30 Plants a Day (What I Ate in a Day #35)

This was a weekend day I wasn't feeling super great, so I didn't have as much energy for proper food prep. That being said, my version of low energy might still seem a bit involved--I used the energy up in the morning, mostly, though!

Also, I'm still in using-stuff-up (but gently) mode, so that influenced my choices as well. I think if I were having a lazy day without that, it would have been much lazier.

There is a bonus in this post, though, because I recently watched this video by PB with J, and I was inspired by that to figure out how many plants I might eat in a day. He was going for 30 on purpose, but I just kept track after the fact as I was writing up this post. (The actual advice that sparked this was 30 plants in a week, which is very easy for a vegan--likely the reason he went for a single day.)

I found I came to just about exactly 30--and I wasn't trying. Which I thought was fun to see, so I'm going to tell you about it, too.

Breakfast was a chickpea flour scramble with veggies (recipe from Oh My Veggies), sweet potato puffs I found in my freezer, and roasted tomatoes with garlic (to use up what I had on hand) (recipe from Food Network). This was really good! I especially loved the roasted tomatoes, and that's likely going to inspire me to start buying the big pack of grape tomatoes (at least while I can still have the oven on), because they're delicious.

Not pictured, I also had a glass of orange juice and a cup of raspberry leaf tea.

Plant counter:

1. Chickpeas (in the chickpea flour)
2. Spinach
3. Onion
4. Garlic
5. Parsley
6. Bell pepper
7. Thyme
8. Cumin
9. Turmeric
10. Olives (in the oil--which may not count for PB with J but I'm counting it)
11. Sweet potatoes
12. Tomatoes
13. Oranges (from the juice)
14. Raspberry (from the tea)

So as we can see, breakfast was a good start on my plant counter! But of course, some plants will get used over and over, so my plant count slowed down a bit as the day went on.

Lunch was slices of a glazed Tofurky ham roast I had in my freezer, some of my last box of Annie's vegan creamy shell macaroni (which is a pumpkin-based sauce), sugar snap peas, and carrots. I'm not tending to buy Annie's products these days since the factory workers have spoken out against their working conditions and called for a customer boycott, but I have had that box of shell macaroni for ages. (It may or may not have been well past its use by date. I won't tell.) Fortunately, if you want something similar, there are other options out there, though I tend to make my own macaroni and cheese these days instead of using a box with powder. This was a good, basic meal, and it helpfully adds to my plant counter!

15. Wheat
16. Pumpkin (from the pasta sauce)
17. Soy (in the roast, and in the milk I used to make the macaroni)
18. Oats (in the roast)
19. Barley (in the glaze)
20. Mustard (in the glaze)
21. Sugar snap peas
22. Carrots

At dinner, you really see the energy has gone. Here I have a hot dog, made from a bun and a vegan frank I had in my freezer, with ketchup, mustard, and dill relish. I also had a little bag of barbecue potato chips. Delicious, of course, because who doesn't love a hot dog? Although it adds less to my plant counter, it still adds a few things.

23. Peas (from pea protein in the hot dog)
24. Sugarcane (from sugar in the bun and the hot dog)
25. Paprika
26. Cucumber (from the relish)
27. Dill (from the relish)
28. Potatoes

Not pictured, I had some chocolate and a clementine, which brought me up to exactly 30, aside from some other random plants in my herbal tea in the evening:

29. Cacao (from the cocoa in the chocolate)
30. Clementines

I don't know if this all "counts," given that some of it isn't whole foods. But it was interesting to me and hopefully to you, too! There is so much variety, even on a meh day.