When you bake potatoes, do you bake too many on purpose? I do, so I can make something yummy with them the next day. Here's a fantastic recipe I made on Sunday morning. It's adapted from the book Vegan with a Vengeance. I encourage you to try the vegan version! Any substitutions you do with flesh, I can't vouch for the results.
Vegan Chorizo and Potato Brunch
Heat oven to 350. Cube two or three leftover baked potatoes and put them in the oven in a roasting pan to crisp up on the outside. You can toss them in a tiny bit of olive oil if you think they need it.
Pulse these items in a coffee grinder or crush in mortar and pestle. Set aside.
Mince one large onion and saute in a bit of olive oil with three minced garlic cloves. Add the spice mixture and saute a minute or two. Add about 1/2-1 lb of veggie mince. (I just dumped some in). Add 3 Tbs ketchup and about 1/2 cup of water, 2 bay leaves, 1 cinnamon stick and a few big grinds of black pepper. Reduce heat and simmer until liquid is evaporated. Turn off heat, cover and let sit while your potatoes finish browning. (If you use meat you're going to have to do all sorts of browning and draining away of grease and making sure it reaches a certain temperature so it doesn't give you trichinosis and all sorts of stuff. Good luck with that.)
When your potatoes are a lovely golden brown, take them out of the oven and toss them in the skillet with the chorizo.
Strut when you serve this for a Sunday brunch.
If you must, you could have toast and scrambled egg or tofu with this, but we just had big platefuls of it with real coffee.
It was a huge hit with our omnivorous friend who stayed with us for the weekend.
I got a letter from CILIP today. I was successful in my application for ACLIP certification. So now I have another qualification to add to my CV.
My passport application is filled in and all I have to do is get my countersigner to sign it, and off it goes to the Home Office (along with my US passport and certificate of naturalisation--eek! I hate sending off my valuable documents) and in about three weeks I should have my shiny new UK passport.
Everything seems to be coming together as planned. Yay!
Thought I'd post my July rotation. This rotation has a cross-training focus and includes meditation on rest days. Kundalini yoga also incorporates meditation and chanting.
JULY 1 Ultimate Stretch Kundalini Yoga 2 Endurance for Movement (functional training) 3 REST meditation 4 Yoga Burn (ashtanga) 5 Bootcamp Maximum Calorie Burn (plyos & cardio) 6 Get Ripped to the Core (weights--light, high rep) 7 Express Cardio (step) 8 Better Burn, Better Buns (functional) 9 REST meditation 10 Body Fusion (step with weight intervals) 11 Total Body Power Yoga (ashtanga) 12 Aerobic Body Shaping (step with weight intervals) 13 REST--Kundalini Yoga for Beginners & Beyond 14 Body Sculpt (weights--slow and heavy) 15 Ultimate Stretch Kundalini Yoga 16 Low Max (step) 17 REST meditation 18 Yoga Burn (ashtanga) 19 Strength in Movement (functional) 20 REST meditation 21 Super Cardio Sculpt (cardio) 22 Total Body Power Yoga (ashtanga) 23 Cardio Sculpt Blaster (step) 24 Jiggle Free Arms (step with upper body weight intervals) 25 REST meditation 26 Finding Your Core (functional) 27 Ultimate Stretch Kundalini Yoga 28 Basic Step (step) 29 Jiggle Free Buns (step with lower body weight intervals) 30 Yoga Burn (ashtanga) 31 REST meditation
Maybe this functional training will shake up my body just a bit. I've been doing Jari Love 3 times a week in June, so the functional training is something different.
Did you know that if you are not a community member, you can still contact me by clicking the 'contact me' link to the right? A window will pop up allowing you to send me an email through extrapounds. So if you're a lurker with no extrapounds account, contact me if you like!
Today has been a rest day and I've eaten very well! (Using the phrase in the old sense, as in I've had some good things to eat today. Although nothing I've eaten has been terribly bad).
Breakfast: black coffee 1 slice wholemeal toast with coconut oil and strawberry jam 1 slice wholemeal toast with cashew butter and strawberry jam
Snacks: small pineapple, coconut and banana smoothie
a few soya crisps
a raisin biscuit
Lunch: courgettes stuffed with brown rice, olive caper and tomato filling green beans with mushrooms vegan chocolate cake (which has aged well and tastes better for having been wrapped in foil and left alone a few days) topped with a scoop of dairy-free ice cream
I can see all obstacles in my way Gone are the dark clouds that had me down Gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day
Whew, I feel better this morning. Yesterday was a bad day, talk about hormone surges!
Today is my Citizenship Ceremony! I'm going to do a cardio workout and then wait around here for time to go. DH is going to go out to pick up a few things, including flowers for the flat! We'll take a cab to the register office because 1) I can't really walk that far in high heels and 2) it's actually raining today, despite my opening song. But then, it does rain here an awful lot.
So this morning I've had real black coffee (I think I needed it!) and a bowl of yummy soaked muesli, my favourite food. I've taken my round of supplements (flaxseed oil, calcium with vitamin D, B12 and selenium) and am working on the first pint of water for the day. I do intend to have a few drinks tonight in celebration of my new citizenship status, then next week I apply for a UK passport!!!!!
I will tell you all about the ceremony and post photos ASAP.
Have a great day!
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I'M BACK! Have posted two new photos of Britain's newest citizen! Woo hoo!
I have had the worst case of PMS today that I've had in a long time. I have been trembling, angry, bloated, fat, unhappy, grumpy and pretty much just plain evil. I have raised my voice, cried, thrown things and eaten half a box of chocolates. I've got precisely 7 zits on my face; two of them can only be described as massive. My belly is pooching out a country mile. Nothing feels right, everything is pissing me off and I can't hang on to anything. Everything I pick up I drop. I can't find anything. I burned the dinner. I tried to make a cake and it didn't rise properly. Why the heck did I try to make a cake? I've already eaten half a box of chocolates today! What do I need with a cake? Vegan cakes suck anyway--that's why I never bother with cake. But I saw some people on TV eating cake and decided I wanted some. I have been nothing but psycho all day. It started around 10.00 this morning and just hasn't let up since. I just ate dinner, having eaten any and everything in sight all day, and my hand was shaking so bad I was having trouble forking up my noodles. Which tasted like crap anyway, as I'd burned the garlic.
I swear to you I feel like I am swimming in grease. I feel like my skin is oozing greasy fat, that I am nothing but fat. I feel like I could eat junk until I literally puke. (Sorry to be blunt, I'm feeling very, very blunt today. As my poor husband well knows.)
The dark clouds lifted briefly around 1.00 when I actually started, but since then it's all been building up again. It's 7.00 and all is SO not well. I hate hormones. Things aren't usually this volatile for me. I don't know what is going on. Maybe it's also stress from having the citizenship ceremony tomorrow. It's a huge big step in my life.
Ugh. This fat roll hanging over my shorts is grossing me out.
Okay, so stock take. What exactly have I eaten today. Let's make a list; lists calm me down.
scrambled tofu on wholemeal toast, No Caf grain beverage with a bit of non-dairy creamer
post-workout smoothie shake and 3 Healthy Choice apple and raisin biscuits
2 whole meal oat with dried fruit biscuits
2 veggie burgers on wholewheat buns with lettuce, tomato, thousand island dressing, ketchup and mustard; about 10 chunky chips
half the top tray of a box of chocolates--something like 8 chocolates--these are those Belgian shell truffles with hazelnutty stuff in the middle
licked the bowl and spoon while mixing up a vegan chocolate cake
half a small sliver off the end of the loaf of the cake when it came out of the oven (checking for edibility as a visual check was inconclusive)
stir-fried broccoli and rice noodles with seitan
and lots of water all day
So that's what? 5 servings of bread, a bit of veg and protein and the rest sugary junk (so what if it's "wholegrain health food store junk"--it's still junk!)
If I had a sleeping pill I would take one and go to bed. I am so ready for this miserable day to be over.
I just did my first Kundalini yoga session last night using a new DVD called Ultimate Stretch Workout. I enjoyed it very much. It incorporates some chanting and some breathing techniques that I was not familiar with. I would have felt more comfortable with the chanting part if hubby had not been in the next room with the door open. There's a sort of singing meditation at the end that I had trouble with. It goes 'Guru guru wahe guru, guru Ram Das guru'. Guru means spiritual teacher, and this mantra invokes Guru Ram Das, the patron saint, as it were, of Kundalini yoga. I didn't feel comfortable invoking Ram Das, but found that when I substituted Jesus and Buddha, my spiritual fathers, I felt much better with it. I have no problem with a mix-and-match spirituality, so doing a kundalini workout while praising Jesus and Buddha felt perfectly fine to me. (I haven't updated it in a while, but I have a separate blog devoted to my spiritual practice called Present Moment, Wonderful Moment. Maybe mentioning it here--and this new addition to my practice--will inspire new blog entries there! In fact, come to think of it, I probably should have posted this entry there! Oh well!)
My only other experience with yoga has been ashtanga or power yoga, and I am sick to death of sun salutes!
I like the workout so much I ordered another of Ana and Ravi's workouts, Kundalini Yoga for Beginners and Beyond. 202 five-star ratings at Amazon can't be wrong!
For today, though, it's back to regular old weight lifting--hello Jari Love! Then after that workout, we're going to do a bit of shopping for some black earrings.
My citizenship ceremony is tomorrow at 2.30!!!
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Update: Just finished Get Ripped with Jari Love and drank my first Nutrient-Rich Shake. (See entry below). I didn't have the maca powder because the purveyor no longer stocks it and haven't sourced it elsewhere yet; also left out the probiotics. It was tasty and really hit the spot after a tough workout. Hooray for new things!
Yesterday I went and bought a new blender and spent some time ordering unfamiliar new ingredients for Brendan Brazier's "Nutrient-Rich Shakes", recovery food for post-exercise. On their way to me now are containers of hemp protein, gelatinized maca powder and chlorella powder. Can't wait to get this new book and start reading up!
