By Molly Patrick
May 23, 2017,
Hi peaches n’ cashew cream,
Last year I was on the brink of a meltdown…
But first, let me rewind this track.
Clean Food Dirty Girl has been 100% self-funded. Luanne and I started working on our business full time in January 2014. We put in 12 hour days for two years straight before we started making enough money to pay our rent and our bills without a side gig. For those first two years we were running on passion, determination and trust that one day it would gain traction and it would work.
Fast forward to October 2016. Our efforts were finally starting to pay off and our worries were no longer about how we were going to pay rent. Our new worries were about how to keep up with our fast growing business without running ourselves into the ground and burning out like a goddamn shiny black stiletto-stomped Virginia Slim with bright red lipstick marks.
Here’s why.
Last October we were in the middle of not only preparing the content for the 2017 Plant Based Reset, but we were also doing our first proper launch for the program. I don’t know if you know anything about product launches, but they are intense and super time consuming.
At the same time all this was happening, I was coming up with a new meal plan every week as well as new recipes for those meal plans. I was also writing the weekly Fuckery, answering emails and blog comments, doing a live training every month and managing our private Facebook group.
All the while, Luanne was changing platforms for our online classroom and updating our CRM system (geek talk for super important backend website stuff). We were busy as fuck but we knew better than to complain because being busy and having a shit ton of business is a fantastic fucking problem to have.
I did know however that I needed help, because my workload wasn’t realistic and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up for much longer on my own. This is when I decided to connect with my hippie roots, go with my gut and allow the flow of the universe lead me (excuse me while I adjust my dream catcher headband).
Each night before I went to sleep I pictured the person who I wanted to hire.
- They would help me with recipes and meal plans and they would have mad crazy Whole-Food Plant-Based recipe skills – even better than mine!
- They wouldn’t take themselves too seriously.
- They would take constructive feedback like a champ and never take things personally.
- They would be passionate about helping people eat their way healthy.
- They would be kind.
- They wouldn’t need to be micromanaged.
I would think about all these traits that were important to me and then I would picture a magnet that connected me to this person, wherever they were in the world. And then I would let it go and trust the process. I did this for a couple of weeks and then one day I was in our private Facebook group and I noticed someone who kept giving excellent meal plan substitution ideas. I looked back on other comments she had made and they were brilliant. Her name was Jennifer Pollock and I quickly messaged her on Facebook to see if she wanted to help me with recipes and possibly meal plans.
We jumped on the phone with each other and before we knew it, we had talked for almost two hours. By the end of our talk I knew she was the person on the other end of the magnet. She’s been working with us ever since and I absolutely adore her. I also adore her recipes and meal plans.
When it was time to bring another person on board the dirty train a few months later, I did the same thing as before. I thought about who I wanted and I knew they would come. And what do you know, it worked again! Tamie Spears has been with us since February of this year and her Whole-Food Plant-Based recipes will give you actual orgasms in your mouth. She is a pleasure to work with and I am thankful for her and Jennifer every single day.
Jennifer and Tamie are plant based recipe wizards and an instrumental part of Clean Food Dirty Girl. I also consider them good friends. Jennifer is in Colorado, Tamie is in Michigan, and I am in Hawaii. Even though we’re spread out in proximity, we have our rhythm, a flow, and our process down to a tee. Show these gals some love in our Private Facebook Group, and catch their mad plant skills with our weekly Meal Plans.
The three of us (aka Team Dirty) went live this past weekend. We answered lots of questions, spoke about how our weekly Plant Fueled Meal Plans are created, and talked about general team Dirty bad-assery! If you didn’t happen to catch it live that’s ok – check out the replay below. It’s free to watch.
Just sign in with your email address and a link will be emailed to you immediately. You’ll then go to your email, click on the link and then BOOM! you’re in!
Find out about the magic behind clean food dirty girl’s plant based mavericks!
Today’s recipe is super yum and super easy.
*It might even give you an orgasm.
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked Quinoa 260g
- 1 can black beans drained and rinsed well
- 1 tomato seeds taken out and then diced (about 1 cup / 180g)
- ¼ cup red onion finely diced (35g)
- ¼ cup sunflower seeds 35g
- 1 green onion thinly sliced (discard the root and use the entire green onion)
- 2 tablespoons cilantro chopped
Dressing
- ½ cup avocado about 1/2 of an average sized avo / 90g
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 2 teaspoons Coconut Aminos
- ¼ teaspoon cumin
- ¼ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, add the quinoa, black beans, tomato, red onion, sunflower seeds, green onion and cilantro. Gently stir and set aside.
- In a small mixing bowl, add the avocado and mash well with a fork. Add the lime juice, Coconut Aminos, cumin, red pepper flakes and salt. Stir everything together.
- Add the avocado mixture to the quinoa mixture and gently stir until the dressing is thoroughly incorporate.
Wishing you a happy week. May it be filled with finding your people.
XO
Molly
7 Comments
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How well do you think this would keep for a meal prep situation? Is there at all a chance that the lime juice would prevent the whole thing from turning brown over the next few days? It sounds AMAZING, but I am such a batch cooker!
Hey Taryn! You can make the sauce the night you plan on eating the salad for optimal freshness.
Alternatively, if you want to eat it over several days it will keep just fine in the fridge.
As a rice eater, my friend who is a vegetarian introduced me to Quinoa as a better alternative for rice. I first tried it here in Taiwan when I went to a rice burger shop. Well, the rice had a mix of quinoa. Currently, I am looking for a recipe with quinoa so I am happy to find this quinoa salad.
What would be a replacement for coconut aminos?!
Hi Geani, Coconut aminos are a bit less salty and more sweet than soy sauce. Our Clean Food Dirty Girl substitution document suggests diluting soy sauce with water and blending it with a soaked date but you could also use a bit of maple syrup. You could also simply just dilute some soy sauce and forego the sweet and that would work too. ~Karen
As a Michigander, it was pretty exciting to see Tami is from Michigan. Our state isn’t really on the cutting edge of
plant based food. My town has one stop
light and no grocery stores unless I go to the next town over and no speciality stores. I so appreciate the recipes I try really teach how to use the Instant Pot to make lentils, beans and such. How things bought and cook roll over into other meals. I feel I’m learning so much, and we aren’t eating out as much. I know our healths are improving. Now I long for the weight loss.
Hi Tammy, how awesome that you are making the meal plans work even with limited options. Thanks for sharing that you are learning and it’s carrying over into other recipes! YES! And, don’t worry, your body will figure out it out, just keep eating all the plants. ~Karen