Closing Time

I started this blog just over six months ago with so much excitement! So much passion and determination. 22 posts later and the excitement isn’t there anymore. Or at least I don’t have the time with everything else going on to get excited about this blog. It saddens me to stop because I really have enjoyed creating these posts. But between not having the time and the fact that this started as a Real Food blog and now we are Vegan. Which the two have similarities but it’s not the same. The blog just isn’t working for me right now.

For anyone who happened to read any of my posts, thanks so much for taking the time. I hope you enjoyed it.

I also hope this final post finds you happy, healthy, and living well. I wish you all the best on your journey through life.

~ Pioneer In a Modern Kitchen~

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27

Raw Till 4… Maybe?

Yesterday I decided to do Raw Till 4, or at least kinda. For those who are familiar with RT4 you know there are a lot of rules. Im not really one to follow such strict rules. I don’t want to track where my calories are coming from. But I stuck to raw foods till 4 and then cooked foods for dinner. For those who haven’t heard of RT4 I wont go over the guidelines here but a quick google search will explain it to you if you are interested. :)Anyway Ive tried doing it a few times, but yesterday I was the most successful at it. So what did I have? Lots of good things!

For breakfast I ate half a Cantaloupe. A couple hours later I had a 40 oz banana date shake. An hour or two after that I ate four clementines. And then later I felt the need to have something less fruity so I made a salad. Then after 4:00 for dinner I made us baked potatoes! Which had russets, sweet potatoes, and yellow potatoes! I used some salt and pepper to season them and baked them for a hour. And through out the day I drank 96 oz of water.

Thats what I had for my whole RT4 day. It was all delicious and very satisfying.

Where I think the true Raw Till 4 lifestyle people would disagree with what I did is… In my shake I used 1/3 cup of fresh peanut butter. I also used half an avocado and salt in my salad. The Raw Till 4 plan is low fat and low salt. I don’t know if what I ate went above what they recommend. But like I said I don’t feel like keeping that close of track. I also think they would say I didn’t eat enough. But for my body what I ate felt good. I didn’t not eat enough. I ate what I wanted when I wanted to and I enjoyed it! One of the big RT4 rules that I did follow was no oil. Which is kinda a big deal for me because I like using olive oil on my baked veggies. But I didn’t use it!

So I think I did pretty decent. I don’t know that we will ever be full time Raw Till 4 vegans, but I could see at least doing it part time.

    
 

What about you? Have you ever tried Raw Till 4? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Do you live by it? Do you have any tips on how I could do it better without having to keep close track of what I eat? Let me know in the comments!

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
James 1:2-3

 

What my Vegan Baby ate today!

Lately I have been watching “what I ate today” videos on youtube. I think they are interesting and fun to watch. Since I don’t make videos though I thought I would do a blog. And since I’m always talking about what I eat I thought I’d tell you what my baby ate.

My daughter is almost one and a half and still happily breast feeding. In between nursing though this is what she ate today, in our mostly real food vegan home!

  
  

She also had some of my banana date shake, more cashews, and drank water through out the day. ( I just didn’t take pictures of that. )

It was a good eating day for her, some days she’s not as interested in solid foods. But she loved all her food today and is happy.

There you have it! What my vegan baby ate today! Let me know if you like this kind of blog. I could definitely do more!

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Matthew 19:14

Some December Foods!

Oh the holiday season! How busy things get, and so few blogs are written! Even now this will be a quick one.

I wanted to talk about some of the things we are eating now. All these things we were eating before going vegan and now we haved changed them to be vegan. If they weren’t already. So not a lot has changed in ways. But its been delicious!

 
  
  
  
  

 Lots of fruit, vegetables, and smoothies! Plus some tasty meals! Im working on keeping my focus on real foods, and staying plant based. We definitely have strayed a bit from that because we have been trying different things that are vegan.(Not everything vegan is healthy!) Its been fun experimenting, and Im sure we will more. But mostly I want to stick with plants as much as possible!
I’d like to say I have interesting posts coming soon. But to be honest with a baby and Christmas coming up Im having a hard time finding time and insperation. Hopefully the New Year will bring both!

In the meantime I hope life finds you all heathy and eating delicious things!

Merry Christmas!

Our first Vegan Thanksgiving!

Our first Thanksliving, as some vegans call it, was awesome! We went to a breakfast where we had vegan cinnamon rolls, fried potatoes, granola, and fruit. Super delicious and fun!

Then for the main meal of the day we made veggie “chicken” patties for our meat replacement. Sweet potatoes, yams, green beans, carrots, and cranberry sauce!

It was all really good and completely satisfying! Not to mention we had the great feeling of knowing we didn’t take part in the killing of 37,000,000 turkeys (I believe thats the number I heard). Or harming any other animals!

Our family’s of course still had “normal” thanksgiving foods which made things weird. But over all we had a good day with delicious harm free foods! For which I am very thankful!

  Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
Ephesians 5:20

The Rest Of Our Reboot!

Our reboot went very well! We did it for the 7 days as planned… Almost. Our dinner on the 7th night wasn’t on the plan. But it was our celebrating being done, and celebrating the beginning of our new Vegan lifestyle! Thats right Vegan! Haha! We were Vegetarian for 3 days and then switched to Vegan. Even though the for sure decision didn’t happen until a few days into the reboot. The reboot itself was Vegan. So really doing the reboot made for an easier transition into a Vegan diet. Anyway, I’ll speak more on that later. This post is about the reboot.

It was definitely challenging. But we did enjoy doing it. We discovered some new ways to make delicious food! By day 5 I felt really good. We both lost a few pounds and overall it was a fun and growing experience!

Next I will show you some of the things we ate the rest of the week!

   
 

 
  
  
I planned to write more but this is all I have time for today!
If you have any questions let me know!

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.
Job 37:5

Reboot Day 3

  

We are on day 3 of our 7 day “reboot.” A true reboot is strictly fruits and vegetables with mostly or only juicing. (From what I understand.) Our reboot is different but still a challenge. It consists of mainly vegetables and fruit. But also nuts and seeds. And Im allowing olive oil and seasonings for cooking the veggies because personally at this time I cant do a week of raw vegetables. Also my husband is having black coffee, I just let the coffee go this week.

So far things are going pretty well. Ive made us green smoothies each morning. A different kind each day so far.

We had salad with grilled onion, pepper, mushrooms, and tomato on it twice.

And a vegetable soup twice that sadly I did not get a picture of. We had the same meals for two days because we were gone Sunday and brought left overs with us. We are snacking on veggies, fruit and nuts in between meals and drinking lots of water.

The first day I had a head ache I believe from the lack of coffee. Thankfully I didn’t get a head ache yesterday or today. Yesterday I was having a hard time eating the salad even though I knew it tasted good. I just felt like I couldn’t eat more vegetables. But we came home and I ate a few pistachios and felt I could go on. Haha! Today I feel tired. But I think it has more to do with the time change and cloudy day then what Im eating. But its hard to say for sure.

Each day I have had moments where I feel awesome and Im really excited for this. And moments where I want to quit and go by doughnuts. Thankfully though we are still holding on and I think it is getting easier.

Its harder in ways then I thought it would be to do this. But its a good challenge and Im learning some things along the way. Like the fact that I can make our smoothies with a bit of water instead of milk and they are just as good. And I can cook things in olive oil instead of butter and still enjoy them.

Over all this is a good experience.

Todays lunch.

Tonight for dinner Im making roasted brussels sprouts and red potatoes. With maybe cherry tomatoes on the side. Im not totally sure about the side yet.

What about you? Have you ever done a reboot? More strict less strict? Let me know!
I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 

Something New (kinda)

We have been living on a mostly real food diet for almost 7 months now. Id say 60% to 80% of the time. Which for such a dramatic change thats not bad in my opinion. If we never ate at our family’s houses our percentage would be higher but we like our family’s so we eat with them a couple times most weeks. 😉

At home we have pretty much been vegetarians. I bought a small bag of chicken tenderloins once in the last like four months and there are still a couple in the freezer. We eat meat when we arent at home and someone makes it for us. But over all we aren’t big meat eaters.

Today I watched the documentary Vegucated. And for me that was the push I needed to go vegetarian. Possibly even vegan someday, but one step at a time.

I can’t say I’ll never eat meat again. But for now Its what we are going with. As well we want to cut back on all animal products.

So that will mean even more new and different foods! Im really excited to start this new chapter in our eating habbits. And conveniently enough we had a vegetable and fruit reboot planned for next week. Which will give us some time to think about our next steps.

I’ll be sure to blog soon to tell you how the reboot is going!

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 

James 1:2-3

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

Oh Fall, you bring so many wonderful things, and that includes an abundance of apples!

Last Sunday my mother-in-law sent me home with 3 dozen apples. She had a huge box full from a friend and she shared some with me. She wanted me to take more but I figured 3 dozen would do it for us.

I wanted to try making homemade apple sauce sweetened with maple syrup! And I found a recipe that did just that. This one Here! Of course though I didn’t fully follow the recipe.

I didn’t use the kind of apples it called for. And honestly I don’t even know what kind I did use. I also blended the apples before cooking them instead of mashing them at the end.

It made for a very smooth apple sauce! At least my second pot was, the first pot was a little chunky because I hadn’t quite got down the blending technic. But by the second round it was perfect!

I also used a little less maple syrup then it called for and I skipped the cinnamon, because personally I like my apple sauce without it. Which I have heard makes me crazy. Haha but hey what do you do? I was very pleased with how it turned out. I got to freeze 5 cups of it for future baking use. And we have had a couple jars in the fridge that we have been enjoying.

What about you? Do you make home made apple sauce? With or with out cinnamon? And what is an excellent dessert to make with apple sauce? Let me know! I have never done it before but am looking forward to trying it out!

   

The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:9

Our Dinner Plates: Monday- Friday

This week I decided to keep track of our dinners. Both to show what we have been having and possibly inspire someone to try something new!

-Monday-

Buttery Garlic Rice & Baked Vegetables! 

I don’t know why I never thought to do this as a side before, but I will again! All I did was make brown rice then I added some butter, garlic powder, salt, and a little bit of pepper. It was delicious and made a great side to the baked broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.

-Tuesday-

Baked Red Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts & Bananas and Nectarines!

This was my first time making red potatoes and brussels sprouts. They were fabulous together and I will make them both again, together and separately.

-Wednesday-

 
Parmesan Noodles & Green Salad!

Both of these were simple but complimented each other very well. The salad was a spinach, kale, chard mix with a homemade dressing.

-Thursday- 
Fried Potatoes and Eggs! 

I had a pretty busy day so we had an uncomplicated and quick dinner. But even though its super easy to make it was so good! Its actually one of my favorite foods. I just fry potatoes in butter with seasoning and then scramble in some eggs.

-Friday-

 
Chicken and Veggie Pizza! 

This was so delicious! The crust was home made, the white sauce was home made, and it was topped with lots of mozzarella cheese, baked chicken, bell pepper, and sautéed mushrooms, red onion, broccoli, and cauliflower! This meal definitely took the most work but it was worth it! And it made a great start to our weekend!
I really enjoyed trying a few new things the last couple of days. What have you tried new this week? Or has it been a week of making all known and loved meals? Either way I hope it was tasty!

There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8