Back at it with another recent vegan eats post! Amidst the season of excessive school work, I’m delaying some more research-intensive content since right now my brain is so overwhelmed I found myself sitting on the futon staring at the ceiling debating whether to continue working or just go to bed the past two nights.
To give you any sort of scope of how incredibly boring I am these days, upon reflecting on my weekend, I can safety say the most invigorating thing I did was impulsively add an avocado to my cart at Trader Joe’s after overhearing someone mention avocado toast and being stricken with an instant craving. It felt so bold and whimsical!
This weekend I’ve also been trying to secure an apartment for next fall (fingers crossed!) and have been relying on my compression braces to deal with carpal tunnel symptoms from excessive typing.
Wild weekend, I know. Today is actually exciting because it’s Millie’s birthday! So we are going to celebrate HARD (which I will recap in next week’s post). Here’s a photo from her first birthday party. I’m not crying, you are!
Anyways, if you want some more nitty-gritty nutrition or climate reads, stay tuned or search the ‘nutrition’ or ‘climate’ tabs, but or for now, simply enjoy this recent vegan eats roundup in the meantime!
Giant Salads with Banza and Oodles of Nutritional Yeast
When the weather starts to turn warm, I crave all things FRESH, including giant salads.The key to a meal-worthy salad in my books is including a variety of textures, flavors and including all three macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein).
This meal reflects a version of something I make often: leftover roasted veggies (in this case, purple sweet potatoes, yay carbs), organic mixed greens (I buy the family-sized for $4.49 every week at ShopRite during salad phases and plow through them), frozen thawed peas for a pop of freshness, flavor, protein and fiber, hemp hearts for fat, protein and omega-3s, raw cashews for more fat, protein, flavor and crunch, and cold Banza because pasta on salads = <3. I covered the whole thing with some Panera dressing I had in m fridge + oodles upon oodles of nutritional yeast.
If you haven’t put nutritional yeast on salads, you must give it a whirl. It somehow amplifies the entire experience exponentially. Please try it and thank me later. ;-).
Also, I cooked my noodles in the microwave and quickly cooled them in the fridge. Yes, I often cook noodles in the microwave. That’s what living in apartments in NYC with no working stove/oven for many years gives you – microwave and toaster oven skills galore. Some people asked me about this, and I could totally write a post/make a quick video tutorial. Let me know if you’re interested!
Fancy Fruit:
My building had a surprise resident-appreciation breakfast the other morning, which was nice. On my way out, I grabbed a sesame bagel and filled a Pyrex container with fruit salad (shout out to my EHS department for always training me to BYOTupperware).
I adore fruit salad and for some reason it is such a treat to me. Maybe it’s because as a solo-living human I never buy all the ingredients to make it myself, so it’s novel. Or maybe it’s because it reminds me of staying in a hotel with continental breakfast, which is my favorite thing in the universe. Either way, when it comes to fruit salad, I’m always excited.
Non-fancy fruit:
I go through phases where I want to just eat ALL OF THE FRUIT. This spring weather shift has made me want freshness at every meal and snack! That means oodles of fresh produce. I recognize that being able to consume fresh produce regularly is a privilege. Shout out to ShopRite for having organic pink lady apples at $1.49/ pound as their regular non-sale price. I don’t know how they do it, but I am here for it.
So frickin’ yummy! 
