A Little Wellness Never Hurt Nobody, plus...Stuff I Ate Today!

   My hilarious and beautiful girlfriend Alana recently caught my attention with her new blog, Unconventional Wisdom, where she discusses all sorts of things related to health, delicious food, family (she's a new-ish mom to a baby boy whose cheeks I badly want to smush) and general well-being.  One of the things I've always loved about Alana is her strong sense of intuition--everything she does always seems to be "right" for her at the moment.  She always knows what she's talking about because she speaks from personal experience 100% of the time.  No faking.  No false preaching.  I like this.

Anyway, Alana has been using her health counseling background to develop a "Wellness Plan" for herself, her family, and those with a desire to start eating more whole foods and to feel and look better, in general.  I support this!  As soon as I checked out her plan (which you'll have to personally email her to get), my brain started brewing up all kinds of ideas that I totally must cook and share.
Here's one:

NUT-CHO CHEESE STUFFED POTATO with GARLIC-LIME KALE
(...and if you are a cutesy name-hater, you can kiss my grits, I'm calling it "nut-cho cheese")

So, this would fall under a lunch item on Alana's Plan because it involves at least two vegetables and a protein. Here's what I did:
Boiled a russet potato (you could use a sweet potato, red potato, whatever) and cut it in half, lengthwise. Scooped out the insides of the bottom half and, along with the top half of the potato, mashed it up in a bowl with garlic, a little plain almond milk, salt, pepper, cilantro and scallions. Scooped the mashed potato filling back into the hollowed out potato.

For the nut-cho cheese, I threw all of the following things into my Magic Bullet: about 1/4 cup of cashews, 1/2 cup of liquid (I used the juice from a container of fresh pico de gallo), a little nutritional yeast, onion powder, yellow mustard, pico de gallo, Sriracha, and...the secret cheesy ingredient...
PRESERVED BEAN CURD.

Don't knock it 'til you try it. Preserved Bean Curd tastes similar to bleu cheese--pungent, salty, and unmistakably "gym sock cheesy", but it contains no dairy and no fat.  I actually LOVE it.  I used about 1/2 a teaspoon of this stuff and it made the cashew cheese so much more legitimate.  A billion Chinese folk can't be wrong, right?

Next, I sauteed some chopped Italian kale with olive oil and lots of minced garlic, then finished it with a squeeze of fresh lime juice. I warmed up the nut-cho sauce, poured it over the stuffed potato, and topped it with pico de gallo, cilantro and scallions (you can use whatever garnishes you enjoy--black pepper, chives, micro greens, etc).
Voila, Wellness Lunch.  Sue me.

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And in other news...
Here's what I had for breakfast today.

Garlicky Breakfast Salad

Yes, that is garlic, and yes, I eat that much garlic.  Don't worry, my husband does, too.  Mixed greens with homemade GARLIC dressing (minced garlic, cider vinegar, olive oil, maple syrup, salt 'n' pepper), steamed asparagus with pan-fried garlic and Veggie Sausage patties (Trader Joe's made those, not me).  I love salad for breakfast and I probably eat it four times a week.  I mostly attribute this to the fact that Nightmare Hippie Girl by Beck has been stuck in my head for close to 17 years. "She's cookin' sal-aaad for breakfast....she's got tofu the size of Texas..."  Can't really help it.

Lunch!

Crumbled Tofu Reuben

I spent waaay too much time looking at nothing good at the library today and came home HUNGRY.   However, something I've recently noticed about my appetite is that it doesn't take much food to make my hunger go away.  I often think I'm going to starve and so I desperately make a massive burrito, only to realize five bites later that everything is fine and I am no longer hungry.  So, today I wisely chose to make a small sandwich--that reuben is actually only slightly bigger than a deck of cards. Seriously.

One slice of toasted Fitness Bread (the best bread! the weirdest packaging!), 1000 Island dressing (Vegenaise, ketchup, relish, Sriracha), yellow mustard, pickles, mixed salad greens and pan-fried crumbled tofu (seasoned with a little tamari) mixed up with sauerkraut.  Ughhhh, so good.

Anyone else eat salad or vegetables for breakfast?  I'm always collecting new ideas.

Tomorrow: HOMEMADE MOVIE SNACKS