Peas & Thank You Tempeh Bacon Reuben

Before we talk about this (amazing) recipe, we're taking a trip back in time.

One year ago this past Thursday (May 31), I was in Santa Barbara visiting my then-boyfriend (now Fiance) and my friends. I had just taken the USMLE Step 1 (Boards), and it took me a couple days to recover emotionally. I was finally feeling like I was on vacation and was spending the day on my own while John worked. I ran, I went out to lunch, I went shopping.

That was the first time I ever had a Reuben Sandwich. Here's the post about that day. Little did I know, John would propose that evening, but that's another story.

At the time I think I wrote that this was pretty good, but really it was kind of bland. I just didn't have anything to compare to.

Until now. 

Thanks to Mama Pea, I now know what a Reuben should taste like. This is another recipe from the Peas & Thank You cookbook. Pretty much all the recipes are written for 4, but I often adapt for things like sandwiches that don't keep as leftovers, because I'm typically just cooking for one or two people. 

I've been eating it all week, and I just make an individual serving each time. I fry up 3 slices Tofurky Tempeh Smoky Maple Bacon in just a little cooking spray, then transfer to a plate and use the same little pan to make my sandwich. I cut down the Earth Balance on the bread a little - but I think some is an essential part to the taste. You need that salty crispiness on the outside of the bread. For individual servings, I just put the Vegan Thousand Island dressing ingredients directly on the bread and swirl around with a knife, instead of making the sauce separately in a bowl. Also, I'm not always the biggest Daiya (vegan cheese) fan, but this is exactly the kind of meal it's designed for. The only other change is that I'm using Ezekiel 7 Grain instead of Rye. 

It sort of tastes like a super grownup grilled cheese.

Usually after about 4 days, I'm glad that my leftovers are gone because I get bored of a dish, but I think I could keep eating this indefinitely. 

It's that good. 

What's the meal you could eat over and over?

Peas & Thank You Broccoli Salad

Morning friends. Happy Sabbath. Our charming grandmotherly cleaning lady has run of our house and John and I are once again coffee shop working until Church. 

This picture is from 2 weeks ago - but it literally looks exactly the same. He's wearing a slightly different checked shirt today. 

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a recipe update that I skipped over in all the excitement of going to Colorado to see Shannon graduate.

I made this dish last week but never worked it into a post. As you may recall, one of my "25 by 25" - 25 things I want to do by my 25th birthday in October - is cooking all the way through the Peas & Thank You cookbook. I haven't yet made a page with all my recipe reviews linked, but that's coming soon. This is an adaptation of your standard broccoli salad - complete with some fakin bacon.

I used to love broccoli salad. I have very happy memories of rare nights when Mom and all of us kids would go to the Roth's Deli when cooking just wasn't going to fit into the nightly schedule. Along with the chicken fingers and the potato wedges, broccoli salad - though a rare choice - was always super tasty. Around the age of 11, I became a vegetarian, and broccoli salad didn't make the cut.

Until last week, I'm pretty sure it had been 13 years since I had anything so closely resembling the classic.

This recipe combines Vegenaise with some smoky bacon (I used Lightlife), red onion, dried fruit and cashews for extra crunch.

The day I made it, I only let it set up for 2 hours in the fridge and I wasn't so sure about it. Most of it was perfect, but the red onion was little too strong for me.

However, the next day it was perfect. The time to sit and soak up the flavors toned down the sharpness of the onion and it was just right. I loved how filling it was without feeling heavy. I had it for lunch 4 days in a row - and it just kept improving.

I would definitely make this again. Just let it set up in the fridge for a whole day.

Do you have a favorite recipe that gets better with time?

Study Day, Peas & Thank You Pineapple Stirfry

I went to bed at 9:30 last night and slept in until 6.

I can't even tell you how awesome it felt to wake up ready to get up, and find that I still had plenty of day in front of me. I don't really like to sleep in if it means I wake up feeling like my day's half gone.

So with my sunrise I went for a slow 5 mile run, fueled by 1/2 a banana with a peanut butter shmear. I've stuck mostly to 3-4 mile runs lately simply because my workout time is so limited with the number of hours I've been putting in at the hospital, and 5 miles kind of worked me. I'm okay with it, it just means I've been working hard in other parts of my life.

I came back rull sweaty and recovered with my favorite shake: 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 frozen banana, 4 g vanilla pea protein, and today I tossed in a few frozen raspberries:

I tried to be really intentional about structuring my day so that I would study LOTS but have productive fun breaks and end the day feeling like I spent it well, but I don't think I really succeeded. 

I did manage to clean my desk and room and feel a little more organized. I also cooked well and went on an adventure to Target with my roommate Molly, where I found Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter on sale. Yes. 

Study-wise I did do some work but I bet if I totaled up the time spent on study vs. all the other things, I would find that poorly justified time wasting won. 

Some of that time was spent very well though - cooking. 

For lunch I mixed up a Satay Partay Tasty Bite sauce packet with crispy fried tofu and veggies. I'm still using the sampler my Mom bought me for Christmas - thanks Mom. 

And I ate it out of a metal prep bowl I had previously used to hold my chopped veggies. We like to save dishes in this house.

And as part of my Target trip I picked up ingredients for dinner and made Mama Thai's Pineapple Cashew Stirfry from Peas & Thank You. I served it with quinoa instead of rice, and I have leftovers. I thought this was really great. I don't really like the lemon tofu from Pick Up Stix, but it kind of reminded me of it, but with only the parts I like - the tang and the crispy, without the overly sticky sweetness. 

I just realized I ate kind of a lot of tofu today. No apologies, it was great. 

I still have lots of work ahead of me this week, but tomorrow I get to check off the EKG, Preventative Med and in-house subject test. 

It's weird because on the one hand this week is full of free time and on the other hand it's full of stress. I've kind of forgotten what it's like because on most rotations we just have a couple days of tests and we work right up to it. Internal Medicine is a longer, bigger rotation with a lot of extras to fit in, which is why we have this week. I'm just doing my best to compartmentalize my mind a little so I can enjoy the free time without it all being crowded out by test stress. I feel like I used to be good at this? 

Thai Veggie Burgers from Peas & Thank You

After my review of Hunger for Change this morning, I just really wanted a pile of vegetables for lunch, but a body needs more than raw lettuce, so I was pretty excited to realize I had some of Mama Pea's Thai Veggie Burgers in my freezer.

John and I made them a little while ago and ate them burger-style complete with pineapple slices:

The ingredients are pretty simple, but these come together really well. The main substance comes from oats and garbanzos. I thought they were really good - but I've come to expect Mama Pea to pretty much blow me away and they kind of just reminded me of nice baked hummus. The texture was a little on the soft side, though maybe that was the fault of my frying. So my verdict was just okay. 

That is until today when I put one on a salad:

It just needed a little something extra and I think pairing it with a generous drizzle of Asian dressing brought it up to my expectations. 

And if you're thinking this looks suspiciously like a mixing bowl, you're correct. When it comes to salad, we don't mess around here. 

There's still one burger in my fridge that I'm planning to pack up like this salad-style and take with me for lunch tomorrow. 

Meanwhile I'm counting down already - just two more days of wards, 1 week of tests and Internal Medicine

is officially behind me.

Unless I have to repeat it.

Remember this morning when I said I was going to go study?

I did. I just obviously stopped again. Since I'm writing.

I swear I'll go back to work soon.

Can I tell you something I learned?

Can I?

Yeah I'm trying to think of something I learned...

Here we go: Crohn's disease is granulomatous. Celiac is not, so you can use that information when you're differentiating them, among other things.

Also S1Q3 for posterior hemiblock. Do these words not mean anything to you? Yeah me either.

I feel like I need another veggie burger.

Vegan Mac & Cheese from Peas & Thank You

I've been feeling like I'm on the brink of illness. It could really go either way. First I feel a little feverish and like my throat and head kind of hurt, and then I feel okay within a couple hours, so I'm sucking down the tea, slacking on exercise and making comfort food.

#25 of my 25 by 25 list is to cook all the recipes in one of my cookbooks. Am I going to completely hate Peas & Thank You by the time I'm done? We'll see. Mama Pea hasn't really failed me yet.

Tonight's dish was Lulu's Mac & Cheese. I followed the recipe exactly in terms of ingredients. Complete with 8 oz. of Daiya cheddar, which I've never used before. It does a pretty fair job as vegan cheese goes, but I still prefer nooch for most things.

The changes I made included cutting the pasta by a couple ounces and replacing it with 3 steamed crowns of broccoli (because you know I can't restrain myself from adding veggies) and some Linketts that I browned in a frying pan before stirring it all together. Also I used penne noodles. Nothing against macaroni noodles, I love them, I just didn't have any.

The verdict? Completely awesome. It's very cheesy - it could probably have even handled even more veggies and been all right, but I liked it really well in this exact ratio. The recipe made probably 4-5 good sized bowls and if possible I can tell you it was even better as leftovers.

Or maybe it just tasted better because my head couldn't decide if I'm sick or not and all I wanted to do was lie on a couch and watch Ghost Whisperer on Ion. Yeah that's one of 2 channels we get.

Instead of Ghost Whisperer though, I hung out with my EKG book and my question bank again. I'm starting to get stressed about nearing the end of this medicine rotation and not knowing nearly enough. It's rough to end on an inpatient rotation with pretty long hours too - makes me a tired whiner. Someone tell me to suck it up and study.

Tofu Ricotta Gnocchi - from Peas & Thank You

Today I got home from my last day at VA inpatient just in time to make dinner with John. Last night we had planned to make the Tofu Ricotta Gnocchi, but when it came time for it we weren't really that up for cooking, so we put it off to tonight. I'm working my way through all the recipes in the cookbook for my 25 by 25 list, so here's another one from it.

The recipe is kind of interesting, because it's gnocchi-like in style and process, but doesn't actually have potato in it. It's actually a tofu/vegan cream cheese/flour/seasoning mix.

I wasn't sure I got the consistency of the dough quite right, but I added some extra flour as I was rolling it out until it wasn't too sticky.

Rolling it out to about the length of the cutting board and then slicing made piece just the right side. I tried to make the little gnocchi marks with a fork, but that worked out better for some than others. Some were too sticky and the fork sort of tore them. More flour pretty much solved it. 

We also ended up cooking them a few minutes longer than the recipe called for because they seemed too soft when we first tried them.

And we served them up with steamed veggies, the Peas & Thank You tomato sauce and topped it all with nooch.

The best part was actually the tomato sauce for sure. The gnocchi tasted great, but I just didn't love the texture - still too far on the soft side. I think though that anything topped with this sauce would be awesome and I'll definitely be enjoying the leftovers later. 

Tomorrow it's off to Riverside. People also call it "hell" or "the jungle." I can do anything for three weeks right?

What's your stance on soft gnocchi? 

Post-Call and Day Off

I finished my long-teased 25 by 25 page - check it out for the things I'm working on before my birthday this year. It also explains the two Peas & Thank You recipes in this post - #25 is cook all the recipes in one of my cookbooks. 

Today was my only complete day off in this three week block. I have three total but the other two I had to go in for at least a little class. I tried to keep it a little productive. Worked on a paper, read about the liver and the lungs, but also it was kind of fun.


Yesterday I was post-call, which just means the day after you've been on call and are therefore at least a little sleep deprived. On-call days are longer than regular - if it's overnight it could be 30 hours, but most of the time for us students they're like 18 hour days.

Really it's just an excuse to rock your wrinkled scrubs, smudge your mascara, down an extra cup of coffee and walk around with your eyes 3/4 open. People see the scrubs and say, "Oh hey are you on call?" And you say, "No, post-call." Meaning, "Yeah, that means I have an excuse for looking like this." It doesn't give me an excuse for my rough face all the other days, but at least every few days I have it.

It's also an excuse to eat this - Overnight Oats in Jar. In the mix: Milk, chia seeds, oats, leftover peanut butter scraps, maple syrup. And 1/2 a banana added in the morning. Being able to just pull my breakfast out of the fridge the morning after call was so nice.

After we got done with all our rounds and discharge workup, we were able to go home for some needed rest.

First I picked up some veggies at the Sunday farmer's market:

Then John and I went on lunch date to a new place: Thai Kitchen in Grand Terrace. I got the Cashew Tofu with brown rice:

And finished off lunch with the last of the Call Brownies ("Call" anything = baked goods I make and take with me when we're on call for my team) I made the Peas & Thank You recipe, but added a 1/2 cup of walnuts.

And then today, DAY OFF! I slept in until 7. It was nuts. 

For my day-off breakfast, I made Peas & Thank You French Toast with Ezekiel bread and a berry sauce for John and I. It's impressive the way somehow this recipe mimics that eggy batter without the eggs. John's fave breakfast is still oatmeal, but this was pretty tolerable.

And we also did some yoga under the powerlines, where there's some nice grass. I went on a run and realized just a couple blocks in that I was already thirsty and it was 80 degrees outside. I was pretty thirsty when I got back.

"Yoga Bawss."

John doesn't let me spell "boss" the normal way anymore. 

And tomorrow it's back to work as usual. 

Internal Medicine's almost half over and I feel like I need to step up my study game, but I'm also learning a lot on the wards. 

If you were on call, what baked goods would you want someone to bring?

What I Ate Wednesday: Internal Medicine

WIAW!

As always a big thanks to Jenn at Peas and Crayons!

Internal Medicine is my new rotation, and since it's outpatient right now the hours are still pretty reasonable, but I know in a couple weeks it's going to blow up and I'll feel like I never see my house, so I'm trying to cram in as much studying as possible. I wouldn't say things are boring, they're just kind of routine. I do love that I don't start until at least 7:30 am, so I can work out and still have a little time in my morning, instead of leaving the house at 5 like my roommate. That part of the rotation is coming for me though, just a couple weeks away. 

Post-workout Pre-Breakfast Shake. 1/2 frozen banana, 1/2 cup soymilk, 5 g vanilla rice/pea protein powder. I use the Magic Bullet short cup.

Breakfast: Granola Yogurt Bowl. This one has soy vanilla yogurt, bulk bin granola, and blueberries.

Lunch: Thai Crunch Salad. Veggie Love! This is the Peas and Thank You recipe, with a store-bought teriyaki marinade and salad dressing. I made an enormous box of it - the full recipe, without the dressing, and I'm taking it out in portions each day. There are so many veggies in here - 2 types of greens, scallions, carrots, cucumber. Plus healthy protein like edamame and tofu.

Dinner: Amy's Chunky Vegetable Soup, Gardein Mandarin Orange Crispy Chicken. More Veggie Love! I was feeling a little uninspired, and had just woken up from an awesome 2 hour nap. Minimal effort on this one.

Snacks: Apples, Orange. I actually had three of these baby apples. It may have been too many.

Tea.

Favorite vegetable?

After the Half Marathon Refuel

Figuring out how to eat enough/hydrate/not feel sick/not go overboard can be kind of tough for me after a really long run, or in this case a race. I think I did pretty all right and felt pretty good. I had some post-race nausea that I was trying to work around and looking back at the day I didn't start rehydrating aggressively enough, but otherwise, I present:

A Day of Vegan Refueling

It helps me to count calories for days like this because my hunger signals aren't always trustworthy. I was a little nauseous until about 3 pm, but I know from experience it's a bad idea to put off the refueling. The body just breaks down.

Immediately after finishing the race. 60 calories in this bottle, and piles of potassium.

Some of my Mom's Chocolate Hazelnut Tea on the drive home. 15 calories. 

Then we made some pancakes.

And Little Links - 8 g protein and just 90 calories in 2.

Chocolate chip pancakes x3 + 3 Little Links with 1.5 tbsp peanut butter and 2/3 tbsp maple syrup, I don't really like my pancakes drowned = 585 calories. Pancakes were 90 each.

This is the Peas and Thank You Apple Cinnamon recipe with white flour and replacing the apple with about 4 tbsp chocolate chips for the batch. Mom had to thin the batter a little, and it made 14 pancakes.

This is a Trader Joe's stew. It's good but as my Mom pointed out, needed piles of veggies for the amount of sauce. I ate half a package with 1/2 a banana. 215 calories + 50 for the banana = 265.

Vita Cafe Vegan Basic Burger with Tempeh Bacon and Daiya Mozzerella. Around 500 calories.

Irish Oatmeal Cake with Coconut and icing. Around 350.

And how many calories do I burn running a half-marathon? Well my Garmin said 1266, and I'd say it feels like that.

So that's 1750ish calories of refueling goodness. I think I did a pretty good job. It's tough you know. Sometimes you have to eat cake. 

And the pancakes were SO good. I may have a new post-race tradition.

Refueling advice? I'd love to hear your wisdom.