My grandma was a great cook! She had a natural ability to just put different things together and it tasted wonderful! One of my favorites was her banana bread. Unfortunately, she is gone now so there is no way to get the recipe BUT this recipe certainly fills the bill and it is oil free! The recipe is slightly adapted from a recipe in the Happy Herbivore book. If you don't have this book....get it, it has lots of easy, wonderful recipes! Makes 1 loaf. Ingredients: 1/4 cup non-dairy milk 1/4 tsp. lemon juice 4-5 spotted or browning bananas 1/2 cup dark brown sugar 1/2 cup raw sugar 1 tsp. ground cinammon 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg 2 cups of flour (I like to use 1 cup oat flour, 1 cup spelt flour, you can also use 2 cups whole wheat flour) 1 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. vanilla extract 2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. You will also need an 8" non-stick loaf pan. 2. Whisk the non-dairy milk and lemon juice together until bubbly and set aside. 3. Combine bananas and sugars in a food processor until smooth and creamy. 4. In a large bowl, whisk spices, flour, baking soda and baking powder together. 5. Add milk-lemon juice and banana mixture, as well as remaining ingredients, to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. 6. Pour into loaf pan using a spatula to evenly distribute and smooth top. 7. Make a tent over the pan with a large piece of aluminum foil. 8. Bake for 45 min. to 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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There is something about the smell of hash browns being cooked that brings up fond childhood memories. I can't necessarily remember specific times we had hash browns, but I can remember the smell of them cooking as the smell permeated the house. When I started this diet, I wondered if I could ever get hash browns that were good without using oil. I initially started with just potatoes and seasoning but the potatoes were always too dry for my preferences. At one point, I threw in a chopped white onion....SUCCESS! The moisture in the onion keeps the potatoes from drying out and gives them a sheen that almost makes it look like they've been cooked in oil. These potatoes are now a weekly Sunday morning staple at our house. They are great by themselves or with salsa or BBQ sauce. My son loves them wrapped into a tortilla with a little BBQ sauce. I hope you enjoy these as much as we do!! Click for recipe! I had a hankering for some lasagna tonight but wanted a simple recipe. I looked at several recipes and didn't seem to have all the ingredients, so I threw this recipe together with what I had. Give it a try and if you make any adjustments (translated as improvements) please let me know and I'll add them as variations to the recipe. Simple Spinach Lasagna Servings: 8-10 Ingredients: 16 oz. Lasagna Noodles (I used spelt noodles from Lassens) 1 pkg. silken tofu - extra firm 14 oz. Gimme Lean - Sausage Style 16 oz. frozen spinach 40 oz. spaghetti or marinara sauce 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 cup nutritional yeast 1/2 tsp. oregano 1/2 tsp. basil juice from one lemon 1/2 cup (approx.) breadcrumbs Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 2. Remove spinach from freezer so it can begin to defrost. 3. Cook lasagna noodles per instructions on the package. 4. Press tofu (see note below on pressing) 5. Brown Gimme Lean in skillet - about 5-6 minutes and then set aside. 6. Crumble tofu into large mixing bowl with your hands. 7. Add salt, nutritional yeast, oregano, basil and lemon juice to tofu and mix well. 8. In a separate bowl mix 12-14 oz of spaghetti sauce and mix with browned sausage. 9. In a large baking dish (I used a deep 9x13, rectangle) spoon in a layer of sauce to cover the bottom. 10. Put a layer of noodles, then a layer of meat (1/2 of the meat), layer of tofu mixture (1/2 of mixture) and half the spinach. 11. Repeat step #10. 12. Put final layer of noodles on top and cover with remaining spaghetti sauce. 13. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on the top. 14. Cook in oven for 40 minutes. Pressing tofu: Pressing removes most of the moisture. Open the tofu and put a double layer paper towel on a plate. Set the tofu on top of the paper towel and then put another double layer of paper towel and set a heavy book on it. Let sit for about 5 min. Replace both sets of paper towels, flip the tofu and repeat. First, let me apologize to all of you in the rest of the country that are snowed in. See, I live in sunny California and the sunny days has me thinking about firing up the BBQ this summer. I've made several different veggie burger recipes but never came across one that "looked" like a hamburger (not that it's that important....but it goes along way when trying to sucker my kids into eating a plant based diet). These not only look like a hamburger but they are very tasty also! Feel free to modify the seasonings to your hearts content....it's really easy. Oh, and if you decide to throw these on the grill, throw a handful of veggies too....like green/red bell pepper, onion, zucchini, yellow squash....the list goes on. Try them out yourself and then let me know what you think! Black Bean Veggie Burgers I had pretty much given up on any kind of cheese replacement that was decent on this diet but I happened to be reading Howard Lymans book called "No More Bull". In the back of the book are over 100 recipes. I started perusing the recipes and found a recipe for cheese replacement. I gave it a go and it's pretty good!! This recipe can be used to dip your chips in (like nacho cheese), it can be used on pizza, quesadilla's, the list goes on. There are several variations in the book but I only put one or two of them on my recipe page. Again, try it out and let me know what you think! Cheese Replacement Recipe One of the challenges of being on this diet is finding salad dressings that do not contain oil. Adding even more to that challenge, is finding an Italian Dressing that does not include oil. This simple recipe basically uses cornstarch and water (thickened on the stove) in place of oil. The thickened cornstarch and water can be used in other recipes in place of oil also. Here's the Italian Dressing recipe. On a completely different topic, as I talk to more and more people advocating for a change I like to give examples of people who've had success. There are some people in my personal life who've started doing this diet but I haven't gotten around to getting their story posted. Additionally, I'm not a doctor so I don't have the luxury of meeting daily with patients and scientifically tracking their progress. Sooo, I decided to share some of the success stories of people I've come across as I've done my plant based diet research. Whether it's for inspiration or you want proof, check out some of the stories on my Success Stories page. I'm always looking for fun snack food that fits the diet so that when I get the munchies I have something healthy to eat. I know these onion rings don't look healthy but they are.....no oil, no grease....just baked and yummy. Dip them in your favorite sauce and enjoy! Check out the recipe! The breading for these can be used on many things. I've used them on potato wedges and I no others have tried the breading on zucchini and mushrooms also. The recipe is adapted from the Isa Chandra Moskowitz recipe book called, "Appetite for Reduction". She likes to use oil to saute things but I found that in almost every recipe, you can eliminate the oil and the recipe still works just fine! I love chili and so I'm always playing around with my recipes to get just the right blend of flavors. I was reading through some of the recipes on allrecipes.com and came across a recipe to try. I modified it slightly and it is now my favorite chili recipe! It calls for low sodium taco seasoning and a package of ranch dressing mix. I would have never put those two together but it is wonderful! It's so good, even my 6-year-old picky eater likes it. If you like chili, you'll like the Amazing Chili recipe! With the holidays at hand, I was looking for a good dish to be the "main" dish for our holiday meals. I tried the vegebird in the McDougall book and it was horrible. In the past, we've always done turkey, ham or homemade chicken and noodles. So what could we use to replace those dishes that would satisfy an unlikely vegetarian? My dear mother decided to try the Raise-the-roof Sweet Potato Lasagna from the Engine 2 Diet book by Rip Esselstyn. All I can say is WOW (see pic)! This is now our goto meal for the holidays and it is wonderful. The recipe makes 10-12 servings so you may want to cut it in half or freeze half of it for another evening. I was with family yesterday after a funeral down in the Los Angeles area and we stopped at Marie Calendars. I decided to have some of their vegetable soup. It was satisfactory but I realized that I could probably find a recipe I liked better. So today I looked out on the internet, found a recipe, made some adjustments and came up with a very yummy and flavorful vegetable soup. To try it out yourself, you can find the recipe here. It was a fun recipe because I had my youngest daughter (6) help me with washing the vegetables, cutting them up and putting them in the pot. My hope was that because she made it, maybe she would be more inclined to eat it. Well, the logic didn't really pan out although she did eat some. My son devoured it and the mom of the house and oldest daughter weren't home to try it. Either way, it's a nice soup to have on hand. It would be a great idea to double the recipe and then put in the fridge for lunch over a few days. If vegetable soup isn't your thing.....give my chili a try...it's also a good winter dish and is yummy! Here are some of the latest foods we've been enjoying. The first picture is a very yummy veggie wrap I made the other day. What makes these wraps wonderful is to bake them for about 8-10 minutes in the oven. It warms up the ingredients and also gives a slight crunch to the outer shell. Here's the recipe! I've also been reading through the book written by the son of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. His name is Rip and he's written a book about how he used a plant based diet to convert a whole fire station to eating this way. The book is called the Engine 2 Diet. One of the recipes in his book is called, "Macaroni and Not Cheese" so I decided to give it a try and see what my family thought! To try this yummy recipe, click here! Last weekend I was motivated to make something new so I gave calzones a try. The one in the picture is not perfect, because ideally there would be more sauce over the top of the calzone (but I ran out). The calzone was great and, like pizza, there is so much you can do with it. A calzone is just a stuffed pizza so try some other sauces inside besides a red sauce. I was thinking a yummy pesto sauce or maybe even hummus! The dough takes a little time because it has to raise but you can be cutting up your veggies (for the innards) and working on the sauce while you wait. The beauty of calzones (again, like pizza) is that you can make one per person and can completely customize the toppings for the individual person. I made these for several of us and made sure each person gave me the toppings they like so that it was made-to-order. It's a fun way to cook and everybody gets just what they want! The recipe for the calzone is in the recipe section of this site. Another item I made last weekend was our favorite Pumpkin Spice Muffins. They are quick and very easy and the whole family loves them. In fact, I usually make a double batch and through one dozen in the freezer for a few days. These can go bad quickly so definitely keep them refrigerated and if you make a large batch, put the extras in the freezer. These can be a nice complement to a meal, or they can even be a dessert by adding a sweet jelly to them or over a cup of coffee. This Pumpkin Spice Muffin recipe can also be found in the "recipes" section of this site. |
About the Author
Hello, my name is Todd Coston. This site is a dedicated to my journey on a plant based diet. I'm passionate about the benefits of this diet and share my thoughts, resources and recipes through this site. I would love to hear from you, so drop me a line at [email protected]. Other Plant Based Blogs/Sites:
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