Thank God for Dr.Oz and so many others that are showing a vegan diet can be healthy and are encouraging people to give it a try!

Specifically, a few family members of mine are taking Dr.Oz's 28 day vegan challenge and I'm so happy for them! And so of course I want then to enjoy the food so very much that they don't miss what they thought they might. I have about a zillion ideas so let's see…

*While I don't own this book I have heard good things. And I like to keep meals easy so this book could be a good choice: The 30 Minute Vegan

*Books I know and love: Eat to Live and Skinny Bitch

*Website: Post Punk Kitchen  – Loads of free recipes!

*One of my personal favorite dishes from a local PDX vegan restaurant called Blossoming Lotus is called the Green Gaia which is steamed kale, mixed greens, sprouts & avocado tossed in garlic olive oil, topped with sesame seeds with a choice of rice or quinoa. Actually all of Blossoming Lotus's bowls are fantastic and you could make them at home. I highly recommend quinoa as a great rice substitute. Find it in the bulk bins at the grocery store and cook it up like this:

1 cup quinoa

2 cups filtered water
Rinse quinoa well and drain.
Add water and quinoa to sauce pan and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to simmer and cook on low heat until all liquid is absorbed, approximately 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and enjoy. Makes about 2 generous servings.

*Doing a bit of research online is very helpful. Exploring a food shopping site like Food Fight will give you lots of ideas of things you might want to try to find and/or ask your grocer to carry.

*Field Roast and Gardein are amazing. My meat-eating husband likes them. Seriously. So Good! I would suggest Gardein's Santa Fe Good Stuff with a big spinach salad. (Husband even diced it up and put it in a whole wheat tortilla with salsa, guacamole and greens once). Yum! Or the Smoked Apple Sage sausage from Field Roast sliced onto mixed greens, chopped celery and use fresh salsa as dressing. Delish.

*And last but most importantly increasing fresh low sugar fruits, eating more greens then you ever imagined possible, eating colorful veggies, orange peppers, broccoli, red peppers, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers… explore the produce section like you never have before. When I first started eating more raw foods I was not shy about asking the produce man questions, and most of them were basic, like how do I cut this open? And again going on line really helps just omit the dairy and meat from whatever recipes you find and use the yummy Earth Balance butter and eat more greens and eat more greens and eat more greens. Can't say it enough.

*My personal dessert of choice is Endangered Species 88% dark chocolate. One square satisfies my sweet tooth. And another sweet craving curbing food for me is Kombucha. I adore Kombucha. Here's a link to my fav: http://www.synergydrinks.com/ 

Coming up I hope to share breakfast ideas, more greens recipes, and smoothies. Tell me what you need and I will do my best. I hope I can help. Much love and yummy food to you all. Love you!

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