Shout out to Chloes's Vegan Italian Kitchen, a major favorite in my house, Salad Samurai & Protein Ninja, who's salads, smoothie bowls and protein muffins have been present in my kitchen ever since their release, and 365 Vegan Smoothies, which I bought for everyone in my family and now they make even more smoothies than I do. Thank Glob for the vegan community, because I would be nowhere without you all.

XO,
KZ

I begin most days when I open my eyes at 6:47am and say to myself, "I'm going to get up in 13 minutes, work out, eat a healthy breakfast and lunch, and not eat pasta again for dinner." 13 minutes later I am snoozing super hard, I add extra almond butter to my oatmeal, eat leftovers for lunch, and definitely eat pasta for dinner. This has been especially true for the past few weeks, so here's a picture of not an exception. This is pasta with pesto sauce and breaded tofu with no vegetables. Sue me.


I know I said I've fallen hard into a pasta rut, and I have. But this picture was taken like 5 weeks ago, and it is an amazing stir-fry with basil and gnocchi. They sell packaged gnocchi at my bodega and I always forget about it, but it takes like 2 seconds to cook and also rulz. New tattoo! Team Gnocchi! Wait, too many letters and too few knuckles!


I know what you're thinking... "this isn't pasta either." But you're WRONG. This is orzo, which IS pasta!! This is the Tempeh Orzilla from Isa Does It, and also from her blog a million years ago, when I first made this and fell super deep in love with it. So deep we text late at night. It is SO good. It's a stellar combination of tempeh, spinach and sundried tomato. I added some cherry tomatoes on top for a nice pop of flavor, and sprinkled vegan parmesan-- fairy dust, if you will, made from almonds, nooch and lemon zest.


Alright, this is straight up not pasta. But it is also from like 4 weeks ago so maybe pre-pasta rut. This is the Lemony Cannellini beans from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen, over mashed potatoes with some added broccoli. There's some amazing broth made from white wine, nooch and almond milk to soak up with some bread (more carbs!) or with the potatoes. This dish is literally perfect. I know I call every bean my favorite at one point or another but cannellini beans are totally my favorite. Swear.


I left my dark and stuffy apartment one time and bought this breakfast sandwich during lunchtime at Toadstyle. I also got fried broccoli. I wanted fried cauliflower but Alex doesn't like cauliflower. Worst, amirite? So instead of your typical tofu/daiya/tofurkey breakfast sandwich, this one has polenta as the "eggy" part, homemade hollandaise, tomato and avocado. It was nicely unique!


Remember that time I was making #irresponsiblepurchases at Haymakers? I bought all this stuff: Terri ranch dressing, Califia farms Almond creamer, Sriracha Just Mayo, Barry's Adzuki bean fresh tempeh, 2 of my fave So Delicious plain unsweetened yogurts, No Evil Foods Seitan, an espresso chocolate Ponycake (gift for Alex <3), Meow Meow Tweet grapefruit deodorant, daiya alfredo mac and cheese, Earth Balance Mac, Miyoko's winter truffle, and the Vegan Egg.


Since I'm sure you want to know my feelings on all of these products, keep reading. The Terri ranch is single-handedly responsible for any salads I ate during my pasta rut. My fave dressing so far! The Califia farms creamer is pretty much a staple for me, still haven't tried the Just Mayo (it doesn't go on pasta..), and the yogurts are long gone, because they are so good. I LOVED the tempeh, so yeah, go Barry! I made a Buffalo tempeh salad (!) with some Terri Ranch and loved it so much. I made an amazing Ropa Vieja from the No Evil Foods Seitan, which is easily shredded. Super good and will definitely buy again. I am a shamefully big fan of all of these mac and cheeses in a box. I grew up in the 90s in the McWorld era, so if you don't understand me you're too young to get me, or you're my mom and you are like, yup, exactly that. You already know about my feelings on the Vegan Egg, and this is my favorite flavor of Miyoko's cheese second only to the Fresh Loire Valley in a Fig Leaf. This deodorant smells good but it just doesn't work. Wish it didn't cost $14, but shame on me for even spending $14 on deodorant. I have been applying it 3 times a day in order to smell good. I recommend it for you if you don't do anything that makes you sweat, sit in air-conditioned places for the whole day, don't walk around or get mad. I sweat when I get mad, so sometimes I put this on more than 3 times a day.


I made this for a brunch party my parents had! It is the "Lazy Morning Frittata" from Thug Kitchen Party Grub and it was delicious the day-of, but the leftovers didn't reheat very well. It is super pretty and kind of perfect for a brunch party. Plus my mom let me use some of her stash of Polish Pottery and it made it look even better.

So I have been so into making oatmeal in the morning lately. I hadn't really ever made it from scratch before, and only ever ate those Quakers instant oatmeal packets, which after reading the ingredients really didn't interest me anymore. So all this time I have been like, RIP oatmeal, when I could have been making amazing homemade oatmeal every day. What I do is: bring 1 cup almond milk and 1 cup water to boil in a saucepan, stir in oats (old fashioned rolled) and reduce to simmer, stir every few. When it looks almost the consistency that I am into, I stir in like 2 tablespoons of almond butter and 2 tablespoons maple syrup. It makes 2 servings so I just pack the other serving in a container for the next morning. Once it's in my bowl I top it with extra almond butter, chocolate covered chia seeds, and some frozen berry that is in my freezer, this one is raspberry. Sometimes I do another swirl of maple syrup too.


Pasta! This is the Pasta Pomodoro from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen with a dollop of pesto on top, because more pesto. Hard to go wrong here. You don't need help understanding why I am in love with pasta, tomatoes and basil.



Be back soon with hopefully less pasta, more makeup/beautystuffs, and hot with news.
<3,
KZ

A lot of people don't  like to use protein powders because they are processed and have chemical ingredients. I was able to find all three special types in their pure, one-ingredient form. I have been using the Vega Sport vanilla and chocolate recovery powders for a few years and think they taste okay in smoothies, don't have too many ingredients, and fit my need for basic vanilla/chocolate vegan protein powders.


She gives 4 basic template bowls, and for each she provides about 4 variations. This one is the peanut butter and strawberry bowl. It has frozen bananas and strawberries with almond milk, protein powder, vanilla and peanut butter. The bowls without avocado aren't as pudding-like, but more smoothie-like. Still fun to eat, though.



A great variation on the chocolate avocado bowl is to simply add greens. For this one I added kale and some spirulina powder. Other days I added just spirulina and it tasted mostly the same.



This one is the Matcha Latte Bowl, with Matcha (obv), protein powder, frozen bananas, almond milk, and vanilla. I topped with granola, blueberries, bee-free honey, white chia seeds, and sprinkled some more matcha powder on top.



I finally tried making acai bowls! This one has an acai frozen smoothie pack, frozen avocado, frozen banana protein powder and almond milk. You would be surprised how much it tastes like chocolate! It definitely has that pudding-texture which can't be beat in smoothie bowls.



I loaded this bowl with so many toppings that you can barely even see it! It's the Chai Latte Bowl with frozen bananas, protein powder, chai spices, and almond milk. It was the best with some bee-free honey. I don't think I ever put it in a chai latte before, but when have you ever been able to order a chai latte sweetened with bee-free honey? Someone should get on that.



When my stash of granola was wearing thin, I made a new batch, this time the Chocolate Hazelnut Hemp Granola. It is so good and I still have so much left. I think I made it two weeks ago. I also switched out blueberries for strawberries because I can't wait until June to eat strawberries. I was particularly stoked to eat my chocolate avocado smoothie bowl that morning not only because I got to top it with my new fresh granola, but also because I had replenished my stash of chocolate-covered chia seeds.



Okay, okay last smoothie bowl. This one is one of the best though! It's the Pumpkin Pie Smoothie Bowl, and it's got frozen bananas, almond milk, protein powder, vanilla, pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices. I ate it with unseasonal strawberries in the zombie spring.



Flipping through the book, the thing I was second-most stoked to try were the burger bowls. I remember crumbling many a beast burger over some salad this summer during my salad-reign-of-terror, and with some mustard and avocado, it was surprisingly awesome. So I began with the Black Bean Hemp Burger Bowls. The burgers have a variety of nuts and seeds, as well as the black beans and hemp protein, but are rolled in a corn-chip coating before being baked. The rest of the bowl has "refried corn quinoa" and a mango-onion salsa. This whole thing was a little dry for me, and I mostly just ate all the mango and then picked at the rest. B- on the Burger, itself.


Burger Bowl, in concept, sounds great. But the burgers are enough work on their own, and making the fixings for the sides was a ton of work too, and since it didn't really come together for me, I just made burgers with the rest. My burgers always go like this: Toasted Bun, chipotle vegenaise, spinach, tomato, guac and Chao cheese. I enjoyed the burgers much better this way.



Much more success with the BBQ Pinto Seitan Burgers. These were great. I kept worrying that they weren't cooking through enough but once you got it on the bun it was perfect. These are more like the burgers I'm into. Sorry all my burger pictures look the same.



There are still a lot of recipes I want to try. I definitely want to make some scones, muffins and brownies! There's a huge section with more breakfast food like this, with protein pancakes, protein waffles, more biscuits, more bacon, more sausage, more good stuff! There's also a huge section of toasts! Basically there's a ton of savory toasts with all sorts of things, spreads that are packed with protein, but also sweet toasts with interesting spreads too. I think so far 75% of the recipes I've tried have been really good, so I'm giving it a big thumbs up. Hopefully I'll be able to flex something soon.