The juicer is here.....

The juicer is here, the juicer is here.  As you can tell I am very excited and so is our son.  He was the first one to have it out of the box, unfortunately I had no fruit in the house to juice, so off to the grocery store I go.


Now it's unpacked, washed and waiting to be used.  The juicer came with a disc of e-booklet's, they are funny.  First off there is four booklets, three are almost identical and then one on beauty treatments.  The pictures are from the 70's and the juicing recipes are almost all the same. 


So now starts the job of making sure that our picky eating son gets some good nutrients into him.  Not sure if you can survive on bread, butter, plain pasta, pizza and apples.  I bought him chocolate flavoured Ensure, to help him put on some weight and some added nutrients, he said it tasted yucky.  Tasted like chocolate milk to me, sigh!  Hopefully all my efforts and money, will be rewarded, probably not, being a mom is sometimes frustrating.


I am going to start out plain, apple juice, maybe try carrot, watermelon and grape.  I might need to get a second job to supply us with all the fruits and vegetables I will need to buy.


A recap on dinners this week, the Green Curry Deep fried tofu was a bomb.  I had never used green curry before and when I added it to the coconut milk it didn't turn any shade of green.  So I added another spoonful and then another.  Yikes, it was so hot we couldn't eat it, we had to throw it out.  Bless my husband who made a good effort at it.  I made french bread to go with the Guoda and Lentil soup and it was a big hit.  Well, except for the son of course, who just ate the bread. 


It's the company christmas party tonight, so will let you know what "vegetarian" dish I get served.  I will be trying the Sesame crepes with mushroom cream sauce tomorrow night.  Also Christmas decorating will be taking place over the weekend.


Have an excellent weekend everyone.  (my two followers)

A few bits about getting all my vitamins

Good morning everyone, thank goodness it's Friday. Our 18 month old daughter is going through a phase of clingy, whininess and night waking, it's exhausting, so I need to make sure that I get proper nutrition. This was one of my concerns when turning vegetarian. Chatting with a friend while picking up our son yesterday, she mentioned that a good friend of hers was debating becoming a vegetarian but was always anemic. There are lots of ways I have learned to make sure you get your iron, especially for us women, while being a vegetarian.


The one thing I learned is that when you are eating a food with iron, always have it with something with Vitamin C, it increases the absorption. Spinach salad (tons of iron) with a citrus dressing, oatmeal with orange juice, etc. For me, I also take an extra iron supplement during a certain time of the month. Although I don't always keep up on my iron, I can always tell when I am lacking, when I have good sleep but still feel very tired and no energy, that is when I take some extra iron supplements.


Another vitamin I was concerned about was B12; I do take a B12 supplement, but have also discovered Nutritional Yeast. Full of B vitamins and a complete protein, I try to add this to one of my meals a day (it has a cheesy flavour).  I usually add it to my pasta, pizza, anything that would taste good with a cheese flavour.  


Here is a great looking broccoli and cheese soup that uses nutritional yeast, again from Vegetarian Times...

Of course, I am not an expert and you should read up on all the nutrients and where to get them yourself if considering becoming a vegetarian.  Also talk to your doctor or a nutritionist, hopefully I have offered some insight into what you need.  I always consult the vegetarian food pyramid for my daily food choices.

A little history of the why

Well today I am going to start with a little history of why I decided to become a vegetarian. I was always raise a meat and potatoes girl, my family had to have meat, potatoes and some sort of boiled to bits vegetable for dinner. For about the last two years the thought of cooking meat has made me sick, I remember opening a package of ground beef and being grossed out by the blood that was at the bottom of the tray. Then I started getting mental images of the cow it came from and that was that for beef, but I still ate chicken. Then one day I was making some sort of dish with chicken thighs and when I bit into it I hit a small piece of bone, gross, again. So that was it for chicken. Now all I had left was seafood, then I got a bad bit of shrimp and there goes the seafood. I still eat some dairy, real cream for my coffee, the odd bit of cheese, mostly Goat Cheese and some Brie. I don't eat eggs as well and that stems from cracking open an egg to find blood and other bits inside and I thought I was going to throw up right there and then. That is when I decided on being a veggie, I read alot of books as I knew this was going to be a major change to my life and families as well. We have a very picky 6 year old and if he doesn't eat meat he would get no protein, so for now I am keeping him a meat eater. My husband, doesn't like alot of meat, but occasionally likes his double cheese burgers or meatloaf, I actually make a pretty good meatloaf (which I will now have to show him how to make).
My favourite book is "Becoming Vegetarian by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis", the bible for me. I wanted to make sure I was going to get all my correct nutrients, protein, calcium, etc. and this book had it all. Then I started, I went to the grocery store, stocked up on what I thought I would eat and away I went. It has been a bit difficult in the sense that the rest of the family still eats meat, so I try to make dishes that I can substitute tofu for the meat or I'm cooking two separate meals. Not always fun. Also I am a mother of a 6 year old and a 18 month old, so I need fast and easy recipes, nothing fancy here. I have a few good cook books, but rely on the Internet for alot of recipes as well. But I am finding it difficult to find fast, easy and inexpensive recipes. So, here starts my journey of blogging what I eat, hopefully I can help others out there that need some meal plans.

Here is what I have going to have for dinner for the next couple of days, I thought I would start with dinners mostly, as breakfasts for me are pretty simple, I need to get a 6 year old off to school. I eat mostly cereal, oatmeal, waffles, fruit that sort of thing, so nothing special in the vegetarian world there.

Nov. 17, I am going to have the Spicy Tofu Bento Bowl that is in this month's Vegetarian Times, it looks super yummy and if my version looks half as good as the picture, it's going to be great.

Nov. 18 I have planned a Polenta and mushroom lasagna, another Vegetarian Times recipes.

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10175?section this is the recipe for the Spicy Tofu Bento Bowl, tell me that doesn't look yummy.

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/9770?section= here is the polenta lasagna, yum.