A Few Things I Ate This Week

Yesterday I spent FOUR HOURS cleaning the kitchen and pantry. I took a quick break for lunch and I was super-glad to have this to eat (without making another mess!) so I could get back to cleaning. I tossed an embarrassing amount of food out due to lack of organization on my part. I have another bag of food that isn’t out of date but I bought some crackers that I didn’t realize have milk in them and there’s a few things I don’t see us eating before they go bad.

Part of this effort was also to rearrange the cabinets so my kids can see healthier, more filling options right at eye-level. Also, I’m weary of buying boxes of crackers and cookies that get opened before the old ones are gone. Once the current stock of these pre-packaged things are gone, I won’t be buying as many to replace them. I’m trying to be more mindful of all the vegan and gluten-free convenience foods that aren’t necessarily the healthiest.

Beans and rice recipe is coming soon!

Confession time: I have an addiction to smoothies. This one is almond milk vanilla yogurt, almond milk, frozen mangoes, frozen pineapple, chia seeds and peach slices.

Look what I found at Aldi! It’s a tiny bundt pan for the Instant Pot! There are a couple of recipes I’ve been wanting to try but I couldn’t justify buying a bundt pan on amazon, but then I stumbled across this for $5 at Aldi.

This massive bunch of kale was $1.79, I think, at Harris Teeter. I ended up having to put it on two sheet pans to make kale chips. My oddball kids got super excited about kale chips. We had these with lasagna made with kale ricotta. Kale with a side of more kale!

I made a full batch of these gluten-free vegan banana flax muffins.

I also had more bananas in the freezer and made these Banana Bread Muffin Tops from Oh She Glows. I have made these in the past but I was a little wary this time because I was using frozen bananas that didn’t look super-appetizing as they thawed on the counter. But they turned out fine, so yay! I keep these in the fridge for breakfast and snacks.

I made a batch of these energy balls (recipe coming soon!) but with chocolate chips. These are what I have been eating for breakfast the last 2 days and snacking on while I cleaned.

This was my Publix cart on Friday. The seat is all produce and most of the main basket part is more produce. I’ve been better about remembering my reuseable bags too! Yeah, there’s some a2 milk in there (sigh.) but other than that, it’s a completely vegan and gluten-free cart! I love Publix produce and will drive past multiple other stores to get to go to their produce section. Probably the cashier wanted to run for dear life when she saw all this produce on the belt. (I remember loving ringing up produce as a cashier but most other cashiers hated it. I enjoyed the challenge of learning what everything was and all those 4-digit codes. I’m a weirdo.)

Anyway, I will be posting the Red Beans and Rice recipe on Monday and probably the energy balls recipe later in the week. I also post random pics of things I eat on my instagram (@thriftyveganeats).