Cookie Craze

This past week for me has been full of nothing but packing, moving and unpacking. What calms a tired soul? In my case it's cookies. Less of eating them, more of baking them. Although I should add that I realized this week that my campus grocery store sells vegan cookies. And not just one, a variety. So I indulged in and Explosive Espresso Chip Cookie, how could I not? I have this compulsion to buy specialty vegan food whenever I see it in unexpected places.

So anyways, I decided to bake cookies to calm things down in my mess of an apartment. I had been wanting to try the butterbean cookie recipe by The Happy Herbivore, beans in cookies? Gotta try it! But I switched things up a little bit because I had some cashews I wanted to get rid of. Here was the result-

Cashew Butterbean Cookies
Adapted from The Happy Herbivore

• 1C rolled oats
• 1C whole wheat pastry flour
• 1t baking powder
• 1/2t baking soda
• 1/4t cinnamon
• 1/4t nutmeg
• 1/2C white beans
• 1/2C raw sugar (I German rock sugar melted into a simple syrup)
• 1/4C applesauce
• 1/2t vanilla extract
• 1/2C raw cashews

1) Sift dry ingredients in one bowl
2) Run beans, vanilla and apple sauce through a food processor until smooth
3) Stir to combine, then scoop tablespoons onto a greased cookie sheet
4) Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, and enjoy! 

Best part about this recipe? Each cookie is only 70 calories with 2g of protein and 2g of fiber! So I don't even have to feel guilty about my moving week treat.

My Ode to Bananas

I never appreciated bananas before I went vegan. Most known for potassium level, bananas also contain magnesium, manganese, vitamin C as well as B vitamins. They're basically chameleons when it comes to desserts such as smoothies and ice cream. They make a creamy dish and are great on their own, or take to any flavor that you add. Here are my favorite ways to eat bananas (other than raw of course!)

Smoothie base

Green tea ice cream

Banana Sorbet

Strawberry soft serve

Fried banana dessert

Peanut butter pops

Green Monster Guide

I have a green smoothie for breakfast at least 3-4 days a week, and there have been many weeks where I've made one every single day. (Shout out to my magic bullet here, I love the individual cup blending and it's blended smoothly for me every time!) Like everyone else, I thought they looked weird at first, but that didn't matter after I tasted my first one. It was delicious! And I always felt great heading into the day, I can't imagine a more vitamin packed breakfast.

So how do you make one of these bad boys you ask? Follow my 3 step formula and you'll get a delicious smoothie every time.

First, pick your fruit base. I always use frozen bananas. I buy bananas in bulk (and by that I mean get them from the dining hall) slice them, and store them in a ziploc bag in my freezer. (For other reasons I love frozen bananas, check out my ode to banana's post here) Feel free to use any fruit or combination or fruit. Frozen is always better because it chills your smoothie. You can add ice if you use fresh fruit, but it will dilute your smoothie.
Fruit Base Suggestions: Frozen bananas, berries, cantaloupe, honey due melon, apple, pear, mango, avocado etc.

Second, pack in the greens. I usually use kale, but again- this is flexible. Make sure your greens are rinsed and torn away from the stem. This is where your smoothie is going to get its punch of vitamins. Kale is high in vitamin K, C, beta carotene, and rich in calcium. It's also high in sulforaphane, a strong cancer fighting agent.
Green Suggestions: Kale (curly, red or dinosaur) collard greens, chard, spinach etc.

Thirdly, liquefy! For an extra creamy smoothie use a milk base. For extra vitamins, coconut water is great. If you're a tea fanatic like me, that's also an excellent base.
Suggestions: Almond milk, rice milk, coconut milk, hemp milk, soy milk, coconut water, green tea, white tea, oolong tea, black tea, mate tea, orange juice, pineapple juice, pom juice etc.

After these three steps, it's up to you for any add ins. Chia seeds, flax seeds and nut butters are great for adding protein.

Simple Green Monster Recipe

• 1 cup frozen fruit
• 1-2 cups chopped greens
• 1 cup liquid

Take my suggestions above, or pick your own, then blend and detox away!

The "I'm too broke to grocery shop this week" Scramble

It's one of THOSE weeks. The last and first week of the month are always the hardest, my bills always cut into my grocery allowance. But I've prepared for these situations by making sure I always have these four things on hand:

1) Pantry grains (quinoa, rice, pasta etc.)
2) A bag of frozen vegetables
3) At least 1 can of beans
4) Stir fry sauce, or stuff to make my own (usually soy sauce and dijon mustard)

These four things make up my emergency meal kit. No matter what, mixing those four things together will be delicious. You get your vegetable serving in, you get protein from the beans, and you get fiber from the grains. The sauce gives it the illusion of being a well thought out stir fry bowl (part of being in college is making sure the final product looks good and fancy, no matter how much thought you ACTUALLY put into it....)

So my emergency scramble for this week? Quinoa with kidney beans, green beans, corn and carrots with Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce. Roughly 450 calories, 18g of protein and 14g of fiber. Not too shabby.

Chickpea Coconut Curry

I adapted this recipe from The Vegan Stoner. I love their recipes because they're really good basic starting points, and you can add whatever you want to them! And really, playing around with ingredients and adding your own spin is what cooking is all about.

All the delicious ingredients to start. Yogurt base, spices, veggies and chickpeas.

I haven't had chickpeas in forever, and I've been craving them for a week since I first glanced at this recipe. I just had to wait until I could snag a container of coconut yogurt from Whole Foods.

My kitchen smelled amazing when all of this was heating up in the pot. I was also roasting sweet potato in the oven, so it basically smelled like thanksgiving. My roommates even ventured away from their chemistry books to see what I was cooking and steal a bite (of course I'm always happy to share.)

And voila! Delicious vegan coconut curry. It hardly took anytime at all and I'll be eating the leftovers all week.

Chickpea Coconut Curry

1 16 oz container of coconut yogurt
1 can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 cup of corn
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 T curry powder
1 t garlic powder

Heat everything in a pot and serve over brown rice! Yeah, it’s that easy. 

Moving On and Moving Up

My journey began earlier this summer when a friend and I decided we were going to start eating vegan six days a week so we could be healthier and lose weight. I had been vegetarian before, but reading The Kind Diet was the last motivational I push I needed to jump into veganism. I believed the same myths as everyone else, that it was hard. That it was expensive. That you could only eat plain vegetables. Within that first week, everything was proved wrong. It was easy, it was cheap, and I was eating some of the most delicious food I'd ever had. So out the window with only six days a week, I fell in love with being a vegan. My first favorite meal is below, the black bean burger.

I created a tumblr mainly to follow other vegan oriented tumblr blogs, but I never dreamed that I would gain so many of my own followers. Nothing made me happier than posting recipes and looking back the next day to see how many people liked it or re-blogged it. The traffic on my blog has been my main source of motivation over the last few months. It's radiated in every aspect of my life. I find people are completely intrigued in my lifestyle as a vegan, and want me to share my stories. It's even been the center of a few job interviews and the highlight on my resume. So today I decided I would upgrade from my Tumblr domain to this one. I plan on still maintaining my tumblr, because it's a great way for people to easily re-blog my recipes. If you want to check that out, it's http://maddegoesvegan.tumblr.com But here I plan on telling you a bit more about my life, why I decided to cook certain meals, and just going more in depth on my vegan lifestyle.

So this blog will be all of my favorite parts of me- I'm Madde. Nineteen. A Northeastern husky. And a Vegan, who's favorite thing in the whole world is cooking and sharing.