Vegan Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Caffe Ladro October 17, 2012

The first fall after I went vegan I was so disappointed to find out that Starbucks put dairy in their pumpkin spice syrup, and thus pumpkin spice lattes were off my list of fall food options. Flash forward to this past weekend when I was standing in line at  Caffe Ladro (the Lower Queen Anne location) ready to order my usual spicy soy chai latte when this sign caught my eye:

Seasonal drink offerings at Cafe Ladro

Pumpkin sauce! This means that the fine folks at the Caffe Ladro bakery make pumpkin sauce from scratch, without all of the extra sugars and other junk that is found in typical pumpkin syrups. I ordered my first decaf pumpkin spice latte in years and it was delightful. I will be back many times during this cold, and sometimes rainy Seattle fall.

Anti headache diet: bringing back the avocado October 7, 2012

Today I am bringing back possibly my favorite food in the world to my diet. Avocado. I picked up this avocado salad roll at Metropolitan Market and had it for dinner. If I get a headache tonight I will try eating avocado again in a couple days and if it happens again I will cry and cry and cry because that means avocados are a trigger and I can’t eat them anymore without experiencing pain.

Anti-Headache Diet Days 4 and 5 October 5, 2012

I think I am starting to get the hang of this and have spent the past couple days almost completely headache free, and what little headache I did get was very minor in comparison with the migraines I have been getting. Which happened just in time for my insurance to finally approve my having “just twelve pills a month” of the new migraine meds my doctor wants me to take if I feel a migraine coming on. I really hope to not have anywhere near twelve migraines a month with all the diet changes I am working on.

Speaking of diet, what fun things did I eat the last couple days? Not much, really, but here are a couple photos of my lunches from yesterday and today.

Brown rice pasta with tomato sauce and veggies.

That dish is brown rice pasta with tomato sauce, red peppers, mushrooms and carrots. It was OK, the brown rice pasta got mushy when I reheated it and I didn’t cook the peppers long enough, but it had substance at least.

Garden vegetable soup

This is a bowl of the garden vegetable soup I picked up at Whole Foods. It was packed with veggies, and the ingredient label said it had soy in it, but I think it was a very little bit, and it was from soybeans, not soy protein isolate.

So, even if my meals aren’t exciting, at least this diet seems to be working.

Anti-Headache Diet Days 2 and 3 October 3, 2012

The anti-headache diet sucks. There is no other way to put it. It sucks to end up in enough pain that it is necessary to do a detox/elimination diet, and it sucks to not be able to eat any of my favorite foods. The second day was rough, I wasn’t eating enough because I didn’t feel good through most of the day, and didn’t feel like eating. By the end of the day I was starving, and needed to eat, and decided I wanted Indian food.

I made the decision that I would fudge the rules a bit on the list of foods I can and can’t have, and ordered a dish with chickpeas (I am not supposed to have legumes) and ate the white rice that came with my order, instead of making the brown rice that is allowed. The rest of the ingredients are on the allowed list, so over all I didn’t do too terrible with the cheating. I ended up with aloo chole, aloo gobi, okra masala, and rice. The aloo chole quickly disappeared, so the picture below is part of the leftovers that I had tonight.

Lessons so far from being on this diet include the fact that I must eat more, and that following the list of allowed foods to the letter may not be the best idea for me. It is still a work in progress, but I do know that my diet is in much better shape today than it was a week ago.

Spaghetti Squash “Pasta” October 1, 2012

Welcome to Vegan Mofo 2012! It is that time of the year, where vegan bloggers all over the world commit to blogging about vegan food at least 20 times during the month of October. I had planned on showing you my daily creations, and showing that being vegan isn’t that hard.

Now, I still don’t think that being vegan is hard, but my migraine headaches made a vengeful return two weeks ago, so I have decided to make October the month I get well, and get pain free. This means that I am following Dr. Fuhrman’s “anti-headache plan” from his book, Eat to Live. This means that my food may not be very interesting for the next couple weeks when I am basically limited to brown rice, green salads, steamed greens, unsalted tomato sauce, limited servings of starchy veggies, oatmeal, and fruit  (grapes, pears, melon and apples).

So, my dinner tonight was a half of a baked spaghetti squash and a half a cup of unsalted tomato sauce. Basically, you microwave the squash for a minute to “pre-heat”, then cut it in half. Take out all of the seeds and membranes and place it flesh side down on a pan with about a half cup of water in it, and bake it for 20-25 minutes (your oven may behave better than mine and it will take less time). You are looking for it to be fork tender, that is when it is done. Take a fork and scrape the flesh out, it will come out in strips that look like noodles. Pour tomato sauce over it, and serve.

Spaghetti squash and tomato sauce.