Day One

Today was the first day of our dietary experiment - Benna is going completely vegan, and I'm technically going vegetarian, since I'm still eating tasty eggs from our beautiful ladies. Not only is B going vegan, but he's giving the Engine 2 diet a go - no added oils or salt. Tough on me, I'm a salt FIEND! However, E2 still allows the use of Bragg's liquid aminos, so it's not a complete shock to my system.

This morning's breakfast was a delicious plate of sauteed red chard and onions - we countered the chard's bitterness with a dash of orange juice, and added a little bit of homemade veggie stock and Bragg's for some flavor. Benna topped his veggies with some tofu cooked in the leftover juices from the veggies, and I had a nice fresh poached egg. SO GOOD!

For snacks during the day, we had raisins and unsalted nuts (I was actually surprised how much better you can taste the actual nut without added salt), and a new snack I'm pretty happy with - homemade marinated veggies. Good replacement for chips and whatnot; super flavorful, tangy, and spicy.

For these crunchy little treats, I marinated a mix of cucumbers, cauliflower, carrots and bell peppers in white wine vinegar, sugar, a dash of salt (salt because I made them pre-E2 diet!), dried herbs and red pepper. Next time, I'll be using honey instead of sugar, and Bragg's instead of salt. Really nice to have a big bag of these sitting in the fridge ready to snack on.

For lunch/dinner, we had veggie and brown rice burritos with a really excellent avocado spread we got the idea for in the E2 book. We sauteed the veggies without oil, which works much better than I thought it would. I deglazed the pan with a little white wine, added the spices (garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, cumin, cayenne and black pepper), added some veggie stock and a dash of Bragg's and cooked it down until it had a nice sauce going on.

Now, the avocado spread is super tasty, and worth posting the ingredients. It's excellent for veggie wraps and sammies, or for dipping veggies in - which we totally pigged out on last night!

1/4 package tofu
1 avocado
1/2 lemon or lime, juiced
1 roma tomato, diced
handful of cilantro, rough chop
dash of Bragg's
dash of hot sauce or cayenne, to taste

Whirl everything together in a food processor, and you have a creamy, tangy delight!