#WFPB Cooking Demo at ShopRite

OK, today was a collaborative event with Community Board #9 and ShopRite, hosted by Ms. Angela Vita, retail dietitian at ShopRite at Bruckner Commons, and held in the upstairs community room at the ShopRite.

Obviously, the nutritional theory is important, but food shopping, food preparation and cooking is where the rubber meets the road, and it is truly a privilege to have this new ShopRite in our community with the services of a "retail dietitian." Already we have a budding, informal network which includes the plant-based doctors in the area.

Recipes

The purpose today was just a food "demo," just to give people some idea of what can be done.

ShopRite offers a remarkably rich palette of foods and ingredients that are great for the plant-based cuisine and Angela has developed a shopping guide on a flyer that is available at the reception.

Angela Vita did the cooking

Salad Dressing

The Esselstyns call this 3/2/1 dressing, but I call it 1/2/3 dressing for practical reasons which I explain below.
For household use, you would commonly use a tablespoon as a measure, but depending on how many people you cook for, it could be 1/4 cup or whatever.

• 1 tbsp Maple Syrup
• 2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 3 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• optional: make it thinner with lemon/lime juice
• optional: you can add any spices you like, chopped garlic, chopped parsley, cilantro, chilis, micro-planed ginger or turmeric, on and on. 

The bottom line is, starting from this basic mix, you can improvise a thousand different dressings, and it keeps fairly well to, for the vinegar is a good preservative, so you can make it for a few days in a row and keep it in your fridge.

Angela Vita at Work at ShopRite Bruckner

Sweet Potato Noodles

Personal note: Just this week I was given a package of sweet potato noodles, and was deliberating what I was going to make with them. Today's recipe is certainly one delicious possibility. Today we used fresh noodles from the store.

• 1 lb raw sweet potato noodles
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed and cut-up
• 1/2 cup broccoly florets
• 1/4 cup shiitake mushrooms
• 2 tbsp Braggs Liquid Aminos
• 1 tsp. date sugar
• 1/4 cup cut-up green onions in 1/8" slices
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tsp sesame seeds

 Whisk the Liquid Aminos with the date sugar in a cup and set it aside. Heat the pan on medium and add the noodles, broccoli and one cup of water. Cover and let steam for 3-5 minutes. Add mushrooms and liquid amino mixture. Stir together for 3-5 minutes. Add green onions and sesame seeds before serving.

Enjoy!

Well enjoy we did!

This was the whole room, we had about 15 people.

Ingredients 

Some of the ingredients merit comments.

• Braggs Liquid Aminos has a lot less salt than even low sodium soy sauce, so it is a great solution, if you are trying to use less salt, which is generally the principle of the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet. 
• Date sugar is a good sweetener, because it is purely pulverized whole dates, so the sugar is still complete with the fibers from the fruit. The same would not apply to date syrup or even to maple syrup. All in all date sugar, or even cut-up whole dates is a great solution for a sweetener, which is sometimes needed, such as in tomato sauces, to cut the acidity.
• As mentioned above, the 1/2/3 dressing can be the basis of a thousand different dressings. I refer to it as 1/2/3 because the balsamic comes last that way and can be used to clean the last bit of mustard from your spoon. I personally extend it usually with the juice of a lemon and a lime, and I could use anything for spices, cut-up parsley, garlic, cut-up red onions, cut-up tomatoes and/or cut-up sundried tomatoes, etc. The sky is the limit.

ShopRite at Bruckner Commons #1 - Of Soup and Corn

Periodically, I make my own veggie broth and I freeze part of it in the form of three (covered) trays of icecubes.

Oxo No Spill Ice Cube Tray

Often times, especially when sautéing it is easiest to not have to splash around with actual broth, but use a few ice cubes of soup stock.


In between, I use some store-bought soup stock and yesterday it was time to see what our new ShopRite store had to offer, which was impressive, so I decided to try all of them:

Veggie Broth and McDougall's Soups at ShopRite Bruckner

In other words, take your pick, they have four different veggie broths, College inn, Swanson, Rachel Rae, and Emeril's Organic and all reasonably priced, so pick whichever one you like best. I decided to try all four of them and compare.

Home Made Veggie Broth

Here is what I might use for home made veggie broth:

Ingredients

The veggies for roasting:
Onions 1lb,
Celery 1lb
Carrots 1lb
Tomatoes 1-1/2 lb
Green bell pepper 2-3
turnips 1/2 lb
garlic - 3+ cloves 

The spices for the stock:
3+ cloves or, if you want a different flavor, use Cardamom
3+ bay leaves
black pepper tsp
1 bunch parsley (or cilantro)
chunk of turmeric
1 gallon of water

Preparation

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Clean veggies as needed, including removing the leaves and the soft core of the celery. 
Place vegetables in a roasting pan and place them in the 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) oven. Stir every 15 minutes.
Cook until the vegetables have browned and the onions start to caramelize, typically more than an hour.

Put the browned vegetables, along with the celery you set aside, garlic, cloves, bay leaf, pepper corns, parsley and water into a large stock pot. Bring to a full boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Cook uncovered until liquid is reduced by half.

Use a colander to pour the broth into a large bowl or pot. This is your veggie broth. You can use it as is, store it for later use, or freeze it in an ice tray like I suggested above.


The veggies are delicious to eat hot or cold. You can freeze them in quart bags for later use. For instance, to make a "chunky style" pasta sauce.

Cooking Cycles

Making your own broth has everything to do with cooking in cycles. Once you really get into the plant-based routine, you learn to always work ahead so that in a pinch you have a meal ready, you can use your fridge and freezer to help you out. I consider 5 days the outer limit in the fridge, but most things you can freeze, and I always have a collection of quart freezer bags, so I am never caught short.

McDougall's Soups

I was delighted to also find Dr. McDougall's soups. Dr. McDougall is one of the pioneers of the plant-based nutrition movement and his soups are great for those times when you don't have time for anything, or simply don't have anything in the house. The are superior products. I always like to have a few in the house.

Corn on the Cob

There's only one way to make corn on the cob. Thankfully, ShopRite now sells corn with the husks on.
The way to cook them is to soak them in water and then roast them in an oven pan or on a baking sheet for 45 minutes at 450F, and you leave it in the husks, but you cut off the stems for serving. You only remove the leaves when you are ready to eat one, so that they remain piping hot. I don't put anything on them usually, but sometimes I love to offset the sweetness with some Tabasco Sauce. The recipe goes back to Nero Wolfe, the fictional detective created by Res Stout, who says in Trio for Blunt Instruments that American housewives should themselves be boiled in water if they prepare corn that way. He suggests eating it with butter and salt, though, but we skip that part for the sake of our #WFPB diet.

ShopRite at Bruckner Commons: Who Would'uv Thunk It?

Our neighborhood was just greatly enriched with a new ShopRite at Bruckner Commons. It is a magnificent improvement to the quality of life in our area.

This time, I am not going to use a lot of words, but I will provide some of the pictures, and then at another time I will provide some more detailed explorations of what the store has to offer for the #WFPB shopper. First however, I will analyze the little shopping bag I brought home and explain why I will be going back to this store probably once a week, or certainly every week or two, despite the fact that I have a great selection nearby. Simply put, ShopRite has enough specialty items that I cannot get everywhere, except downtown or on-line. So here goes with my shopping bag:

My Shopping Bag

• A roll of polenta $6.99 - I can't find that around here, only downtown, until now. Recipe: https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/polenta-crostini-chickpea-pesto/#gs.zexPS2g
• Celery Root $2.61 - I can get it sometimes at the farmer's market at Virginia Park. A recipe: shred it, and make a salad of it by marinating overnight with raisins, lemon and honey.
• Radiccio $2.25 - have to go downtown for that one, until now. Recipe: shred it and add to any salad.
• Artichokes, 3 for $5 - same thing, down town only, until now. Recipe: boil in water until you can pull out the leaves (20-30 mins), and eat with a 3/2/1 dressing with lemon or lime.
• Belgian Endives $3.74 - and gain, down town only, until now... Recipe: core them. Use in salads sliced thin, or make a salad with a 3/2/1 dressing with lemon or lime, with some walnuts and some raisins.
• Steel Cut Oats, Wholesome Pantry, 30 Oz. $3.19 (10.63 cents/Oz). For recipes, see the links below.

For those who have followed my oatmeal shopping expedition, this store label organic steel cut oats is a great value at $0.11/Oz., on a par with buying organic steel cut oats in bulk downtown. Here, by the way is my major post on oatmeal, which is truly the breakfast of champions.

On a tour: Without a lot of comments, here is a visual tour, pictures taken in haste, but I will revisit some of the sections in the future. This store is on my itinerary now.

Oat milk

They believe in salad

 The possibilities are endless...

Fruit galore

Veggies, veggies

Polenta rolls

Spices

And finally, here comes Angela Vita. Ask her anything, be specific about your diet. She definitely does know what a Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet is all about:

Angela Vita - Retail Nutritionist

Vinegars

Whole Grain Pastas

Some real finds in the frozen section, helping you to always be ready!

Sprouted breads

P.S. Angela attended the Hunter College Food as Medicine Summit in 2017:
http://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/eventscalendar/food-as-medicine/

At the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center