I eat vegan food and love it

Vegan Food For The Win!

Hey Everyone! I'm back with another food post. I have a lot of posts that I'm working on (Mordor Updates, Makeup Reviews, and more...) but none of them are ready. So... you are getting more food pictures! I hope you like it!
 

Garden Herb vegan burger on olive bread with garlic dill pickles, vegenaise, ketchup, mustard, and Zapp's BBQ chips. 

 

Quinoa Burgers on Olive Bread. Ketchup, mustard, and vegenaise on the burgers and Zapp's BBQ chips on the side. 

 

Angel Hair with soy sauce, liquid aminos, and sesame oil. 

 

Leftover Lasagna (remember that post from last week? That lasagna!) 

My mom and I stopped by the Fresh Market and I picked up some vegan sushi. This is a really fantastic spring roll! (I didn't eat the white sauce.) 

Here we have vegan sushi made with brown rice. I try to et brown rice when I can to get that little bit extra nutrition that white rice lacks. 

 

Here you can see the wonderful spring rolls dipped in the sweet chili dipping sauce. 

And here is a close up of the vegan sushi. I drizzled soy sauce on top of the whole package since I was planning on eating the whole thing. The only downside to eating vegan at a sushi restaurant is that you have to order about twice as much food to stay full. Eating one pack of sushi will only keep me from being hungry for an hour or so (the avocado adds another hour), so I have to either eat more sushi, or eat a snack later.

 

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Check out my next food post! 

NaNoWriMo and More

So, you might be able to tell from the title, I'm going to be doing National Novel Writing Month in November. It is a challenge to write a small novel (50,000 words) in 30 days. I haven't actually written any stories since 2009/2010, so I'm pretty nervous about just starting to write a book. I am hoping that this will get me out of the writing slump I have been in for a while.

Because I will be attempting to write ~2000 words a day, I will be only posting one blog per week in November. I will be using all my writing abilities for my story and not for my blog... so what can you expect for November?

1. October Makeup Empties... this will probably come later in the month because I think I will have a ton of products to discuss and it will take some time for me to do all the research I need for the post.

2. Walk to Mordor Large Update: weeks 44 through 50 or so. I'll also talk about my first year doing Walk to Mordor and how much longer I believe it will take for me to complete the walk.

3. a huge food pictures post... this won't be too difficult, so I might do a few of these.

4. an update on my NaNoWriMo at the end of the month.

So... that's it for now... look out tomorrow for another food post!

I ate stuff

I ate stuff. What a shocker! Here are some things I ate recently.

Zapp's are local kettle style chips that come in a huge variety of flavors. This was a flavor they had at the store that didn't contain dairy (why must salt and vinegar have milk in it, why!?!), so I got Cajun Dill Gator-Tators. OMG! These are amazing! They are pretty salty, but really great.

Sesame garlic noodles in a box from the store. I keep buying these for days when I have no time to cook. They are really great. 

 

One of my favorite salads ever. This is Coffee Raini's Curry Chicken Salad (without the chicken). It is a mix of lettuce, cabbage, carrots, raisings, apples, grapes, and coconut flakes all mixed with a sweet curry dressing. So yummy! 

Earth Balance White Cheddar Mac n Cheese with Steamed Broccoli.  

Leftover Homemade Lasagna. 

Garden Herb vegan burger with pickles, mustard, ketchup, vegenaise, on olive bread!

 

This is the last of my Teese Cheddar vegan cheese on olive bread that I nuked in the microwave. It doesn't microwave very well, but it still tasted ok. 

 

And last, but not least, we have BBQ flavored Zapp's Potato chips. I liked these almost as much as the dill gator-tators.

 

Have any of you tried Zapp's? What are your favorite flavors?  

Walk to Mordor Update Weeks 42 and 43

Hello All! I'm back with my WTM Updates! It has been a really long time since I did one (July, if you can believe it!) and I'm here to bring them back, since I'm trying to step up my fitness in these next few weeks. If you haven't heard of  Walk to Mordor, it just means that I'm tracking my mileage and tracking how long it is going to take me to get to Mordor and back to the Shire following Frodo as he brings the ring to Mordor. I like the idea of using a fantasy world as a motivational tool to get fit.
As I've been trying to organize my posting schedule on my blog, I've decided to do Walk to Mordor Mondays, so all my Mordor and fitness posts will be on Mondays from here on out. My hope is to update every other week and the other Mondays will be days to talk about other cool fitness things like products and exercises. Here is my update from weeks 42 and 43!

Week 42

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Goal Weight	Projected Goal Date	Week #/ Day
270	268.3	175	2017	42/ 4-5

Date	Activity	Total Miles this Week	Beginning Mileage	Ending Mileage
7/13-7/19	Walk and Hike	17.28	520.16	537.44

Location	Notes
On winding paths, starting to head southeast.	This week (15th) was my one year vegan anniversary! I was sick this week (a hangover from the week before) and didn’t get much done in the way of exercise. It was also pretty rainy, so walking was a no-go.

Week 43

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Goal Weight	Projected Goal Date	Week #/ Day
270	268	175	2017	43/ 5-6

Date	Activity	Total Miles this Week	Beginning Mileage	Ending Mileage
7/20-7/26	Walk and Hike	16.48	537.44	553.92

Location	Notes
Reach another mountain crest. Turn Southwest for descent and walk along cliff edge.	Again, I didn’t do much in the way of hiking this week, but I did go into town in Hendersonville a few times.

That's all for now! Next Monday, I'll post another update!

Things I've Been Loving

Another Things I've Been Loving post for you guys!

I've been really busy these past few weeks, so I haven't had much time for discovering new things. I have been, however, rediscovering old things that I had forgotten that I loved. This post is all about those old things I had forgotten about, and I'm not quite sure how I've been going on without them in my life.

1. Evanescence- I used to listen to Evanescence almost every day for my last two years of high school. I fell in love with the song "Lithium" from The Open Door. It was the first song I heard/ watched the music video for that I said "I have to get this" the moment I first heard it. Some of my other favorite songs by Evanescence are "Going Under", "Imaginary", "My Immortal", and "Everybody's Fool" from Fallen. My favorites from The Open Door are "Call Me When You're Sober", "Lacrymosa", and "Good Enough". The only song from Evanescence that I could say is a favorite is "What You Want". I haven't listened to the album enough to feel like I could say any of the others are my favorites. Here is "Lithium" if you want to watch it.

I love the opening lyrics:

Lithium, don't want to lock me up inside.
Lithium, don't want to forget how it feels without...
Lithium, I want to stay in love with my sorrow.
Oh, but God, I want to let it go.

 

This describes perfectly (for me at least) the feeling of how I felt when I was on depression meds. I felt like I was being bottled up and distant from my emotions. Is it better to feel like you are crying all the time, every day, or to feel empty? It's a hard choice. Nothing is more strange than feeling guilty about wanting to feel sad again because you miss it. Welcome to my internal battles.

2. Doctor Who- I finally watched The Day of the Doctor and the ending of Matt Smith's time as Dr. Who. I bawled my eyes out, it was so emotional. Now I just have to catch up on this season before Saturday... yeah... not going to happen. But I'll probably read the episode synopses and move on with life. And this was my favorite line in this season:

3. The Vegan Peach- I've been watching videos by TheVeganPeach on YouTube for a while now and I love that she "tells it like it is". Her videos are really refreshing and real and have no "fakeness" that some of the vegan community on YouTube have become. I highly recommend her blog and her videos! Here is one of her videos about why honey is not vegan:

4. The Dollar Tree- I used to go there all the time in college. I stopped going when I came home because it was easier to go to other stores. However, they have the best Halloween decorations and they are only $1! I also have found some really great unbreakable glassware (I have glasses I have dropped onto wood floors several times, and they are still going strong). I got some really great black and purple fake flowers with glittery plastic spiders in them to stick in some glass bottles I found at Michaels. There we go. Halloween decorations done! Check out their Halloween products here!

That's it for now, Peeps! What are some of the things you have been loving recently?