Barley and Black Beans

One of the joys of pregnancy so far is my new found obsession with eating enough protein in a day. After awhile I realized I just couldn't eat another soy hot dog or boca burger so I decided to be a little more creative.

I discovered hulled barley at Whole Foods and I was shocked by the nutritional power this grain has. One half cup of hulled barley has 11 grams of protein, 16 grams of fiber and only 2 grams of fat. On top of that it has a full days worth of manganese and 60% of my daily dose of selenium.

So I started just eating it plain or mixing it with black beans and as the days have progressed I have gotten more creative. Now I make it like this:

1/2 cup cooked hulled barley
1/2 cup cooked black beans
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen vegetables
1-2 Tablespoons of salsa

This dish packs in 24 grams of protein and 28 grams of fiber.

Of course, barley is one of those foods that fills me up super fast, so I usually eat half of the bowl early in the day and the other half in the afternoon.

I couldn't get Zoey to actually sniff this dish but she did make an appearance on the kitchen table while I was taking pictures so that will have to do.



Here it is all mixed together and ready to eat:


It's delicious!

Zoey's dad adds 1/2 a yellow zucchini and a handful of spinach to his bowl. I haven't tried that yet but he loves having it for lunch at work.

Vegan Banana Berry Muffins

As Zoey and I prepare for the arrival of our new non-feline baby this summer, we have begun a massive clean-out project. Next up on the list of things I am cleaning out? Cookbooks! I have too many cookbooks. I have some that I have never used and many that I keep around just because I tried one recipe and liked it but never got around to using it again. Check out the cookbook labels on the right side of my blog, I am mostly a walking 1 hit wonder.

So, as I go through these cookbooks now I am applying a "use it or lose it principle" which means that I am going to be cooking more from these cookbooks and making a final decision about whether each book deserves the precious real estate that it currently takes up in my kitchen.

First up on the list is the Teen Vegetarian Cookbook. I love cookbooks for kids/ teens because I like recipes that are easy to follow. If they had a healthy vegan cookbook for 5 year olds that would be about my speed. But alas, I am stuck with a book for teens and the first thing that caught my attention was muffins (imagine that).

These muffins use maple syrup and blueberries as the sweetener and I replaced the oil with applesauce.

Here it is right after adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients:



Into the oven for 20 minutes:



Out of the oven and on to the plate. This is also a picture of the cookbook that I am testing out to see if I will use it or lose it.



Overall these are probably the healthiest tasting muffins that I have made and they were pretty good.

So that is 1 point for using the Teen's Vegetarian Cookbook.

Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

It has been awhile since Zoey and I have made pancakes for breakfast so when we saw this recipe on the Meatout Mondays website, I knew that we would be giving it a try. I like oatmeal, I like bananas and I like pancakes so I was ready for success.

The first step was to soak the oats in soymilk in the refrigerator overnight. First of all, I have no idea why this step is important (but I did it because the directions told me to). Secondly, I don't know what oats they are using where they get 26 grams of protein from a cup of oats, but I should look into that. I just used standard regular Quaker oats.

So in the morning, my oat/ soymilk combination seemed pretty identical to how I had left it the night before:



Zoey kept a close eye on the prize while I added in the other ingredients:
(Notice the brown bag of pears behind her- we are still trying to ripen those pears!)


After everything was mixed together we poured some batter in the pan:


Ta da! I added some bananas on top so that my breakfast would look more like the picture (I am funny like that). Zoey's dad had these without bananas on top and they were still delicious.


Some of the other recipes on that recipe site look great so I am going to give some other things a try.