Foodie Find!

I recently stumbled upon a website called getmealplans.com by Lindsay, the Happy Herbivore   The idea is that you pay $5 per week (less if you subscribe longer) for a complete weekly meal plan, grocery list, snack guides and recipes.  It's all laid out and is supposed to be super easy to follow.  The dishes are for a plant-based diet, vegan actually, and built for 1,200 calories per day, per person.  They have two plans, the individual (feeds 1) or the family plan (feeds 4).  Supposedly, you can cook most of the recipes beforehand and just grab and go on busy days.  

At first, I thought website claimed that you could do this on $23 per month, but I believe that's just the cost of the plan per month.  Reading more in depth, she says the average is $30-40 per person.  It's steep, but has lots of healthy stuff.  We'll see if it's worth it.

I love the idea of not planning what's for dinner (or breakfast, lunch, and snacks) and everything being incredibly healthy, so I bought the one for this week (January 9th, 2013).  Five dollars was painless to spend for not having to plan anything!!! I did look for some reviews online before I bought it, but couldn't find anything outside of her website.  So I'll review it this week and see what I think.

Here goes!

Butter Dreams

My fake grandma used to have a butter churn in her dining room for decoration. There were many meals I spent staring at it and imaging myself in the days of old, chatting away while churning away. Since then I've always dreamed of making my own butter.

The day finally came when I stumbled upon an easy how-to from Mother Earth News and knew it was worth a try. The full details are here; make sure you try it. It is completely worth all the shaking. Actually that's the most fun part! So shake, dance, and enjoy!

LottaFrutta

LOTTAFRUTA

This is just a quickie. I discovered a little hole-in-the wall restaurant that had the coolest food! It was called LottaFrutta.

This place had murals of gigantic fruits and berries painted in the entire space. The owner is an adorable young Brazilian woman with bright sparkling eyes. She lives directly above her shop and is always bouncing around her cafe talking about the benefits of each fruit.

This is their Dolce Vitta. The combination of yogurt with honey drizzeled on top and a myraid of fruits was pure heaven! Definitely have to recreate this at home! I loved her idea of adding honey to the fruit and yogurt.

I also got a grilled sanduch there. It's like a panini with cucumbers, aavocados, sprouts, havarati cheese and tomatoes! It was incredible with fresh locally baked bread. I think I just became addicted to LottaFrutta!

Green Smoothies!

I just came across a new website and found a brillant recipe idea. Read the whole article under "Ode to Green Smoothies" by Victoria Boutenko.

The idea is to mix greens (40%) and fruit (60%) together with water and create a delicious shake. So I had a few overly ripe bananas and some spring mix salad wilting in the fridge and decided to try it.

I threw in the two old bananas, a handful of salad greens, a little bit of water and about 4 ice cubes just because I like it cold!

At first I told myself that I loved it, and then acknowledged that I was lying :D. It was a little bitter (from the wilting spring mix no doubt) and watery (too much water!). So I added some maple syrup to it. It turned out pretty good and it was OH so filling!

Next time I won't have to add syrup if I use fresh non-bitter greens (ie baby spinach) and a sweet fruit in addition to the banana. I'm definetly going to give it another try! I love the idea of gettting some many good vitamins and good taste in an easy to fix, raw, yummy recipe.