Saturday, March 12, 2011

How to Be A Lazy Vegan

Granted most people don't work mostly from home like I do and have lots of time to prepare food most days. I find I spend about half my time like that, and the other half my time out and about without much time to eat. So I'm going to try and share with you everything I know about eating vegan when you don't have a lot of time, or are too lazy or hungry to make anything exciting or time consuming.

1) Being prepared: Carrying snacks with you(nuts are dried food are nice and portable, larabars, apples, oranges, bananas, dried crackers/flat bread/wraps) if you know you're not going to get a chance to really sit down and eat something, or have the time to buy something. Or having these things at home when you're really hungry from a long day.

2) Plan your meals: I try and do one huge grocery trip once a week, and usually make some kind of salad dressing or dip in a large batch to have in my fridge. Buying boxes of salad mix, or making your own and leaving it in the fridge is nice cause then all you need to do is mix the two together. I usually make a big batch of crackers or flatbread as well to have for snacking. Avocados can be made into guacamole pretty quick as well.

3) Run out of ideas: I read blogs, cookbooks, ect. I try to make a point of trying something that sounds weird to me just to see if I like it, and if you do, well you've found something new! Another thing I love about raw food is that usually nothing goes terribly wrong if you substitute most ingredients. When I first started eating raw I used to search high and low for all the exact ingredients, and once I brought them all home I would usually forget what exactly I bought them for and end up not knowing how to use them. I've gotten better at this now. I have a habit of making 1 thing a week, then only wanting to eat that so I end up eating it for a whole week. Then I get bored of it and move on. I'm not really sure why. Trying a new vegetable/fruit a week keeps things interesting as well.

Things that taste good but don't take long to make:
Zucchini Noodles: Run them through a spiralizer, and toss them with salad dressing, thinned out dip, tomato sauce, pesto, veggies, nuts,
Soups: Toss all the ingredients in a blender until they get warm, and chop some more veggies to mix in.
Salads: Pretty self explanatory, and lots of variety.
Wraps: Like a salad but you can carry it with one hand.

Some recipes can be made into several different things, for example: cashew cheese. It can be flavored pretty much any way you like, and used as a dip, spread, sauce, dressing, filling, eaten on it's own, or dried and made into a cracker. It's also ridiculously easy to make:

1 C Cashews
1/2 C Pine Nuts
1/2 Lemon
1/2 Shallot (about 2 T)
1 Clove Garlic
Salt to taste

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Add some water to thin if desired.
You could add herbs, sundried tomatoes, other nuts, spices, whatever your heart desires.

Examples of foods that serve more than one purpose:

Burger Patties! Without dehydration they're sort of like a pâté, you can use them as burgers(obviously), crumble them up over 'spaghetti', stuff them in a wrap, eat them on their own...



Baba Ganoush: (Although this applies to all dip-like things), eat it with crackers, put it in wraps, thin it with some water and use as a sauce.



Banana Ice Cream: Eat on it's own, make a sundae, top a fruit salad with it, put it in a smoothie, make parfaits...



Hopefully this was somewhat helpful!

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