Shortcut Short Stack Red Velvet Pancakes…

Breakfast is served!

Breakfast is served!

This breakfast is not going to help you lose weight…I am not even going to claim that it is remotely healthy.  But I can assure you that this is totally vegan and you are gonna win over everyone and anyone when you serve them this red beauty on a plate.  This recipe uses a few convenience ingredients for the sake of ease and for those moments where you simply cannot fuss with a bunch of steps and grabbing a bunch of ingredients that you may or may not have.  During the weekends in my household we make a nice breakfast that goes beyond the typical weekday fare but we are juggling 3 kids who wake up at the buttcrack of dawn and will steal a random loaf of bread and destroy it if we don’t give them food right away.  So needless to say, this breakfast checks all the boxes for us.

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Engine 2 Diet Review Part 1…The Food!!!

This delicious vegan Flag Cake also had vegan vanilla pudding and extra berries as filling!

Last week while Chuck was off work, I feeling pretty distracted (especially on July 4th-hence this beautiful creation you see here!).  Although we decided to stay home and not travel too far, it seemed like every day there was something to do.  Luckily, I managed to get a few things out of the way and there’s only one thing I am still working on and that’s my article for T.O.F.U Magazine!  C-ville Vegan had its first blog post on July 8th (and another on Monday!) and although I will admit in my recent post I might have come off as harsh but I felt it was rightfully so…I was lured to a restaurant with the intention of trying a popular vegan menu item that is still advertised on their website and upon my arrival, I was told otherwise and was given a substitution I could have gotten virtually anywhere in Charlottesville.  All venting aside, yesterday was the last day of the 28 Day Challenge of the Engine 2 Diet.  During these 28 days, there was a lot of information, recipes, meetings and feedback and I felt in order to give this review the justice it deserves, it was best done in two parts and what a better way than to start off than by talking about the food!!!

French Toast using Ezekiel bread

I want to first start off by admitting that breakfast was definitely a treat when the Engine 2 Diet was involved.  The lesson I learned about breakfast while on the 28 Day Challenge was that very few cereal brands out there really do live up to their claims.  Although I consider myself an expert at reading the label for vegan ingredients, I was blown away when I was reading the nutrition labels.  I seriously have been in the dark when it came to the sugar content in most cereals!  As a result, I have now leaned a bit to brand loyalty…Kashi, Nature’s Path, Ezekiel, Barbara’s Bakery, and Uncle Sam always seem to be the safest bets (just check for all vegan ingredients!).  Cold cereals aside, the French Toast and Breakfast Tacos were really good (and easy!).  I also baked a batch of Mighty Muffins but I do believe that the portions were a bit off as I wound up making 18 muffins versus the 6 that was mentioned as the serving amount (another E2 participant mentioned the same issue)…consider yourself warned 😉  Not everyone (including me!) can cook a hot breakfast but the one thing I was inspired to do during these 28 days was to freeze my Mighty Muffins and Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes in advance so during the week if I was not in the mood for cereal then I had something in the freezer that I could give a zap in the microwave and have a hot breakfast in a snap.

Now as far as lunch/dinner recipes go in the book, some were hit or miss…The best recipes in this category were the Black Beans and Rice, which reminded Chuck and I of a Burrito Bowl at Chipotle (but better!) and the Sloppy Joes, where the recipe was a dead ringer for a Manwich!  The Mexican Lime Soup was fantastic as well and definitely deserves honorable mention.  Most people I spoke to loved the Lynn’s Meatloaf  recipe but it couldn’t hold a flame to the recipe I use.  However I converted Lynn’s Meatloaf into stuffed peppers and it was even better…So much better that my meat and potato eating (but open to vegan food) inlaws loved it 🙂  Also, the Sweet Potato and Vegetable Lasagna was definitely worth the hype but it’s definitely not a meal that will be on your table in 30 minutes or less.  There was a lot of prepwork in that recipe but the end result was worth it. 

As far as the not-so-great recipes go, the Red Beans and Kale over Quinoa was just too weird tasting (and you had to mash the beans quite a bit to thicken the sauce) and the Mac and Not Cheese was not a meal I could pass off as a vegan “Macaroni and Cheese” (now if you want a great Mac n’ Cheese recipe that works well with the omnis, just click here).  The Shepherd’s Pie recipe was decent but yet again, I have a recipe (that I will blog in the VERY near future) that I normally make as care packages for my friends who fall ill or the new moms in my church who need a good meal that requires no fuss and tastes great.  Rip’s version of Shepherd’s Pie was passable but my version is easier and can be made “E2 approved” with only a couple minor modifications that no one would ever notice.  Then there’s the Red Curry Vegetables over Brown Rice that was just plain gross 🙁  That’s saying a lot since I rarely turn down anything with curry…

Then there were snacks and desserts…The Healthy Hummus was pretty good.  It wasn’t as creamy as conventional hummus but it was definitely worthy of spreading it on a sandwich or dipping your pita pieces into.  If there was one recipe worth trying but it would make anyone cringe at the name, that prize would go to Kale Butter.  It looked like green slop but it was the best green slop I have ever had!!!  I was spreading this on crackers and if I was making a sandwich, I could definitely see myself using this as a condiment.  When I posted on Facebook that I was making Kale Butter…you wouldn’t believe the comments I got as a result!!!  But most of my friends know that although I am vegan, I am all about good food and food that I can pass off to my non-vegan friends so I have a feeling that one of them gave the recipe a shot all because of my endorsement 😉  Moving onto sweets…I really LOVED the brownies!!!  I was a bit taken by how much applesauce it called for but you would have never known once you had a taste of this chocolatey confection!  It also went great with the (super easy and better for you) Banana Ice Cream that was not mentioned in his book…needless to say, Chuck and I loved our E2 brownie sundaes 🙂  In the cookies category of the Engine 2 Diet book, hands down- the Oatmeal Cookie was far better than the Chocolate Chip.  The Chocolate Chip cookie reminded me too much of a mini cake or a scone than an actual cookie but the Oatmeal Cookie was perfection.  Also I made the Blueberry Dumpster Fire Cobbler which I mentioned in a past post that was great once I modified the recipe.

Now I know I am throwing a lot of recipes out there and a lot of reviews but during my 28 Day Challenge I was cooking a lot from the Engine 2 Diet book and it would have been nearly impossible to post each recipe individually on this blog.  Even in blogs like Julie/Julia, Julie could only blog one meal at a time and here I am making roughly on average of three Engine 2 Diet meals a day…I must say I am quite the overachiever 😉  The next book I am cooking my way through, Sweetness Without Sugar, it should be easier to post individually (with more photos!) as I am only focusing on sweets in comparison to “Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks”. The next part of this review will be my overall take of the Engine 2 Diet book and living the Engine 2 lifestyle.  But if you would like to try some of the recipes yourself, the Engine 2 Diet website has posted a few for you to try so you can see for yourself.  That should keep you busy until my next post…