Recipe: The Best Breakfast Sandwich I’ve Ever Had

10 years ago • 4 Comments • Live Well, Recipes

You don’t have to be vegan to know that grabbing a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on an english muffin every morning on your way to work is a BAD idea.

Finding a healthy but satisfying breakfast sandwich was a bit of a challenge. I like hummus and tomato on an english muffin sprinkled with fresh dill, but that wasn’t high enough in calories or protein for Greg. We needed something that had enough protein and healthy fats to get us through our busy mornings.

We finally found the perfect solution. We substituted tofu for egg and added avocado for healthy fats, with tomato and a little red onion for flavor. A little vegenaise or Just Mayo (so delicious that my non-vegan parents now stock it in their fridge for themselves) makes this sandwich even more delicious than a traditional breakfast sandwich. I would eat rather eat this than a traditional breakfast sandwich with meat, egg and cheese – even if you took all the health, environmental and ethical considerations out of it. It tastes fresh but satisfying, filling yet not greasy or heavy. It’s pretty much perfect.

The only problem with this breakfast sandwich is that you can’t buy it on your way to work! Ok, and also they’re not nearly as beautiful when I arrange the avocado slices instead of Greg (he’s a sandwich master).

Recipe: Our Favorite Breakfast Sandwich

Firm or Extra Firm Tofu

Small amount of chopped red onion

Avocado

Tomato

Ezekiel English Muffins

Vegenaise

Vegetable Broth

Salt & Pepper to taste

The night before: Slice your tofu into 1/2 inch thick squares about the size of your Ezekiel english muffin*, and put in a container. Cover with vegetable broth and soak overnight. One pound of tofu makes 6 breakfast sandwiches for us, with the last day having a little irregularly shaped tofu. We cut the pound all at once and leave it in the fridge in the vegetable broth, making sure we use it within 3 days. (It’s also great cubed and tossed into a stir fry.)

Morning of: Remove your tofu from the vegetable broth. You can pan sear it lightly on each side in a pan over medium heat with a little oil, OR you can microwave it for about a minute until it’s warm all the way through. I tend to microwave it, because it greatly simplifies the breakfast sandwich process and I often lose the nicely browned tofu sides in the pan, which defeats the purpose of searing the tofu.

Note: This really is excellent if you pan-sear the tofu. For a great article on how to dry-sear tofu, check out what Isa Chandra wrote on the ppk.com!

Toast your english muffins (otherwise they’ll get soggy) and put a tofu square on the bottom one. Add diced onion, sliced tomato, sliced avocado, and spread vegenaise on the top English muffin. Salt and pepper to taste if desired (I often don’t). If you want an easier sandwich to eat, you can mash the avocado instead of slicing it, then the pieces won’t slide out. Put on the bottom English muffin piece and add the tofu on top for a more stable sandwich.

Consume, and enjoy the energy boost!

*I recommend the Food for Life “Ezekiel English Muffin” because it’s a flourless, sprouted grain english muffin that not only tastes amazing, but is low on the glycemic index and high in protein. It’s a whole grain solution that doesn’t taste like cardboard, and I think we can all get behind that!

For more healthy and delicious breakfast ideas, check out my Healthy Breakfast Ideas.

How I Define “Good” Food

10 years ago • 0 Comment • Live Well

EUREKA!!!! Wait a second. That’s not a brownie. What the…

When I was in college, finding a good buy at the grocery store meant anything cheap or on sale. (When my grandparents sent me birthday money, I used it to upgrade my food purchases.)

Being a grown up with stable finances has a lot of benefits, and food is one of the biggest ones. I love that a “good buy” now means something a lot more to me than price. I feel extremely privileged that I’m able to buy the foods I do, and I have the time and resources to learn about why the type of food I buy is so important.

I also feel a little stressed out sometimes, because my qualifications for what food is “good” sky-rocket with every documentary I watch.

Ten years ago I would have said that good food is: inexpensive, tasty, convenient, and preferably has a long shelf life. (I was living in a dorm with a communal kitchen down the hall and had a limited budget.)

How I Define “Good Food” Now: Healthy, and tasty with a limited impact on the environment.

Good for my body means it’s fresh, plant-based, minimally processed, non-GMO, and organic, with minimal refined grains or added sugars.

Good for the environment means it was grown locally, it’s organic, and it’s minimally packaged.

Tasty means it’s not wax beans or lima beans, and honestly I know Greg loves beets but they’re not my favorite.

This means I can buy:

Local organic lettuce that is sold without packaging. And actually this is questionable since it will only TASTE good with the addition of other things (ie, in a smoothie, because salads are kind of my nemesis).

Much of the available produce is either local or organic. Some organic produce is wrapped in plastic, while its conventional counterpart isn’t (the cauliflower at Whole Foods comes to mind). I can buy peanuts in bulk and avoid the packaging, but they’re not organic – those come in a plastic bag.

My favorite sprouted grain, flourless, super healthy Ezekiel English Muffins? In cardboard surrounded by a plastic bag, produced in a factory across the country and shipped to the store. Shoot.

Time to start making my own… or is it?

Two out of three ain’t bad:

I need to feed my family with as little guilt as possible, so I’ve started choosing foods with these guidelines in mind to help me prioritize my food choices, but not bind myself to them. I choose the least amount of packaging whenever bulk is an option. I choose organic whenever possible. I buy local when I see it. For the dirty dozen, I buy organic over local. I never buy animal products. I buy the recyclable, BPA free boxes of tomatoes instead of the canned tomatoes with BPA linings. I make the best choices I can, and hope that better ones will be available in the future whenever I feel guilty for chucking non-organic clementines from Chile into my cart because I love them so much.

I don’t wish I could go back in time to the oblivious me in college, although sometimes things were easier, back then. Instead I try to appreciate how lucky I am to have the amount of control I do over what I feed my family. I live close to a large Whole Foods, there are farmer’s markets nearby every Saturday, and I can afford to buy organic. Buying in bulk and avoiding animal products actually reduced our grocery bill, but buying organic is more expensive. I think of it as an investment in our health and the environment that I’m lucky we can make.

The other day I spent over an hour taking the skins off chick peas so I could make myself some guilt free homemade hummus. It eliminated the plastic container of store-bought hummus and the cans of chickpeas, but soaking the chickpeas, cooking them, taking the skins off, and then blending my own hummus was over an hour of active labor. That’s just not going to work for our family right now.

So I’m taking some deep breaths, making the best choices I can that actually work for our family, and trying to feel good about the choices I make. Even when they’re not local organic package-free lettuce.

What does “good” food look like to you?

My motivation: keeping these guys healthy and helping them inherit a healthy planet, too.

3 Kid-Approved School Lunches

10 years ago • 0 Comment • Live Well, Recipes

Will is in his second year at his Montessori preschool, which means he has lunch-bunch three days a week! I love the extra special time I have with Andrew on those days. I don’t love waking up in the morning wondering what I’m going to pack him for lunch!

To keep me motivated and inspired, I’m making fun school lunches into a personal challenge. I’m hoping to pack three lunches each week that are a good balance of easy, healthy and delicious, and then post recipes and photos here to help inspire people looking for their own school lunch ideas for the next week. I love sharing what I make for Will because it adds motivation to create meals worth sharing, it helps other parents looking for ideas to pack school lunches, and it pays forward all the meal inspiration I’ve gotten online!

Here are Will’s lunches from his first week of school:

Lunch 1: Sun-butter and jelly sandwich on Ezekiel bread, homemade applesauce, strawberries.

Sun-butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off, strawberries, and homemade applesauce.

I love this meal because it’s so simple and Will ate almost the whole thing. I tend to pack more fruits than vegetables for school lunches, because Will is more likely to eat fruit without someone coaxing him than he is vegetables. When I do pack veggies, I make sure they’re his favorites. (Carrot sticks and kale chips come to mind!)

Ezekiel bread is a sprouted grain bread packed with nutrition available in the freezer section of most grocery stores. I love it because it’s high in whole grains, protein and fiber, and because it’s frozen so I can always have it on hand without it going bad. It’s so good for him that I make a concession and cut off the crusts.

If you’re packing applesauce, consider mixing in some flax seeds or chia seeds!

Sunbutter is a great alternative to peanut butter because it’s nut-free and safe for schools where children have nut allergies. It’s also delicious.

Lunch 2: Soy Hot Dogs wrapped in Blankets, Ketchup, Strawberries and Grapes.

I used a recipe from Vegan Lunch Box to make vegan “pups in a blanket”. The book provides a simple dough recipe, and I rolled it out and cut it into strips so Will could wrap his own soy hot dog. This sounds labor intensive, but it can be done the day before and stored in the fridge. Making part of lunch in advance turns it into a fun afternoon activity with the kids and reduces stress in the morning. I liked the dough recipe from Vegan Lunch Box, but honestly, any biscuit recipe would work. You could also use refrigerated pizza dough. (I tend to avoid the refrigerated crescent rolls because they’re not that healthy.)

I baked his Vegan Pup in a Blanket for 18 minutes at 375 degrees – you just want the dough to get lightly browned on the bottom and the soy dog to get hot.

While the soy dog cooked, I filled Will’s thermos with boiling water and let it sit for ten minutes to warm up. I dried it thoroughly and then put the hot dog in (I had to cut it in half).

Add a side of ketchup (sorry, preschool teachers) and some fruit, and he’s good to go!

The best part? Andrew and I now have our lunch prepared, too! The extra soy dogs are all wrapped up and oven ready 🙂

I mixed the dough, rolled it out, and cut it into strips. He rolled it around the soy dogs.

I try to involve Will in at least one step of the food prep or packing. He feels more ownership, and therefore eats more, when he has helped.

Lunch 3: Hummus with Carrots, Apple Slices with Sunbutter, Dried Cherries.

A smaller lunch: Will (and many other preschoolers, I’m sure) doesn’t eat a lot of food in one sitting. His stomach is small, and he has a morning and afternoon snack in addition to his three meals. Last year I would often send him lots of “options” for lunch to make sure he had plenty of food to eat. A lot of food came home, to be saved for snack later.

This year I’m going to try to send him more appropriate quantities with fewer choices. If he’s hungry, he has three good food items to eat. He doesn’t need five mini containers to open and decide between every time he has lunch bunch!

Hummus: Sometimes I make my own hummus using the recipe from the Oh She Glows cookbook, but I buy as much hummus as I make.

Carrots: Lately I’ve started to avoid baby carrots in favor of buying my own and cutting them myself. They last longer in the fridge, usually taste better, and can be cut into thinner and longer sticks which are easier for Will to bite and chew. I prep them in advance and store them in a Pyrex container submerged in cold water in the fridge.

Apples: Will eats more when I slice them, but slices oxidize and turn brown if you cut them in advance. Tossing them in a little lemon juice helps keep them looking fresh.

Happy lunch packing! Make yourself one, too 🙂

Why I Tell My Kid The Truth

10 years ago • 3 Comments • Live Well

This guy can handle the truth. In fact, he’s better for it.

Will, my four year old, used to ask me questions that would make me freeze in my tracks because I wasn’t sure how to respond to them. FYI – “Hang on, let me read the chapter in this parenting book in search of age-appropriate responses to questions about bodily functions, I’ll get back to you on that” is NOT a valid response.

Sometimes I don’t want to tell him the truth, because I don’t like the truth.

Will needed three shots at his four year visit, and boy did I want to tell him it wasn’t going to hurt. But that wasn’t true. So I looked him in the eye, told him it was going to hurt, but it was important to keep him healthy, and that it wouldn’t hurt for very long. He said he understood, sat still on my lap, and didn’t cry. The pediatrician and I made eye contact over his head afterwards and exchanged a “Holy @#$* did that just happen?” look with each other. She said she’s NEVER seen a four year old so calm through shots in her entire career.

I’m not taking the credit, it was Will who had the foresight and understanding to realize that the pain was coming but would be temporary, and to handle it with composure.

But I do think it helps Will to know that he can trust me to tell him the truth. He knew I wouldn’t lie to him to get him to sit in my lap and hold still, he knew what was coming and why, and he trusted me when I said it wouldn’t hurt for long.

Will’s pediatrician even told him it was ok to cry before she gave him the shots… but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. I almost cried, because I was so proud of how bravely he accepted that he needed to experience some pain in order to stay healthy. HE IS FOUR. Four.

After our family stopped eating animal products, I had to think about my strategy for raising vegan kids in a non-vegan world. How would I handle the tough questions about what was in other kids’ lunch boxes, and why we don’t buy certain things at the grocery store?

I came up with this crazy strategy for handling all such questions. I tell my children the truth, in age-appropriate language and detail.

When my children ask why we don’t eat anything from animals, I tell them it’s because it hurts the animals, our planet, and our bodies. When they ask why other people DO eat animal products, I tell them it’s because they grew up doing it, they haven’t learned to cook differently, and they don’t understand how bad it is for the animals, their bodies and the earth.

It’s actually pretty simple.

When my kids ask me a question, I think about what amount of information they can understand, and I answer truthfully.

It’s so much easier than evading questions or teaching them something they’ll need to unlearn later in favor of the truth. I don’t hide the fact that my kids are vegan from them, or that a friend has allergies so we’re using sun-butter instead of peanut butter to keep our snacks safe, or the fact that a relative died means their body stopped working and we won’t see them anymore. I don’t over-explain, but what explanation I offer is truth that can be built on later, rather than replaced.

So go ahead, tell your kids the truth. Just tell them in language and brevity that reflects their current age.

Less Waste Race: Run Greener

10 years ago • 5 Comments • 13.1 Training, Live Well

Greg’s race day bag – seeing the contents prompted me to refuse mine.

My Inspiration: I’ve been reading Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, a blogger/author who systematically reduced her waste to the point where her family no longer owns a trash can. Her book is as overwhelming as it is inspiring, and I often need to remind myself that she took several years to get to the point where her family no longer produced trash.

Her book has so many amazing ideas for ways that we can reduce our own waste, and many of them are just as easy as the wasteful version. I don’t need my soap to come in a box.

Refusing is Better than Recycling: In one of my favorite sections, Johnson discusses the importance of refusing things. Recycling is great, but refusing and reducing is better. I’ve started to apply her “refuse” strategy, and in a short amount of time I’ve appreciated the lack of clutter and obligation to dispose of unwanted, temporary use items.

Do You REALLY Need the Race Day Giveaways? My most recent refusal – I politely declined the race bag at the Maine Half Marathon. I didn’t need all those little freebies, and I own plenty of reusable bags for the grocery store. Many of the free items were individually packaged food items that I don’t even eat, because they’re processed foods with chemical additives, not vegan, or both. What would I do with a little plastic first aid kit? I thought about how many times in the past year I’ve wished I had one… and landed on zero. As a whole foods vegan who has found a line of sports nutrition I love (vega), it didn’t make sense for me to take that bag full of items I would ultimately dispose of or have to find recipients for.

My bib and race medal were the only souvenirs I took from the Maine Half Marathon.

If the Race Shirt doesn’t fit, you won’t wear it. I walked away… and headed over to the technical shirts. Here I was excited, because I could use another long sleeve running shirt (ok I don’t NEED one, but I would definitely wear and enjoy it, so I was ready to bring one home). However, even the women’s small was too big. It was big enough to be unflattering and likely uncomfortable to run in. I decided not to take one. After all, I’d accepted one from the Chilly Half Marathon the year before and never once worn it. Yes, it was free, yes it had the name of a race I enjoyed running on it… and it sat there unused. Better to leave it.

Can I do better next time? Part of me wonders if refusing these items did much good in the long run since they’d already been produced – I wonder about e-mailing race directors in the future and letting them know not to make a bag for me, because I don’t need one. At the very least, someone else can find homes for those products I won’t use, so I’ve saved myself the headache (and heartache) of disposing of them.

Bottled Water & Disposable cups: I did create some waste on race day – I used three of the water station and threw out those paper cups. I could have worn a hydration belt. I’m trying to find as many ways to reduce my family’s waste that work as well or better than the wasteful ways (although some inconvenience is completely worth it.) Am I crazy to consider a fuel belt on race day to save three little paper cups? I run well with it on all my training runs, how much added weight is it really? I wasted a lot of time at the water stations, because I stop to drink the water and have to merge on and off the course through other runners. What if I could take my gel and hydrate while I walked up a hill, and then skip the water station entirely? I would strategically reduce the difficulty of the hill, while saving time later on. It’s worth considering, especially at my pace. (I would be less inclined to run Greg’s speed with water jiggling on my hips the whole time.)

One thing I definitely could have avoided was the bottle of water I accepted at the finish. I refused the disposable foil blanket (I was so close to my family and my gym bag with a sweatshirt). Yet without thinking I accepted the bottled water. I could have easily asked a spectator to hold onto a bottle of fresh water for me at the finish line, they could have kept it right in the stroller. If I didn’t have spectators at a race, I could keep water in my checked bag at gear-check or in the car. Sure, it’d add a few minutes until I got water, but after a 2 hour and 17 minute run, 5 minutes is nothing in the scheme of things. No bottled water for me next time. I’m on this.

10606173_10101957307965999_6174907690497362525_n — I could have skipped that bottled water, I had family right there who would have thrown my reusable water bottle in the stroller for me.

Here Are Some Strategies to Green Your Racing:

Refuse: Don’t accept items you won’t use, even if they’re free.

Reduce: Wear a hydration belt if it’s all the same to you, and have a water bottle stashed somewhere for after you finish so you don’t need to accept bottled water.

Communicate: Tell Race Directors you’d prefer not to have a race goodie bag. Suggest that they let runners fill their bags with only the items that they actually want, by having vendors give out free samples rather than making bags filled in advance. If the technical shirt doesn’t come in a size you’ll wear, mention it to a race volunteer and let them know you’d love to either see it in your size, or have the option to reduce the number of shirts made by opting out during race registration.

Save Money: Don’t buy lots of gear you don’t need at the race expo, especially if the price is more enticing than the style and fit! Do an inventory of your running gear before you hit up the expo to grab your bib. Knowing that you already have 4 long sleeve running shirts, 2 jackets, 1 windbreaker, 3 pairs of capris, etc. can strengthen your resolve not to buy that cute running jacket that’s on sale but was manufactured in China, shipped here on an oil rig, costs you money, and isn’t necessary because you already own three.

It’s not always easy: I am going to be honest – it wasn’t easy saying “no thank you” to the bag of free goodies. But as soon as I walked out of there, that pang of regret faded. I didn’t need any of it, and now I don’t have to find homes for all those unwanted items. Score for me! I made the right choice for me AND it was a green one. Being greener will be easier if you find the most compatible green choices for your personality and lifestyle. I wasn’t about to refuse the race medal, my race medal collection means too much to me right now to sacrifice it to the principles of environmentalism and minimalism. I’m letting go of the things that are easiest to let go of. Think about the environmental impact we can make if everyone does the same.

Happy racing – do good! (And I don’t mean just by running.)

Browsing Category

Live Well