Bay Area Vegetarians

Running season, swimsuit season, lettuce-bikini season. It’s all about to start. This is the time to incorporate some healthy eating habits. Don’t starve yourself—that can confuse your body and make it harder to lose weight. If you’re hungry all the time you’re not enjoying life, and you’re more likely to give in to some junk food.

For me, Team Vegan is about to start up again (April 26: mark your calendars now!), so it’s time to think about food as fuel. This year our team will train together for 13 weeks to run either a 5k (3 miles), a Half Marathon (13.1 miles) or a Marathon (26.2 miles!). Crazy, I know, but with the right food you can run 100 miles!*

Fill up on good vegan food. A big bowl of oatmeal in the morning contains very few calories, is naturally vegan and free of cholesterol, and you’ll be too full to nibble on Krispy Kremes. Doesn’t hurt that it’s cheap, too! When you buy oats instead of coffee-shop sugar-bomb muffins, you’ll have extra money to sponsor a Team Vegan runner. Sweet!

I love my oats during the week. But let’s face it: we can’t be all good, all the time. Sometimes it’s fun to splurge a bit on a Sunday morning. Below is a link to a great French toast recipes, and my recipe for tofu scramble. Both recipes are yummy enough for breakfast in bed, but still healthier (and cheaper) than hitting your local greasy spoon.

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Whole grains. Nonfat. Cheap. Easy to make. Any recipe with those adjectives is bound to also be…boring. Right? Wrong. Healthy recipes can be boring, no doubt about it, but they don’t have to be. If you have any recipes that you force yourself to make and eat because they’re good for you, rip them up and use them to make a piñata (which might taste better than the recipe).

When we eat or serve boring food, we’re doing more harm than good. If our friends eat our boring vegan food they get nervous about the whole vegan thing and become more resistant to hearing about animal suffering. Who wants to go from BBQ burgers and chocolate cake to unseasoned brown rice and carob bars? That’s a terrifying idea to a carnivore and he’ll resist the message in order to protect himself from bad food.

Give a carnivore a delicious vegan meal, though, and watch those mental brick walls crumble.

Below are two super-easy recipes that fit the bill.

Mushroom Barley Soup
Curried Red Lentil and Cauliflower Salad

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