First, join Joey and me for our Frugal Challenge: No-Heat November! I know it sounds crazy, but we’ve done it for the last two years (actually, we leave the thermostat set no higher than 62 all winter long), and neither of us have gotten frostbite or hypothermia. It’s a great way to save on your electric or natural gas bill!

Food-wise, the entire day has been an epic win! Breakfast Part 1 (I always divide breakfast into two halves) was some chopped cabbage and Sabra hummus…followed by a travel mug of coffee and soymilk.

At about 10 am, I had 1/2 cup oatmeal with 2 TBSP Jif Natural PB (which is sweetened with molasses, which is definitely vegan)

And lunch, my friends, was this:

A GIGANTIC salad with Romaine Mix, cabbage, black beans, and the rest of the pico de gallo that I got on Sunday. No dressing, just pico-y goodness:).

I had a serving of raw almonds for my afternoon snack, but was DYING for some candy around 3. EMSI came by the office and dropped off Halloween treat bags for us, which had a Reese’s cup and a mini-tootsie roll (both definitely not vegan) and a small pack of Twizzlers. Thanks to VegNews and their listing of Vegan Halloween Candies, I found out that the Twizzlers were vegan and I tore into them!

We hit Trader Joe’s on the way home so I could stock up on tempeh, tofu, and hummus, and then hit the Teeter because I had to get a treat for our office’s Halloween Snack Party tomorrow (which I found out about this afternoon). This one’s going to be a huge test for me; I’m relatively sure that nothing is going to be dairy/egg/animal product free, so it looks like I’m going to be staring at everyone while they chow down. I’ve come up with a pretty good way to remind myself to resist the treats, though, which I’ll share with you guys tomorrow. I got some tahini at the Teeter too…expensive, it was, $8.50 for 1 lb, which in our house is obscene, so I’ll have to use it up. thankfully, Heather did a whole week on the stuff, so I should be all set with ideas!

Which brings me to my EPIC dinner win:)…I was reading The Fitnessista today and saw that she’d done something pretty unconventional with her sweet potato. It looked pretty good, so tonight I took two small sweet potatoes and “baked” them in the microwave. The first, I topped with 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (I had Wal-Mart Garden Veggie Sauce), some nutritional yeast, garlic and onion powder, crushed red pepper flake, and a little cayenne. Holy cow was this incredible! I will absolutely be doing this again, and often. On the second, I put a little ketchup, hot sauce, cayenne, garlic and onion powder, and crushed pepper flake…it wasn’t as good, but I’d used up the last of the spaghetti sauce. Gina, if for no other reason than this recipe, I love your blog (but I loved it anyway, so I guess that’s kind of irrelevant)!!

Shelli got into the “special ‘nip” last night….