Creative Week of Plant-Based Meals After Refrigerator Breaks Down Over The Holidays

Creative Week of Plant-Based Meals and Our New Refrigerator!

 Over the holidays, our refrigerator stopped working.  (And our main bathroom duo sinks weren't draining!)  We had to juggle our food a bit, using a big cooler that we kept outside on our deck, swapping out ice packs as needed.  Although it was warmer than usual, we thankfully also have a back up freezer that we could utilize for some of our frozen foods.  However, I had to get creative with our meals over the weekend, to use up foods, like a Bonza Chickpea Pizza Crust, and some plant-based sausages and 'meats' that had softened in the freezer.

Here's a post sharing our creative week of plant-based meals.

Trader Joe's Korean Beefless Bulgogi over White Rice w/ Red Millet

Banza Chickpea Pizza Crust with artichoke, sweet 
red pepper, red onion & vegan mozzarella

Christmas Eve Salad with 4 types of lettuce,
Sweet Spicy Roasted Nuts, mandarins,
Pomegranate, and blanched carrot & radish with an 
Orange Tahini Dressing

In addition to the now thawed plant-based meats, I also had cooked up a big batch of chickpeas prior to Christmas,  along with some leftover hummus that I was charged with making for our family gathering on Christmas Eve.  

And, since I had already planned on making a Shepherd's Pie at some point over the holidays, with these super delicious Vegan Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower, I  decided to make a Chickpea and Sausage Shepherd's Pie, instead of using lentils, which I had originally planned to make.  That was incredibly good!

Chalk this up to another benefit of being on a vegan, plant-based diet.  Had we still had our freezer full of beef, as everything in our refrigerator freezer had thawed and softened before realizing it wasn't working!

Our cooler would have likely been filled with cuts of meat, as we had been purchasing a quarter to a half of a locally raised cow while on our 'hypercarnivore' diet!  Ugh!  It came with the liver, tongue, and all the parts too!  It's so gross to even think of eating that now, that it's hard to believe we fell away from our vegan diet to begin with!  But, that's behind us now, way behind.  Sooo glad we returned HOME to our HEARTS!  Onwards from here. 

You can see my video below about our donating the beef, and my reflections about how fear drives our behaviors.

It seems as though each Christmas has a different theme ~ what we focus on making sure we do, make or have changes each year.  Some years are much more festive than others.

Last year was special for me as we attended a couple Christmas concerts, one at the beautiful Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, and drove around to view a lot of the neighborhood lights.  

We visited Frankenmuth, MI, a pretty Bavarian town the year prior.

This year, I was quite the Santa's Elf!

I baked, and made Christmas treats.  We also shopped at the Toledo winter farmers market with mom and her friend to purchase gift items made by locals.  Much of my efforts were actually focused on giving gifts and treats to the caregivers and some residents where mom lives, and bringing treats with us for our family dinner on Christmas Eve.  

I know those caregivers (and people working in these senior homes everywhere) work quite hard, and likely are way under paid for their level of responsibilities!  While I had several days of long hours, the joy of showing up at my mom's unexpectedly one evening prior to Christmas with an arm full of packages and treats was worth every minute.  

There's something especially rewarding about giving homemade treats.

On the left is homemade Chocolate Peppermint Bark.  I made another batch using 100% bakers chocolate which I sweetened with Xylo, and added a gluten-free Marie's cracker with the nuts and seeds and peppermint extract to bring on Christmas Eve.  I don't have a photo, but I ended up quite liking them!  These were made with peppermint chocolate chips.  

The inspiration for making those came from Derek at Simnet Nutrition, on YouTube.

And you simply MUST try my Sugar-Free Vegan Russian Tea Cakes!!!    Don't wait until next Christmas either!!! They are easy to make, and soooo goooooood!!!  The bottom photos are Vegan Vanilla Wafers, also delicious.  You'll find the link to that recipe on my Vegan Russian Tea Cakes post.

Now, for more chickpeas.  What better way to use up items that need to be used up but to make a soup?

Chickpea Vegetable Soup.  Root Vegetable Stew with Tempeh.  Squash Soup.

The tempeh and plant-based sausages that were in the freezer had softened, so they all found their way into a pot of something throughout the week.

And, what's better with soup than a nice loaf of homemade bread?  Don's homemade Sourdough bread made with sprouted wheat flour + bread flour.  YUM!

Chickpea Bonanza!  Top L, Chickpea Soup in a Tomato-y broth, Don's Sprouted Wheat Sourdough (R)

Below:  Top L Root Vegetable Stew with Tempeh & Dried Shiitakes; R shows with some Trader Joe's Italian Plant-Based Sausage pan-fried, and added on top; Bottom L, Chickpeas braised with Brussels Sprouts, Radishes & Baby Bok Choy; Air Fried Super Firm Tofu with Medley of Greens, Red Cabbage, Brussels sprouts & Carrots

Simple Squash Soup with Ginger with our morning porridge

This photo, below, was our Christmas Eve dinner with family, Vegetable Lasagna made by my sister-in-law and her helpers, salad with Orange Tahini Dressing, mandarin oranges & pomegranate seeds that I brought, more awesome homemade sourdough bread, made by Don's niece-in-law.

The top right photo, below, was our Christmas Dinner, using up what we had to use up:  Some lasagna we were able to take home with us, the rest of the salad plus a cooked beet salad, some Gardein 'Chicken', and our Chickpea Crust Pizza.

The reason we have so much plant-based meats is that we do keep some as back-up in our freezer.  However, I often use whatever fresh tofu we have, or I cook up lentils or chickpeas, and forget to grab the freezer items.  Actually it was kind of fun to enjoy them over the holiday week!

Bonza Chickpea Crust Pizza

To make the pizza, I used about half a can of pizza sauce, sliced frozen and thawed artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, sweet red peppers, red onion, and vegan mozzarella cheese + a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.  The pizza ingredients went together perfectly.  

The Chickpea crust is great.  It tastes like a wheat crust.  Here's another Pizza recipe using the same Bonza Chickpea crust, also quite good.

The entire dinner was a bit of an odd mix, but in the end, it was all perfect.

Of course we were using up some vegetables at breakfast time as well.  Below is a classic macrobiotic breakfast, with Miso Vegetable Soup with ginger, seaweed, 2 dried shiitakes, carrot, celery and daikon.  The soup is topped with homemade Natto, and served with breakfast porridge.

We have a fridge full of miso, as Don recently ordered several varieties from South River Miso (the best!)

Thankfully, miso and Natto are both fermented, so they kept well through our refrigerator-less days.

Natto is made from fermented soybeans and is one of the richest sources of vitamin K2.  Most people get very little.  Vitamin K1 is found in greens, but K2 is a more easily absorbed form of vitamin K.  Vitamin K2, and nattokinase, the enzyme produced from making Natto have many health benefits, including heart and bone protective effects.  

I'll have to write a separate article about Natto.  It's commonly consumed in Japanese and macrobiotic cuisines, but less common in the West.  And, it's a bit of an acquired taste, but when made correctly, it goes great on top of cooked whole grains, or in soups.

For our final meal using up items that had been frozen, and thawed, we had these:

Holy (live) cow!  These are great!  Tender, with a grilled steak flavor!  I had made white rice sprinkled with red millet the day before, and decided that would be the perfect match with these Korean Beefless Bulgogi.  And, they were.  I'd get these again in a heart beat!  

Many of these meals are not our typical meals, as we prepare most of our meals from scratch using simple basic plant foods. However, they are totally great to have on hand when we want to enjoy something different, or need something quick to prepare.  

While many people are bashing plant-based meats these days, there are many that are protein-rich, and  quite tasty, without a lot of bad ingredients.  I personally find it more enjoyable eating plant-based meats knowing that they did NOT come from a dead animal who lived a miserable life, and suffered horribly at death.  I certainly do not want to ingest that type of energy anymore, as long as I have a choice.  I already went through waves of physical and psychic detox over the last year and a half, give or take, since going vegan.  

Now that I've reached and maintained a much more ideal body weight and body composition, I'd like to maintain that, and continue to manifest the most vibrant, healthy version of myself I can.  You can read about my Macrobiotic Weight Loss 'Journey' here, and my Macrobiotic Weight Loss Meals, here.

I look forward to continued improvements in my flexibility, strength, mental / emotional peace, joy and lightness of being in 2024, and wish blessings of health and harmony for all.

Although we had an expensive week, as we had to have the plumber out to fix our clogged bathroom sinks, and we had to replace our refrigerator, since the old one which was from 2006 wasn't worth fixing ~  the upgrade is welcome, and we are back in the flow.

And, in case you want to see our new refrigerator, here it is.  Refrigerators are a lot more expensive than they used to be!!!

All I can say is, thank God we are on a plant-based diet!  The only thing we finally had to toss out was our locally made apple cider, which fermented.  Go plants!