usually I keep it simple with my four-ingredient green smoothie, which I shared yesterday. But when I’m having smoothies for multiple meals of the day, I have to mix it up a little.

Enter my four-ingredient summer smoothie. Frozen banana and almond milk for a creamy base. A whole orange for a bite of citrus. And frozen strawberries to make it extra cold and sweet.

This smoothie is a powerhouse of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Potassium, and only takes a minute to make. You could almost call it sorbet....

Ingredients:

1 banana, peeled and frozen

1 cup almond milk (I use plain unsweetened)

1 large orange, peeled and quartered

1 cup frozen strawberries

Steps:

Combine all ingredients in a blender until smooth. If your blender blade is dull, you may need to stop and stir the ingredients to get them smooth. No need to add ice. Reduce amount of almond milk for a more sorbet/dessert texture.

How do you freeze your spinach? I've tried before, just as whole leaves, but they unfroze and were nasty!

I usually buy spinach that’s already frozen for smoothies (they harvest and chop it up and then freeze it) or if I have leftover fresh spinach I’ll chop it up roughly and put into zipper-lock freezer bags.

Not sure why yours unfroze, that sounds like it may be a freezer problem. But maybe keep frozen spinach in the back of your freezer, instead of in the front/door, so that it experiences less temperature change when you open the door?

Also I only use frozen spinach (pre-frozen, or fresh then frozen) in smoothies. I don’t recommend heating it up, it gets pretty gross.

Hey I'm allergic to avocados, what would you say is a good substitute so I can still get those good fats?

I’m not sure if you’re allergic to anything else, but nuts and seeds are a great source! Especially almonds and walnuts. Coconut oil is also amazing, and you can use that in anything from a smoothie supplement to cooking oil or in baking in place of butter.

Here are some more ideas: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-food/the-5-cleanest-sources-of-plant-based-fats/

Simple Green Smoothie

I drink a lot of smoothies. Like, A LOT of smoothies.

I’ve been through every phase. I’ve added 12 kinds of supplements to them (protein powder, flax, chia, chlorella, acai powder, almond and peanut butter, raw cacao, hemp seeds, bee pollen etc.) and I’ve done single-ingredient smoothies (just frozen bananas, or just strawberries and ice) and I’m happy to say that I’ve found my happy middle.

Although supplementing my smoothies felt like the healthiest thing to do, it was a pain to open all of those jars and scoop everything out every morning and I eventually stopped. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Single-ingredient smoothies sounded like a great snack, but get super boring. I don’t understand the point of a mono-meal, and I probably never will.

Enter my go-to four-ingredient green smoothie. A frozen banana and a cup of almond milk for a creamy base, fresh or frozen spinach for green goodness, and almond or peanut butter for protein.

No exotic produce, no weird supplements. Just a damn good smoothie. And the best part? I literally always have these ingredients on hand. I buy a bunch of bananas and then peel and freeze them all in zipper-lock bags, and always have frozen spinach, some nut butters, and almond milk on hand.

Of course I’ll try new things, and I’ll occasionally add some flax or chia if I’m feeling it (i did buy the big bags after all) and sometimes I’ll buy protein powder if it’s on sale. But for the most part, this is the smoothie I’m sipping.

Ingredients

1 banana, peeled and frozen

1 cup almond milk (I use plain unsweetened, but vanilla would taste good too!)

1 cup frozen spinach, or two cups fresh

1-2 tablespoons nut butter (I use almond or peanut)

Steps

Blend, blend, blend! Then enjoy.

Happy (belated) Fourth of July!

Last week was probably the most festive 4th of July I’ve ever had. I turned 23 and America turned 239, so it seemed like a cause for celebration.

I watched fireworks at the Charles River Esplanade here in Boston and went on a harbor cruise, but most importantly I let my inner-Pinterest shine by making an American flag fruit salad using strawberries, bananas, and blueberries, slicing open a fresh coconut, making five-ingredient bruschetta, and crafting some hydrating lemon/cucumber/basil water with my lady Lindsey from More Awesomer.

Because nothing’s more patriotic than really good snacks, right?

#vegan #vegetarian #fourth of july #july 4th #how i summer #boston #new england #bruschetta #water #vegan recipes #what vegans eat #fitblr #fitspo #coconut

Green Buddha Bowl

I hate leftovers.

I know this makes me an outlier in the college foodie world, where leftover pizza is king, but I don’t want to eat the same dish every day of the week. And I don’t see the appeal of eating food that’s been sitting in a Tupperware container days after I’ve made it. It doesn’t matter how much I LOVE a dish the night before, I absolutely will not eat if for lunch the next day.

But I also don’t have the time or brain power to make a single-serve meal from scratch for lunch and dinner every single day. So I’ve found a method that works for me: planning out meals that have almost identical ingredients.

I know what you’re thinking. “They’re the same damn ingredients! Just eat the same salad a few days in a row!” But I can’t, and I won’t. I'm a grown-ass lady and I do what I want.

Here’s an example.

Last week I shared my spinach salad with quinoa, and the next day I made this buddha bowl by chopping the rest of my spinach finely, adding the same edamame, almonds, avocado, and dried cranberries, and then tossing everything with brown rice.

Yes, the only ingredient change is adding a lot of rice instead of a little quinoa.

But that little change (plus chopping the spinach instead of leaving it whole) completely changes the feel of the dish, and keeps my grocery list on the simple and the affordable side.

I’m going to share a few more of these “anti-leftover” dishes over the next couple of weeks, so I hope you like them as much as I do! In the mean time, go make yourself a buddha bowl of not-leftovers.

Ingredients:

1 cup baby spinach, or 1 large handful, chopped finely

1/2 cup shelled edamame (I buy frozen and thaw it)

1/4 cup almonds (I buy dry roasted and salted)

1/4 cup dried cranberries (any dried fruit will work)

1/2 an avocado, cubed

1 cup cooked brown rice

dressing of choice (I use a simple balsamic vinaigrette, or oil and vinegar)

Steps:

Combine warm rice with edamame, finely chopped spinach, and dressing of choice. The spinach will start to wilt.

Top with almonds, cranberries, and cubed avocado.

Note: I make batches of brown rice and freeze them into 1 cup portions to save time. Give it a try!

Spinach Quinoa Salad

It’s summer! Avocados are in season! Farmers markets on every corner! I actually want to eat raw veggies again! I’ve stopped craving mashed potatoes!

My summer diet is radically different from my winter diet. I’m not trying to eat seasonally on purpose, but the fact is I crave roasted veggies and mounds of mashed potatoes when it’s cold out, but once June rolls around I find myself eating mostly raw fruits and veggies.

Part of that may be because it’s just too hot in my apartment to cook, and part of it may be that fruits and veggies look 1000% more appealing when they’re being sold at a sunny farmers markets instead of fluorescent grocery stores.

This salad is a combination of “I bought too much spinach at the farmers market” and “I need to clean out my pantry.” Enjoy!

Ingredients:

3 cups baby spinach, or several large handfuls

1/2 cup cooked quinoa

1/2 shelled edamame (I buy frozen)

1/4 cup almonds

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/2 avocado, cubed

dressing of choice

Steps:

Cook your quinoa if not already prepared. Quinoa simmers for 15 minutes on the stove, using a 1 cup quinoa to 2 cups water ratio. Dry quinoa roughly doubles in volume when cooked, so 1/4 cup dry quinoa makes about 1/2 cup cooked. I like to make a batch on Sunday nights to sprinkle on my salads throughout the week

If using frozen edamame, thaw according to package directions.

Combine spinach with edamame, quinoa, almonds, and dried cranberries.

Top with avocado cubes, and toss with salad dressing. I usually use a simple balsamic vinaigrette, or oil and vinegar.

Note: I was cleaning out my pantry and wanted to use up my dried cranberries, but this salad would taste amazing with fresh strawberries or any other fruit really.

Simple Taco Salad

I have a lot of non-recipe recipes up my sleeve to make for lunch and dinner when I’m just too tired to be bothered with thinking. Side note, that seems to be happening to me more and more these days, is this what growing up feels like?

Either way, thinking is exhausting. Preparing this simple taco salad is not.

Black beans and salsa are always something I have on hand, and no matter what I actually plan to cook for the week, my grocery basket always contains some romaine lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, and red onion. These are the kind of ingredients that go great together in a pinch (like this taco salad obviously) but separately, they can be added to pretty much any dish. The point is, these are the kind of ingredients that won’t go to waste by the end of the week, even if you don’t have a plan for them yet.

Ingredients

Romaine lettuce

Tomato (I like on the vine, or roma tomatoes)

Avocado

Black beans

Red onion

Salsa (I use medium, or peach mango usually)

Steps

I don’t have step-by-step instructions, or ingredient measurements for that matter, because this is a whatever-the-hell-you’re-in-the-mood-for kind of salad. No thinking, remember? But ideally, you’ll wash and shred or tear the lettuce, and combine with chopped tomato, diced red onion, slices of avocado, and then top it off with black beans for protein and salsa to taste.

Serve with tortilla chips, because life is too short to only have salad for dinner.

Chocolate Covered Cherry Smoothie

I’m not much of a dessert person (although I definitely participated in National Donut Day and got a free chocolate glazed donut with my iced coffee from Dunkin this morning) but I always crave ice cream in the summer.

Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the humidity, maybe it’s because my window AC unit doesn’t actually work on days over 85 degrees, but I have to eat something cold and sweet after dinner from June through August.

As someone who can never choose between fruit flavors and candy flavors (cookie dough ice cream is candy and you all know it) this smoothie lands somewhere in between.

It’s cherry. It’s chocolate. It’s four ingredients. It has no added sugar. And it hits the spot.

Ingredients:

1 banana

1 cup frozen cherries

2 tablespoons raw cacao (or more, to taste)

1 cup almond milk

Steps:

Blend all ingredients until smooth. If using fresh cherries, use a frozen banana. I don’t recommend adding ice, because it will water down the smoothie.

Note: I always use unflavored, unsweetened almond milk, but if there was ever a time you wanted to use sweetened vanilla almond milk, this would be it.

Sweet Potato Apple Sandwich

I have two very important things to tell y’all. The first is that I watched the first season of Broad City last weekend and it healed the TV-shaped hole in my heart left by the Parks and Rec finale.

The second is that there’s an episode where they go to a vegan sandwich shop, and ignoring the fact that they were making fun of it, it led me to create this sandwich out of the random stuff in my fridge.

It’s savory, it’s sweet, I’ve had it for lunch every day this week. The only thing you really have to do in advance is roast the sweet potato, but you could also microwave it to save time.

Ingredients:

Two slices of your favorite bread (I used Ezekiel sprouted grain)

Hummus

Guacamole or smashed avocado

Arugula

Green apple, sliced

Sweet potato

Steps:

Slice the sweet potato into thick slices, about 1/2 inch, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast at 400 until soft, about 30 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Alternatively you can slice them, and then microwave them for five minutes, or until soft.

Toast bread, spreading hummus on one slice and avocado on the other.

Add arugula and a slice of apple.

Freshii - Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts

Confession: I love fast food. I’m sure somewhere there exists a world where everyone has time to make every single one of their meals from scratch, but I certainly don’t live there. And as much as I love cooking, I don’t have the energy, time, or creativity to do it every day.

On those kinds of days, my options boiled down to either paying too much for the price-per-pound salad bar, or telling myself that eating fries and a soda for dinner was totally okay. Neither of those options are reeeeally totally okay.

Luckily more and more fast and healthy places are popping up around Boston to solve this problem, like Freshii! I visited the Back Bay location last week (at Dartmouth and Clarendon by Copely Square) and was PUMPED to see all of the delicious-sounding healthy items on the menu. I ended up with the Buddha Bowl and the Green Energy Juice, which had apple, cucumber, kale, lemon, carrot, romaine and spinach.

My order didn’t break the bank, the juice was fresh, and the Buddha Bowl was big enough to have the leftovers for dinner that night. If that’s not winning, I don’t know what is.

I just recently switched from vegetarian to full on vegan and I'm eating the 3 same vegan meals I was wondering if you had any suggestions of some foods to spice up my diet? I also love your blog a lot :))

It would help if I knew what three meals you were eating, but my first advice would be to start thinking of dishes in terms of cuisines. Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Italian, etc.

All of these cuisines have easy-to-make plant-based meals. Burritos, tacos, and burrito bowls with chickpeas or black beans. Peanut noodles with broccoli. Stir fry galore. Veggie sushi and edamame. Greek salads and pita bread with hummus and olives. Pasta primavera or with tomato sauce.

When you’re having a hard time choosing what to make, picking a cuisine first (instead of trying to think up a dish out of thin air, or walking into a grocery store blind) can really help you narrow down what you’re in the mood for.

Hope that helps!

#vegan #vegetarian #plant based #plant strong #reader questions #vegan ask #anon

Hi Maddie! I was wondering, do you find it hard to stay vegan at your new job?

Hi! Lots of people at ATK follow different diets, so I don’t feel out of place at all. It does mean I can’t participate in some tastings, but there is always PLENTY of food for me to try. If anything, it’s a blessing because otherwise I would eat everything in sight and gain a lot of weight very quickly!

#reader questions #ATK

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