Hot, Humid, and Rainy

Wesley Chapel, Florida

We sure wish we could head north to Ashville, North Carolina.  They are having the kind of weather I’d like.  Low 80’s during the day and 60’s at night.   Or better yet.  Maine, like Jeanne and Eldy.

This is a typical Florida summer.   HOT.    This heat is the reasons the snowbirds head north!  It’s been in the 90’s every day and mid 70’s overnight.  The humidity is high and we get a thunderstorm just about every day.  It doesn’t last long but it can really come down hard when it does.     This is our normal subtropical summer pattern.    Historically, hurricane season starts heating up now and peaks in September.  We’re holding our breath on that! 

We haven’t done anything fun lately and we keep thinking we need to make a trip to the beach.  There are some beautiful beaches nearby, but for some reason, we haven’t gotten motivated.  Maybe a trip to Fort Desoto Beach, or Honeymoon Island?

There are some nice rivers we could kayak, but in this heat, we prefer salt water kayaking, where we can get out and get wet. 

I don’t know why we haven’t been motivated to do something fun.  Maybe it is the fact that we lived in this area so many years, and there is nothing new to explore.  Maybe, it’s the heat.   Whatever the reason, our life has been pretty boring, which makes it difficult to write a blog.

The main thing we’ve done lately is go food shopping.   We have discovered so many new things to eat, and food seems to occupy most of our waking moments!  

I just discovered a new website with some wonderful vegan recipes.   Some of you have expressed an interest in eating some vegan foods, but don’t know how or what.  Here are some easy and great looking recipes:  Happy Herbivore Recipes

Almost a “toad”

Wesley Chapel, Florida

Our new truck is still not ready to be towed behind the motor home.  It appears the drive-shaft disconnect part  did not fit, so we will have to wait for another one to be sent.

It’s no big deal, except for the fact that we had to drive 40 miles over to Clearwater to pick the truck up.  We didn’t want to leave it there for who knows how long.    They did get the Air Force One braking system, and the tow bracket installed, as well as all the wiring done.  The only thing left to do is the driveshaft disconnect.

 

We are almost at the end of week number three of our new vegan lifestyle.    We have not missed meat or dairy products, and we are having no cravings because we can pretty much eat/graze all day long. 

We’ve been discovering more and more delicious foods that not only can we eat, but that we like to eat.  Who knew there was so much great food out there that didn’t have meat or dairy?  You get stuck in a rut of eating the same things over and over and there is so much variety out there if you just take the time to look.

 

Here are a few of our favorite new finds.

We bit the bullet and bought a super high power  Blendtec blender .   It was not cheap,  at $360,  but we felt it would help us to eat more healthy fruits and vegetables.   They had a demo day at Sam’s club so we drove over to look at it in person.  We could have gotten it on Amazon for $369, but I wanted  to actually see it before we paid that much money.

There are basically two top blenders that have the power needed to do what we need it to do.  The Blendtec and the Vitamix.

There are numerous You Tube videos comparing the VitaMix blender to the Blendtec blender.

Which is better?   

Both have have big motors (although the motor in the  Blendtec is larger) , both are extremely powerful and both have a 7 year warranty.  Both are expensive.

The following is a video comparing the two blenders.  They both did a great job.

The reason we decided against the VitaMix,  was it’s size.   It’s over 20 inches tall, and wouldn’t fit under my kitchen cabinet.  I plan on keeping it on the counter top so that I’ll use it often.  The base is a lot larger and heavier too. Even though the Blentec is smaller and lighter weight, it gets the job done as well as the VitaMix.   For us, smaller is always better since we live  in a RV.    We also like that it has preprogrammed buttons for most uses.  If you want to make ice cream, you hit the ice cream button, soup, the soup button, or smoothie’s the smoothie button.  There are quite a few different buttons for whatever you want to make, plus a pulse button, where you can raise or lower the speed of the blades. 

We made a great soup in the Blendtec.  It’s so powerful that the friction actually heats things up if you blend it long enough (90 whole seconds).  So I made a quick and easy soup with:  tomatoes, onion, cilantro, taco seasoning mix, avocado, garlic, and jalapeno.  You hit the “soup” button, it does it’s thing automatically,  and when it stops,  you throw in a handful of corn chips, hit pulse and it chops the corn chips up into the hot soup.  Yummy!   The soup is thick, spicy and delicious.  When you’re done, you put a little water and a drop of dish soap into the blender, hit pulse a few times and it washes itself!

I also tried a blended drink last night for happy hour.   I’m happy to report that it makes a great frozen mixed drink too!

I’ve gotten quite a few comments from people who are either already on a vegetarian/vegan diet, or who have thought about it.  Some of you said you were interested in changing your diet, but didn’t know how, or what to eat.

Here are a few of our favorite new food discoveries.  It’s really not too hard, if you just take a little time to discover all the wonderful plant based food that is out there.

 

Hummus is our new best friend.

Yummy.  It’s made with garbanzo/chick peas.  Doesn’t sound good, does it?

Trust me, it’s thick, creamy and delicious.  There are many flavors.  We like the spicy varieties.   We spread it on tortilla shells, for wraps, or bread or pita’s for sandwiches.  It’s also good as a dip for chips or veggies.  You don’t have to be vegan to enjoy it.  It does have olive oil in it and many vegans try to stay away from oils.  We don’t.  We figure we’re doing very well the way we are right now.  Oils, salt and liquor are not taboo for us!

We like pizza but sometimes don’t want to take the time to make a home made pizza crust.  I don’t like the looks of any that I’ve seen in the stores.  We can no longer get the frozen pizzas at the grocery store, which were a staple in our old life.

We discovered these  brown rice tortilla shells in store demo.   We found them in the freezer section.  They are delicious as a pizza crust.  We throw one in the Nu-Wave for 5 minutes to crisp it up, then toss on the pizza ingredients and cook another 5 minutes of so.  So GOOD!

 

 

One of the ingredients we put on our pizza is this “cheese”.

It is delicious and comes out gooey and creamy on your pizza.    We had been using an almond milk “cheese” until we tried this at the demo.  This is much better, although it looks ugly in the package.

Another thing we love are lentils.

I made tacos with them.  I just added some dry taco seasoning to some cooked lentils.  I put them on taco shells with lettuce/spinach and some hummus.  VERY good!

And finally….my cute kitten picture of the day.

I guess Mr. Baxter is now a year old, so maybe he’s not a kitten anymore!