Sometimes you can make dinner be super simple, and yet it's still satisfying and healthy! That's how it is with these simple black bean bowls. What you see is the dinner I recently served up. It was simple to make, the presentation looked nice, and everyone liked it! I served it up with some small warmed corn tortillas. I just warmed up a can of black beans (drained them), made some rice, and then added the veggies and vegan cheese. There's also a little dish of mango, which topped it all off. Keeping it simple when making healthy vegan meals is great. It doesn't take much time and effort, ev ..read more

Looking for a great balsamic dressing and marinade? Look no further than the one by Primal Kitchen! I've been buying the Primal Kitchen Balsamic dressing and marinade for a while now. I absolutely love it! The dressing is so darn good, and the ingredients are great. Yay! A winning combination in my book. It's difficult to find a vegan dressing that not only tastes really good, but that has clean ingredients. I find so many that get ruined by having ingredients that I don't want (i.e., xanthan gum, other gums, etc.). The ingredients on this vegan dressing are great, and I love the taste! Is it ..read more

For a while now I have been wanting to try The Bake Chop in Downtown DeLand. I have looked at their menu many times and was interested in trying the vegan TLT, which has BBQ tempeh and veggies. Well, today was the day that we finally made trying this place happen!  My husband and I decided to spend the morning at Blue Spring State Park. It was a lovely morning there! With schools being back in, it was not busy at all. It was lovely! And we had to big manatees swim under us as we floated down the run (we often have manatee sightings at this spring). Once we were done there, we decided to ..read more

Anyone who lives in Florida is familiar with Publix. It's a Florida iconic place! Not only is it a grocery store that people in the state like, including myself, but they are also famous for their sub sandwiches, aptly called the "pub sub." Well, they have vegetarian and vegan options, too! You can use the Publix app to place an order for a sub, which is what I recommend. Their deli counter gets ridiculously busy and you can wait a while to get a sub made. I always order it ahead of time in the app, so that when I arrive it's sitting there ready and I just grab it and go. They have a veggie ..read more

A good friend of ours, Omar (owner of Kale Cafe in Daytona Beach), has told me several times as we have sat under the tent watching our sons play soccer that I need to try black salt on tofu. He said it makes it taste like eggs. Well, I have heard him say it numerous times over the last couple of years, and finally I recently picked some up and tried it. Wow, total game changer! I like the taste of eggs, but I don't buy them because of what they are and where they came from. I was excited when Just Egg came out and in the beginning I used it often, making things like sandwiches and omelets. I ..read more

This weekend, we were in Lake Nona, Florida for a soccer tournament. I did a search to find some vegan food near us, and Veg'n Out came up, which was less than 15 minutes away, so we decided to go there for lunch between the games. My son wanted an acai bowl, so he ordered one of those with, and my husband and I both wanted to try one of their salad bowls. I got the BLT one, which had coconut bacon, and my husband got a spicy chickpea one. My son usually loves acai bowls, but he wasn't a fan of the base of theirs, so he mostly just ate the stuff off the top. It contained spirulina and I think ..read more

Today, I stopped in to try Cafe Del Sol, located in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. It was a two minute walk from where my office is, and I had been wanting to try it since I heard about the place months ago. I kept putting it off, because I was waiting to try it with the friend who told me about it. Since her schedule is always keeping her busy, I decided to try it today with my husband for lunch. Cafe Del Sol has a great little diner that offers some indoor and outdoor seating. The menu there is all vegetarian, and then anything can be made vegan (or non-vegetarian by adding chicken). We saw num ..read more

Looking for a way to help improve your digestion, heal your gut, and feel great? Give L-Glutamine a try!  This Gut L-Glutamine is vegan, too! There are no extra filler ingredients that shouldn't be in there. You have to be careful when you take any kind of supplements, because often times you will find that there are unnecessary ingredients that have been added. Sometimes those added ingredients are even harmful to the gut, despite the fact that you are trying to heal it. This one is different. It doesn't contain any extra ingredients, which is great. L-Glutamine helps to improve gut muc ..read more

My son's girlfriend recently told me about a place that she likes that she though I may like - Stoked Poke, located on the corner of Dunlawton and Ridgewood in Port Orange (next door to 7-11). I took a look at the online menu and was interested. I stopped in there twice this week, once Friday and once Saturday. You can get vegan bowls at Stoked Poke, both hot and cold bowls. They offer both hot and cold bowls to choose from. The cold bowls come with an option of a small or large ($9 and $12), and the base can be acai, dragon fruit, or mango blend. I opted for acai both days, because I love ac ..read more

While many people like to debate whether or not eating animals it healthy or not, there is research that continues to come out on the topic. A study that was published in the August 2022 issue of the journal Microbial Physiology, took a look at whether or not eating a vegetarian diet will help to reduce diseases. They conclude that "Homo sapiens could avoid a significant fraction of the diseases that plague us by shifting to a more vegetarian diet." The research that the team conducted in this study was to see if the disease agents that are present in raising animals and eating them can go on ..read more