Weekend List w/ Oil Free Potatoes

Happy weekend! It’s been a productive one here so far, I headed to the gym at the crack of dawn yesterday to cram in a workout before my early hair appointment, caught up on laundry at home, dropped a large load of stuff off at an animal rescue thrift shop, and worked on decluttering at home a bit. I also ordered new hard drives for our monster desktop computer since I will be upgrading it and reloading with Windows 10 next weekend … not totally looking forward to that. And I got more V-dog ordered for the pups which is good since Miko has been a fan of V-dog Breathbones lately.

I’m a fan of the sweet cinnamon smell they give his breath and that they’re helping to maintain his teeth which can be tricky for small dogs.

Friday night we headed to Anatolian Table for dinner and enjoyed the only solid vegan option on their menu – the veggie pide.

It was a little frustrating because they had a large vegetarian section on the menu, but most items included cheese, yogurt sauce, and rice with butter. If they could just stop using butter in the rice, it would add a lot more vegan options to the menu! But the pide was great, like a spicy and savory veggie pizza with a crispy, thin crust.

Thanks to Jennifer at My Blissful Journey and Garden of Life, I won a sweet giveaway for two packages of RAW Organics Organic Golden Flax Seed + Raw Organic Antioxidant Fruit ground blend. This excited me as a superfood addition to our breakfast smoothies, I could rotate from adding a few spoonfuls of this blend or chia seeds for a little nutritional diversity.

The blend is in a finely ground form that is not super sweet of flavorful by itself, but perfect for adding to smoothies, sauces, and chia seed pudding.

And it adds a hearty thickness to smoothies and ups the nutritional value for a fun rotation.

I’m starting to get a lot of spaghetti squashes from our garden which is awesome, it’s one of my favorite squashes for having a great flavor by itself and being a fun, healthy alternative to pasta. I steamed one and scooped out the contents to use in this fun dish blended with slow cooked pinto beans, steamed broccoli, and steamed green beans seasoned with Trader Joe’s enchilada sauce, smokey seasoning blend, and a little salt and pepper.

It was flavorful, slightly spicy, and very hearty. A dish I will keep in the rotation for a hearty winter meal.

I’m also getting more yellow cucumbers from our garden and used one in this simple salad yesterday with hummus dressing.

For dinner last night, I had a lot of potatoes to use up from our farm box and decided to experiment with oil-free baked potato wedges. I chopped them up and tossed with a little apple cider vinegar, Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute, and salt and pepper.

And baked for about 35 minutes on a non-stick baking mat at 425 degrees.

The result was delicious! The potatoes had a different texture from ones baked with oil, they had a crunchier skin and puffed up more during the baking process, but still had soft and creamy centers and made a tasty, healthier alternative to fries or tater tots.

And excellent dipped in a blend of hummus and sriracha. Miko was a fan of them too.

There is a lot for this weekend’s list, but I’ll start with the most inspiring. This couple made an impressive health transformation through a vegan diet and running with four children – wow! What is very fascinating to me is how different they look and how much better, he looks like Jake Gyllenhaal now and she’s gorgeous with a different face shape and beautiful skin. Again, wow.

NPR had a great story this week about loosing pounds through a vegan diet.

And so did The Washington Post with great info on calorie sources and how they can make a huge difference.

Another use for coconut oil is foot repair, is there anything coconut oil can’t do?

This is a fun, quick read on vegan and relationships, starting a healthy diet and fitness routine together can be great bonding for relationships.

I’m more of a lip balm girl, but it’s always nice having a list of vegan lipsticks when I do dress up. Hmm, not sure about the blue…

EcoWatch reminds us how to maintain an eco-friendly diet and I am focusing more on reducing food packaging here lately, buying foods from bulk bins instead of cans, etc.

The owner’s of Herbivore Clothing have a new cookbook that I need to check out.

I can’t get enough of vegan football players, here Brandon Flowers talks about his vegan transition.

This blind-folded extreme vegan taste test is pretty damn funny.

Entertaining read from an amateur raw vegan.

I want to try this raw vegan fig orange cheesecake.

Finally, I just love ranch-turned-farm-sanctuary stories, so loving and inspiring. Here’s another one in Texas.