Beautiful food

Some attractive food I've eaten recently.

Spinach quiche with avocado

Banana with peanut butter, coconut, almonds, and raisins

Cat cafés: Eat among cats!

Today I acquired some life-altering information:

There is such a thing as a cat café.

"Excuse me, please stay out of my tea."

You go, there are cats there, you can buy food, you might need to pay an hourly fee.

There are about 100 cat cafés in Japan. Apparently their popularity stems from most landlords in Japan refusing to allow tenants to have cats.

As far as I can tell via Google, there are no cat cafés in the United States.... yet. Should I take a break from college and start one in MA? This is a real consideration. I imagine that there would be a huge market for this around here. I would definitely go to one!

Notice the cat furniture in the window inviting cats to display themselves to passersby

I think the attentiveness of the cats may be a bit exaggerated here.

Very similar to the above photo, but the cats and humans have swapped roles.

"Some cat cafés feature specific categories of cat such as black cats, fat cats, rare breed cats or ex-stray cats."
-WIKIPEDIA 

If I decide to open a cat café, I would like it to be basically a normal café (with great vegetarian food) that just happens to have cats. And there would be no hourly fee unless problems arose. Anyone interested in being my business partner?

Suspiciously easy raw applesauce recipe, or: Why isn't applesauce always made this way?

Spoiler: To make applesauce, all you have to do is blend apples in a blender.

This recipe takes about 15 minutes to make about 1-3 large servings.

Raw applesauce with cranberry and cinnamon

Recipe

1. Chop apples into eighths, approximately, removing the core. I recommend a big knife like the one pictured, because it makes this step very easy.

2. Put apple chunks in blender.

3. Add raw, rinsed cranberries to blender. (optional)

4. Add ground cinnamon (not too much!) and real maple syrup. (optional. Also, this stuff probably isn't raw.)

5. Add a little bit of water (if necessary to make it blend. My blender doesn't work well unless I add the water.)

6. Blend. You might have to use a spoon to move the stuff around in order to make it blend. Be very careful if you do this because it can easily hit a blade and that can result in you getting seriously hurt or making a mess.

7. Let it blend for about a minute once it starts blending smoothly. Then taste it to see if you want to add anything else.

Enjoy!


Also, I'm thinking of making cranberry sauce using the same technique, except I would use more cranberries, less apples, and more maple syrup. And maybe no cinnamon.

The most wonderful breakfast

I have a cold. This morning, my mom recognized that I wasn't feeling ambitious enough to make breakfast, so she made me the most wonderful breakfast.

It consisted of:

chopped oranges with lettuce
grapes
chopped red pepper
raw cinnamon applesauce with almonds, lettuce, red pepper, and oats with honey
water with lemon, lime, orange, and honey


I am inspired to mix fruits with vegetables more freely.

Raw fooding

I started eating mostly raw foods about three weeks ago, and I'm starting to notice health benefits! I wasn't really counting on this happening; I just wanted to feel good about what I was eating.

1. I am more hydrated. I am peeing clearer and much more often.

2. I am breathing easier. For at least a year, I've often been unable to catch my breath once or twice a day. This would happen at random times, when I was just sitting around, not related to exercising. Now it seems to be totally gone.

3. My mouth/tongue are cleaner. I don't get a bad taste in my mouth, which used to often happen to me after eating, especially when I ate dairy and chocolate.
(Also, Nate is experiencing the same thing. He has told me that he, who has always been very adamant about frequent and thorough teeth-brushing, barely sees the need to brush his teeth anymore.)



Update: some health concerns I have since "going raw":

1. I am losing weight

2. My back teeth have been sporadically very sensitive to cold (but this could be because of a recent injury).

Ingredients:

Carrots
Collard greens
Mushrooms
An onion
Celery
Cucumber
Olive oil (cold pressed--it's not raw otherwise)
Sesame oil (don't know if this is raw)
Fig-infused vinegar (or other interesting sounding vinegar)
Ginger root
Garlic clove
Lime

Directions:

First, make the marinade:
Combine olive oil, vinegar, and sesame oil. Sweet lime juice in to mixture. Mince garlic and ginger. Add to mixture.

Then, chop (washed) carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, onion, and celery into sticks (or something like sticks). Sometime before these are all chopped, immerse the chopped mushrooms into the marinade. Leave them in there for about 10 minutes.

Then, cut the collard greens on either side of the stem so you just have the soft leaf part. This will make each leaf into two thin, spineless leaves. Eat the stems.

Remove the mushrooms from the marinade. Lay out the collard leaves. Add about a couple sticks of each vegetable to the middle of a leaf. Roll the leaf around the vegetables so it holds them. Put a toothpick through the roll so it stays together. Continue until all the vegetables are used.

Serve with the marinade for dipping.

Marinade

I had extra vegetables, so I chopped them into squares and ate them as a salad

Vegetarian eating: in and out

Vegetarian Recipes

Quinoa stuffed pepper:

1. Cut a pepper in half. Clear out the seeds and anything you don't want to eat.
2. Fill it with a mixture of cooked bulgur wheat and/or quinoa (which both have a lot of protein), shredded bread, ricotta cheese (not pictured), grated parmesan cheese, apples, vegetables (i.e. zucchini, carrots, mushrooms, celery), and oil (it should be pretty moist so the stuffing doesn't get crunchy).
3. Optionally, top with a slice of tomato and shredded cheese.
4. Cook in the oven/toaster oven for more than 10 minutes.

Pretty healthy frappe:

1. Add: Vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt, plain Greek yogurt (good source of protein), soymilk, honey, and vanilla extract.
    Optional: add one or more of the following:
             -Fruit juice (especially orange juice, cranberry pomegranate juice, or cranberry grape juice)
             -Frozen berries
             -Pretty much any fruit
             -Chocolate syrup, hot cocoa powder, and/or chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast
             -A banana
2. Blend in a blender.

Tip: I find that using a straw greatly increases my enjoyment of any frappe.



Eating out: Where to go and what to get

Subway: Veggie Delite   $2.99 six inch, $5.00 foot long
A sub with lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, cucumbers (I think), red onions, green peppers, banana peppers, olives, pickles, and cheese. (I like to get it with monterey cheddar cheese on Italian herbs and cheese bread with chipotle southwest sauce.)

D'Angelo: Vegetable Quesadilla   $2.99
A quesadilla with grilled mushrooms, peppers, onions, and American cheese in a flour tortilla. This is pretty greasy, and a little less filling than the Subway sub.


Chipotle: Any burrito, taco, or salad without meat    about $5.00-$6.00
Lots of vegetarian options, and beans are a good source of protein.


A deli
Not many delis offer a wide selection of vegetarian meals, but most will make you something special if you ask. Fresser's Delicatessen in Randolph is my recent favorite. They make a vegetarian sandwich for me that has lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, onions, roasted red peppers, oil, and provolone cheese. It is so good! And they're really nice.


A pizza place
Pizza is usually around $2.00 per slice, I think.


A sushi place
Most sushi places have a vegetarian section of the menu. My favorite vegetarian sushis (plural of sushi?) include: sweet potato maki, avacado maki, and spinach maki.