St. Helena's Communal Meal Prep 10/26/19

This time the theme was leafy greens.

Eating leafy greens, either raw or cooked 4-6 times a day is the standard recommendation of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn for it will keep your arteries flexible. Chewing the leafy greens will convert nitrate and with the enzymes from your saliva ultimately it will produce the nitric oxide that helps your bloodvessel stay limber.

Some of the best foods for this are:

1. Beets
2. Garlic
3. Leafy greens
4. Pomegranate
5. Nuts and seeds (but.. we want to go light on those because of the high oil content).

Two Salads

Green Salad

• 1 Green lettuce
• 3 Vine tomatoes
• a can of black-eyed peas (or whatever beans or peas you can find)
• some quinoa
• yellow, red, green peppers
• a can of sliced beets
• a carrot sliced thin (we skipped this because we already had the veggie spaghetti salad with carrot)
• capers
• olives
• a red onion, cut up.
• a pomegranate
• 1/2/3 dressing: 1 measure maple syrup, 2 measures Dijon Mustard, 3 measures Balsamic Vinegar, and lemon and lime juice to taste
• add milled flax seed and/or chia seeds for Omega-3's

Endless variations on the above are possible, and depending on the addition of quinoa and beans, you can make this a meal salad.

 

 Veggie Spaghetti Salad

We made this with a mandolin, but you could use a spiralizer of some sort. Taste is the same, but the long spaghetti strands present better - maybe.

For a dressing we used some 1/2/3 dressing with thyme and some Veggie Mayo (see below).

• Shredded Zucchini
• Shredded Daikon
• Shredded Green Papaya
• Shredded Carrot

Veggie Mayo

• 1 package of Silken Tofu
• 1 tbsp maple syrup (or date sugar)
• 1 tpsp red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp of Dijon Mustard

 Drain the tofu on a paper towel, and mix the ingredients with an immersion blender.

Leafy Greens Galore

It was Khokon, the owner of Neerob Restaurant, who taught me to make a medley of green leafy vegetables.

The message is that you can make either pure spinach, or Malabar spinach (poi leaf for the Bangladeshis), or Swiss chard, or any other green leafy vegetables by itself, or you can make a medley.

You can create a simple and delicious flavor with caramelized onions and garlic, some turmeric (preferably fresh) and perhaps Panch Puran or other spices.

 The way to build it up is to caramelize the onions first:

• cut up the onions finely
• optionally: cut up some chilis
• roast dry for 5 minutes - just until the onions start turning brown and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
• mince some garlic
• mince turmeric
• 1/2 cup of veggie broth 
• now stir-fry for five minutes, keeping it liquid with the broth.

• meanwhile cut up the stems of your leafy greens if they have heavy stems.
• now stir-fry another 5-7 minutes with the stems.
• cut up the leaves into 1-1/2" strips and add
• cook on medium until the leaves are al dente

The above is just perfect for making green leafies as a side dish. Alternatively, you can make dal, as follows:

• after stir-frying with the stems, you add more water and red lentils (hulled red lentils) in about 2:1 proportions water to lentils, let it cook about 10 mins then add the green leaves and let it cook for five minutes.

In other words, you start the same way for making green leafies as a side dish or the dal with green vegetables.

Butternut Squash

The last thing we made was butternut squash. We cut one in half lengthwise and put two garlic cloves in the hollow, and filled it up about half-way with veggie stock.
30-40 minutes in the oven at 400F, until soft.

Desert was grapes, which were also delicious.

It seemed everyone enjoyed the meal.

From the money dept

We had eight people, or $120 in funds, and we spent $87.31. In short, we are donating $32.69 to St. Helena's. There was plenty of food, even considering that two people did not show up. 

I discovered Yondu at the Plant-based World Expo & Conference

Here is the Yondu website explaining what Yondu is.

Clearly, it is of Korean extraction, and it's a fermented brew from soybeans and veggie broth, but it is fermented in its own juices, with very little salt, which is the problem with some fermented projects like kimchi or Tianjin preserved vegetables. It seems expensive, but it's actually economical for you can use it just one teaspoon at a time.

It is amazing, you can cook without salt, and this chef does not yet know how to cook without oil, but you can absolutely make any veggie dish without oil.

Here was my first delicious recipe with some Organic Swiss Chard from ShopRite on the Bruckner:

A side of Swiss Chard with Yondu 

Ingredients

• One bunch of Swiss chard
• some fresh turmeric, minced, or turmeric powder
• three small or two medium onions, cut up fine.
• 3-5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tsp of Yondu

 Preparation

• Caramelized some onions, 5 mins dry roasting at 425F(Medium/high)
• followed by gradually adding some minced garlic and fresh turmeric (always available at Al Aqsa on my street) and stir-frying for another 5 mins at 425F with some splashes of veggie broth.
• Cut up the stems of the chard in 1/4" pieces, and added on top of the caramelized onions, while adding 1 cup of water with one tsp of Yondu.
• Cooked for 10 mins at 275 F (Medium). 
• Cut up the leaves in 1"strips, and put them on top of the onions and stems, and cooked for another 10 mins at 275F.

The result: a quick and easy side of veggies.

Starling Avenue Stew with Swiss Chard and Jackfruit Seeds

Jackfruit has been plentiful on Starling Avenue this summer, and my girlfriend brought some home several times, as it was selling for 99 cents per pound, at Premium Halal Meat & Fish and other stores. The seeds are edible, and first we roasted some... that was not bad. But then I had a hunch, which led to this new dish, a Starling Avenue original. You could make it with seeds of the Jackfruit, or, if those are not available to you, you could make it with chestnuts. Key foods on Unionport sells organic chestnuts in a bag, or Chang-Li Supermarket on Benedict Avenue also sells chestnuts in bags, under the brand name of Homei.

This recipe meets all the criteria for Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's no-oil vegan lifestyle.

Jackfruit Arils & Seeds (Wikipedia)

The jackfruit itself has become a favorite desert, and that is saying a lot, for I don't normally eat desert. In the process of taking the pods out of the fruit, you must take the seeds out, and when they dry the outershell which is whitish, dries up very quickly, and you can peel it off. The seeds themselves can very well be roasted, especially when they are fresh, but if you dry them you could try this stew. Notably some stores also offered the Jackfruit seeds for sale at $4.99/lb. Here goes for the recipe this is for 2 people. The overall flavor of this dish is "nutty," and the tastes harmonize well, but you can make variations.

Ingredients & Variations

• Farro for a grain - you cook it like rice, but it has a very rich, nutty flavor. Around here you can find it at Good 'n Natural on White Plains Road, its from Bob's Red Mill. Alternatively you could use a brown Basmati rice.
• Swiss chard. Chang-Li Supermarket regularly carries this vegetable. You could uses spinach instead, but again the Swiss Chard has that rich, nutty flavor, that sets it apart.
• A chopped onion.

Preparation:

• In a pan, cook the chopped onion in two cups of water for about 10-15 minutes, with the peeled jackfruit seeds. Turn down to a slow simmer.
• Meanwhile you washed the chard and chopped up the stems into inch-long pieces.
• First add the stems of the chard to the simmering pan, and let simmer for about 5 minutes.
• Chop the leaves of the chard into about inch-wide strips, and add them to the pan - let it simmer until the leaves are wilted and soft to eat.

Serve the stew over the farro. The whole thing has a rich, earthy, nutty flavor, and it should not need anything else. Enjoy.