Post, post, post!

Apparently I stink at blogging regularly. I could never make a fortune off of this. I am too irresponsible! Two more weeks done, and two weeks closer to the Wheat Belly Diet. I am feeling like the Vegan Diet is not as restricting as the Wheat Belly, so hopefully I will be shedding more lbs in the near future. I am still up two pounds from my lowest vegan weight. Thank you North Carolina and your amazing fried food!

I still haven't made the fried pickles, but I have the ingredients and recipe in hand and will be making them as soon as the stars align and I can bring myself to heat up oil and deep fry those dill babies. This past week I tried two new recipes, and of course they are sugary and sweet. The first was an adapted recipe from ourbestbites.com. They have amazing recipes! I had some black bananas and used them in the Carmelized Banana Bread recipe. amazing! Here's what I did to make it vegan:

3 tablespoons vegan butter substitute
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
4 medium ripe bananas
1 cup vanilla almond milk
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
3 TBS corn starch
9 ounces (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 cup dark chocolate chips (any that are dairy free)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9×5″ loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
Slice the bananas. Set aside.
Over medium-high heat, melt 3 tablespoons vegan butter. Add the bananas and brown sugar and saute for 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.
Pour the banana mixture into a large bowl. Beat on medium speed until kinda smooth, kinda chunky.
Add the almond milk, oil, vanilla extract, and corn starch to the banana mixture. Set aside. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture slowly on low speed until just combined. Add the chocolate chips.
Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. It will be full! Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes or until golden brown on top and a pick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it. Cool for 10 minutes and then remove the bread from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

I skipped the butter glaze because I needed the chocolate chips that particular day. You could make it with almond milk and vegan butter substitute.

The next chocolate my body needed was no bake cookies, so I found a generic recipe and made it vegan:

1/2 C vegan butter substitute
2 C sugar
1/2 vanilla almond milk
4 TBS cocoa
3/4 C peanut butter
2 tsp vanilla
3 C Quick Oats
3/4 C dark chocolate chips (without any milk product in them)
Melt the first 4 ingredients in a sauce pan continually stirring, and once it hits boiling, let boil for 1 minute without stirring. This makes it carmely! Remove from heat and stir in the PB, vanilla and oats until combined well. Add the chocolate chips after it is cooled enough to touch, but still a bit warm.
Spoon portions onto a wax lined cookie sheet and refrigerate until cool and solid.

My kids devoured these, and if I had flax seed or something healthy to add, I would have! They are amazing, and I would love an excuse like flax seed to make them a health food!

I no longer think that vegan=skinny. I can make almost any dessert into a vegan one now with a few staples like vegan butter, almond milk, veganaise and dark chocolate chips. This diet is great for those who have cholesterol problems, but for those without self control who just want to be thin (i.e. me) this diet has been a no go for weight loss. I do feel "cleaner" on the inside, if you know what I mean, but definitely not leaner!

As an aside, for our cheat day we celebrated my friend Kelsey's birthday and made paninis. AMAZING!!!!! Get some french bread, slice it for sandwiches and butter one side of both. Layer on freshly sliced mozzarella, peperoni, tomato, avocado and salt and pepper and either put in a panini press, or do like I did and squish it in your George Forman grill. Life changing. Why am I still up two pounds? I don't get it...