Last night I asked Cari what she was making for dinner and she said, "White Bean Chili". Now normally, the White Bean Chili has chicken in it. Cari started thinking and said, "How about if instead of chicken I use tofu and then you can have it too!" I, of course, agreed and it was delicious!! Here's the recipe..... White Bean Chili Prep time: 10 min Servings: 4-6 Cook Time: 30 min Ingredients:
Put white bean chili and tofu into a skillet (we use our electric skillet) Add enough salsa to turn the liquid in the skillet a little red (1-2 cups) Bring to a simmer for about 30 min.
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Today is a "Western BBQ" here at work. Something fun to do to break up the daily routine. Each department was given food they needed to bring. Our responsibility was to bring rice and beans type dishes. Thankfully, the dear lady that organizes this thing recognizes there are more and more vegetarians at work (yes, some were already here and some are my converts!) so she put on the bulletin to make sure each department brings at least one vegetarian dish. I wanted something relatively easy but also something I had not tried yet. So, I dug through the McDougall book (one of my favorite books) and found this recipe for Spicy Spanish Rice. It has some green pepper, onion, garlic and a few other seasonings and to give it a kick, a little Tabasco sauce. See the recipe below.... Spicy Spanish Rice Prep time: 15 minutes Servings: 4 Ingredients:
Instructions:
I've given you the rules of my diet but I've realized that may deter many of you from ever looking at a vegetarian, oil free diet. So, in an effort to give you more information, I've created a new section to this site called "The Diet" (yes, I know....how original). This section will give you a little more detail to the diet and also point you to the McDougall web site which shares the diet in much more detail.
A couple of weeks ago, my dear bride went away for the weekend on a scrap booking retreat. To please her fellow cult members (oops, I mean scrap bookers), she made fresh cinnamon rolls to share with the other ladies. She then left, with the cinnamon rolls and only left the wonderful scent of the cinammon rolls behind in our house. The kids and I were a bit dejected, even though I knew I couldn't eat the cinnamon rolls because of my diet. So, I set out to make cinnamon rolls that WOULD work with my diet. I found a recipe for whole wheat cinnamon rolls and with a few adjustments, was able to produce my own fresh, whole wheat, NO OIL cinnamon rolls. The first picture is the bread rising. The second picture is the finished rolls cooling. The last picture is one, yummy cinnamon roll. Here's the recipe (which can also be found in the "recipe" links in the upper right. Cinnamon Rolls Prep time: 3-4 hours Servings: around 30 rolls Ingredients: Dough Ingredients 1 cup water 2 Tbsp yeast (4-1/4oz packets) 2 tsp. honey 2 1/2 cups non-fat soy milk 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce (butter replacement) 1/2 cup honey 4 tsp. Braggs Aminos (salt replacement) 8 cups whole wheat flour Ingredients for the “ innards” of your cinnamon rolls: 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce (butter replacement) 3/4 cup Splenda (you can use white sugar if you want) 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon Melt your butter and set it aside. Mix together the rapadura and cinnamon in a bowl. Ooey-Gooey Frosting 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce 6 Tbsp. milk 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla 8-9 Tbsp. powdered sugar to make the consistency you like (or more) Stir in apple sauce, vanilla, milk and powdered sugar. Whisk together until smooth. Instructions: Okay, here’s how to make the dough… In a large bowl, mix 1 cup very warm water, 2 T. yeast and 2 t. honey. Stir this together and kind of mush the yeast around. Let this sit for a few minutes while you do the next step. In a saucepan, add 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce, 1/2 cup honey, 4 t. salt and 2 1/2 cups of milk. Heat this to 120 degrees. Pour milk mixture into yeast mixture and stir. Stir in 8 cups of flour, 2 cups at a time. (add more if you need it) Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes. Plop it into a bowl, cover it and let it rise for 1-1 1/2 hours. After dough is nice and fat, punch it down and knead out all it’s bubbles. Cut the dough in half, setting one half aside. On a well floured surface, roll dough into a nice big rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Use a pastry brush to spread 1/2 of the applesauce all over the rectangle. Sprinkle 1/2 of the cinnamon/splenda mixture all over the applesauce. Roll up the dough. Cut into thin slices, about 1/2 inch thick. Place rolls side by side on baking pan. Repeat process with other 1/2 of dough. Allow dough to rise about 30 minutes. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown at 350 degrees. Allow rolls to cool a bit, then drizzle lots and lots of ooey-gooey frosting all over them. My Pepperdine buddy, Brandy, shared these ideas with me. Great stuff!
"Friday night, I cooked for some really healthy, picky eaters. I made chicken kabobs and for myself, veggie kabobs. I used zucchini, mushrooms, 4 colors of bell peppers & seasoned them with lemon juice and salt/pepper. (I marinated the chicken though) If you have a griddle pan, there's no need for a nonstick spray either. I love the char that grilled veggies get. They would also work on the grill outside. We don't have one yet... so indoor BBQ has to do. I made a wild rice/basmati rice for the veggies to go on top of and for dessert, grilled pineapple. Tonight, we had leftover zucchini (btw, I highly recommend starting a garden. If the only veggie that you grow is zucchini, grow it. It grows so easily and it's hearty and versatile). I diced about 3 small zucchini, 4 potatoes, and threw some baby carrots into a pan and covered it. On medium, I steamed them, stirring every 5 min or so. When they were steamed, I threw them into a bowl with garlic, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, black pepper, scallions (and whatever else you want to season with) and added water as I hand blended them to the consistency I wanted. It makes a really hearty and healthy soup. Elliot even eats it! We toast some bread or make homemade croutons for the top. It works with broccoli or basically any hearty veggie like spinach. Remember to leave the skins on all of them (washed well) because it keeps most of the nutrients that way." So many ideas, sometimes I don't know where to start. Thankfully, I LOVE eating so getting motivated to try these ideas is not tough. More recipes coming soon....... I've been needing some little thing to have after my meals to satisfy my sweet tooth. I found a neat little recipe from cooks.com that fit the bill nicely. I had to make a few adjustments to the recipe, but the cookies came out great! Here's the recipe (can also be found in the "Recipes" link in the upper right hand corner): Whole Wheat Oatmeal Raisin Cookies Prep time: 15 minutes Servings: makes about 25 cookies Ingredients:
Instructions:
There is a video coming out this summer that will talk specifically how a plant based diet can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, dimentia, etc. The video is not out yet but here's the preview.... More info about the video at http://forksoverknives.com/
When I share my fabulous plant based eating style with others and tell them what I can't have, they say, "Oh, so you are vegan!" NO!
Although vegans often eat a similar diet than me, the motivation is entirely different. A vegan does not eat meat because they believe it is cruel to animals. This is an excerpt from wikipedia: "Veganism is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind. The most common reasons for becoming a vegan are human health, ethical commitment or moral conviction concerning animal rights or welfare, the environment, and spiritual or religious concerns. Of particular concern to many vegans are the practices involved in factory farming and animal testing, and the intensive use of land and other resources for animal farming." Ok, so I don't believe in cruelty to animals BUT, that is not my primary motivation for eating this way. I eat this way because I'm trying to stop and reverse heart disease. Not for religious reasons, not because of the environment and not because of any moral convictions. So, although I eat in a fashion consistent with how many vegan's eat....I am actually just a very strict vegetarian! Trivia: I originally title this blog "The Unlikely Vegan" and then switched it when I realized the true definition of a vegan. Now hand me my gun so I can shoot me some animals.......hello, I'm kidding! There are several items I keep on hand that are handy when I need a quick meal. The first one is a good salad dressing. There are many variations of balsamic vinegar based dressings and I do have some that I like but my absolute favorite is one called Spicy Salad Dressing. You can find the recipe with my other recipes or the link above. The dressing can be used on just about any salad, on a pile of steamed veggies or even on potatos or ric
The next one is steamed brown rice. Brown rice can be used for all sorts of things. Mixed with black bleans and thrown in a a whole wheat tortilla (I recommend Foods for Life Ezekial 4:9 tortillas) with a little salsa is great. If you have more time, defrost some stir fry vegetables (just run them under warm water until they are defrosted) and throw them in the burrito too. You can mix up the flavor of the burrito by changing up the veggies and salsas. Another thing I do is throw some frozen stir fry vegetables in a non-stick pan with a little low-sodium tamari (similar to soy sauce) or a good no-oil stir fry sauce, stir fry the veggies and then throw them on top of the rice. Perfect, quick meal and I like to do tons of veggies. Finally, we can never have enough baked corn tortilla chips around here. Heat the oven to 400 degrees, cut a stack of about 6-7 corn tortillas (most do not have any oil) with a pizza cutter or sharp knife into about 6 slices (like pizza). Then spread them out on a cookie sheet and stick them in the oven until they are crispy but not burnt. For my oven, it takes anywhere from 12-15 minutes. I do mass amounts of these and we usually go through them in d-a-y-s. Cari told me today that she went to a mexican food restaurant and had chips and said after having the baked chips, the ones at the restaurant seemed very greasy and salty! (my plan is working, trying to convert her one bite at a time to my healthy diet.....mu-hahahahaha) So last night (Friday) was "date night" for Cari and I. We dropped the kids off at mom's for an overnight stay and the evening was ours. Of course, I spent a large part of the afternoon figuring out where I could go and eat and have a meal which fit my new diet. I mentioned my challenge to my brother and he suggested going to the Belvedere Restaurant in the newly renovated Padre Hotel (at one point, he was the lead architect for the project...which is VERY cool!). He told me he would get us a table arranged and would see if the chef could cook a special vegetarian meal just for me. He made the calls and "boom" just like that, we had a place to eat. Part of the deal is he emailed my list of rules to the manager to pass on to the chef. Keep in mind, this way of handling dinner would probably not work at Denny's or Red Robin but at high end restaurants, the chef's sometimes consider it a challenge to try and come up with a good meal for you. We arrived at The Padre about 6:40p (our reservations were for 7p) and had some time to look around the renovated hotel. We told the check-in ladies that we had arrived and they said they would let us know when our table was ready. At almost 7p on the button, they came and got us and told us our table was ready. They got us our water and then our waitress showed up, introduced herself and told me it was her understanding they would be preparing a special dish for me (yes, I felt like a celebrity!). In the meantime, Cari ordered the Grilled Bone In Ribeye (seen in this first picture). After a little while, Cari's steak was delivered. I was excited to see my dish but it didn't show up for about 7-8 minutes after Cari got her meal. Finally my dish showed up........ The dish was simple but tasty. It was basically whole wheat noodles in a soy sauce based broth. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't any sign of vegetables in my entree but the noodles were still good. Overall, it was a great experience but mainly because I was in the company of my beautiful wife! |
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