My Yoyo Diet :D

Sorry I’ve been MIA, the charger for my laptop died just as Greek Week ended. I have a bunch of stuff saved up, but for now this is what I can do from my phone!

I started using MyFitnessPal.com earlier this week…

  
You keep track of everything you eat and drink,

and it counts calories and shows all the nutrients for the day (more than this! You can track vitamins and minerals).

You also track how much you exercise, and you can earn extra calories! Woohoo!!!!

This is what you see at the end if the day, it’s good motivation! I had a much better day than this on Wednesday, but…then I went on vacation. I’ll have to start fresh Monday.

Except I just went to Whole Foods and loaded up on vegan junk food, but I will try really hard to eat it in moderation. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyone else use MyFitnessPal?

Week of Greek: Shopping

Now that we’ve had fun cooking together all week, maybe you’d like to know where you can purchase some of the ingredients used in the recipes. Pretty much every ingredient can easily be found in grocery stores in most parts of the US (and of course Greece!). Not sure about other countries, but the ingredients are very basic. That said, it sure would be nice for Greece if we bought Greek imports when available. Now some regular grocery stores, like Meijer and H-E-B, will carry at least a few imports. But in some areas, you may need to seek out a Mediterranean or European market.

Krinos and Optima Foods are two of the biggest importers in the US.
Another brand that comes to mind is Arosis, I bought some of their dried gigantes in Greece and now see they’re available in the US. You can even find them on Amazon.
And of course you can always look for products with Greek writing on them :) When you see a product labeled, “Greek xyz,” check to see if it’s made in Greece.
I’ve never seen a Mountain Tea (sometimes called Mountain Herb or Wild Tea) that isn’t imported from Greece. It’s actually a very beautiful herb, usually sold still on the stem and with little blossoms, although in Greece I found it in tea bags.

Here you will find A List of the 25 Best Greek Olive Oils of 2015, as awarded by the New York International Olive Oil Competition (yes, that’s a real thing!). There’s even a key that shows if the oil won a gold or silver medal. Click on the picture of any oil you’re interested in to read a more detailed description and find out where it can be purchased.

Here is A List of Some Vegan-Friendly Greek Wines from Barnivore.com

I also found a wonderful list of brick and mortar Greek markets in the US and Canada over at The Greek Vegan, many of them also have websites, some that you can order products from.

Keep watching Oh She Cooks on facebook because I’ll be sharing the last Week of Greek recipe from 2 Broke Vegans sometime today! And tomorrow I’ll post the whole lineup of recipes in case you want to cook up a Greek feast for family and friends!

Can Cheese Be Cheese Without Dairy??!?

Is it cheese??!??!?!?!???

Look friends, I read some comments on a recipe posted on a certain vegan cheese brand’s facebook page this morning and it really annoyed me. Why a bunch of non-vegans feel the need to comment in the first place, I don’t know. Get a life. But what bothered me is this idea that “if it doesn’t have dairy, it’s not cheese.” Well, I’m just an uneducated church secretary, so let’s see what Merriam-Webster has to say about it:

1  a : a food consisting of the coagulated, compressed, and usually ripened curd of milk separated from the whey
   b : an often cylindrical cake of this food

2  : something resembling cheese in shape or consistency

Wait, what was that? something resembling cheese in shape or consistency.

And did you know the secondary definition of milk, according to the same dictionary, is “a white liquid produced by a plant”. So, ya know, that could be soy milk, almond milk, quinoa milk, macadamia milk, cashew milk, sesame milk, coconut milk, hemp milk, flax milk. You get the idea (Maybe I’m stretching the definition a little, but it doesn’t say it has to ooze from the plant).

So just to be clear: YES. Cheese can still be cheese without dairy. You might not fool anyone into thinking a vegan cheese is a dairy cheese (although I have, and without even trying, and much to my dismay since I wanted to eat it all myself), but IT IS CHEESE.