anulicious

The most asked question when people get to know that you are Vegetarian or Vegan is:

„Where do you get your Protein?“

A lot of Vegetarians eat a lot of soy products, because  they are very protein rich. This is fine.

Although I am not a fan of all the products with isolated soy like fake-meats, soy milk, etc. and just like consume it in form of Tempeh, Miso, Tamari or a little Tofu.

So what are my favorite Protein Foods?

Beans and legumes. I always have beans canned or dried in my home.

My favorites are chickpeas and navy beans. I love to make hummus or bean puree out of them and eat it with everything!

I also like to add red lentils to my Veggie-Bolognese.

Then there are nuts and seeds: walnuts and pumkpin seeds are my favorite. And you can easily add them to your muesli or salad.

Why people often think that protein in meat is best is because it is a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids. But we now know that it is not necessary to get all of them in one meal, so you can have  for example your nuts with your breakfast, beans for lunch, tempeh for dinner. AND there are actually plant foods, that contain all essential amino acids.

One of them is the wonderful Quinoa.

Often referred to as the Inca grain, it is actually a seed. It is very versatile and you can use it for example like Cous Cous.

A benefit is that it is glutenfree also, if you have issues with that.

Lately I discovered my love for quinoa as breakfast.

I just cook the quinoa, add  almond milk, some fruit (berries are wonderful for this) and a sweetener like honey, agave or stevia.

I even eat this for dinner. It is wonderful. Of course you can add more stuff like nuts or seeds or some flax or hemp oil for the omega 3’s.

xoxo

Hey you all.

Finally I am back on the blog.

The reasons for my absence:

1. been to Vienna

2. caught a bad, bad flu in Vienna and was ill in bed

This was not pretty I tell you. Fever, shivering, severe muscle pain and headaches. The first day I couldn’t eat anything at all and just stayed in my dark bedroom, slept and drank lots of water. Luckily on the next day I felt a little better and prepare myself some very healthy stuff for a quick recovery. That meant a lot of fresh squeezes juices and smoothies and soups.

My new favorite germ fighting Smoothie is this one from Angela Liddons Blog “Oh She Glows“.

It is so creamy and healthy and tastes amazing. Oh this clementines are soooo yummy.

You can find the whole recipe here.

Source: ohsheglows.com via Amber on Pinterest

It really worked wonders for me and I am very, very glad and thankful for feeling so much better this week.

So take good care of yourself. Winter is almost over and so is Flu season.

We nearly made it.

xoxo

No food journals from the last week, sorry. It was just to busy.

Also I bumped my head very badly and had awful neck and shoulder pain from it. But luckily I am feeling a lot better today. But what I realized was that when I don’t feel well, my eating habits go a little crazy. I couldn’t stay away from some nasty stuff, what bothered me, but I cannot change it anyway.

I can only learn for the future and try my best. You shouldn’t be so strict with yourself anyway, but I just notice immediately now, when I ate food that is bad for me. I get stomach pain or reflux and stuff. So that shows me even more, I was on the right track of Eating and I should stay there.

Today was really crazy, so I am planning just Smoothies and Juices for tomorrow to get the body back in balance. That is the most important thing: even if there are days where you are dragged to nasty foods and overeat, it is much easier to get rebalanced when you know which foods are good for you. And I know which ones are.

For today I want to leave you with a lovely recipe from canadian nutritionista Meghan Telpner. She has a wonderful website and educates people about healthy eating. I stumbled over her Tempeh recipe and wanted to give it a try and I have to say it was so, so good!

Actually my first experience with tempeh wasn’t a good one. I ordered it in a indonesian restaurant and it had almost no taste at all. I was very disappointed.

But because I always read about the wonderful benefits of tempeh, I wanted to give it another try.

What is tempeh anyway?

It is made of fermented soybeans (so a probiotic food actually, which is always great for your gut) and it is a complete protein, which means it contains all of the essential amino acids (my veggie heart says hurray!).

You can buy it in whole food shops and I would always recommend to buy soy products organic, because soy can be so genetically modified. Don’t be repelled by the looks. It doesn’t look very pretty.

Like with tofu and many other things, tempeh gets great when you do the right stuff with it, like marinating it in a yummy sauce.

And that’s where Meghans brilliant recipe comes in. The marinade is sooooo amazing, I couldn’t believe it.

It is made with balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, olive oil, tamari and thyme. Addictive!

So get yourself some tempeh and bring it on! Here you find the original recipe.

I served mine with brown rice, broccoli and sprouts. Super healthy.

And I tell you, even hardcore meat eaters can be satisfied with this. Promise!

xoxo

Half time for our Raw Food Challenge and two more weeks to go.

I has been an amazing journey so far. Not only because on the different Food and Eating, but because of the experience itself.

How clear my mind is when I am on raw foods, but also how addictive cooked food is. So speaking of that, I have a little confession to make…

Yesterday my husband and I went to town to do some shopping and just wanted to stop by our favorite Sushi Place to eat a little wakame salad. We really had the intention not to eat anything cooked. But after two weeks of just raw foods and a hard time on Wednesday, where we both almost fell of the wagon, the craving was to strong (or we were to weak, if you want to put it that way).

We ordered the Wakame Salad, as you can see here:

BUT after that followed some Edamame, plus Avocado & Shitake Maki.

We enjoyed every bite without guilt. We just said to ourselves that this was the reward for our the first two weeks without a failure.

And honestly: there could have been worst foods we could have eaten. We also felt good after that, but we realized, although the portion was not huge and we shared it, we both were very, very full and immediately had this stuffed feeling that we are so familiar with when we eat “normal” food.

So, that was our little Cheating Story. But hey, nobody is perfect, right? We got back on track right after this and we are sure now we will also hang in the last two weeks of this challenge.

Here is what I ate yesterday:

Green Smoothie

Fresh Juice

Some bites of my hubbys Salad with dried tomatoes, olives, fresh tomatoes, walnuts, cucumber and olive oil

Our “cheating” lunch at the Sushi place

Salad at our friends home (bell peppers, pomegranates, Avocados, red radish)

Enjoy your Sunday!

xoxo

I am in love.

And it is this woman’s fault: Sarah Britton from the My new roots – Blog.

I told you about Sarah before in this post, when I wrote about the awesome Raw Taco Recipe.

And now she got me again with a Raw Chocolate Milkshake.

The great thing about Sarah’s recipes is, that you don’t primarily make them because they are so healthy for you (which the are) but because the taste so amazing.

Same with this recipe. I am normally not really a chocolate kind of girl, but the last days this image of Sarah’s raw milkshake didn’t go off my head, so I went to the Whole Foods Store and bought some raw cacao powder.

The great thing is, you can drink this milkshake without any guilt, because it is super healthy for you.

Raw Chocolate has so much benefits and is even a superfood. Read the whole blog post from Sarah here. There is a lot of interesting information concerning this.

Yesterday I had:

Green Smoothie

Salad with china cabbage, cucumber, tomatoes, sauerkraut and Tahini Dressing

Carrots

Raw Chocolate Milkshake

xoxo

As I have time off between Christmas and New Years, today I met with my dear friend Nadine for lunch.

We wanted to try out the restaurant Ecco, because it has an extra vegan menu and a lot of vegetarian options. I think that is just a great thing and I hope that more restaurants will incorporate veggie meals in their normal menu. In Cologne we really don’t have that very often.

I had a yummy vegan Bolognese and my friend Fettucine with mushrooms.

We had so much to talk about because we have so little time to see each other regularly. So there was a lot of chatting and before we knew, it was already getting dark outside. Time flies when you are spending it with lovely people.

Nadine has also a great blog. You can check it out here.

So now I am at home and looking forward to a cosy evening with my man. Just watching a movie and making a tea of the Love Tea – Collection I got for christmas. A hard choice to make.

xoxo

If you are having some friends over for new years eve and you are looking for ideas for simple and quick recipes, I have a few suggestions.

Earlier this month we celebrated my husbands birthday and I made a small buffet.

We had classic Bruschetta and the wonderful Black Olive Bruschetta with Cashew Cream from Colleen Patrick-Goudreaus book “Color me vegan”. This is so yummy and easy to make.

Watch Colleen’s video for the recipe here.

She is such a great person and I admire her work so much. She really is an inspiration to live a compassionate lifestyle. Check out her website.

A party wouldn’t be one without proper party salads. For that how about these two?

Trattoria Pasta Salad

Creamy Avocado Potato Salad (No Mayo!)

These recipes are from the Post Punk Kitchen Website from Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Isa is also an author of many vegan cookbooks and has some lovely recipes, so it is really worth checking out her website.

So, happy party planning and bon appetit!

xoxo

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We absolutely had a great time.

Today my husband and I wanted to go to the Spa actually, but when we got there, it was so crowded with people that we changed plans and went to our gym. That was awesome, too, because after one and a half hours on the Stepper and in the Pool we were totally guilt-free of all the yummy stuff we had the last couple of days.

Which leads me to my vegan Christmas Dinner I told you about in the last post.

The evening was so nice and we really enjoyed the time with our family.

The food also turned out very well, but because I was so busy and nervous I totally forgot to take pictures of it, so I only have a preparation pic from the Appetizers for you. Sorry!

The Appetizers, Pear Fig and Sage Tartes with a roasted garlic Aioli, were inspired from the great Sisters Heather and Jenny from Spork Foods. The two ladies really rock in the kitchen and they also have a Cookbook out now which I want to get for me next week. I am so looking forward to try out more of their recipes, for the tartes were so good.

Then we had the soup, which I already told you about. This was a crowd-pleaser.

For the main course I made a Quinoa Pecan Stuffing from the great “For the Love of Food” – Blog.

With that I served pumpkin chips and a green salad with pear and cranberries.

For the dessert, which I prepared in advance, I again took the help from this Blog from Angela Liddon, where I also got the soup recipe from. I made the No-bake Chocolate Torte.  So yummy, without any white sugar, flour, eggs. Amazing!

After Dinner we had fun with the Wii I lent from a colleague of mine and played a little Bowling match. It was really fun.

So how did you spent your christmas?

xoxo

I am getting a little nervous. Tomorrow I will be hosting the Christmas Dinner for my hubby, his Mom and sister and my parents.

And I hope that all the food I am planning will turn out delicious, for it will be an all vegan menu.

Today I already prepared the wonderful soup , which I found on the great website “Oh She Glows” by Angela Liddon:

It is one of my daily Must Reads. Angela is a cooking genius. All the recipes from her that I tried so far were awesome. They are all vegan and most of them are really simple and don’t require a whole bunch of fancy ingredients. Try it yourself, you won’t regret it.

For the Christmas Dinner I prepared her Carrot Apple Ginger Soup. It is easy and sooooo delicious.

Don’t worry about the looks when you cook it. As soon as you blend it, it will burst with color. Look!

If you want to try it out, here is the full recipe.

I wish you all a very merry christmas with your loved ones.

xoxo

It has exactly been one year nice my last post. Oh my!  Just to let you know: I was doing totally fine the whole time.

It was just that a lot of things were going on in the last months.

I began a new job, which I really love and I am so thankful for and I wanted to concentrate on that. All the time I was wondering, if, when and how I would continue my blog and I think now is the right time.

I also decided that I will give the blog a bit of another direction. When I first started with it, it was an experiment  and I didn’t know where it would be heading. So also the topics where of a very wide range. I want to change that, and here is why:

At the beginning of this year I saw a movie called Earthlings which touched me very deeply. It is about the Human / Animal Relationship and shows how we exploit animals on many levels. I started to educate myself about Factory Farming and decided to stop eating all animals from one day to the other. I am on a mostly plant based diet now, which I would never have imagined just one year ago.

But I have to say it was the best decision I could have made. I feel great taking action for my health, the animals, the environment at the same time and living my life compassionately every day.

And that leads me to my blog, which I always thought of as a lifestyle Blog and still do. And in the future I want to focus on my journey to healthy and compassionate eating and living and share it with you.

I know that a lot of people want to incorporate more healthy foods in their diet and cut down on the meat, but feel that it is hard and they don’t know what to cook and how. I hope that by sharing my experiences I can inspire people to try out new things in the kitchen and have fun with it.

For today I want to leave you with the link to the Movie that started all this for me:

http://www.earthlings.com/

In my opinion every person on this earth should have seen this.

Take care and see you soon!

xoxo