Yes, it’s true, I made tacos.  Again.  Something about the sun being out and the weather getting warmer makes me crave Mexican food.  Is this so wrong?  I say no.

It’s supposedly going to rain tomorrow.  What kind of crack is the California atmosphere on?

Back to the more important kind of crack: Mexican food.  Not authentic, mind you, but healthy and delicious.

So tonight was Vegan Chickpea Tacos courtesy of Happy Herbivore.  I made these for the first time a few weeks ago; and let me tell you, I didn’t even miss the meat for a second.

Both times I made this I used the taco seasoning recipe mentioned in the post.  The chickpea recipe calls for tamari; but I didn’t have any on hand, so I just used soy sauce.  If you’re intolerant to gluten, you can find wheat-free tamari, which makes the whole dish gluten-free.

I served the tacos with some diced tomatoes, spinach, salsa, and hot sauce.

I had two tacos.  For the second one I added some Greek yogurt:

Obviously, once you add the yogurt these aren’t vegan anymore.  But I’m not vegan.  Clearly.  I mean, I’m slightly obsessed with half & half…  Anyway, Greek yogurt is a great substitute for sour cream.  Less fat, more probiotics.  Yum.

I knew these tacos were good when KC, king of all red meat, said he liked them.  Victory!

The recipe says to cook the chickpeas until they’re crunchy.  I think this is delicious if you’re going to eat them by themselves as a snack; otherwise, I like to pull them out when they’re a little soft still, because they have sort of the same consistency as ground beef.

After dinner, Seuss had a photo shoot (courtesy of KC):

So regal.  Seuss Mackey the model.

After the shoot, we sat down to watch House (which I love).  And yes, I may have given in to this:

Stupid Fentons leftovers mocking me from the freezer.  Hate you.  (No I don’t.)

After ice cream, KC and I shared a small bag of popcorn:

Hello night of junk food…

And what am I doing right now?  Eating chocolate.

What is going on here?  Why can I not stop snacking???  Ugh, it’s one of those nights where I want to walk around with Pop-Tarts in my pockets…

Good thing these pants don’t have pockets.

And I don’t have any Pop-Tarts.

Mmm… Pop-Tarts…

Enough.  I’m going to bed.

So continuing with the sad Thursday theme, KC and I watched The Bridge tonight. It’s really interesting, but not exactly a feel-good flick. (Not to worry, I may be unemployed, but I’m not going to go jump of the Golden Gate anytime soon.)

I made brussel sprout salad for dinner:

I concocted this salad after having something similar at Pizza Antica.  To make this, I took a bag of TJ’s brussel sprouts, trimmed them, and cut the small ones in half, the larger ones in fourths.  I tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper and then tossed in some chopped prosciutto (3 slices).  I generally add a sliced onion to this, but I was out of onions (they all went onto the pizza last night); and seeing as driving all the way to the store for a single onion seemed silly, I decided the salad would be onion-less tonight.  Anyway, this all went into a 400° oven and baked for 12 minutes.  After the 12 minutes, I added some cubed bread (which I had tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper) to the pan and baked everything for another 13 minutes.

Once fully cooked, everything was added to the salad bowl along with 1/2 a bag of TJ’s organic spinach (I generally use spring mix or baby lettuce for this, but neither was looking fresh at TJ’s this week, so I stuck with just spinach) and 2 chopped hard-boiled eggs.  I then tossed the whole mix with some red wine vinaigrette (1 tbsp. red wine vinegar + 1 tbsp. olive oil + salt and pepper).  It’s important not to over-dress this salad, as the roasted brussel sprouts have a lot of flavor, so if you add too much dressing the whole thing just gets too heavy.

Yet another easy and delicious salad:

I had this plus cranberry water (of course!).  Oh yeah, we got our CO2 refilled last week, so the Soda Club is back in working order!  Oh fizzy water, how did I ever live without you?

Speaking of things I can’t live without…  Dessert:

This is the other dark chocolate bar I buy.  I wish it was organic, but I loooove that it’s super dark: 85% cacao; plus it’s only $1.49 at Trader Joe’s, a great deal compared to many other good-quality dark chocolate bars.

As a random sidenote: I saw this today and thought it was really funny. Check it out if you have a minute!

Ok, I’m getting sleepy.  Time to get ready for bed!

Night!

Yes, you read that right; and no, it’s not English.  It’s Italiano!  It just means pasta and beans.  I know, I’m sorry it’s not something more fascinating and romantic; it’s just what I made for dinner.  If you like, you can tell people it means whatever you want (“We’re having Pasta e Fagiole for dinner!  Caviar and lobster!”)  On second thought, that might be a bit misleading.

Anyway, the soup had to cook for 2 1/2 – 3 hours so I got a bit hungry waiting for it to be done.  I had a hard-boiled egg while I waited:

Finally, at about 9:15pm the soup was ready (I guess I started it a bit late tonight, woops!)

I had this + another piece of bread.

There’s really nothing like a big bowl of soup on a cold night.  This was just what I needed after last week — lots of veggies!

The bonus of making this soup (and waiting the 2-3 hours for it to cook)?  The leftovers!

I put the big container in the fridge to eat this week, and the 4 smaller containers went into the freezer — perfect for dinner on the fly.

So you might be thinking, “Why should I wait 3 hours for this soup to cook when I can just get soup in a can?  I mean, there’s vegetables in that can too…”  Well, true, there are vegetables in that can (I mean, I think there are.  What can are we talking about exactly?).  The main thing to remember about canned soups is that they’re generally chock full of sodium (aka salt), too much of which can cause bloating in the short-term, and high blood pressure in the long term.  Also, read the ingredients on that soup: do you recognize all of them?  Maybe; maybe not (seriously, what is Maltodextrin and Modified Food Starch?  I have no idea).  The nice thing about making your own soup, or using a starter like Bean Cuisine (which contains just dried beans and spices — all of which you know and can pronounce — no salt), is that you’ll know exactly what’s in what you’re eating and you can control the amount of salt you’re consuming.

As a reference, in a similar can of Progresso soup (Lentil soup) there’s 810mg of sodium.  In one serving of Bean Cuisine, there’s less than 165mg of sodium.  Yes, you read that right: there’s 5 times the amount of sodium in one can of Progresso soup than in a serving of Bean Cuisine.

After dinner, I was back on the dark chocolate:

Oh TJ’s chocolate… you always treat me right.

Alright, well time to put my PJ’s on then it’s off to bed, I’ve got a date with a super cute tot in the A.M.!  Night!