What Do You Eat??

Over the past year, our family has made a change in our diet. We had been cutting way back on meat intake for a while, and then we cut back on dairy. This past year, we've moved to a primarily vegan diet. We try to stick with 90% vegan foods, with a lot of veggies, fruits, nuts, whole grains and beans.

The "90% vegan", practically speaking, means that we eat vegan at home with exceptions at restaurants and celebrations like birthdays. I stick with it the most strictly. My exceptions are pretty much confined to our monthly trips to our favorite Indian restaurant. I choose only vegetarian items, but I know they probably have ghee- clarified butter- in them. I've been doing this long enough that I've really lost the taste for meat and dairy. Daddy "celebrates" more than the rest of us. ;-) His diet, though, really is much better than it was before.

Anyway, I thought I'd just post what we eat for about a week, just for fun. People seem to be curious as to what you eat if you don't eat meat. Here goes:

Saturday
Saturdays are our feast days. We're busy during the week, so our meals are simple then. I try to do something special to welcome the Sabbath on Friday night, and then we all like a big breakfast/brunch on Saturday morning. The kids, on this day, got up and ate apples and had a glass of almond milk. I guess this was their first "snack" of the day.
Breakfast: Oatmeal Pancakes with Orange Syrup, fresh raspberries, and orange juice. I'll post the recipe for the Pancakes. We love them, and I use the leftovers to make almond butter and jelly sandwiches for Bryan to eat for his weekday breakfasts. (He eats in the car on the way to work, so it has to be portable.)
Lunch: Breakfast was late, so there's not really much "lunch" to speak of. Just my homemade whole wheat challah with carrot sticks as a snack.
Dinner: Spaghetti (Bryan's absolute favorite), homemade whole wheat French bread, steamed broccoli, and a big salad with olives and cherry tomatoes. We had almond cookies for dessert.

Sunday
Breakfast: We need to be quick in order to get to church at 8:30, so I made QUICK bread. Orange Quick Bread. Even though I made it with spelt and cut the sugar in half, it's still kind of a treat. I opted for muesli, but then ended up sneaking the last piece of Orange Bread when I got home from church. Justin wasn't happy about that. I guess he was planning on doing the same thing, but I beat him to it.
Lunch: Lentil Nut Mini Loaves, Baked Potatoes with Chives, Steamed Kale, and Fresh Cherries for dessert.
Dinner: I decided we just HAD to run some errands, so we found ourselves out around dinner time. Poor planning on my part. The kids had had Lara Bars in the car earlier, but they were HUNGRY. Anyway, we went to a Souper Salad, and got big salads and vegetarian soup with fresh melon for dessert. We made (mostly) vegan selections. I think a couple of the kids got ranch dressing, and I can't vouch for the cornbread. As a sidenote: It was a perfect opportunity to see that here in America, one can make himself a full "salad" without touching a single vegetable.

Monday
Breakfast: Steel Cut Oatmeal with Almond or Soy Milk. The kids have theirs with a touch of molasses and cinnamon. (My Opa from Tennessee gets us the best molasses.) I have mine just with cinnamon. Later, we had apples for snack.
Lunch: Stir-"Fried" (really steamed) Veggies and Rice, Steamed Bok Choy, and Kiwi for dessert. The kids had Bananas with Almond Butter for snack before gymnastics.
Dinner: Almond Butter and Jelly Sandwiches for the kiddos, Big Salads for everybody. Mango Smoothies for dessert (mmm, yummy!) (Bryan eats a late snack at work, and then usually has our "lunch" for dinner when he gets home. He gets home late, so that works out better during the week.)

Tuesday
Breakfast: Fruit Salad (with lots of yummy fresh and frozen fruit) topped with milled flax seed and Almond Cream Sauce (made with almonds, dates, and water).
Lunch: Leftovers!! The kids had spaghetti and I had stir fry. We had had baked tortilla chips (just baked corn tortillas) and black bean dip (black beans and salsa whirled together in the food processor) as a snack earlier. We had been raking mulch all morning and we needed some fortification!
Dinner: Pecans and raisins for afternoon snack, then Big Salads and Vegetable Soup for dinner. My friend Kristi gave me the idea to have salad stuff (lots of variety) in the fridge just to pull out whenever. Then everyone assembles their own salads. It's fun for the kids and really healthy too. I also fixed the kids smoothies. These are a good way to get them to down some things they might not otherwise eat. (In this case, I was trying to get a certain avocado-hater to consume some heart-healthy fat. Shhh...)