Our February #WFPB/Suppers Mealprep at St. Helena's

Kitchen in full swing

We had a nice group of 11, and the topic was Mexican food. We had picked two recipes from the website of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies.

 

 

Follow Instructions

 The Menu

A Green Salad

[Note: we typically like to add some chia seeds, and some milled flax seed to our salad dressing, because they add Omega-3 fatty acids to the diet. The dressing is a standard dressing in the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet.]

We made a nice salad with:

• a head of Romaine lettuce
• a head of green leaf lettuce
• five tomatoes
• three peppers green/yellow/red
• capers
• salad olives
• 3/2/1 dressing (3x balsamic, 2x dijon mustard, 1x maple syrup)
• A few scoops of Chia seeds
• A few scoops of Milled Flax seeds

Portobello Fajita Stir Fry

[Note: here is the original listing for Portobello Fajita Stir Fry on Nutrition Studies. We had to up all the quantities for 11 people, and we assumed one large portobello per person, so we had 11 of them. We follow here the original recipe for 4-5 people. In this case we used the whole grain tortillas.]

• 4 portobello mushrooms, sliced
• 1 onion sliced (why be chincey with 1/2 onion?)
• 1 cup bell peppers, sliced into strips
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed
• 4 medium carrots
• 1 zucchini sliced into half-moons
• 1 tsp paprika ( we could not find "liquid smoke" or "smoked paprika"
• 1/2 cup corn (we used frozen)
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth for sautéing
• (we did not use the optional cabbage and sprouts)
• Cilantro to taste. We used a lot!
• Whole grain tortillas

Fajita Seasoning

[Note: To save time we pre-mixed the fajita seasoning]

•  1 Tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tbsp onion powder
• 3/4 tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground Mexican oregano
• 1/2 tsp paprika powder
• 1/2 tsp Himalayan salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Preparation:

1.  Sauté onions in vegetable broth for 3 minutes.
2. Add the rest of the vegetables (except the zucchini), season with liquid smoke or smoked paprika and fajita seasoning and sauté for 5 minutes.
3. Add the zucchini and cook for 3 minutes. Serve on a corn tortilla or whole grain tortilla and top with cabbage and sprouts.

Three Sisters Posole

[Note: this recipe is again from Nutritionstudies, here. We made it with minor variations. We could not source the blue corn posole, so we used white corn posole. Also we could not find the tepary beans in our area, so we used a mixture of pigeon peas and field peas.

Also, there is a difference between posole and hominy, although it looks similar, as explained in this article: You Say Hominy We Eat Posole:

The difference between regular corn hominy and posole comes by way of a process called nixtamalization, in which the corn is soaked in an alkaline bath of calcium hydroxide, aka lime. Lye, or more traditionally wood ash, can be used as well. Nixtamalization removes the outer shells of the kernels, allowing them to swell to outsized proportions. The process prevents the corn seeds from sprouting, which was important for storage purposes in ancient Mesoamerica, where the process was invented.

Note 2: for the class we cooked the posole and the beans ahead of time, so that we only needed to "assemble" the meal.]
 
 So we used:

• 2 cups white corn posole
• 1 cup of field beans/pigeon peas (two small beans as an alternative to tepary beans)
• 2 medium zucchini
• 1 tbsp ground red chili
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 tsp Mexican oregano
• 8 cups vegetable stock
• liquid aminos instead of sea salt

Preparation:

1. Cook the blue corn posole: In a medium sized pot, cover posole with plenty of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook until tender, about 2 hours. Drain and set aside.
2. Cook the beans: In a separate medium sized pot, cover beans with plenty of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook until tender, about 1½‐2 hours depending how long the beans were soaked. Drain and set aside.
3. In a large pot, add the minced garlic, chopped onion, zucchini, oregano, ground chile, and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, then add the cooked posole and beans. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes to allow the flavors to come together. Add sea salt to taste (optional).
4. Serve with warm corn tortillas, wild onions or scallions, and a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime.

In all, the variations were minor, the substitutions close, and replacing salt with liquid aminos just made the posole that much better while using less salt.

Next time, I need to take some pictures.