Vegan Banana Bread

I heard an interesting health tip this week; drink a large glass of water before every meal. Not only will this help to keep you hydrated but it will also help to curb your appetite so that you eat less, and therefore helping you to take off some of those unwanted pounds.

Last week I had some very ripe bananas. Like many people, my mind automatically goes to banana bread. So I decided to play around with my mom's recipe to see if I could make it a bit more healthy. And keeping with my new vegan interest, I decided to make it without eggs. I had heard that you could replace eggs with apples sauce, so I thought I'd give it a try. The rule is 1/4 cup of applesauce to one egg. I also replaced half of the sugar with applesauce, as well as added a few other tweaks of my own. It turned out well. The only thing I think I will change next time is to bake it in a smaller bread pan so that my loaf isn't so thin. Here is my recipe:

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp. margarine

1 3/4 c. flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

3 ripe bananas

1/4 c. brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 c. apple sauce

1/2 tsp. salt

First cream margarine, sugar, vanilla. Then mix in the apple sauce. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in flour mixture and mix until moist. Stir in mashed bananas. Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes.

Sugarless Apple Pie

I've never been much of a sweet tooth. Even as a kid, I had no problem passing up dessert. My holiday candy would sit around for months with me eating a piece here and there, while my brothers wolfed their's down in two day. It's true that I'm a girl who isn't very fond of chocolate (except I do like dark chocolate because it's bitter), and I only eat cake at special occasions. I suppose when it comes to eating healthy this is a good thing but everyone has an Achilles heel. Mine is pie. I love pie, and I love to bake pies. This, I believe, is one of the contributing factors to my recent weight gain.

Yesterday my dad came up from our basement with apples that were starting to go bad. And what better to do with slightly mushy apples than bake them into a pie, right? So, my mom and I put our heads together to come up with ways to try to cut the calories that went into the pie.

First, I made an olive oil pastry crust instead of a standard pastry crust. By using olive oil, not only do you cut some of those unwanted calories but it is also healthier for you than vegetable shortening. The oil pastry was harder to work with than the standard pastry, so it didn't turn out as pretty as my pies normally do, but in the end it did taste good. Although it was not as flaky as a standard crust. It is pretty easy to find oil pastry recipes, I used the one in the Betty Crocker cookbook.

For the filling, I replaced the sugar with apple juice. This actually worked better than I expected. The pie obviously is not as sweet as a standard apple pie but it did have a very rich apple flavor which I rather liked. I will include the recipe below.

After crunching some numbers, I estimated that you save yourself approximately 110 calories per serving by baking this pie instead of a standard apple pie. This is based on a 10 inch pie divided into 10 slices.

Ingredients (This is for a 10 inch pie.)

1 (12 oz.) can of frozen apple juice concentrate

3 Tbsp. cornstarch

1 tsp. coriander

1 tsp. cinnamon

pinch of salt

8 cups of sliced apples

Combine juice, cornstarch, coriander, cinnamon, and salt into a pan. Heat until thick. Add sliced apples and simmer until partially cooked. Pour into an unbaked pie shell and cover with top crust. Bake at 350 for 45 min.

Whole-wheat Spaghetti with Golden Garlic, Tomatoes and Sage

I found this recipe on the Vegetarian Times website. It was fairly simple. The most time consuming part of it was that I used dried garbanzo beans, which involves soaking them for several hours and then cooking them for around an hour. However, you could save the time by using canned garbanzo beans which are obviously pre-cooked. Other than that it was pretty simple and didn't take much time to make. I didn't have fresh sage or kalamata olives, so I improvised with black olives and dried sage. I'm sure this effects the taste some but it still turned out good. I also cooked it a bit longer than they said to because I like my tomatoes to be more like a sauce than chunks of tomatoes. Of course, that's a personal preference.

One nice thing about using recipes from Vegetarian Times is that they have all the nutritional information for each recipe right there. If you'd like to try this dish, the recipe can be found at the link below.

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10984?section=

Recipe for Success

A friend sent this to me so I guess this is my first recipe. :-)

The Beginning of My Journey

Welcome to my new blog about my journey to eat more healthfully. You might wonder since I'm already a vegetarian, why do I feel I need to improve my eating habits? The truth is there are plenty of foods out there that vegetarians can eat that are not necessarily good for you. Vegetarians are not immune to the consumption of foods that are high in sugar or fat. Vegetarianism just means we don't eat meat.

I love food; I love to eat it and I love to cook it. I'm not a professional chef, in fact far from it. Up until my junior year of college, my cooking skills pretty much consisted of anything that could go into the microwave. When I moved into my first apartment, I found myself having to prepare foods on my own, rather than just heading over to the cafeteria for meals. This jump started my desire to learn to cook. Most of my "education" came from cookbooks or the internet, however I recently took a class on vegan cooking, which taught me some useful basics that I had missed in my self-education, as well as got me thinking about the benefits of limiting the consumption of animal by-products.

The real inspiration behind this new blog, though, is that in the past 10 months since my graduation, I have gained around 20 pounds. And now that my clothes don't fit, I've decided that I really need to put a stop to this. The truth is I eat when I'm bored, so this is particularly difficult since I am currently unemployed. However I can be very determined and have decided that I am going to start limiting my daily caloric intake to 1800 or less. By adding in daily exercise, it is my hope that I will in time be able to comfortably wear my favorite jeans again.

I will be blogging about my experiences and posting pictures and recipes (or where the recipes can be found). If you feel inspired by my latest health kick and wish to join me in my journey, I'd love to hear about what you're doing to better your life.