Breakfast Smoothie

So there are a ton of different smoothies you can make.  This is one that I've come up with for breakfast.  Here are the ingredients:
-Spinach
-Banana
-Apple
-Oatmeal
-Dates
-Cinnamon
-Ice
I didn't put down measurements because I don't really measure.  Its all up to your personal taste.  If you don't like spinach, put in less spinach and more foods that taste better to you, like apples or bananas.  Dates are used to add sweetness.  It's a good alternative to sugar.  I use maybe 2 dates maximum.  After that it's too sweet.  The oatmeal makes your smoothie thicker, so add around a half cup to a cup to start and add more if you don't like the consistency.  The oatmeal also tends to mellow out flavors so adding too much might negate the fruity flavors in your smoothie.  I add in ice at the end to give it a more smoothie texture.  Also I feel like it will stay fresh longer.  That's it!  This is just a good starting point.  From here you can experiment with proportions.  Good luck!! I'll post a picture later of my smoothie as a reference.

Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants in Atlanta

If you're interested in eating out, more and more places now are catering to vegan customers.  But the best restaurants are the ones who focus on vegan cuisine.  Here is a good list that I found online Vegan Restaurant Guide.  I've already gone to Loving Hut, Cafe Sunflower and Tassili's Raw Reality.  I would recommend all except for Cafe Sunflower.  They are really snobby there and the food is a bit overpriced.

Making Spaghetti

At first I thought I would make a bunch of my own recipes and take pictures of all of the food that I make.  But to honest, I don't really have the patience.  So what I'm going to do is look for basic recipes that others have made and then give you alternatives to their instructions.  The first recipe I will be altering is a spaghetti recipe.  I just did a quick google search for Simple Spaghetti Sauce and this was the first to pop up: Simple Spaghetti Sauce. The ingredients list is very very simple.  And already it avoids meat and dairy.  But there is more you can do with this.  This recipe requires sugar.  Instead of adding sugar, you can actually finely dice a carrot.  Carrots get sweeter as you cook them.  If you are pressed on time you can even just drop a carrot and tomato into the blender.

If you think that this recipe is a little light without meat, there are many different vegetables that you can add to bulk it up.  A very simple way to go is to add button mushrooms.  I would cut them into four pieces and just drop them in the sauce.  I also like to use zucchini.  You can just dice it up and throw it in the sauce.  Let me know what you added to it to change it up.

My Reason For Change

BEFORE

AFTER

When I first started changing my diet it was because I was overweight. I was 250+ pounds. But when I moved to Korea I started looking more into the connections between diet and health. One of the first documentaries that I watched was Forks over Knives. It showed that diet was not only correlated to weight, but also to a number of diseases. Looking back on our family history I can see how this makes sense. I've been told that my great grandparents lived past 100. Then my grandparents lived to their 90s. But now my aunts and uncles are barely reaching their 70s and 80s. The only difference really is their diet. Since watching this film along with many others I have drastically changed my diet with many great results. My weight has dropped all the way down to 175 and has stayed consistent. My acne has all disappeared. I have more energy than I've ever had without needing any coffee, tea or sodas. I also have no headaches and my joint pain has disappeared. I used to have a lot of knee pain after playing basketball or soccer. There are many other things that I can list too. I'm writing this blog so that the rest of our family can benefit from what I have learned and even expand on it. I will be posting altered recipes. These will be things that we normally ate, but altered to eliminate harmful ingredients like, animal products and excessive amounts of sugar and oil. If you have a recipe you would like me to change, email it to me and I will do my best to change it while keeping it tasting great. Good luck with your change! I hope this helps!