Crock Pot Recipe: Lightened Up Sweet & Spicy Veggie Curry (vegan)

I don’t remember I was this excited to make a meal before. I don’t count desserts, those are always exciting. But the thing is, I have been craving REAL food lately. Like, real dinner food – not just yogurt and cereal, which is what I’ve been having. Don’t blame me, eating that way is quick and easy and doesn’t require any prep. Plus it’s unlikely that the food will go bad! While with more real food, something that involves vegetables for example, they can go bad pretty quickly. Thankfully my overwhelming sweet tooth has been pretty tame lately and I bet intuitive eating is the cause of that – I am beginning to see that I need REAL dinners to stay happy and balanced! So here it is!

Lightened Up - Sweet & Spicy Vegetarian Curry in a CROCK POT! #easy #healthy

Why yes, you read that correctly. I used my crock pot for the first time! Finally! That’s why I was SO excited. I bought the crock pot a month or so before I moved out of my old apartment – since I’m now only living with one other person (not three, like I did previously) and our kitchen is nice and big – I am finally able to make dinner for myself! Yay! This curry recipe I found was the most interesting to me since I already had some of the ingredients and only had to buy some veggies to make it complete. So that’s how the lightened up Sweet and Spicy Vegetarian Curry came about!

Lightened Up - Sweet & Spicy Vegetarian Curry in a CROCK POT! #easy #healthy

The curry was not as much of a curry as I expected it to be. I’m not a huge curry eater (read: I never eat curry) but I expected it to have… I don’t know, a more curry flavor? But then again, I did adapt from the original recipe listed below and I did not add curry paste, just curry powder. If you do make this and want a more curry flavor, I do recommend you add more curry powder than you think you’d need or you can add curry paste. I just didn’t wanna go out and buy something I would only use for one recipe.

Lightened Up - Sweet & Spicy Vegetarian Curry in a CROCK POT! #easy #healthy

The recipe is very light and filling. But I did notice that my tummy did not handle something well and I’m going to assume it was because I used white rice (it’s the only one I’ had.. I’ve had it for a while too, haha I never make rice). I got bloated right away and I felt kinda “off” – almost like allergy symptoms but not intense, thankfully. I’m thinking I won’t be eating this with rice next time to see if rice was indeed the culprit since I’ve had all of the ingredients in the curry before. Maybe besides the coconut milk, but I use coconut flour quite often and I don’t see any adverse effects so I doubt that’s what it was.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

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This is the most personal post I have ever written

[Disclaimer: this post was written and hidden in my drafts section since January. I was debating whether I should post it or not because it's pretty personal. But I finally thought - why not? So here goes...]

Have you ever noticed there was a pattern in your behavior ever since you were little?

Not necessarily positive or negative; just a certain behavior that has been a recurring pattern or theme through your whole life. It often goes unnoticed. It’s gone unnoticed for me for all 23 years of my life.

Until now.

After weeks of convincing from a friend, I finally purchased Geneen Roth’s book Women Food and God. I began reading it with the purpose of finding some solace from eating issues I’ve struggled with over the last 4 years. While the book is very insightful, I have found something interesting in myself that is not necessarily food-related.

Geneen Roth states that how we eat is a direct image of how we see ourselves and the world. She emphasizes the importance of facing the issues and emotions that may arise rather than numbing them using food. We eat compulsively because we refuse to deal with a certain emotion that may otherwise cause us pain. We want to avoid that pain, although unconsciously, so we reach for food to keep ourselves occupied, to feel comforted, to numb and dilute the feelings of boredom, sadness, loneliness, pain.

While it took me a while to follow along with what Geneen was talking about in her book, I am now starting to understand what she means. It is important that we learn to face our issues and our emotions, whether they are positive or negative. If we don’t feel- we don’t live. Because to live doesn’t mean you’re alive. Living means that we experience life rather than float through it. We notice how we struggle and deal with problems; we notice the beauty around us and within us; we learn about ourselves and we are eager to better ourselves emotionally and spiritually.

I had a slight epiphany. It does not have to do with food but it is an interesting realization anyway. It is something I have not noticed about myself until now [aka: January]. Geneen emphasized the importance of looking within ourselves: how we feel, how we act, where we came from. I looked within myself to see how I’ve always acted. What I found is something entirely nonfood-related. But just because it’s not at the root of my eating issue, doesn’t mean it’s not extremely interesting!

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Egg White-Battered Grilled Cheese with Mixed Greens

How often do you have breakfast for dinner?

Egg White Grilled Cheese with Mixed Greens - totally making this for the next breakfast for dinner! Yum! :)

I actually have breakfast for dinner quite often. It’s one of my favorite things to have for dinner to tell you the truth. This kind of “Breakfast After Dark” is not only easy and quick, it is also so delicious and comforting! Especially the Egg White Grilled Cheese with Mixed Greens that I created as my Breakfast After Dark recipe that I am sharing with you today.

Egg White Grilled Cheese with Mixed Greens - totally making this for the next breakfast for dinner! Yum! :)

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Where I currently stand with Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating

A few months ago, I gave up on dieting and picked up the Intuitive Eating book. The book was very eye opening and enlightening. The intuitive eating approach seemed like the perfect approach for me – I like food, I have a history of losing and gaining weight, and the restricting and bingeing behaviors. The relationship with food and exercise I had in the previous years was disordered and lead me to some depressive thoughts, feelings of guilt and shame, as well as low self-esteem.

When you restrict for extended periods of time, you end up binging and filled with guilt. I have had countless occurrences where my eating habits and poor self-image have prevented me from leaving my apartment. I have refrained from attending numerous social events because I felt that I was too fat to have friends or have fun (I was 15 pounds over my goal weight, at the most). I now realize how ridiculous this sounds. There is no such thing as being too fat to have friends, what the hell?! Like I said, my mentality was very disordered and my thinking and emotions were ruled by how I ate that particular day and what the scale said.

Fast forward to the breaking point. I have worked on rejecting the dieting mentality and allowing myself to eat whatever I want. I gained a few pounds in the process. Trying not to worry about it. I stopped exercising because I simply focused on listening to my body. In the past, I associated exercise with weight loss exclusively and I did not really see or do it for any other reasons. Because I stopped thinking about dieting, I also stopped exercising to let my thoughts go back to neutral and become as non-judgmental as possible. I worked on stopping my emotional eating (still a work in progress). I listened to self-hypnosis for intuitive eating with the purpose of clearing emotional roadblocks (which I absolutely recommend!).

Everything was going great until my trip to New York City during which I indulged a lot and seemed to have lost some of the intuitive eating practice I newly acquired.

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