Natto Breakfast Updated

Some time ago I posted about my new favorite breakfast, Natto, with brown basmati, black rice, natto, scallions, chives, and a cut up jalapeño and serrano pepper. 

Afterwards the Australian Doctor Robyn Chuter, who is a fellow graduate of T.Colin Campbell's institute of Nutrition Studies, gave me the idea of adding in ground flaxseed, but that might be healthy it does not taste great. It easily dulls down the taste of the whole dish, in spite of the peppers. Until... Wasabi powder came to the rescue. The result is great. Gourmet stuff, and it sure as hell wakes you up in the morning. Robyn's Substack is worth following, by the way. 

So here goes, the winning edition of my healthy breakfast:

It starts harmless enough, 

• 50/50 Brown Basmati rice and Black Rice
• 1 jalapeño seeded and cut up fine
• 1 serrano seeded and cut up fine
• chives
• 2-3 scallions

Adding the ground flax seeds  dulls down the taste. It drowns out even the peppers.

Here comes the Wasabi shaker.

And I am addint a liberal dusting of Wasabi.

The final stage is of course mixing it all and eating it.

I assure you it is glorious.

You will not be in any doubt if you are awake or not.

Recommended.

It only took me two months of experimenting since Robin suggested the ground flax seeds for me to come up with this refinement.

Econo #WFPB #0002 - Basic Miso Soba

Note: to be economical in your kitchen, one thing you might want to do, is to be clear with yourself what cuisines you like best. It is very easy to carry altogether too much in inventory, when your cooking styles are all over the piace. I like potatoes, and pasta and rice. They are all good complex carbs, if you use whole wheat flour and brown rice. Rice keeps fairly well, Pasta also, but not potatoes. I was raised with potatoes, but by the time I started living on my own, I became a little Chinaman, living on mostly rice, tofu, and veggies. But, I always had a reputation for cooking good pasta sauce, and while the precise recipes changed over the years, that remains a favorite. Then, later in life my tsste for potatoes came back.

All of that, just to say that Miso soup and miso soba are easy dishes if they fit your pantry. On the positive side, most of the ingredients keep rather well. Dried seaweed is an example, dried mushrooms is another. For the following recipe the fresh ingredients are some collard green leaves, some daikon, and some scallions. All the rest can be kept dry. 

In the following recipe, I will assume that we begin making the soup at breakfast.

You rinse about a 1" to 2" wide strip of kombu, and put that on with 2 cups of fitered water. You add in the dried mushrooms, a teaspoon of hijiki and a teaspoon of wakame. Rinse them, before adding to the soup.

Cut up a 1/4 block of tofu in small cubes, and bring the whole thing to a boil, and let it simmer for a bit and then let it cool off.

Dry Ingredients:

1 1"-2"strip of kombu, rinsed

1 tsp hijiki, rinsed

1 tsp wakame, rinsed

1/4 block of tofu, cubed

1 handful of dried shiitake mushrooms

1 bundle soba noodles or whole grain ramen.

Bring to a low simmer and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes, and then let it cool off. Do this at breakfast if you want to have the noodles for lunch of dinner.

Preparation:

Presently, you reheat the now cooled off broth, and when it comes to a boil, you turn it completely low, and remove the kombu. Now come some more ingredients:

Fresh Ingredients:

3-5 Collard Green leaves, stem removed, rolled up, and cut in thin slices

1"-2" section of Daikon, julienned, katsumatsuki style cut

3 scallions sliced thin. 

Assembly:

If using Soba, cook it separately in ample boiling water.
If using ramen, you can add them in the soup at the end, for about 4-5 minutes, as long as you make sure they are submersed long enough.

Cook the daikon and collards in the soup.

Meanwhile boil a cup of water to dissolve about 3 tbsp of miso, but let it cool briefly for you do not want to boil the miso. 

Dissolve the miso. Mix it all in a bowl, and finish with the scallions.

Nutrition:

Clearly the noodles are the carbs

The leafy greens are there in abundance,

the tofu bumps up the protein a little bit

the miso, see this healthline article:

One ounce holds (please get the low sodium variety) :

• Calories: 56
• Carbs: 7 grams
• Fat: 2 grams
• Protein: 3 grams
• Sodium: 43% of the RDI
• Manganese: 12% of the RDI
• Vitamin K: 10% of the RDI
• Copper: 6% of the RDI
• Zinc: 5% of the RDI

                                                                    

Econo - #WFPB #1 - Asparagus Improv and Bean Soup

The biggest part of kitchen economy is to learn to cook certain things ahead, and to be able to play into seasonal opportunities. When cauliflower is $5 a head, I don't need it, but when it's $1.49, I eat it, and so it goes with many things, I have an easy time on my street, for I am in a community where people eat lots of fruit and veggies, and I can follow the prices just by walking down the street.

Asparagus was cheap this week ($1.49 a bunch) so, it was on the menu - steamed in a typical asparagus boiler - 5-10 mins:

Sauce:

• 2 TBSP Chickpea Flour (Besan)
• 1 TBSP nutritional yeast
• 1/4 tsp Kala Namak (black salt)
• 1/2 lime juiced
• 1/2 lemon juiced
• grated nutmeg...

You could do either lemon or lime depending on what's in the house. 

And for the potatoes, I air fried two medium sized red skins. 

And I complemented it with a cup of home made bean soup from the freezer. When I cook soup, invariably I use a lot of ingredients, so I end up cooking enough for 12 people or so, and I freeze most of it, so I can serve up delicious soup in no time.

Nutrition:

Remember: 

• 80% of calories from carbs, 
• 10% from proteins, and 
• 10% from oils/fats

The biggest fallacy of traditional nutrition is the emphasis on protein. If you are trying to live economically, that will cost you, and lead you to wrong decisions. Just in this one meal example, you can see how easy it is to get your proteins. The fats come from beans, and an occasional avocado. Here is a great video on Chronic Kidney Disease, which clarifies why you should NOT over consume proteins. 

Potatoes:

(I can eat 2-3 potatoes in a setting)

1 Medium Red Skin Potato:

about 153 Calories

about 0.3 g fat

about 33/87 carbs

about 4.03 g protein

average 80% carbs, 10% proteins, 2% fat

Asparagus:

(One bunch would be at least 2 cups.)

1 cup of Asparagus

27 calories

0.16 g of fat

5.2 g carbs

2.95 g protein, or:

average 4% fat, 61% carbs, 35% protein

 

Now for the Sauce, which is chickpea flour (2 tbsp) with some nutritional yeast (1 tbsp).

for Chickpeas, see here, based on 1 cup. I used 2 tbsp for this sauce, about 1/4 cup.

approx:

calories 89,

proteins 5g

fat: 1.5 g

Fiber 10 g

and some thiamine, folate, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, copper and manganese 

for nutritional yeast, see here, I used 1 tbsp of Noochylicious, and the analysis is for

1 tbsp:

calories 32.7

calories from fat 2.8

protein 4.4g

The soup is rich, the beans have a good fat content

The analysis of one cup is:

One cup (171 grams) of pinto beans boiled provides (1Trusted Source):

Calories: 245
Carbs: 45 grams
Fiber: 15 grams
Protein: 15 grams
Fat: 1 gram
Sodium: ??? mg
Thiamine: 28% of the Daily Value (DV)
Iron: 20% of the DV
Magnesium: 21% of the DV
Phosphorus: 20% of the DV
Potassium: 16% of the DV

Now if you managed to have an OK breakfast, and a good salad for dinner later, with some whole grains like quinoa, etc. you are close to a decent nutritional day. In between you can snack on some steamed kale with sweet potato, mustard seeds, and balsamic vinegar.