Celebrating major personal accomplishments

I am celebrating several major accomplishments this week. None of which would be possible without you, my amazing readers,  and my supportive friends and family. All of you inspire everyday! You are the force that moves me forward and that gives me a reason to blog and create recipes. Thank you!

Drumroll, please :-) 

My Garlicky Cheezy Kale salad was featured in the new Vegetarian Times Magazine issue (September 2012) as one of the honorable mentions from their recipe contests. That is my second recipe that was published in the Vegetarian Times Magazine as an honorable mention in their readers contest :-) I could not be happier! They even put my photo in this issue and a link to my blog. Win, win, win! 

And my Chocolate Raspberry Tofu Pie recipe was published in the Eating Well Magazine (August 2012 issue) :-) It makes me so happy to have two recipes published in magazines at the same time.  

 On a different note, my weight loss journey is going very well. 

I have lost 15.4 pounds (7 kg) since the end of April. I did not measure myself in April so I cannot track how many inches I lost total, but since I measured myself two month ago, I have managed to shrink about 3 inches around my waist, 2 inches around my hips, 1 inch around my arm and 2 inches around my thigh. I manage to squeeze a good cardio exercise into my busy work schedule 6 times a week. I run, I use stationary bike and elliptical machine, I do aerobics at home and I also do some light weight lifting, push-ups and crunches, etc. When I first started running in April, I could barely run 1 full minute without stopping or having to take a walk break.  I have slowly built myself to run 5 minutes without stopping, and nowadays I can run 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) without walk breaks or stopping. I am working on improving my speed now. 

The hardest part of this journey is not the exercising, it is the food. I am a foodie, food lover and I used to live to eat. Having to shift my priorities, cooking and eating habits was, and still is, a challenge for me. I am trying to keep my calorie intake around 1200-1300 calories a day, but I still enjoy a chocolate (or hot chocolate, or other treat) everyday. It is not about deprivation for me, but I have to plan carefully every meal and every day ahead of time. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I have cranky days and happy days, I have days when I want to give up, but then I remind myself of the promise I made in April. And it feels good to fit into jeans that are 3 sizes smaller than my old jeans :-) 

My new published recipe and a surprise package

I have been going through a lot lately, I have been fighting an infection due to several painful abscesses on two of my teeth. I am having a surgery next week and I have been a mess because of that. My anxiety and fear from the surgery are making my life miserable and I cannot wait for this to be over. In the last few days two very nice things happened that made my days a little brighter and put a smile on my face. Several months ago Eating Well bought a recipe from me. They recently published the recipe in their newest cookbook and sent me a copy. I was thrilled to see my recipe in a beautiful cookbook. It felt really good :-) They even took a nice picture of the pie and put in the cookbook as well. That is probably one of my best recipes for a dessert so far: "Chocolate Raspberry Tofu Pie".

This is the cookbook :-) You can buy it from Amazon, it has a lot of vegan recipes, and most of the vegetarian recipes in this book can be easily veganized. Each recipe has a nutritional information and many of them have very useful and informative notes.

Few days ago I got a beautiful surprise package from my friends at the Czech Vegan Society .

The package was full of vegan goodies, spices, salamis, pates, delicious cookies, spreads, puddings, and a big supply of my favorite vanilla sugar that I use for baking :-) These guys are wonderful, they are working very hard on making Czech Republic a better and more compassionate place and they are raising awareness about veganism and cruelty-free living. Czech Republic is fairly new to veganism and there is not a big vegan community so it is very impressive that they are doing this despite all the hard-headed meat-eating population. Please, check out their website, they have an English version as well.

Chocolate Raspberry Tofu Pie

I spent half of August visiting my family back in Czech Republic (and a part of my family in Hungary, too). I was happy that I had a chance to see everyone because I had not seen my family for over 5 years since I moved to the U.S. I enjoyed every minute that I spent with them. I had a chance to eat at several vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Prague and Liberec. I also ate tons of wild blueberries in the woods, and fresh raspberries in my great-grandmother's garden. I miss having red currants and fresh berries from the garden in the summer. In Atlanta I cannot even get red currants in the store. I love chocolate and I love raspberries so I figured that I would combine them and create a delicious vegan pie. I spent Monday afternoon creating this recipe and I loved the results. I had several friends test it and my non-vegan friends loved it as well! I wanted to share this recipe with everyone. Here it is........

Chocolate Raspberry Tofu Pie

1 9-inch graham cracker pie crust (ready to eat)

10 oz chocolate chips (dairy-free)

1 package (12.3 oz) firm silken tofu, crumbled and at a room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 cup thawed frozen raspberries

1 Tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup fresh raspberries for garnish (optional topping)

Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler or microwave.

Place silken tofu in a blender or a food processor and blend until smooth. Add melted chocolate, vanilla extract and maple syrup. Blend again until smooth. Add raspberries and powdered sugar and blend until mixture is very smooth.

Spread mixture into a graham cracker crust. Garnish the cake with fresh raspberries, if desired. Refrigerate pie for several hours, until firm.