Bibimbap! BLT!

It seems like all my random meal round-up these days feature food from the cafe at Crosstown Arts (where I work as the communications coordinator), but when there's amazing vegan food right outside your office door, what's a girl to do? Today for lunch, I had the Bibimbap with added tofu (minus the egg).

This is typically served with a fried egg on top. The cafe is not entirely vegan (but I'd say 90% of the items are), but anything can be made vegan. For this, you could simply leave the egg off. Or you can pay a couple extra bucks and add tofu on top! I saw someone post this version on Instagram last week and had to try it.

The bowl is made from fried rice paper, and it's stuffed with pink rice, brussels sprouts, kimchi, and zucchini, plus the most amazing baked tofu.

My breakfast this morning was Overnight Oats with Chia, Walnuts, Berries, & Banana, enjoyed after a core work class at the YMCA. I love having creamy overnight oats prepared to enjoy after my workouts!

And here's my dinner last night — a BLT from Imagine Vegan Cafe. Such a classic. Stuffed with veggie bacon, avocado, tomato, lettuce, and vegan mayo. It's usually served on a white hoagie bun, but I like to sub wheat bread instead. Side of kale.

Banh Mi! Galette! Burrito!

Lulu's Food hosted another vegan pop-up brunch this past Sunday at Fuel Cafe. The theme this time was sandwiches! Don made homemade bagels and did a vegan carrot lox & bagel sandwich thing, and he also made Breakfast Banh Mis. As much as I love a bagel, I cannot resist a banh mi!

Don's homemade baguettes were stuffed with tofu scramble, mushroom pecan pate, harissa, and pickled carrots — all made-in-house. Served with roasted potatoes. Sooooooo good.

But before I ate that around 11:30 am on Sunday, I had this tasty slice of Avocado Toast with a side of fresh berries. First breakfast to tide me over. I topped the toast with sriracha and Spice Hunter Bagel Crunch, a knock-off of TJ's Everything But the Bagel. It's good, but it's salt-free so it's not as good as the original.

I've been eating a lot of Black Bean & Brown Rice Burritos lately! I'm using the oil-free refried black beans from the No Meat Athlete Cookbook (which I made a few weeks ago and froze some) with brown rice and various fillings. This one, enjoyed in the dark yesterday because my power was out (thanks to a transformer blowing up!), has beans and rice, steamed potato, vegan cheddar, salsa, and lettuce. Luckily, when the power goes out, I can still cook on my gas stove. It came back on around 8 pm last night (after being off for 12 hours!).

And I've saved the best for last! Ali, our baker at the cafe at Crosstown Arts, made these amazing Black Sesame & Almond, Mixed Citrus, and Blueberry Galettes this morning. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the sesame seed in there, but I could not resist those flaky layers. And turns out the sesame was a perfect complement to the sweet fruit filling. Was planning to split with a co-worker, but I decided it was too good to share.

Cheeseburger Pizza, Tofu Chicken, & Kool-Aid Pickles!

The cafe at Crosstown Arts (where I work) has two menus – an ALWAYS menu and a TODAY menu. The ALWAYS menu stays the same for several months at a time, only changing with the seasons. But the TODAY menu changes, well, everyday. And Fridays are flatbread days! Flatbread Fridays! A couple weeks back, the featured flatbread was this Cheeseburger Flatbread with Impossible burger crumbles, cheese (I opted for non-dairy cheese), fried onions, vegan aioli, and pickled shishitos. It was SO GOOD.

Here's another amazing plate from Crosstown Arts. The TODAY menu also features a daily vegetable plate, which stays the same for a week at a time. Last week, it featured Grilled Eggplant, Roasted Brussels, Sizzled Kale, and Carrot Puree. I loved all the different textures from the various cooking methods, and that kale was OFF THE CHAIN Y'ALL. It was fried and very crispy, like a perfect kale chip. Best veggie plate I've ever had.

Down the stairs from my Crosstown Arts office inside Crosstown Concourse, there's a new popcorn shop — Pop-a-Roo's — that just opened. Not only do they have popcorn, but they also carry KOOL-AID PICKLES! This is a Southern thing, but I'd somehow never tried it. Probably because I'd never actually seen a real-life Kool-Aid pickle. I'll try anything though, so I bought some as soon as I heard they had them. And you know what? They're freaking good. They sell grape and red (guess it's cherry?), and the grape is definitely the better flavor. I know this is a combo that shouldn't work, but it does. It tastes like a sweet and sour grape pickle.

Here's a less-weird meal that I made at home last night — No-Chicken Tofu Bites with Agave Mustard, Oven Roasted Fries with Curry Ketchup Aioli, and Roasted Asparagus. 

The no-chicken tofu bites are actually a recipe for the air fryer from my dad. They're really good! You bread the tofu in a batter that's seasoned with vegan chicken broth and then coat with panko. This entire meal was basically oil-free, aside from a few spritzes of cooking spray. I feel best when I'm eating oil-free!

The No Meat Athlete Sauce System!

No Meat Athlete recently put out a podcast (and accompanying blog post) about hosts Matt and Doug's favorite healthy dinner — the grain/green/bean meal. As their post mentions, this can be as simple as a bean and veggie bowl with brown rice. Or it can be something more creative, like tempeh (counts as a bean) tacos with red cabbage (counts as a green) on corn tortillas (counts as a grain).

I know that I feel healthiest when I'm eating bean/grain/green-inspired meals, and I loved all the fresh ideas they threw out. I'll be trying a number of them over the next few weeks. They also included a link to a past blog post on their No Meat Athlete Sauce System, a fancy name for NMA co-host Doug Hay's favorite five whole foods-based sauce recipes and various ways to use them. You can see all the recipes and serving suggestions here.

When I was making my grocery list last week, I picked out two sauces to try. Starting meal planning with a sauce rather than the main ingredient is a new way of thinking for me, and it's fun! After all, the sauce makes the meal. One of the sauces I selected was the Coconut Curry, which I used for this tofu stir-fry.

This fits into the grain/green/bean category since I have tofu (beans), brown rice (grains), and cauliflower and green beans (both count as greens!). Plus, there's red pepper thrown in there for fun.

A stir-fry was one of the main uses mentioned for this easy coconut milk-based sauce, but they also suggest using it as the base of a curry soup or to add peanut butter and make peanut noodle bowls. Yum!

Other sauces in the system include a tomato sauce, lemon tahini, teriyaki, and cashew cream, with plenty of suggestions for using them all. Next week, I'll make their recipe for tomato sauce and blend in some chickpeas (Matt's suggestion for sneaking beans into pasta) and then serve it over whole wheat pasta with kale and mushrooms.

Mardi Gras Fun!

Yesterday was Mardi Gras! Although Memphis is about six hours north of New Orleans, we still party pretty hard up here on Fat Tuesday. And besides, I'm all about a holiday! I started my morning off with some gentle yoga and foam rolling since my legs were still sore from the half-marathon on Sunday. And then I skipped my usual smoothie or oats and went right for the white bread carbs with a King Cake Bagel by Dave's Bagels, spread with vegan cream cheese.

Aren't these adorable? They're not flavored, but the colors are so festive!

Every year, I make a Vegan King Cake to take to work, and this one was no exception. I always use an old recipe by Kittee Berns that I don't believe exists on the internet anymore (sadness). But I have a printed copy that I use. This year, I filled my cake with cooked apples, vegan cream cheese, and cinnamon.

My boss insisted that we do a photo shoot of me cutting the cake by the amazing lights outside the Crosstown Arts bathroom. Believe it or not, our bathroom lights are one of the most photographed backdrops in Memphis (I have no stats to back that up, but I have to walk through photo shoots when I walk to the bathroom at least once a day). The bathroom even has its own Instagram account!

Here's an inside shot! I enjoyed this with a cup of coffee at my desk mid-morning.

For lunch, I brought Blackened Tofu Scramble Over Kale & Garlicky Grits from The Superfun Time Vegan Holiday Cookbook's Mardi Gras section. I've made this in the past and loved it, so I knew I wanted to make this quick, Cajun-spiced meal again.

Crosstown Concourse, the building where I work, partnered with the Crosstown Memphis CDC (a board I serve on) to throw a Mardi Gras Celebration in the afternoon. We had music by a second line band and the Kingsbury High drum line.

Some local drag queens led the second line parade around the building!

After the party, I headed to Imagine Vegan Cafe to eat their delicious Vegan Chicken & Sausage Gumbo with a side salad (served with vegan honey mustard). I love this creamy, meaty gumbo topped with brown rice, and the salad made me feel better after all that sugar earlier.

After dinner, I went home and wound down with an Abita Mardi Gras Bock beer (and my cat Polaris, who makes this funny face because he's missing one of his front fangs).

Today begins Lent, which I haven't observed since high school (went I went through a Catholic phase). But I'm a sucker for a detox (and the retox that follows!), so I've decided to give up my favorite food, ramen, until the Lenten season ends on April 18. Nothing against ramen, but I do have a tendency to eat ramen as a late night snack on weekends (typically when Paul makes a bowl at, say, 10 pm on a Saturday and doesn't finish it). This will help me curb that late-night snacking (and I'll have a better appreciation for ramen when it's over!).

2019 Little Rock Half-Marathon Race Recap

Happy Fat Tuesday, y'all! I've been celebrating Mardi Gras all day with themed eats, parties, and beer. And I'll have a full report on that tomorrow, but first, I need to catch y'all up with how the Little Rock Half-Marathon went last Sunday.

This was my fourth year running Little Rock (I've done the half there three times and the full once), and it was my sixth half-marathon in total. I'm sooooo glad to be healthy and fully healed after two stress fractures last year. And I was even more glad that my partner Paul signed up to run this race with me. Paul has run three half-marathons including this one, and we've done a number of shorter races together. But this was our first half-marathon together.

We woke up at 5:30 am at my friend Sheridan & Drew's house in Little Rock and had bagels (with cinnamon almond butter for me and Earth Balance for Paul). Aren't these Mardi Gras-themed king cake bagels by Dave's Bagels the cutest?! More on those in tomorrow's Mardi Gras recap.

Sheridan (my BFF since 8th grade) is super-awesome and woke up very early to drive us downtown for the race. She lives about 20 minutes away, so she's the bestest for doing this for me every year! It was SO COLD on Sunday (with temps in the low 30s at 7 am when we arrived), but fortunately the Little Rock race offers a warm place inside the Statehouse Convention Center to hang out pre-race. I snacked on a banana while we waited.

At 8 am, we were off! Not only was it cold, it was also drizzly for most of the race. That drizzle even turned to sleet and then hail at one point! Oh, and the wind! Bitterly cold winds. The weather could not have been less ideal, but the good thing about running is it warms your body temp significantly, so it always feels about 10-20 degrees warmer than it is. Despite the crappy weather, we felt good for most of the race! 

We were offered beer samples around mile 9 (thanks Stones Throw Brewing!) and mile 12 (thanks Dugan's Pub!), and we took some mimosa shots from a kind volunteer on the course. Oh, and someone was passing out grilled pineapple around mile 10(ish), and that was AMAZING. A religious group was offering on-the-go communion with bread and teensy wine shots, and while I certainly wanted the wine, the ex-Catholic in me just couldn't do it. Ha!

Paul and I finished strong together! We crossed the finish line holding hands. Paul can run much faster than me, and I told him he should really run the race fast and try to PR. But he didn't get much training in and decided he'd rather take it easy with me in the back of the pack. We finished in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. Pretty far off from last year's Little Rock Half personal record of 2:31, but that's okay. It's been awhile since I've run this far!

After the race, we received our awesome medals! The theme this year was 2019: A Race Odyssey and the medals had a space theme with an alien spinner!

And they glow in the dark! Little Rock is known for having some of the best (and biggest) medals in the country. These half medals are about half the size of the full medals, which are the size of a dinner plate!

Outside the finishing chute, we were handed food and beer. Most races aren't very vegan-friendly with their post-race options, but Little Rock always offers pasta with marinara. They prepare it with added cheese, but I always ask them to go back in the back and prepare me a fresh cup without cheese. I'm so grateful that they're able to do that! All finishers get two Michelob Ultras, which really hit the spot after a long run. Yay for post-race carbs!

Sheridan picked us up at the post-race party after about an hour. And we headed back to her place for showers. I had a Clif Chocolate Peanut Butter Builder Bar in the car for protein. While I don't believe protein supplements are necessary anymore, I do think you need to get some post-race protein. Protein in whole foods form is always best, but since I was away from home, a bar was my best option.

After showers, we headed out for the real post-race reward! PIZZA!! We went to Mellow Mushroom, where I ordered a Jerk Tempeh Pizza with vegan cheese, spinach, mushrooms, and bell peppers. Hit the spot!

Such a great time! Next up, the Nashville Rock & Roll Marathon (the full!). Training for that starts later this week, but I'm taking a few days off running to recover.

What I Ate the Day Before the 2019 Little Rock Half Marathon

Paul and I ran the Little Rock Half-Marathon yesterday! And I'll do a full race recap tomorrow. But tonight's post is all about the food I ate the day before the race. I'm such a nerd about pre- and post-race nutrition, and I think planning my workout meals is probably half the fun of marathon training. The day before a race, I follow a pretty standard meal plan that involves smoothies, salads, and plenty of healthy carbs.

The race was on Sunday in Little Rock, but we woke up on Saturday morning in Memphis and had Banana Mango Berry Smoothies with a frozen strawberry-blueberry-mango blend, banana, walnuts, spinach, and flax.

Then Paul and I headed to the Cooper Young Farmers Market, so I could grab some baked goods from Lulu's. Don's vegan rolls and savory baked goods were certainly not on my pre-race plan, but when pre-race day falls on a farmers market day, what's a girl to do? I wasn't about to miss out on Don's Pizza Bread! I got one of these to share with Paul. Hey, carbs, right? This was the most amazing chewy, buttery bread with cashew mozz and marinara. Made a nice morning snack.

After the market (and pizza bread snack time), we packed up my Subaru and headed to Little Rock so we could get to the race expo in plenty of time. Since I knew we'd be in the car around lunch time, I packed my pre-race lunch of a Giant Salad with Cashew Ranch & Smoked Tofu to eat in the car while Paul drove. Car salad!

We went straight to expo when we arrived to get our bibs and shirts and do a little shopping. Then we headed to my best friend Sheridan & Drew's house. They live in Little Rock and are nice enough to let me stay with them the night before the race every year. Every year, we go shopping at Whole Foods to get stuff to make the ultimate pre-race food, spaghetti! But Sher and Drew have this awesome tradition of "beers before shopping," meaning they never get groceries without first enjoying a beer at the Whole Foods bar. Of course, Paul and I were happy to oblige!

After beers, we got our pasta stuff and headed back to their house to cook dinner. This year, we did a Veggie Marinara Spaghetti with added mushrooms, red onion, and green pepper. We always go with whole wheat spaghetti, and of course, we had garlic bread on the side. Plus Follow Your Heart shredded vegan parm! So good!

After dinner, we hung out a little longer before bed. I enjoyed a locally brewed Lost Forty Easy Tiger Mexican Style Lager as I always have one before-bed beer the night before a race. 

And then we were off to bed by 10 pm to ensure we got plenty of sleep before the alarm went off at 5:30 am on Sunday. I'll be back tomorrow with a race recap and — of course — post-race pizza.