Kelly the Vegga’s Top Three Travel Tips

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

Dudes and dudettes, I’m going to Italy! In five hours! Well, we leave Rhode Island in five hours and have a layover in Newark before departing for Rome, but essentially it’s the same thing. That’s why we’ve been cleaning out our fridge and using up pantry food. VeggaSis’ boyfriend will be caring for our dogs and will probably stay over a few nights, but he’s no chef and will probably just resort to nachos and such for his meals, so we have been eating leftovers like mad lately.

But anyway, I want to share with you my top three travel tips. Going to college in Minnesota meant that I have flown quite a bit during the last four years. I’ve also been lucky enough to experience Europe three times previously, once on an EF Tour to London & Paris, once to visit a friend studying in France (we took an overnight jaunt to Germany while I was there), and I also did a summer off-campus studies program in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland a few summers ago. I am fortunate enough to have a friend in Spain (she did a homestay program with us years back), so I visited her during my midterm break while I was studying abroad. So although going to Italy will be the first time VeggaMom, VeggaDad, and VeggaBro have been abroad (VeggaSis did an EF Tour last summer), I’m a fairly seasoned flier. So I’ve decided to share my top three tips to help you feel the best you can during your travel experience. ;) These tips are most helpful for international flights – since those situations often mean you’re traveling in one way or another for extended periods of time – but they’re also applicable for shorter domestic flights. So here we go!

1. Resist Temptation

Sure, the airport is full of seductive snack options, and when you’re on the go, the lure of Cinnabon or Starbucks can be strong. But eating crap all day long is going to take its toll. I used to skip breakfast before an early afternoon flight back to school and instead opt for a bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts when I was at the airport. By the time I’d landed in Minneapolis, I’d be starving, but I’d inevitably be rushing to catch a bus back to Carleton and wouldn’t have time to eat. Or, if I did, I might grab a pathetic little parfait at one of those ubiquitous snack kiosks. And if I’d had a layover in between, chances are good that I would’ve noshed at Cinnabon. But crap like that just doesn’t make my body happy. Maybe the fact that those yogurt parfaits have a sad little assortment of bland, watery fruit makes it seem like they’re okay, but come on – you can do better. Pack your own fruit salad with the fruit you’ve got to use up anyway, make yourself a sandwich, or put together a yummy trail mix. Not only will you save yourself from feeling like crap later on, but you’ll save money since airport food is almost invariably ridiculously overpriced. I’ve finally learnt this lesson, so this morning I drank a delicious Green Monster and shared an apple with my sister. I’ve got dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds for later, and I just bought a few Larabars for a little energy boost later, because heaven knows what Continental will decide to serve for dinner, and I’m betting it won’t be too appetizing for those of us who don’t eat mystery meat!

2. Start Guzzling

Hydration is key, folks. Drink water like it’s going out of style before, during, and after your flight. Flying tends to dehydrate you, and I hate feeling parched and all tight-skinned and gross when I get off a plane. Keep drinking and your body will be better able to fight off all the nasty airplane germs and then everyone will be happy. I’ve got my Carleton Nalgene right by my laptop and I’ve been sucking down the ol’ H2O all morning.

3. Maintain thy Oral Hygiene

This one is stupidly simple, but for some reason it took me ages to figure it out. Bring your toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste in your carry-on and keep your chompers sparklin’ clean! Maybe it’s just me, but having freshly brushed teeth always makes me feel 50% cleaner, and when I’m flying I tend to start feeling grungy after a few hours in airports and on planes. Chewing minty gum only goes so far, and brushing my teeth before and after flights helps combat that feeling of all-over nastiness, and I think it’ll work like a charm for the extreme grossness I experience when taking a trans-Atlantic flight. And if brushing your teeth in a public bathroom skeeves you out (which, to be honest, is pretty much the case with me), you can wait ’til someone cleans one of the restrooms and then dart in there, or you could bring some of those wet wipes and wash the handle, or you could use bottled water and not even touch the handle at all… don’t let germ phobia keep you from feeling minty fresh!

So there they are, folks, my top three travel tips. And now I’m going to go have a marathon water-drinking session, eat a healthy lunch, and then blow this popsicle stand!

Ciao!

Green Monsters – ur doin it rong!

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

Guys, I’m an idiot.

You know how there’s that stereotype of the book-learned, academically gifted person who, while brilliant, lacks common sense and an ability to function outside an academic environment? Well, that’s not me. Not exactly, at least. I mean, my dad may tell me I’m brilliant, but c’mon – he’s my dad. And in general I do have common sense, and I think I am perfectly capable of functioning in the real world.

But sometimes I can be a real blockhead.

I’ve been drinking Green Monsters a la Angela all summer now, despite the looks of revulsion I get from most family members when I gleefully stand at the kitchen island pulling pieces of kale apart and throwing them into my blender with wild abandon. I have grown to love green smoothies and I just can’t understand why more people don’t try the gorgeously colored drinks.

But guess what? All this time I’ve been ignorant, misguided, foolish. Today, however, I realized what I’ve been doing wrong, corrected my error, and have now entered a state of Green Monster nirvana. My mistake? Not blending my smoothies long enough.

Yeah. Really. It’s that simple and that stupid. Today I was tempted to blend it for longer because of the rather revolting slimy banana chunks that I found in my last smoothie, but I don’t really care about the reasoning behind my change at this point. All I know is that adding an extra twenty seconds to my blending time creates heaven in a glass. It was a hallelujah moment when I took a sip of this Monster and realized that no longer would I be forced to chew up bits of unblended kale! No longer would I find large green specks between my chompers! And no longer would I be confronted with slimy banana bits! New vistas of smoothly blended bliss have opened up before me. I’ve seen the light!

Smooth green bliss.

I wish I had an older photo for comparison, because seriously – this Green Monster is pure velvety bliss compared to what I’ve been drinking. No wonder it seemed like my old smoothies weren’t green enough – I wasn’t truly blending them! And no wonder they always photographed poorly. It probably also helps that I’ve graduated from a Carleton pint glass to this posh crystal number I dug out from my family’s “special occasion” cupboard, but still. Even if I did drink this from a pint glass it would still be heaven in a glass.

I’m so elated and energized by this discovery that I’m going to go do some core and arm exercises to celebrate. Guys, I never work out in the morning, but since this Monster goes down easy (that’s what she said), it also goes down faster than my previous Monsters, and has already given me a boost of energy to fuel an unprecedented morning workout.

Hallelujah!

Please forgive the LOLspeak in my title. Even though spelling errors make me cringe (English major alert!), I find LOLcats ridiculously amusing. Forgive me!

The Not-So-Humble Carrot

/ Kelly / Leave a comment

Sometimes it seems that the most ubiquitous foods are the most under-appreciated. I’m pretty sure that if you were to ask someone to think of a vegetable off the top of her head, the likelihood that “carrot” would come up first is pretty high. But who really gives carrots a second thought? I mean, yeah, they’re orange and kind of phallic, but I think most of us take them for granted despite these two rather special characteristics. And that’s a darn shame, because carrots are wonderful for so much more than dipping in hummus as a tasty afternoon snack.

You probably know where I’m heading with this, but allow me to give you a brief bit of background info before I get to the good stuff. First, for your healthy body, carrots are chock-full of carotenoids, and a diet high in carotenoids (both alpha and beta carotene) has been shown to decrease the incidence of certain cancers. Beta carotene also keeps your immune system strong and helps to promote cell growth. Carrots are bursting with vitamins A, K, and C, and they’ve got respectable amounts of fiber and potassium to boot. Plus, the potency of carrots’ antioxidants has been shown to increase when cooked! That last bit is good to hear, because although I love raw carrots, I also love using them in baked goods. ;) So let’s get to that, shall we?

Last night, to do his part in our clean-out-the-fridge attempt, Dad grated up all our remaining carrots and threw together a carrot salad as a side dish for dinner. But there were a few cups of leftover grated carrot left after he made the salad, so Dad turned to me to do away with the remainders, and I knew just what to make.

Immediately I thought of the Carrot-Raisin Muffins from VWaV. I remember these little suckers fondly. Last winter when I was still at school, I whipped up a batch and froze a couple of them for my big comps exam weekend. During the first weekend in April, I took my comprehensive exercise exam and wrote a bunch of essays on a predetermined list of literature; Carleton requires students to take ginormous exams or write long papers to prove that we’ve actually learned something during our four years. ;) I did almost all my essay writing in the Libe, and prepared a big snack tray of delicious brainfoods to keep me going. I took along a couple of these muffins, and they helped me not only to pass the exam but to achieve distinction on my comps. Needless to say, I now associate carrot muffins with grreaaatt successss. ;)

So last night I made a batch of Carrot & Cran Muffins, replacing the raisins with dried cranberries because, as I’ve said before, raisins remind me of bloated insects and I am rather stubborn when it comes to including them in my baked goods. I think cranberries make a delicious substitution, personally.

Carrot & cran numminess!

Yum! Healthy and delicious. I love the fact that these muffins contain two whole cups of grated carrot. They’re so hearty and fresh tasting. But I didn’t stop with muffins. I turned to Isa and Terry – as I so often do – and decided to make a batch of Carrot Cake Cupcakes for a not-so-healthy dessert.

More carroty deliciousness.

Color me seriously, seriously impressed with these cupcakes. Although VCTOtW has yet to fail me, this might be one of my favorite recipes. I know this picture doesn’t actually show the cupcake’s crummy innards, but trust me – these babies had that sort of smoothness that makes a great carrot cake, and the flavor was phenomenal, even with my minor moderations. Although I know that “classic” carrot cakes contain nuts, my sister is allergic to all nuts, and I never bake anything that I can’t share with everyone! So I replaced the walnuts with sunflower seeds to retain the crunch that nuts give to the cake, and I think it added a really interesting textural change (not to mention some extra protein). I also failed to find soy yogurt at the supermarket (ugh), so I hit up Google for an alternative. I found this recipe for soy yogurt replacer from Celineyum, but I think I used too much cornstarch because my soy “yogurt” was quite gummy. This in turn led to some rather gummy batter, but after adding a little extra soy milk, I think I fixed it. Once baked, the cupcakes teetered on the edge of being the tiniest bit gummy, but not enough that anyone would really notice since they were so darn tasty and moist. They were a huge hit with everyone, especially after I totally de-healthified them by adding the vegan cream cheese frosting from VCTOtW. Mmm.

While Googling nutritional info on carrots for this post, I came across some interesting (ahem) websites. First, Oprah tried to tell me that I should “hide” carrots in her recipes for Italian meatloaf, brownies, and cranberry sauce. Thanks, Oprah, but no way – I want my beautiful bright carrots where I can see them, out in the open and sharing their gorgeous color with the world! The last thing I want to do with carrots is stow them shamefully away in a hodgepodge of ground-up animal flesh. No sirree, no carrots in meatloaf for me. Then I discovered the World Carrot Museum, which isn’t an actual museum but an online devotional for people even more obsessed with carrots than I am. And if you’re interested in juicing – something I don’t do nearly often enough – you should check out this site for some carrotastic juice recipes.

Bottom line? Carrots are amazing and delightfully multifunctional. I love love love veggies in desserts; zucchini bread is one of my all-time favorite quickbreads. And carrots cake? You just can’t beat it. Plus, look how colorful these suckers can be!

Colorful carrots!
(Yeah, I borrowed that photo from here.)

So do yourself a favor and go give those orange veggies in your crisper drawer some lovin’! Your body (and tastebuds) will thank you for it. :)

Ciao!

Brain Games, Wheat Berries, & Pudding for Breakfast

/ Kelly / Leave a comment

I’m happy to report that my grumblings about the weather seem to have driven it away, as yesterday was sunny and generally lovely. I celebrated the return to summer by taking Tamale on a nice long walk, which would have been perfect if half my neighbors hadn’t decided it was a perfect day to mow their lawns. You’ll probably think I’m a freak, but I severely dislike the smell of freshly cut grass, most likely because I think I’m allergic to it since I get headaches whenever I smell it. But whatevs – I’ll gladly take a headache if it means I get to feel the sun on my face and hear the delighted screams of youth as I walk past a group of children bouncing on a trampoline. Ah, summer.

Anyway, on to the healthiness. Let’s start with my healthy mind, shall we? I think you should all check out GamesfortheBrain, a fun little website with a nice selection of games to help wake up your grey matter and justify all the time you spend puttering around the internetz! “But, ma, I was developing my brain’s ability to adapt quickly to new situations!” Heh heh heh. Brilliant.

Although some of the games are kind of lame – “Marsmoney” seems better suited for some sort of elementary school exercise – others are fun. “What Was There?” is one of those pesky ones that asks you to memorize a scene and then questions you on its details. “Memocoly” asks you to repeat patterns of colors. There are also a bunch of word games, but I haven’t tried them yet – I’m too addicted to Word Warp to branch out just yet. ;) All in all, these are not incredibly mentally taxing, but they’re still a fun way to give your brain a mini-workout. And the little “brain tips” you get when you answer a question correctly challenge you to do more – try taking a shower with your eyes closed to let your other senses take over! Hmm… we’ll see about that one. So check it out and have some fun!

But I don’t spend all my time playing on the internetz – I’m workin’ on having a healthy body, after all! Last night I experimented with wheat berries for the first time. I know I came late to the wheat berry party, but better late than never, right? Anyway, I cooked these suckers according to the package and used them as a bed for some tofu I marinated in a variation of the Italian marinade from Vegan with a Vengeance and then grilled on the George Foreman grill my aunt gave our family. I’d never used ol’ George’s grill for tofu, but it worked pretty well, even if one piece was a little more blackened than grilled.

Tofu & wheat berries & veggies, oh my!

To be honest, I was a little wary of all the balsamic vinegar in Isa’s marinade – I kinda sorta despite vinegar in all forms – but I couldn’t taste the acidity of the vinegar once the tofu was cooked, so overall it was a success. Since it was a clean out the fridge kind of night – more on that in a later post – I had some leftover garlicky green beans and sliced the corn off a leftover half corncob for my veggie sides. Yum. The wheat berries were chewy yet tasty, and I felt satisfied knowing that I was filling my body with lots of fiber and protein.

While I was hunting around in the fridge for leftovers, I noticed a big container of cooked rice. “Aha!” I thought to myself, “I can do something with that!” After dinner, I took some soy creamer that needed to be used up and poured it over a big bowl of the rice. I added some dried cranberries (because raisins are nasty, y’all – they’re like big bloated bugs when they swell up in liquid!) and a bit of almond extract and let that bowl marinate overnight. This morning I heated the conglomeration up in the microwave and had Brekkie Rice Pudding!

Rice pudding for breakfast? You bet!

So it’s not the most gorgeous mixture in the world, but I thought it tasted pretty darn good. Next time I’ll add less almond extract, because the taste was *almost* a little too strong. But overall, I was pleased with my fridge emptying skillz.

Ciao!

It’s raining, it’s pouring…

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

…and summer days like these are boooring…

New England’s had a rough summer. I came home from college after graduating and all I wanted was a nice, hot couple of months. I mean, let’s be honest here, this is probably the last “free” summer I’ll ever have. But instead of sun, humidity, and 90+ degree days, I got rain and cold and clouds, at least until a few weeks ago. Then summer began. It still didn’t feel like the summers of my youth – all sun and Del’s frozen lemonade and playing in the pool for hours – but I wasn’t going to complain. Girl’s gotta know when to take what she can get, sometimes.

But now it’s raining again and that’s just not cool. So instead of puttering around the yard, walking the doggies, or lounging by the pool with a book, I’m cleaning my room and spending too much time on the internet. Bleh.

But instead of wallowing in weathery despair, I can remember sunny days of yore and let them give me hope for tomorrow! Like last Saturday, the 11th. VeggaSis just graduated from high school, so we had a combined graduation party with all our family and some family friends, and the weather was perfect. I vetoed a cake and decided to make four batches of cupcakes instead. I made a dozen each of the plain chocolate and golden vanilla cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Then I let VeggaSis choose another kind – she chose S’mores – and decided on Mucho Margarita as the final dozen.

Man alive, but these came out FANTASTIC. I couldn’t find the huge multicolored large sugar crystals the gals recommend for the Mucho Margarita cupcakes’ “rims,” so I just used pink instead. I loved these – the flavor was delicate yet delightfully lime-y, and the icing had just a hint of tequila. I didn’t add as much liquid as the icing recipe suggests, because it was already pretty runny by that point. I think they came out just dandy.

Yeah? Yeah. And the S’mores cupcakes looked even cuter. I know the rest of you churn out gorgeously decorated cupcakes like the OctoMom pops out babies, but this was my first time using anything other than a butter knife to frost my cupcakes and I was proud. I should give credit to VeggaSis for the graham cracker crumbs and Hershey piece decorations, since she did that at my request. The cupcakes themselves had phenomenal flavor, rich and malty and delicious. I’ll definitely make these again on their own.

May I have S'more cupcakes, please?

Scrumptious, yeah? The compliments I received on these made all the little squabbles VeggaSis and I had during the baking process totally worth it.

But don’t worry – the plain ol’ vanilla and chocolate cuppies weren’t neglected! VeggaMom and VeggaDad were in charge of the decorations for these suckers, and since VeggaMom was foiled in her plan to get cakes with VeggaSis’s and my photos on them (no joke!), they decided to personalize the plain cupcakes in their own way. Here’s the whole spread.

Yup, my parents are nutters.

Cute or crazy? You decide! :P

And, last but not least (unless you like cupcakes better than people, which would be totally fair!), here’s a photo of VeggaSis and me at the big par-tay. We don’t look particularly alike in this photo, but for some reason people always confuse us/think we’re twins/think she’s older than me (GRRR), so we made shirts to clarify things. ;) Oh, I’m the one on the right, with the blue shirt – and yes, I know that my little sister is taller than I am!

We so puuurdy!

Right – off to do some yoga. Ciao!

Mens sana in corpore sano…

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

It’s taken me a long time to find my “thing.”

If you’re like me and obsessively read vegan/health/fitness blogs, you’ll know what I mean. Katie has her chocolate, Angela has her glo[w], and Susan has her remarkable talent for inventing delicious fat-free recipes. I started a food blog over at Blogspot a while ago, but I just wasn’t feeling it – there was nothing special about it, and eventually I got bored just posting about food. So I started this blog with vague notions that it’d be more holistic, that I’d talk about my path to healthiness and how that path is not centered around food alone. But I still wasn’t feeling it, and after a couple of lackluster posts I sort of ignored my newborn blog, feeling guilty yet not quite guilty enough to post.

And then I read At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (a surreal and hilarious book, by the by, that I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys Irish fiction and thinks that Joyce is overrated) and suddenly I knew what my “thing” would be. It’s stupid, really, that it took my reading a completely random book to figure it out, because it’s not like “mens sana in corpore sano” is a saying that’s unknown or anything; it’s pretty common! But, hey, I’ll take it. As soon as I read the bit of dialogue where one character quotes that aphorism, I literally got all wide-eyed and excited – “a healthy mind in a healthy body” is an absolutely perfect way to describe what I’d like to achieve.

See, I think I’ve got the healthy mind part down. I just graduated from Carleton College, a fairly unknown yet highly selective, challenging and utterly fantastic small liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, the town of “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” I now have my BA in English, various honors, and 16 years of institutional learning behind me. I think I’ve got the healthy mind covered.

But it’s the healthy body part that’s stopping me up. I’ve made great strides towards healthiness recently, but I’m not there yet. I’ve been vegetarian for four years, but basically eat vegan these days, and I’ll make the “official” switch soon. I took yoga during my last term at college and fell in love, and I’m trying to add strength training and cardio workouts to my daily life. I want that healthy body to match my healthy mind, gosh darn it, and this blog will chronicle my path to holistic healthiness.

Before I wrap up this little introductory post, though, I’d just like to add one more thing, and I’ll elaborate on it further in another post if need be. This is not a weight loss blog. There will be no calorie-counting, pounds-lost-recording, or fat-complaining here. I want to get fit, not to lose weight. Thanks to genetics, I have been skinny all my life, and now I’d like to become toned and truly fit. I hope this doesn’t alienate anyone reading my blog – everyone’s journey to healthiness is different; some of us need to lose weight, and others need to gain it to be truly healthy. I recognize that, and I hope that those who are on trying to lose weight can recognize and respect those of us on the other end of the spectrum. Weight is such a touchy, controversial issue, and it really shouldn’t be. If I ever do count calories or quantify my weight, it will be for a very specific purpose which I will make clear in my post.

So I guess that’s it – I’ve made the trek from Blogspot to WordPress, expanded my horizons, am about to embark on a quest to become wholly healthy, and I couldn’t be happier!

Ciao for now!
Kelly