Throw-it-in Stew

Woohoo, almost Friday! It’s been a long week, but not a bad week, so I can’t complain. I’m just feeling a little extra tired because I’ve been stepping up my workouts by upping the resistance on my elliptical, working on my abs more and extending my running intervals. That’s a lot to do in one week, but I glad I did despite being a little sore and tired. I think it’s helped keep me in a better mood this week as well as skipping sweets and wine for my mini detox. All the sugar I’ve been consuming from the desserts last weekend and earlier this week were definitely screwing with me in the form of mood swings and feeling more stress at work I think, 2 days into my mini sweets detox and I already feel better.

But after another cold and foggy day and a run in the bone-chilling fog, I was craving something hot for dinner. Since I didn’t have any beans soaked, lentil stew it was. I love that lentils cook so quick from dry making them the perfect weeknight bean for me.

And that they can be cooked with quinoa and pair so well with it.

I created a marinara soup base in the Vita-Mix tossing in tomatoes, carrots, basil, oregano, garlic, lemon juice, pinch of salt and sun dried tomatoes. I wasn’t following a recipe, just winging it.

And luckily it came out good. So I simmered a half cup of lentils and quinoa it in for about 30 minutes adding whatever veggies looked good – chopped cabbage, onions, butternut squash chunks and celery. Then my hearty dinner stew was ready.

As usual, I ended up with a huge amount of stew, but the leftovers will keep in the fridge for a few days. I’ll probably saute them with spinach, nutritional yeast, zucchini chunks and a little garlic olive oil to reheat and change up a bit – mmmm, that sounds like a great lunch for tomorrow!

A sweet co-worker brought in a huge box of limone lemons from her try for us to take and did I take some! Free organic lemons? I’m all over that since I go through about 5+ a week.

I spend so much time reading online that I haven’t had much time for reading books and magazines. That’s something I’m trying to change this year as one of my goals, so I splurged on a new magazine on my last Target trip, VegNews. I’m really digging it, lots of great recipes, articles and I even like all the vegan product ads in it – I had no clue there was a vegan online sex shop!

And I cracked into another new book last night, The Vegan Girl’s Guide to Life by Melisser Elliott. 

I didn’t get too far into it before crashing, I got to the “Going vegan for ethical and animal rights” section with many gory facts about the meat and dairy industry that I couldn’t finish, ugly reminders of how awfully animals are treated when farmed for food. I could barely get through them before feeling totally disgusted. She lists them for vegans to arm themselves with facts, which is fine. But I’ll probably skip the rest of that section! I can’t even imagine watching movies like The Cove or Earthlings, kudos to anyone that can.