Product Reviews: Bold Organics Cheese Pizza and Boom Chicka Pop Popcorn

After an excellent time at DC Veg Fest (full recap here), I set to tracking down a few of the new products I tried and enjoyed.  The first one I was able to track down was Bold Organics Pizza.

Bold Organics Pizza is gluten free, milk free and lactose free.  The crust is made of brown rice flour, corn meal, yeast and potato starch.  In addition to a vegan "cheese" pizza, there are a few other options, including a vegan "veggie lovers" with mushrooms, peppers and onions.  Both the vegan options use Follow Your Heart brand cheese substitutes, which are made with non-GMO soy. The "meat lovers" and "deluxe" have real meat on them, but are also gluten and dairy free.  Here's hoping we'll see a some vegan versions these pies soon!  In the meantime, Tofurky makes a few vegan meat pies you can try.

The The Bold Organics line is carried locally at Food Lion and MOM's Organic Market.  (Check their website to locate a store near you that carries them.) Last weekend, we happened to be driving by a Food Lion, so I popped in to grab a pizza.  After spending a few confused minutes in the frozen pizza section, I tracked down a store employee, who in turn tracked down her manager.  Turns out the Bold Organics products are located in the gluten free freezer case, which is located adjacent to the produce section.

According to the package, the pizzas are best prepared in your oven or toaster.  The microwave is not recommended, so if you're in a hurry, this is not the pizza for you.  You'll need time for your oven or toaster to reach 450, 20-22 minutes for cooking, an additional two minutes for broiling and then two minutes for cooling (or, in my case, photographing the pizza for the blog).  I would recommend definitely doing the broiling, as it helps get the cheese nice and bubbly.

When we took the pizza out of the oven, it looked and smelled delicious!  My husband and I both remarked that we couldn't believe it was vegan.  He tasted it and concurred that it might fool him compared to a dairy frozen pizza.  The "cheese" was melty and the sauce had a nice, spicy kick.  The crust is flakier than a traditional pizza, but not unpleasantly so.  It crisps up well.

I will note that I was hungry an hour after I had the pizza, so I would suggest serving it with a big salad or a heaping plate of veggies.  Also, I know I've had this rant before, but let me say it again.  The nutrition serving size on the nutrition panel?  1/2 a pizza. This thing is about the size of a small dinner plate - no one is eating just half of it.  Figure a whole pizza will have 660 calories, 26 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 1340 milligrams of sodium, 12 grams of fiber and 10 grams of protein.  You'll also get 30% of your Vitamin A, 40% of your Vitamin C, 12% of your calcium and 30% of your iron.  So, while it's not an everyday food, it's definitely a better option than a traditional cheese and meat pizza, which will also wallop you with saturated fat, cholesterol and even more sodium.

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Another subject I've written about multiple times before are the finds at our local market, Grosvenor Market.  This place is really a gem, especially when it comes to tracking down healthier snack alternatives.  This weekend, I picked up a bag of Boom Chicka Pop. This popcorn is super simple - popcorn, sunflower oil and sea salt.  Thus, it's great for vegans and our gluten free friends. 

I tend to prefer hot popcorn, but this was a great vegan alternative to microwave popcorn (and I didn't feel like I had to eat the entire bag at once).  It had just the right amount of salty goodness while only having 90 milligrams of sodium in a 3 2/3 cup serving (that, people, is a serving size!).

If you're interested in trying Boom Chicka Pop, you can use this map to find a retailer near you, or you can order it online.

 

Vegan Football Sunday: Potato Skins, "Wings," and Guacamole

The Eagles were televised yet again, so I thought it would be fun to have a few friends over to watch the game.  I decided to do a number of vegan friendly and football friendly finger foods for the occasion: "wings," loaded potato skins and guacamole.

The wing recipe is from the October 2011 Vegetarian Times.   I used Upton's Naturals original seitan, Cholula hot sauce, Whole Foods maple syrup, Original Vegenaise and the smoked paprika we had handy in the spice cabinet.  The wings needed to marinate for two hours before being breaded and cooked, so I did that step first and then popped them in the fridge.

Next, I started the prep for the potato skins.  My husband had picked up a five pound bag of medium potatoes for me earlier in the week, so I baked those in the oven for 45 minutes at 425, and sent them on a wire rack to cool.

While the potatoes were cooking, I made tempeh bacon crumbles.  The October 2012 Vegetarian Times had a recipe for Warm German Potato Salad that included directions for the "bacon" crumbles, so I decided to try those for my skins.  The recipe's not online yet, but it includes tempeh, low-sodium soy sauce (I used Bragg's Liquid Aminos), blackstrap molasses, ketchup or tomato paste, and liquid smoke.  I ended up using both ketchup and tomato paste to get the crumbles to a more "bacony" color, and also cooked them in the pan a bit longer than the recipe called for to get them to crisp up more.  There is a TON of "bacon" left over, so I'll likely sneak it into recipes throughout the week.

To finish the potato skins, I used this CHOW recipe as a guideline, but veganized the ingredients. Instead of butter, I used Earth Balance, and I stuffed the potatoes with the vegan bacon crumbles and daiya cheddar cheese, then topped them with freshly chopped chives.  The potato skins were definitely the hit of the party - my non-vegan friends couldn't believe they were vegan, and especially that I didn't use real cheese.  When I explained what daiya was, my friend Greg joked that I have "gone to the dark side."

To make the guac, I used four ripe avocados,three roma tomatoes (diced), two serrano peppers (seeds removed, minced), half a red onion (minced), four cloves of garlic (minced), the juice from one fresh lime, fresh cilantro (chopped), sea salt and freshly ground black pepper,  I set out the guac with some Garden of Eatin' Multigrain Blue Corn Chips for my friends to eat while I finished the skins and wings.  I also had a tray with carrots, celery and hummus.

After the potato skins were out, I finished up the wings, using whole wheat panko for the breading.  The breading really didn't stick as well as I would have liked, but they had a nice golden exterior.

 

For dessert, thanks to my friend Carol, we had Football Shaped Oreos.  Did you know Oreos are vegan?  (My friend Valerie describes them as "accidentally vegan.")  That's yet another example of an everyday food that non-vegans eat that's vegan friendly.  I'd put them in the same category of pasta with marinara sauce, PB & J, rice and beans and the guac I made today.

Are you a vegan football fan?  How do you veganize your favorite football snacks?

Two Days of Vegan Deliciousness

I've had two days of really delicious meals to share.

As I've mentioned before, our local market has a number of neat food options.   One of my favorite things about it are the variety of snack options that are friendly to my allergies.  When I popped in to pick up a few things last night, I noticed a new product, Beanitos Black Bean Chips. 

These chips are vegan, and they're also gluten-free, which makes them a great option for folks with celiac and other forms of gluten intolerance.  They also have 4g of protein and 5g of fiber per 10 chip serving.  If GMOs concern you, also note that this product is verified as Non-GMO.

The chips are light and sweeter tasting than your average tortilla chip.  My guess is that the sweetness comes from the brown rice.  They paired well with the avocado, tomato and sea salt you see on the right.

I know for sure that I've mentioned my love of Whole Foods many a time in this blog.  Today, for lunch, I visited the Foggy Bottom store and enjoyed a number of items off of their prepared foods bar.  I particularly like getting prepared foods at Whole Foods since they clearly label their allergens, as well as which items are vegan friendly.

In the picture to the right (left hand corner clockwise around), you'll find Quinoa Ranchero, raw dandelion, beets, kamut citrus salad and carrots with ginger.

 

This is my second time eating the kamut citrus salad, and it continues to be a favorite. The kamut has a chewy, nutty texture, and it's a good source of protein and fiber.  The carrots were even more delicious than I was expecting.  It was also my first time eating dandelion greens.  Like most greens, they are an excellent source of vitamin A & C.  They weren't as bitter as I expected, and I actually thought they were good mixed in with the kamut.

Changing gears.  Sometimes, in the middle of my yoga practice, I get strong food cravings.  Since part of yoga is listening to signals from my body, as long as the cravings are healthy, I listen to them. In my pre-vegetarian days, my cravings were for the fancy McDonald's burger with the red onions and a large fries (the fact that there is a McDonald's across the street from my yoga studio may have contributed to these cravings).  However, as I embraced a pescetarian diet, and then a lacto-ovo one and now my plant-based/animal product free/veganesque one, I noticed that my cravings gradually became for healthier and healthier foods.  For example, I might crave a large salad from Sweetgreen or falafel (or, better yet, the Sweetgreen salad with Falafel).

 

Today, my craving was for vegan pizza.  Yes, specifically, vegan pizza.  This was big for me.  It's been about 19 days since I had my last serving of cheese.  Yes, I fell back on the cheese wagon pretty hard last February.  Recently, I decided it was time to eliminate it again.  That is the subject of another post.

 

If that sounds like the terminology of an addict, it's a fair point.  Dr. Oz and Dr. Neal Barnard back me up on this subject, and these guys know their stuff. I know that dairy and I don't get along - it upsets my stomach, makes me break out, gives headaches, makes me congested, you name it.  Also, I tend to eat much larger portions of food when the dish has a dairy component.  Plus, there's the whole ethics of vegetarianism that makes me pause when I think about dairy products.  

 

That said, if you put cheese it in front of me, I can't stop eating it.  So, it's best that I just kick it out of my diet altogether, and get my protein, calcium and Vitamin D from other sources.

 

So yes, the fact that I wanted vegan pizza, in my mind, was a good thing.  I'm lucky that there are three good options for vegan pizza near our place:  Pete's-A-Pizza, Z Pizza and, you guessed it, Whole Foods.   Since Whole Foods is the closest to our apartment, we opted to go there.  Their vegan pizza is always excellent.  Rather than using daiya or another cheese substitute, their vegan pizza is cheese free and loaded with veggies like peppers, spinach and mushrooms.  It's a little heavy on black olives for my taste, but those are easily removed.  

The good news is that I didn't crave my husband's cheese pizza, so I am guessing that's another sign that I have kicked my desire for dairy.  I'm looking forward to checking out more vegan pizza options in the near future! 

Snack Review: So Delicious Coconut Blueberry Yogurt

When I was a little kid, I was a big fan of Dannon Fruit on the Bottom Yogurt.  My favorite flavors were dutch apple and blueberry.  As I became more health conscious, I got into the Fage Greek Yogurts, specifically the ones that came with a little side of fruit puree that you could combine into the yogurt cup.

Since I've been back to going dairy-free, I haven't really been craving yogurt.  But, I was intrigued by So Delicious' Coconut Yogurts.  Today, as my pre-yoga snack, I had the blueberry flavor.  It doesn't have the "fruit on the bottom" type texture that I liked in my yogurt, and it was not as thick as I was expecting.  I did like the flavor - you could definitely taste the blueberry and I caught a hint of coconut.  My co-worker noted that it smelled delicious as well.

From an ingredient standpoint, it has some positives and some things that may give you some pause.  On the positive side, it's fortified with B-12 (30%) and also isn't a bad source of calcium (15%).  It also has active and live cultures, just like your typical dairy yogurt. Plus, there's even 3 grams of fiber in there!  However, if you're a "clean" eater or wary of additives, the ingredients may read like a chemistry experiment.  That being said, if you aren't eating a traditional dairy yogurt for ethical reasons, or if you're having trouble tolerating dairy, I think this is fine as an occasional substitute.

Tonight, my fellow yogini and food blogger, Valerie, posted a review of So Delicious' Greek Style Almond Yogurt.  She raved about it, and I look forward to checking it out!

Exploding Cereal, Rice Cakes and Dinosaur Kale

I'm continuing to focus on simple, easy vegan meals.  Here are some highlights from today's eating adventures.

Breakfast - Or How I Was Traumatized By a Box of Exploding Cereal
I really like cereal, but cereal often does not like me.  Hidden soy can often turn this treat into a sneeze fest.  But, after careful perusal of ingredient labels, I decided to try Nature's Path Flax Plus Multibran Flakes.  This cereal has a lot going for it - it's got 5g of fiber and 4g of protein per serving.  And, since a "serving" is 3/4 of a cup, and 3/4 of a cup would barely feed a squirrel, I figure I'm getting a lot more than that!  The flax in the cereal also is a source of Omega-3.  It's not vitamin fortified, but since I get my vitamins from a variety of plant sources and a vegan friendly supplement, that's not a big deal.

Milk and I also don't get along, but I've enjoyed experimenting with milk substitutes.  Having tried rice milk and almond milk, I thought I'd try coconut milk, specifically So Delicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk.  This product is fortified with a number of vitamins and minerals, Vitamin B12 (50% DV) and Vitamin D (30%). 

So, where does exploding cereal come in?  Well, this morning, when I went to open the cereal, I found the plastic bag a bit challenging to open.  I got a tiny hole in it, so small that basically a flake at a time was coming out.  So, I decided to try and open the bag a little more.  The next thing I knew, cereal was flying everywhere - the counter, the stove, the floor, my hair, my husband's hair and pretty much everywhere but in my bowl.  It was an avalanche of cereal. 

Five minutes of sweeping later, I sat down to enjoy my cereal with coconut milk and blueberries.  I would definitely make sure you add fruit to this cereal or use a vanilla flavored milk substitute, especially if you're used to eating things that are very sweetened.

Snack - Or Rice Cakes Don't Need To Stay in the 80's

I know.  Rice Cakes.  Really?  If you grew up in the 80's, like I did, you probably have not so fond memories of rice cakes, or as some people called them, diet cardboard.  But, recently, when I saw a fellow yogini snacking at them at a yoga workshop, my curiosity was piqued.  I like crunchy, salty things, after all.

The brand I tried was Lundberg's Wild Rice Cakes.  I like Lundberg's rice products, so I felt confident that these would be worth buying,  I was pleasantly surprised with how good these are - nutty and just the right amount of salt.  It was yummy with my giant fuji apple, and the combination made a good pre-yoga snack.

Dinner - When Dinosaur Kale Walked in My Kitchen

I got home later than usual this evening since I was having fun chatting with friends after yoga.  I was tempted to try one of the frozen meals, but I figured I could cook something very fast.  Since I finished the curly kale I bought on Sunday, I decided to make something with dinosaur kale.

Dinosaur kale goes by many names - laccinato kale, Tuscan kale, cavolo nero, etc.  It's flatter and darker than curly kale, and the texture does look scaly, so the dinosaur name is appropriate.

I had half a yellow onion in the fridge, so I minced some of that up, along with a clove of garlic.  I sauteed those in olive oil on high heat for a minute or so.  Meanwhile, I sliced the kale into thin ribbons and then cut the ribbons into smaller pieces.  When I was done cutting the kale, I added in a can of chickpeas and a few scoops of my leftover rice and seasoned the mixture with sea salt and some generous turns of ground black pepper.  Then, I tossed in the kale, gave it a stir and turned off the heat the second it began to wilt, which was pretty fast.  A few shakes of red pepper flakes and it was done.  Fresh, filling and I have leftovers tomorrow.

A Few Random Notes and Some Versatile Bloggers

Slightly self-indulgent of me to go ahead and post this pic of my snack, since I just tweeted it.  But, I was thrilled with how well it photographed and even happier with how it tasted, so I thought it might be fun to share it with folks who aren't on Twitter (Hi, Mom!).  The foodage in question diced avocado with yellow and red pear tomatoes.  The chips in the back are Stacy's Multigrain Pita Chips. Pita Chips are a terrific alternative if you're looking for something snacky that's not fried, and the fact that these are multigrain makes them even healthier.  They're also vegan and don't have any soy ingredients.

Avocado has been helping me as I wean myself off my cheese addiction (read or watch Forks Over Knives for more on Caesin) and I love snacking on it.

Anyhow, in the theme of little things that make me happy, I'm going to take a slight departure from talking about all vegetarian food, all the time to give a shout out to my friend and fellow blogger, Lisa Calandriello.  Lisa and I went to college together and "found" each other at DC's Yoga on the Mall last year.  Since then, we've bonded over yoga, practicing together at Tranquil Space.  In addition to being an awesome yoga teacher giving amazing assists - her Eagle assist completely changed my ability to be in that pose - Lisa has a terrific website and blog that you should check out.

Given all of these terrific things about Lisa, I was so flattered that she chose to mention this little blog project as part of her contribution to the Versatile Blogger Awards.


Part of the award is telling your readers seven random things about yourself, and thus, you are treated to some non-food related things about me.

1.  I love to knit.   My grandmother taught me when I was six.  My first "project" was a cream colored swatch that was a disaster, but I've steadily improved.  You'll most often find me knitting little toy animals to give as new baby presents or hats to donate to the DCJCC December 25 Day of Service (mark your calendars, DC folks!), but I also occasionally will tackle something more complicated.

2.  When I was in high school, I wanted to be a film critic.  I still love movies and will happily go to a movie theater by myself if I can't find someone who is willing to sit through three hours of black and white German cinema or Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Jenn, you were a sport for seeing that one with me!).

3.  I last drove a car on an actual road, in traffic in 1996.  But, now that I live outside of DC, I'm learning to drive again.  I am consoling myself with the fact that I will no longer need to cajole my husband into driving me to Whole Foods whenever I run out of Earth Balance or Daiya.

4.  I have a Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential, which is a professional designation for association management staff.  Even before I qualified for the exam, I needed five years of work experience and 100 hours of professional education credits.  And then I had to learn a lot of random things like environmental scanning, Russian table service, balance sheets, retention rate calculation and answer questions about them on a multiple choice exam.  But, I did it!

5.  Whenever I go on vacation, I try to involve some sort of boat.  When I went to Greece, I took a cruise to Aegina, Poros and Hydra.  When I went to Costa Rica, I went white water rafting (and got thrown out of the raft!).  I was happy as a clam in Chicago doing the architecture tour on the river.  A vacation isn't a vacation for me unless I get to do something on a boat.

6.  When I was in high school, I was very active in our drama club, which was called Theater Workshop.  I couldn't dance and sing at the same time, so I did props and set decoration for all the musicals.  But, I did act in our children's theater productions.  I was always cast as the villain.

7.  Even though I hate to bring this up, I'm running out of interesting things to say, so I'll add this out there.  I was on Jeopardy! in 2000 (the episode aired in March 2001).  I didn't get a single answer wrong, but I had issues with the buzzer.  I ended up coming in second place and I won a Caribbean cruise.  So, I got to go on a boat!  For vacation!  For free!

Another part of the award is to give a shout out to some other blogs you read, so, in addition to reading Lisa's blog, I encourage you to check out:

Skydiving for Pearls: My high school friend Abby has a terrific blog about her life as an opera singer and actress in NYC.  It's terrific to get to follow Abby's life.  She's an extraordinarily talented performer, and she openly shares all aspects of her professional life and how it shapes her world.

Hip Tranquil Chick:  Kimberly Wilson is more of an "accomplished blogger extraordinare" than an "up and coming blogger,"  but I adore Kimberly, who I got to know through attending classes at her yoga studio, Tranquil Space.  Every time I get my Hip Tranquil Chick email alert, I know something I'm going to read is going to make me smile.

Resourceful Mommy:  While I'm not a Mommy myself, I enjoy reading this blog by my college friend, Amy.  Amy is also very accomplished in the blog world, and that's an understatement.  She's a terrific writer and has some amazing insights on family and daily living.