weekly eats roundups

NYC Birthday Weekend Vegan Eats and Being a Hot Mess

January 21, 2019January 21, 2019by Katherine Baker1 Comment

Hello everyone! I haven’t shared a “what I’ve been eating lately” -type post in a while. I didn’t blog a ton over break because I was in serious need of some down time, and had a bunch of technical issues with getting my computer fixed. Anyways, I had a great break and an awesome final weekend to top it off. My sister and her husband flew out to celebrate my bday/just hangout (okay, they came to eat), so I thought I’d share some highlights.

This is definitely not reflective of my normal eating pattern (I rarely eat out, especially when I’m at school), but since this was a fun weekend, I thought some things were worth sharing. Enjoy!

(Pst, if you’re looking for more NYC recs, here’s my Guide to Vegan Eating in NYC. It could use an update since last January, but it’s still a solid list!)

Friday:

Early Friday morning I flew into LaGuardia from Milwaukee. About 15 minutes into our uber ride home, southwest called me to tell me I left a bag there. I had a mini lack-of-sleep-induced panic, but my uber driver was super understanding and took me back to get the right bag. Not sure if it was the lack of sleep and coffee, lingering sickness, or the fact that I was traveling with my dog and disabled mom, but I was so out of it this day! Mood:

Thankfully there was no harm done, and the correct bag made its way back to me, and after that, I headed home to my apartment in jersey where I dropped off my luggage and doggo and quickly freshened up before heading to a meeting on campus.

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Midterm Season Vegan Eats + Cherry Bombe University Recap

November 7, 2018November 7, 2018by Katherine Baker2 Comments

Hello once again to my fine internet friends! I hope you are having the warmest coziest fall filled with mugs of tea, hearty soups, scrumptious baked goods, and warm blankies. I’m back in the blogging game after a fatiguing few weeks of midterms and application work.

Midterms really did not bring out the best in me this year, and after crying in public from lack of sleep and overloads of stress, I decided it was a healthful idea to take a step back from the internet and putting pressure on myself to blog for a few days and focus on learning how to chill and sleep and and socialize and eat like a normal homeostatic human being again.

But! I’m feeling quite restored after this weekend of naps and friends and oodles of baking and wanted to share some meals and snacks from the past few weeks. Hope you enjoy! Leave me your favorite snacks and cozy meals in the comments below, or pop over to my Instagram and slide into my DMs.

I’ll also be recapping my experience at Cherry Bombe University, so keep on reading for that!

Avocado Toast with Za’atar:

This was a new-to-me-combo that I’d wanted to try out for a while. I also added some hemp hearts and nutritional yeast for extra flavor/texture/satiety. It was pretty good, but not my favorite avo toast flavor combo. Still fun to try though!

Oatmeal with frozen blueberries and almond butter

I cannot get enough of this combo lately. I basically make this cinnamon banana-blurberry-oatmeal thing by cooking a 1/2 cup oats with 1/2 a mashed banana and about 1/4 cup frozen blueberries stirred in towards the end of cooking. I then pour my oats into a bowl and top with almond butter while the oats are still warm so the almond butter gets melty, and pour almond milk on top to cool it off, and enjoy.

Dumplings and the Sweet Soy Bowl from Luanne’s Wild Ginger

I visited one of my BFFs Raag in Brookyln last weekend for an early bday celebration. We grabbed lunch at Luanne’s Wild Ginger and it was excellent.

We started with dumplings (<3) and tempura. I’m not a huge fried-foods person, but I love me some doughy doughy dumplings.

For my entree, I got a sweet soy something bowl (can’t remember the actual name), with chewy brown rice, tangy-sweet-sour-spicy gluttonous soy medallions, steamed Japanese pumpkin, house-madee pickled veggies, and kale, and some yummy sauces. This was incredible. I’d eat it every day. Yum.

Happy birthday Raag!

Cinnamon Rolls

Made from scratch with Raag. We used this minimalist baker recipe. Delish! Cinnamon rolls are life.

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Mid-October Vegan Eats

October 14, 2018October 15, 2018by Katherine Baker3 Comments

What is up lovely internet friends? I hope your October is chugging along in a spooky and spectacular fashion, full of treats and maybe some fun tricks too. Here are some recent eats that have entered my belly. Haven’t been the best at photoing food as of late, but here’s a bit of plant-based inspo for ya if you need it!

Pasta with Spicy Marinara:

Spaghetti with spicy tomato sauce was my favorite dinner growing up. Like for my birthday instead of going out to dinner I asked that my grandma (who was Italian and am amazing cook) made me spicy penne and salad. It was the.best.

Then I went off pasta for a while when I went to college. I’m not sure why. I think it was a combination of no pasta tasting as good as Oma’s pasta and the fact that prior to starting my nutrition education (started junior year) I was going through a phase of being overly concerned with eating more protein than I needed (hey, it happens: ‘health’ marketing is so effective and floods all our social media channels and ads!)

Anyways, I’m back on team spicy pasta with red sauce. I’ve been making it a lot lately. I had a Brandless gift card and although I’ve found their stuff to be overall hit-or-miss, I got a jar of their arrabbiata sauce and found it surprisingly good! So I’ve had it with some perfect foods chia noodles a couple of times and Banza a couple of times. Still obsessed with Banza. That hearty texture though! 🤤

Bagels with tofu cream cheese from Wonder Bagels

Good bagels are everything. Good whole wheat everything bagels with amazing tofu cream cheese are quite literally everything. Especially served toasty warm. A couple of local friends turned me on to this spot and now I’ve been dreaming about going back on the regular.

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Recent vegan eats: fall edition

September 27, 2018September 27, 2018by Katherine BakerLeave a Comment

Hello friends! It’s vegan eats roundup time. Today I’m sharing some eats from the past few weeks in hopes of inspiring some yummy planty goodness in your life. Hope you enjoy!

Cinnamon sugar toast:

Been on a kick lately. Who’s with me? Pure nostalgia in every bite. When I want something sorta sweet and Cathy after dinner these days cinnamon sugar toast is where it’s at. This is just TJ’s 100% whole wheat sandwich bread ($1.99) with vegan butter, cinnamon and sugar. Mmm yes please !

Pasta + Salad + Green Goddess dressing + roasted veggies, all in the same bowl:

Am I the only one who likes them together? Always have, always will. This is some Banza I boiled up and added some Trader Joe’s green goddess dressing + nutritional yeast, roasted broccoli + tomatoes (I took home some raw veggies that were leftover at an event a couple weeks ago and about to be thrown out), frozen peas, and hemp hearts on top of some mixed greens. Yum! Flavors + textures all the way.

Vegan oatmeal cookie dough protein bars:

So frickin’ yummy! Recipe is here, ICYMI.

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Vegan Eats Roundup: Back to School Edition

September 13, 2018September 13, 2018by Katherine Baker3 Comments

Back to school, back to busy season! My goodness it’s been just over a week and I already am feeling all the feels for this fall. Excitement, stress, uncertainty, and gratitude for opportunity! Between being a full time graduate student, TA, and rewatch assistant, it’s been a 10-day whirlwind and we’re just getting started.

I thought I’d do a recent eats recap for ya. I was doing them weekly for a while, but have sort of transitioned to bi-weekly, just because most of the time I’m lazy and forget to take pics and/or because I usually eat some variation of pb&j for most lunches during the school year (hey, it packs well and tastes delicious, don’t judge me). So here we go! Hope this inspires some yummy plant-based food ideas for you.

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Recent Vegan Eats

August 21, 2018August 21, 2018by Katherine BakerLeave a Comment

Hey friends! I skipped a recent eats post last week because I was traveling and transitioning jobs! More on that later. Here are some yummy recent eats from the past 2 weeks.

I was pretty lousy at remembering to photograph my food minus when I was in Cali, but that’s just the way it is sometimes! When I’m randomly subsiding off packets of nut butter and bagels and apples while spending days in airports and/or getting home at 1am before eating dinner, my phone is the last thing I’m thinking about when nourishing myself. And actually, I don’t think it would be healthy to remember to photograph everything I eat. Anyways, I’ll be better this week, I promise. 🙂 For now, enjoy some rather random snack and meal inspo, and of course, Millie pics!

Kashi Autumn Wheat with almond milk.

I adore shredded wheat cereals. They remind me of straight-up-childhood. Sometimes I forget about them when I’m on Cheerio or Chex kicks. But I’ve been craving sweet shreds lately and I’m a stroke of serendipity, these were on sale at the store last week, so I picked them up.

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Weekly Vegan Eats

August 5, 2018August 9, 2018by Katherine BakerLeave a Comment

Another week to roundup some of the nommie things I ate. I had kind of a rough week between a couple bad allergic reactions causing skin rash outbreaks and eye swelling (cute, I know), and Millie getting super sick, but regardless, here are some scrumptious vegan food highlights to help inspire your eats if you’re in a rut!

(PS: Millie is doing much better now thanks to our wonderful vet in Hoboken and a couple rounds of antibiotics!)

Pistachio Butter

Holy cow! This stuff is incredible. I have been fluctuating between inhaling and trying to slowly savor this stuff since I made it last week. You can get the recipe here. It’s lovely on bread and toast and on bread with jelly and with chocolate. Can’t get enough!

Cherries cherries cherries

Holy cow ShopRite came through with the cherry sale this week. This was a particularly juicy, plump, and flavorful batch. I mowed through a huge bag in under 36 hours. Could have done it faster, but wanted to spread the wealth over more than one day. YUM. I actually went back on Thursday for another bag, which I ate in its entirety that day.

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What I’ve eaten this week (plant-based)

July 29, 2018August 5, 2018by Katherine BakerLeave a Comment

Time for another roundup! Here are some snacks and meals from my past week. I hope it inspires you to eat something oh so delicious and satisfying, too.

Salad + Fries from Hamilton Inn

Last Friday night I went out to diner with my mom at Hamilton Inn, which is a pretty hyped place in Jersey City. I had always been curious to see if it lived up to the hype…but apparently not curious enough to go until now.

Welp, on Friday it was nice out, and so we decided to take advantage of their outdoor seating and give it a whirl. I got a Roasted Sweet Potato salad with mixed greens, apples, dried cranberries, cherry tomatoes, and some other stuff with maple vinaigrette, and I added avocado to make it more filling. The combo of veggies and cranberries and dressing and apples was really refreshing. I also loved the dressing. I’m gonna recreate this dish at home, but maybe with nuts.

I also snagged a bite of a vegan realistic-meat-substitute burger my mom got and shared her fries. The burger was good but not my kinda thing (I prefer veggie burgers that taste and feel like beans or veggies, not meat), but the fries were really good. Crispy but not greasy (I hate when fries are overly greasy and soggy).

Overall, a good meal, although a little overpriced IMHO. Regardless, still a great meal, and Millie had a good time, too.

Beyond Sushi

Are you even surprised? Haha! My favorite ever. On Tuesday I had tickets to the late show with Steven Colbert. After some ticket mix ups and confusion I ended up taking my mom. I think she enjoyed it? TV show tapings are kinda like a lot of waiting around for 5-6 hours total to watch 30-50 minutes of actual show taping.

Still, I find it interesting to see what goes into television production.

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What I’ve eaten this week (vegan)

July 19, 2018August 5, 2018by Katherine BakerLeave a Comment

Another food roundup for ya! Hope these meals and snacks inspire some deliciousness in your life.

Just Salad:

Grabbed Just Salad the other day with my mom who is in town. Just Salad will forever be my fav salad chain. No shade to the others, just Salad just holds a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s the reusable bowls, maybe it’s all the toppings. Perhaps it’s the yummy grilled roasted tofu or the variety of dressings or the nostalgia of it all since it was a staple for NYUers since they had one right by the library. Whatever it is. It yum.

My go-to is a build-your-own with kale and romaine mixed as the base, with apples, double roasted sweet potatoes, raw beets, apples, roasted broccoli, chickpeas, avocado, and grilled tofu. With agave Dijon dressing. And bread always, duh. YUM.

Onigiri from KoroKoro Riceball cafe

Recently tried a local onigiri cafe in jersey city and am hooked! They have rice balls stuffed with yummy and creative fillings.

Onigiri is itself a Japanese Street food, but the fillings are Koro koro are inspired by other cultures making it a fun fusion place of sorts.

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Uncategorized, weekly eats roundups

What I’ve Been Eating Lately (Vegan)

July 10, 2018August 5, 2018by Katherine Baker2 Comments

Hey hey it’s time for another recent eats roundup. Here are some yummy recent vegan things I’ve been munchin’ on. I hope it inspires some yumminess in your life!

Bananas + Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter

After eyeing up Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter for a long time, I finally snatched it when it was on sale at Whole Foods for $7.99. Yes, still a splurge. But I have been itchin’ to try for so long!

It did NOT disappoint. It’s so good on bananas. Actually it’s pretty much good on everything (I’ve tried ice cream, toast, and apples too), but especially bananas. Obsessed. A worthy splurge IMO!

BANACHOS.

You know it. Recipe here, video here.

Butter Lettuce Salads

Every since I was little, I’ve loved butter lettuce. I can eat a whole head or bag of it in one sitting, easy. Goes down like nothin’.

I love the delicate yet crunchy and refreshing leaves. Have really been loving salads with Bibb or butter lettuce, nuts, and fresh peaches. Lately I’ve been rotating between Trader Joe’s Green Goddess and Panera Poppyseed dressing. And sometimes, I mix them. YOLO.

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