Cauliflower Bean Alfredo (Vegan Day 1)

Today I began Day 1 of my 30 Day Vegan Challenge.  I had to add one day since the month of February has 29 days this year.  This has been something I've been looking forward to doing for a few weeks now.  I had to mentally prepare myself and saved a ton of vegan recipes.  I have never even tried to be vegetarian before, so this is going to be a bit of a leap for me.

Reasons why I'm going vegan for a month:
- Self-determination, no one's telling me or forcing me to do this
- Seeking a challenge
- Want to test my energy levels during/after this month, I'm still exercising frequently
- Forces me to eat more vegetables
- Forces me to stay away from more processed/artificial crap
- Going vegetarian is too half-assed, and I'm not doing this for animal rights reasons
- Want to see how the elimination of dairy affects me
- Putting myself in the shoes of vegetarians, vegans, and those with food allergies

What my Day 1 groceries looked like.
Many of these ingredients will be a staple for the next 30 days and I plan on making everything as delicious as it can be.

And so, for dinner tonight, I used cauliflower and cannellini beans to make a creamy-tasting "alfredo" sauce.

1/2 head of cauliflower, spinach leaves, 1 cup almond milk, 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 cup cannellini beans, 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes, whole wheat macaroni (or any pasta), nutmeg, salt & pepper, and onions

I use this to help speed up the boiling water!

Follow pasta instructions.

In the meantime, boil cauliflower for about 15-20 minutes.

After the cauliflower was done, I poured it out and quickly browned some onions in 1 tbsp of olive oil in the same saucepan.

Add the cauliflower, cannellini beans, almond milk, 2 tbsp oil,  and a dash of nutmeg.

Use an immersion blender (or regular one!) to blend everything to desired smoothness.

Pasta with crushed tomato, spinach leaves, and topped with cauliflower sauce

Add salt & pepper.  After this picture was taken, I added italian seasoning, and crushed red pepper.

The cannellini beans added a nice creaminess.

This was yummy.  I'm going to make this sauce again for sure.  I saved half for tomorrow's lunch, but I'm going to skip the crushed tomato.  Sun-dried or baby tomatoes would go better, as to not overtake the taste of the cauliflower sauce.

Recipe adapted from Cupcakes&Kale

Mint.

I'm really starting to like pastels.  I used to be annoyed with the palette and preferred only bold colors, but it's no surprise that my tastes are changing.

Bought a similar dress at Forever 21, which I plan to pair with a skinny belt and white pearl necklace.

Classy. (She looks like the female version of Robert Pattinson)

NastyGal.

Okay done. This color is making me hungry.

Cinnamon Apple Balls

These little snacks (or desserts!) are all natural, tasty, and healthy!

Ingredients:

8 Figs

12 Prunes

1 c Walnuts

1/2 c Oats

1 Medium Apple

1/2 c Coconut

1/4 c Brown Sugar

Cinnamon and Nutmeg to taste

Chop up the apple and figs a bit, and then throw everything in the food processor.

Should be a pasty consistancy. You can make 24 rolled balls from this.

Roll them in the sugar and coconut.

It's no-bake!

Best if chilled for a few hours.

Yuma!

I eat these as a dessert since I added the brown sugar.  The sugar IS optional though.  They're so dense that eating 2 of them is pretty filling.

For 24 balls, each ball has:

92 calories

1.3g protein

1.5g fiber

Peppermint Red Velvet Shortbread Cake

Holy amazing.  Do you like red velvet cake? How about shortbread? A little bit of chocolate fudge? Sprinkled peppermint? Put them all together and it's like a dessert orchestra that you can taste in your mouth...cooked up by Beethoven.

Okay I may be giving myself too much credit.
Did I cheat? Yes. But did I spend hours in the kitchen making this? Yes. So all is fair.
I had 4 hours to make a dessert and it needed to be awesome.  Only 4 hours.

Using my creativity I combined a package of Canterbury Naturals-Fireside Peppermint Chocolate Crunch Bar Mix that I had with a regular box of red velvet cake mix....in alternating layers.

Additional ingredients: eggs, milk, butter, vegetable oil

This is the website for the mix, but they don't sell the package there. 

Basically, they give 3 packages.  The first one to use is the shortbread mix. 

So buy that. Or make it.

Butter n 3/4ths, baby.

Melt the butter and stir shortbread mixture into it. Or stir brown sugar and flour if you're making it.

Mash it into crust form in 9in pan. Put in oven at 350 F for 25-30 min.

In the mean time, mix all of your boxed red velvet cake ingredients.

Oh! The shortbread crust is ready.

(Okay part of the reason this took longer than expected was because I needed the shortbread's pan for the cake)

Pour the cake batter into the two 9in pans. Follow directions on back of box.

Perrrrfect.

Now I have my shortbread crust, red velvet cake, and the second bag of my Canterbury Naturals mixed up.

This second bag is a buttery chocolate spread.  Basically you can crush up chocolate cookies or oreos and mix it with stick of butter in the microwave. 

Now spread that chocolate butter on your shortbread crust.

Put a layer of red velvet.

Another layer of chocolate.

Spongy pores of deliciousness.

Final layer of red velvet.

Chill this in the fridge for a few hours.

Then coat it with cool whip. Yes, cool whip. Not frosting. 

An 8oz bucket of soft-as-feathers, melt-in-your-mouth cool whip.

Crush up peppermint on top.

Enjoy.

Verdict (Not necessary to read, just buy your ingredients already):

I need to make this again. For just myself.  The shortbread crust is hard to break into, as it is not like a normal crust.  However, I picked it up and ate it like a cookie with the rest of my cake.  

If this sounds silly, you won't care what anyone else thinks once you start eating it.

I sure as hell didn't.  

Also, I don't even like the combination of mint and chocolate. But this had the right about of subtleties.  The additional cool whip, red velvet cake, and shortbread disguised any conflicts my tastebuds may have had with the two ingredients.  

I also don't care if you're on a diet.

Make this and then go run a marathon the next day. If need be.  

The taste makes up for the calories.