My Minty-Lemon Lentils with Spinach

Right, this was kind of gross!  Joseph liked it for some reason.  I was kind of afraid to make it because it has mint in it and I know how I am with mint in anything that isn't toothpaste.  Aaaaaaaaaand, I don't like it.  It took me about half of the bowl to get used to the seemingly overwhelming mint taste, it was then that I could kind of enjoy the other flavors, like the lentils, which I apparently don't really like either.  Haha, at least Joseph liked it.  I'm making him eat all of the leftovers for lunch so I never have to eat it again.  

I'm so disappointed because it was SO promising!  Sweet potatoes?  Spinach? Vegetable broth?  Garlic??  My favorite things!!!  Unfortunately, it didn't have a ton of flavor except for the mint, which was (I believe I already said this) gross.  At least I know.

On a slightly different note, I decided last week that I would start cooking only vegan meals, and after seeing everything we didn't have in our cupboards for such a quest I had some very serious shopping to do.  While I was cooking said vegan meals this week I realized how much junk we DID have.  And it was seriously junk.  TONS of meat in the freezer, lots of boxed foods and JUNK.  So, I decided that we at least need to eat the meat in the freezer, so we've been having a meat binge the last coupe of days (hence the not posting our vegan delights).  We're finally kind of getting rid of the meat in the freezer.  SOO, we'll be making some of my favorite meaty meals a few days this week THEN we'll officially be vegan.  Wish me luck!  I already feel sick after eating so much meat.  We don't normally eat so much at once, but I just want to get it out of my fridge so I don't feel like I'm wasting it.  AHH.  At least, I'll probably never want to eat meat again after this.

My Polenta with Rice and Beans.

Last night we had some leftovers (because holy cow does this vegan food making thing make a TON) so tonight I made something absolutely del-to-the-icious.  Polenta with rice and beans.  WOW.

The polenta I just bought at the store pre-cooked.  It was in a meat tube-like thing.  Super appetizing sounding, I know.  I used that for the crust in the biggest pie pan I could find.  The stuff in the pot is brown rice, tomatoes, an onion, vegetable broth, water and chili powder all cooked until there was no liquid left. 

Then I mixed in black beans and poured that into the pie pan and put some salsa on top and baked!  On each piece served I put a dollop (best word ever) of avocado mixed with lots of lemon juice.  It was SO AMAZING.  

I would definitely make this again.  The avocado really rounded it out well.  Super good.  

AND I followed the directions to a 'T'.  I think I'll have to start doing that from now on because the results are quite good.  The weird thing is that I don't even miss the meat that would normally be in a meal like this.  It's all very filling and tasty.  I'm impressed.

P.S. if anyone wants to try making any of these recipes, just let me know and I can give it to you!  

Our spare time.

This is a random blogpost about things I've wanted to blog about but don't have a whole lot to say... so I'm putting them all together for one super-stupendous blogpost!

First,

Saoirse is majorly cute with this berry hat she has.  

Second,

our couch is falling apart.  In fact, there are (excuse me)  WERE giant holes in the cushions that I patched up by hand stitching on some.. patches then putting some liquidstitch stuff on there so it's extra not going to come apart.  Hopefully.

Third,

My neighbor was putting together a serious puzzle when we went over there about a week ago and I had an itch.  I NEEDED to buy a puzzle and put it together, twice.  So we went out and bought this 500 piece beauty and I put it together again the next day.  It was a lot of fun to do and even Joseph got in on it even after he explained to me that he is not interested in putting together a puzzle.  Oh the sacrifices he makes for me.  HOWEVER, when I was trying to take a picture of the moment we finished he thought it would be funny to make stupid faces.  He then confessed that he was trying to make his face really red but just ended up making weird faces for ALL of the pictures I took.  He is making a relatively normal looking face here.  He thinks he's SO funny...  *sigh* the problem is that I do actually think he's funny.  dangit. 

My Garbanzo Bean Loaf.

Last night was my first time cooking a vegan meal and I messed it up.  Haha.  It still tasted really good, but I have a problem measuring things - I just don't do it.  It wasn't until it was all mixed up and ready to go into the loaf pan that I realized that I had waaay too many garbanzo beans.  So it never set right and never *really* turned into a loaf and was just a hot delicious mess.

Sooo delicious.

So it was supposed to be a vegan version of meatloaf, something I LOVE.  It didn't really taste like meatloaf but it had the components and substitutions that somehow all worked together.  It was mostly blended garbanzo beans and rice which was the meat substitution with shredded carrots which I'm saying substituted the crackers and tomato sauce that substituted the ketchup.  I was very surprised by how WELL the tomato sauce stood out and tasted with everything!  Without that it wouldn't have been nearly as good.  All in all, I should probably measure things I put in the oven, but it was a tasty success!  

And we have TONS of leftovers.  

Another thing I forgot was sides.. I was so concerned with getting all of the ingredients for this that I completely forgot that you can't really eat meatloaf by itself nor would you probably want to eat garbanzo bean loaf by itself, so I opened a can of green beans.  They went surprisingly well together.  

All in all, I would definitely make this again.

Our whole foods plant-based diet.

I have one question.  Being one of the most advanced countries in the world, why do most people die from poor nutrition?  Most people die from heart disease and many die from diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and most of this is accompanied by obesity.

Joseph and I watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives a few nights ago and it left a pretty big impact on us.  Not that I hang on every word of a documentary - because you can make a documentary about anything you want to and talk about the results you want to (think "Michael Moore") but with this I do believe what they were professing, to be true.  It fits perfectly with what my church teaches with what is called The Word of Wisdom.  The diet (I hate using that word, it's more like, new eating lifestyle) is vegan (Joseph hates that word, it's more like, whole foods plant-based diet).. but when I picture someone who is a vegan I think of a hippy who does too much thinking and likes to hug animals and trees and has hairy pits. I want the world to know that my pits are not hairy, animals are okay and, well, I do like trees.  But I definitely keep up with the body hair thing.  My quest for a vegan lifestyle is because I have learned that animals and their byproducts are not something that we need to be eating regularly, in fact, we should be eating it sparingly.  If you want to good description of why I'm doing it, read this.

I have absolutely no idea and no experience cooking anything other than midwestern hearty meat and potato meals so this will be a challenge for me cooking things I've never even heard of before.  So I'll be blogging my daily struggle cooking for vegans.  I have the help of the ever-so-wonderful cookbook Forks Over Knives and will be cooking most of our meals from that.

Wish me luck!

It took me a while to realize the genius of this picture - eat before you cut yourself open.  Love it.

His portait.

Joseph so graciously accepted the offer to watch some kids while their mothers went to an additional Relief Society meeting last night.  Everything went well I guess and got a portait of himself out of the deal!

Kids are so cute.

I guess he was a robot that had lasers coming out of his nose (aka the mustache).

My giggling babe.

My neighbor, Kendra, came over to hang out while the boys when to their priesthood meeting Sunday night.  Saoirse had been in SUCH a bad mood all day, I blame her teeth, but I seem to think all of her crying ever is associated somehow with her teeth.  Anyway, Kendra came over and started making her laugh really hard and I got a video of it!  She's so cute.

Okay.... I realize this video is fast, I think I have to change its format or something.  Stupid blogger not supporting my Photo Booth movies.  I'm keeping the video there anyway, this does count as a blogpost and it won't be taken away from me!

My faith.

Why this is even an issue right now I have no idea but the church has stated that any publicity is good publicity.  So, I read this article and found what it said most inspiring.  If anyone wants to educate themselves, here is a good place to start.

Click the link below.
Are Mormons Christians?


Rather than listening to everyone else tell you what they think, try learning about what Mormons believe from a real Mormon.  I know it sounds crazy, but you'll be amazed.  I promise.

His lie-surprises.

For my 23rd birthday (which, by the way, was an age I never thought would come quite so fast) Joseph had something very special planned for me.  I was completely unaware of anything particularly special going on.  I thought (since we discussed this as a tentative "plan") that we were going to go out to eat at 8 pm after he got home from his church meeting and after I put Saoirse down for bed and we would enjoy a little alone time together out on the town.  BUT, birthday afternoon rolls around and I get called up to my neighbor, Kendra's, house for a gift and some questions about family history.  While I was up there Joseph had some plans of his own to make my birthday quite a memorable one.  When I came back down Joseph told me it was "time to go" and whisked Saoirse and I out the door and into the car.  We filled up the already half full gastank and headed north.  I had no idea what was going on and the further we got from home the more worried I got that the one diaper I had in my purse would not be enough for our seemingly lengthy trip.  At this point Joseph reveals to me that he had several "lie-surprises" for me.  A lie-surprise is a lie that he had told me that was going to be a surprise for me.  His lie-surprises were revealed slowly throughout the evening and came as follows; "I don't have Elder's Quorum Meeting tonight," "We're not actually going to eat at Los Hermanos," "We're not going to eat at 8 but right now," "I don't have school or work tomorrow," and so on.  He drove me up to Ogden, which was a looong hour and a half drive for me not having any clue what was going on, and we went to an AMAZING restaurant called The Timbermine.  Pictured below.

It's supposed to be like an old mine.        ..with delicious food.

Awesome door handle.

See?  Mine-like.

We had SUCH good food there.  We ate the best steak I've ever had (probably because it was wrapped in bacon) with King Crab legs and free fried mushrooms.

So good, and I don't even like mushrooms or marinara sauce.

 We got free mushrooms because we were sitting in a noisy booth.  Or something.  

I just thought any noise we were hearing was part of the "eating in a mine" experience.

Everyone ate in one of these little cubby things.  Excellent for private birthday celebrations.

But it actually looked more like this in there.  You couldn't really see the floor or anything but the cubbies.  Joseph only got the previous picture by setting his exposure time to a billion years to catch any and all light.

Lamp.

This lamp was nice because we could turn down the light so I could slightly more privately feed the babe in our cubby.

Then we were off to our next adventure!  After dinner I was in a hurry to get home for Saoirse to make her 8:30 bedtime.  But Joseph wanted to go "check out the awesome canyon" we were right at the mouth of.  Even though I told him that we needed to get home he didn't listen to me and turned towards the canyon.  I was quite frustrated and on my way to angry when he realized what was happening and told me his next surprise lie; "We're not going back to Provo tonight."  I was shocked and realized that that meant that he packed our stuff which made me worry he probably forgot something I desperately need, like clothes or my toothbrush.  But he reassured me by telling me everything he packed - which was almost everything I would have packed.  He even grabbed a multitude of diapers to my delight.  And after driving only a short while into the beautiful canyon we came to a stop at the Alaskan Inn.  

Across the street/canyon.  The mountains were pretty much in your face the entire time.  I loved it.

I love Utah.

She's half under the bed, but so cute in her disposable diaper and tiny little butt.

The amazing hot tub for two with jets.  I sat in here and drank sparkling apple juice with my man.

This might seem random, but this and the next picture are the best two pictures of the inside of the cabin we were in.  Joseph apparently forgot to get one of the whole cabin so all we have are bits and pieces.

Bed and ghost Abby.

Super yummy and FREE breakfast!  We got to choose what we wanted and when.  I chose to have hot chocolate and it was a good choice if I might say so.

Cabins.

Our beautiful cabin called the Kodiak cabin!  It was bear themed - you know, Kodiak.  The next time we stay here we're getting the Christmas themed cabin.  YES CHRISTMAS.  These people are geniuses.

Cabin.  Canyon.

I just had to add this birthday face.  I hope it looks this good when it's 80.

And now for a string of cute pictures of my baby.

She loves looking at trees.

She's pretending not to notice a picture is being taken of her.

Adorable lips.

Dang.  I made a perfect baby.

A perfectly fat baby.