Time for another installment of Saturday Eats! Just like last Saturday, we started out with a pot of coffee fresh from the Chemex. Unlike last week, however, the weather was chilly enough to make hot coffee more than tolerable; it was quite welcome. While S ground the beans and brewed the coffee, I whipped up a batch of Isa’s Puffy Pillow Pancakes, throwing in a bunch of blueberries frozen just after we picked them last month. I also munched a couple of Chocolate-Hazelnut Buckwheat Bites while I was preparing the pancakes, because why not. Gotta get my iron in! ;)

Lunch was the last of the Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup, which I really should’ve called a stew—it’s thick and not broth-y at all. I’ll be making this again as soon as the weather keeps cooling down.

For an early afternoon snack, I had a small bowl of (store-bought) kimchi, a couple of peanut butter-filled pretzels, and a few more of the buckwheat bites. S has taken to calling them bon bons, charmingly. I’ll have to try a few more chocolate variations because these were so damn good. S’s mom stopped by to meet Luna, so we shared a chocolate bon bon with her—she enjoyed them too. And then Luna did the most adorable little gesture while I was holding her.

Yes, she has WRAPPED HER TINY SKINNY LEGS AROUND MY ARM. Holy moly, could she be any cuter?! It almost makes up for the dozens of mucus-pukes we’ve cleaned up in the last three weeks.*

I snacked yet again during the late afternoon. S went out for a nine-mile run, and while he was being all active-like, I parked myself on the couch with a book and snacks—pumpernickel pretzels with hummus, followed by dried apricots.

After a trip to Whole Foods, I made myself a simple and quick dinner: polenta, sauteed eggplant, and Trader Joe’s meatless meatballs in a super simple tomato sauce I whizzed up from jarred whole tomatoes.

And that’s that! I’m sure I’ll have another snack this evening (and maybe my first pumpkin beer of the season!) but here are my nutritional stats so far: 72 grams of protein, 142% of my daily recommended value of iron (!), and 44% of my daily value of calcium. Good thing we’ll be moving on to calcium-heavy recipes next week! :)

What delicious things did you eat today?

*I jest. She’s a sick little pupperdoo, and we’re doing everything we can to help her get better, and we don’t begrudge her the need to puke up all that mucus in her throat. The vet no longer thinks it’s a straightforward (albeit severe) case of kennel cough, so she has an all-day appointment on Monday for an x-ray and a few other diagnostic tests. Right now we’re thinking it could be chronic bronchitis or pneumonia. Yuck.

Happy first Saturday of Vegan MoFo! Worn out by a week of seat-of-my-pants recipe makin’, I’m taking it easy this weekend. I’ve never been into those “what I ate today” posts, but I thought it might be instructive to see what my protein (and iron, and calcium, and and and) intake is like during a normal day of vegan eating. And this was a fairly normal day, albeit a hectic one—S and I rented a U-Haul van to bring our full-sized bed frame and mattress over to S’s mom’s house, where we picked up her old queen-sized frame (we’re upgrading!). Lots of heavy lifting and schlepping of things on a hot day, but I hope our nice big new memory foam mattress will be worth it.

Anyway, on to my eats! I did take some photos, but you know what? Nobody needs to see some crappy shot of a piece of delivery pizza. Y’all know what that looks like.

Our day started around 8:00 with a fresh-brewed Chemex pot of coffee. I had a clementine and a whole-wheat English muffin with almond butter and juice-sweetened strawberry jam from Trader Joe’s. I also gulped down a big glass of water, knowing I’d need hydration for the busy morning ahead.

By the time we’d wrapped up our bed exchange and returned the U-Haul, it was nearly 1:00 and we were FAMISHED. We shared the leftover Cajun-Spiced Cabbage, but upped the protein content by slicing up a Tofurky Italian sausage and adding it to the mix (we each ate half). I rounded off my meal with sliced celery and cucumbers dipped in garlicky hummus, and then enjoyed the last black bean brownie for dessert.

For an afternoon snack, I enjoyed a bowl of Trader Joe’s blueberry muesli with almond milk.

After a stupidly long afternoon of assembling* an Ikea boxspring/under-bed storage thing, making dinner was not freaking happening. We opted for Papa John’s cheeseless pizza with tomatoes and bell peppers on top, and I had a Woodchuck pumpkin cider to wash it down. Good decisions all around.

So, what were the final nutritional stats? Near as I can figure ’em, it looks like I got 58 grams of protein, 69% of the daily recommended value of calcium, and 74% of the DRV of iron. Not bad, but… could be better! It’s not terribly easy to calculate calcium and iron, since they’re measured as a percentage and not in grams or milligrams. But we’ll talk more about them in the weeks to come. In the meantime, I’m pretty pleased with the results. I’ve never really measured my daily nutritional intake, so it’s good to know that a day of not-so-inspired eating isn’t the end of the world, nutrient-wise.

How was your Saturday?

*S did most of the assembling, because he’s a weirdo who actually enjoys that sort of thing. A wonderful, lovable weirdo.