Food From The Garden

If there's one thing I look forward to in the morning (let's face it, I'm not a morning person) it's a smoothie. I love smoothies. Açai is a new favorite. After having several açai smoothies using the powder from Wegman's, I was ready to try the frozen form and see which one I like better. I'm not sure if it's because they're frozen but the frozen form takes forever to blend so I had the blender going long after the rest of the smoothie was of a uniform consistency. So it's not for the impatient but good things come to those who wait so this is a good patience exercise. In terms of the final product, I loved it. I like that the flavor is much more pronounced with the frozen form than with the powder form. Trader Joe's never disappoints! So please do yourself a favor and give frozen açai a fair chance. You will thank me later!

Memorial Day is tomorrow for my American viewers, which is most of my viewers if I am reading the stats right. On Memorial Day and the 4th of July, when it comes to food, I think red, white, and blue. Dessert is notorious for being the hardest part of any celebration. Food in general is a hard part of holiday planning but dessert is an even bigger deal. Luckily, with a few ingredients in the correct colors that go together and a little creativity, anyone can pull it off and impress their crowd with the perfect dessert. All you have to do with this one is use vegan biscuits as your base and put a vegan cream cheese frosting on top of it, then top it with strawberries and blueberries and you've got yourself a quick and easy patriotic dessert! You could put the strawberries or blueberries over or in any white food and it's just as patriotic. Strawberries and blueberries are definitely some of my most important ingredients on Memorial Day and Independence Day, not that I would tur

Let me preface this by saying that nice cream bowls are highly customizable. They are not rocket science and they can be whatever you want them to be. However, there is an art to them and generally, one's goal in making them is to have them replicate the consistency of ice cream but without the dairy. There are secrets to accomplishing just that and some are better known than others. Here are my tricks to doing it. 1. The base is the most important thing. Pretty much the only thing I do with bananas is freeze them and put them in nice cream and smoothies. To achieve an ice cream consistency, create a base of a couple bananas. 2. But your base should not be just  bananas. I find the results to turn out even better if I add plant milk ice cubes. All you need is plant milk and an ice cube tray. I like to use a ratio of three plant milk ice cubes for each banana used. 3. If adding other fruit, it should be frozen. Fresh fruit does not work as well for this purpose so it should

Summer is just around the corner and while the summer solstice still has yet to come, it definitely feels like summer where I live! With that means a lot of fruits and veggies are in season and what could make a heavy fruit and veggie consumer happier? However, it's also grill season which can mean challenges at cookouts. Sure, there are vegan burgers you can eat but they may get cross contaminated being cooked on the same grill as the meat. So this post is for some tricks to eat vegan at cookouts. 1. This is the most important trick if you want to avoid cross contamination with meat. My family's grill is so old that cleaning it after every use would deteriorate it yet so much meat has been in contact with it over the years. So what we do is we put my food in aluminum foil to create a barrier between your food and the meat. 2. Don't forget the buns. Many wheat products (and gluten free alternatives) are not vegan. Make sure yours are by checking the ingredients list. A

How often do you want an easy dessert? Or a late night snack and you think that's a perfect excuse to have some junk food? Look no further than Oreos. As a vegan, many baked goods on the market are things I can't have. If I want cookies, I usually have to make them myself. I don't regularly get Oreos as I don't want to be tempted to indulge in them nonstop but when on occasion a friend gives me a few, I don't turn them down. I allow myself an occasional treat of them because they're vegan and I don't have to make them. As much as I enjoy cooking and being responsible for making my own food, I also like knowing that there are products out there that are easy to come by made with the convenience of people like me in mind. Health reasons may be my primary motivation for being vegan in the first place but I firmly believe an occasional treat is 100% okay. I draw the line at occasional treats that aren't vegan. I don't eat non vegan food at all but I'

So I, like us all, have a busy life. In this day and age, who doesn't? A misconception I had before I went vegan is that there would be no time to be vegan. That is not true. If there's time to cook, which we all have to do, there's time to be vegan. It is true that being vegan does involve being in the kitchen a lot but so does any lifestyle. There are some life hacks for busy vegans that could easily be incorporated into any lifestyle. 1. Salads don't take much time to prep at all. All you have to do is cut up some veggies and boom, you have a salad. Smoothies are the exact same way. 2. Cook a lot at once. I like to try to yield leftovers when I cook to save me some time later. This works really well for things that won't spoil easily such as pastas and quinoa but it does work for a lot of things if you eat them within a few days. Along those same lines, to save time making school or work lunches, you could also have your dinner leftovers be tomorrow's lu

One day, when I was eleven years old, I was at my grandmother's bingo night. I really liked the coconut macaroons that one of my grandfather's coworkers had made a couple days prior and let me try, so my grandfather said I'd need to try a Mounds bar next time we go to bingo (they sell a lot of processed foods at the bingo hall). So I did, and then proceeded to have an Almond Joy bar. That Almond Joy bar turned into several Almond Joy and M ounds bars because I love coconut, chocolate, and almonds. However, they both have milk in them which means Iwill not be consuming the ones I ate at bingo but that doesn't mean I have to sacrifice the flavor by which my middle and high school years are characterized. With the help of coconut flakes, almond milk, and cacao powder, it's not hard to turn my frozen banana and almond milk ice cube base into the nice cream I wish I could have made all those years. Any nice cream is fairly simply to make because it's not rocket scie

I took up a really interesting challenge tonight for dinner called making a home cooked Southern meal entirely vegan. I chose this challenge because if you know anything about Southern cuisine, you probably would not say it's vegan friendly. So I thought it would be interesting to try to counter that stereotype and show that veganizing any cuisine is 100% doable. I am not trying to convert Southerners, or anybody, to a vegan diet with this post. I would totally support anyone who chooses to go vegan but I also understand and respect the decisions and traditions of those who choose not to. It's a lifestyle choice everyone must make for themselves. I just wanted to have fun with this and maybe learn a thing or two. I apologize upfront if I did something not as a Southerner would have done it. I am not from the South and I simply did a Google search for ideas for a Southern meal and did the best I could with it. It's a learning experience and I was not trying to offend anybod

On this beautiful Thursday, I tried star fruit. It is borderline summer where I live and when the temperatures rise and the sun stays risen for longer, a favorite thing for many to do is to down all the ice cream and popsicles in sight. Fresh fruit right out of the fridge or freezer is a super healthy alternative that also cools you down. That made my afternoon snacktime the perfect time to try some fresh star fruit for the very first time. What is star fruit might you ask? It's a yellow green exotic fruit that looks like a star. For those without kidney problems, it's a wonderful addition to a healthy diet. If you were to ask me to describe the taste and texture of a star fruit, I would say it has a texture similar to that of an apple and tastes like an apple or melon with a squirt of lemon juice. Have you ever tried star fruit? What did you think of it? Have you had any other exotic fruits that you recommend I try? Where could I find them?

So this is an original recipe of mine that's fairly easy to do but demands your full attention. Trust me. I've had one too many disasters in the kitchen when I did this one the first few times. Probably not the best recipe to do if you have to leave the kitchen unattended for even a second. However, if, like me, you find cooking therapeutic and are looking for an unrushed meal to prepare, this may be just what you're looking for. For you gluten free folks, this is gluten free as is. If you're nut free, suggestions for adaptations to make it nut free but just as amazing will be at the bottom after I discuss the recipe Ingredients: 1. A pack of rice noodles 2. Half a block of tofu, chopped or diced 3. 6 or more green onions, chopped 4. 4tsp peanut butter 5. A handful of chopped almonds 6. Himalayan salt 7. Garlic powder 8. Grated ginger or 1tsp maca powder 9. Red pepper flakes 10. 2tbsp coconut oil Procedure: 1. Prepare rice noodles according to package instr

Contrary to what the title may make one think, this post has nothing to do with sports. I have no intention of becoming a professional athlete and I'm just not into professional sports. You can call me crazy but it's true. A recent post from @earthyandy on Instagram inspired this. She encouraged instagrammers to post to Instagram using the hashtag #eatlikeapro and 1 euro will be donated to UNICEF to end childhood obesity for every post with that hashtag. So I decided to post about what eating like a pro means to me. Eating like a pro does not mean you can't have an occasional treat. Who doesn't need and crave an occasional treat? Sometimes you just have bad days and all you want is chocolate to make it better. A healthy diet and lifestyle does not mean you can't have that. Eating like a pro to me means that you find foods you enjoy eating and letting yourself enjoy eating them while still trying to educate yourself on healthy eating habits and being willing to step

You guys want to know something I like doing on weekends that many people do not? I love grocery shopping. I'm not that person who's running to the grocery store every five seconds. If I don't have the exact ingredient I need and it's not absolutely essential, I will make do with what I've got. However, we all need to go to the grocery store every week or so. Good thing I enjoy going grocery shopping. Here is a rundown of what I got this weekend. Bananas Kale Star fruit Dragonfruit Cucumber Spinach Tomatos Oranges Strawberries Green onion Kiwi Grapes Green beans Tofu Daiya cheddar cheese Hummus Seaweed Pineapple Raw cashews Vegetable broth Dr McDougall's vegan ramen (spicy kung pao and pad thai) Whole wheat pasta Garlic and lime salsa Coconut sugar Cacao powder Maca powder Wheatgrass powder Acai powder Vanilla plant protein powder Gardein 7-grain chicken tenders Gardein meatballs Frozen mango Frozen peaches So Delicious soymil

Happy Cinco de Mayo! When you think of the anniversary of the Mexicans winning the Battle of Puebla, what comes to mind? For me, it's food, food, and did I mention food? You will meet few people who love Mexican food more than I do. One of my favorite things about Mexican cuisine is how easy it is to make it vegan and on Cinco de Mayo, I don't need an excuse to load up on it. I made taco bowls for lunch today from cooked quinoa, lettuce, tomato, red bell pepper, salsa, and a chopped black bean burger patty. The salsa I used is the Tostitos original one. I grew up loving Tostitos products and I'm super happy that I don't have to give them up to live this lifestyle. My go to black bean burger patties are from the brand "Gardein", which makes plant based imitation meats 100% vegan and all of them that I have tried look and taste like the real thing and are quick and easy to prepare and I absolutely love them. What vegan Mexican foods do you like? How did y

My name is Maggie. I have been vegan since Valentine's Day of 2018. I absolutely love eating natural plant based foods and have gotten a lot of inspiration from fellow vegan bloggers so I want to make my own contribution to this positive community of like minded people. I will not only share recipes but also fun content such as challenges, Q&A, and more. The Instagram associated with this account is @foodfromthegarden and you can follow me there for other fun stuff. As of October 2018, I also have a Pinterest account that you can follow. Most of what I pin are not my original pins but Pinterest automatically credits whatever I got pins from that I saved to my own boards so if you ever wonder where I find my pins, that's a good way to figure it out. This is one thing I like about it: credit is given where credit is due! If you are interested in following my Pinterest, that is also @foodfromthegarden. It is quite likely that down the road, I will start up additional social