Things are going well with the food challenge. Well, I guess that depends on who you ask. If you ask me things are fantastic. If you ask Tim he may have a different answer. 🙂 I think overall he is doing fine, but he does have his grumpy moments. I feel for him because I know he is way out of his element trying a vegan lifestyle, and I’m so grateful he’s agreed to do it.
Snacks
Thursday I focused on snacks and the results were mediocre. I tried to make some homemade granola bars, but they were crumbly and didn’t stick together. We had high hopes for these granola bars. I even included some vegan chocolate chips to cater to the sweet tooth both Tim and I suffer from (hey I said we were going to limit our sugar intake, not eliminate it). The liquid part of the granola bar recipe included soy milk, agave nectar, and some melted vegan margarine; I’m guessing that this combination was just not sticky enough to hold the oats, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, and unsweetened coconut flakes together. Some honey probably would have done the trick. They did taste good, even if they needed to be eaten with a spoon.
Tonight I tried yet another recipe for vegetable burgers. I’ve tried various recipes for veggie/bean burgers in the past, and have yet to find one I’d consider making again. The biggest challenge is to get the burger to be a consistency and texture that at least somewhat resembles a meat burger. All the cookbooks claim that adding “vital wheat gluten” (aka the protein from wheat) will create a great texture, but I haven’t found that to be true. Tonight’s recipe was named “Golden Veggie Burgers” and rightly so as the burgers certainly had a nice golden hue. They were made with onion, yellow bell pepper, chickpeas and vital wheat gluten. While they weren’t terrible, they were just okay. 
Wonderful write-up, I have book marked this web-site. How long have you been blogging for?
Hi, I found your blog on yahoo.It’s really well written and it helped me a lot. Continue the good work.
Hey I have a personal blog about health, where I document my weight loss journey. I would like to link to your article if that is allowed?
Oh and Lisa, I forgot to add that I have used a lot of recipes from the cancerproject.org website. Love it!
Lisa-thank you so much for the tips on the granola bars. I will try that because they were tasty. I will definitely check out your blog as I'm always looking for new recipe ideas. Thanks again.
Anonymous-thanks for the tip; I will give that a try, too.
Try mixing the granola bar mixture in a food processor instead of by hand. It's quicker, easier and eliminates the elbow grease needed to do it by hand.
Hi Maryea,
Congratulations on making such a great decision for you and your families health!
I am a cancer survivor and now vegan as well via the same route you have taken – research on nutrition and how it relates to cancer. A great resource is http://www.cancerproject.org. They have a book you can download with great info and recipes as well as other articles. they are also doing a vegan kickstart right now with lots of info and encouragement/recipes. There is a link on their website or you can go directly to 21daykickstart.org.
I am also a Robin Robertson fan and was a recipe tester for 1000 Vegan Recipes. I tested Flower Power Granola Bars. One of the things I like to do is make them in an 8×12 inch pan instead of 8×8 – they are thinner, but hold together better. I also experimented by adding one tbsp of vegan butter at a time and/or agave nectar until I got a good consistency. I use 3 tbsp of vegan butter for mine.
I am working on getting a blog up and running and hope it will be up by the end of the month. http://www.planted.blog.com. There will be lot's of recipes ideas and health information. Please feel free to check it out.
Best of luck to you!
~Lisa