"Vegan" is more a sociological term, designating people who don't eat (or use) animal products, and that could be for environmental, ethical, animal welfare or health reasons. But, "no meat"is not nutrition. Potato chips and coke might be vegan, it is not nutritious. The Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, without added Sugar, Oil or Salt (SOS), is the nutritionally sound basis for a healthy vegan lifestyle. The focus is on #WFPB without SOS, based on the work of T. Colin Campbell in The China Study.
Cucumber salad and a huge bowl of my Umpteen Bean Soup, with some parsley garnish.
Dinner
I was out today, and ended up just taking some kale salad, followed by a big salad with red leaf lettuce, beets, tomato, red onion, peppers, quinoa, flax seed and 1/2/3 dressing with lemon, lime, some minced garlic, and parsley.
Ok, we started on Monday with an empty freezer (apart from staples) at the beginning of the month, and sofar I've still got some frozen pea soup and a few left overs (in the fridge). During the week I also shared some meals with a neighbor, for with a single person household, I tend to always cook too much, and I don't want to eat leftovers all the time. For the rest, from what it looks like, I'll make roast cauliflower over rice for tonight and cook ahead some soup for the week.
Part of creating a cooking system for me is to use certain containers always for the same purpose. In this case, I use one container for oatmeal, so washing it and putting it aside, is my reminder that evening to cook oatmeal overnight. My oatmeal is always for 2 days. The same goes for another staple, my kale salad, when that container is half way, I know to bring another bunch of kale, and steam it (I prefer steaming, but that's personal, you could cook it in water). I have a method that involves my induction cooktop, 12 minutes to bring the water to a boil, and then I steam the kale for 15 minutes and I let it drain for a while over the sink, so I do not put it away too soggy. Then I cut it up in about 1-1/2" squares on the cutting board, and mix it with the other ingredients.
Breakfast
At breakfast, I ended up milling some flax seed for the week (again, do not buy it milled, mill it yourself), which I keep in a jar in the fridge, and I use it about twice a day, in my steel cut oats at breakfast and in salads. The other additions I use a lot is chia seeds and hemp hearts.
The oatmeal was ready in the rice cooker at 6:30 and all I needed to do was add a grated apple, a half pint of blueberries, cocoa nibs, 2 tbsp of raisins, 1 tbsp of goji berries, and cinnamon, and let it go for another 5-10 mins on "keep warm." After that just add in a sliced banana, and some blackberries. I never cook my oatmeal with anything other than water, but if people prefer some plant milk, you can add that at serving time - just mix it in and the oatmeal will simply be a bit more liquid, but some folks like that taste better, and using plant-based milk, you are fine.
Preparation
It was time to steam a bunch of kale, and prepare my usual kale and sweet potato salad, and this time I decided to mince some fresh garlic, which is incredibly healthy. I minced it really fine. Other than that, I cut up a sweet potato in cubes, with skin (high ORAC value), added some mustard seeds, and a drizzle of balsamic and mixed it up really good.
Lunch:
This is saturday, right? Cucumber salad, some left overs, and a piece of toast with home made hummus.
Hummus with endless variations
1 can of chickpeas, drained, preserving some 1/4 cup of aqua fava
whatever spices you prefer. Today, I am making it with chopped parsley and a table spoon of paprika powder, plus I'll add in some minced sundried tomatoes after it's made.
Put the chickpeas with 1/4 cup aqua fava, and the spices in your Magic Bullet, or whatever herb grinder you use, and go to it.
A note about knifery
You will note that I 'cut up' things, or I 'mince' them, I do not 'chop.' It all depends what your knife habits are. Chopping is a crude method, and it will make your knives dull fast. I keep my knives nice and sharp and I cut, or mince things, as needed. I also do not scrape the cutting board with my knife, which people do who have dull knives in their kitchen. That is anathema to me, though you can scoop up stuff off the board without endangering the edge of the knife.
Dinner:
The last of the leftovers from the week, while cooking a kitchen sink soup for the week. See here the recipe:
Umpteen Bean Soup
My own variation on the various bags with 13-16 beans, or so-called soup mix beans. The Link is just one example, there are a kazillion recipes available.
1 lb Soup Bean Mix (or whatever the name is, like 13 or 15 or 16 bean mix), soaked with a little kombu (kelp) 8 cups vegetable stock (or 4 cup water, 4 cup stock or all water!) 2-4 onions, chopped yellow or vidalia onions are great here 1 tsp savory 3-6 cloves garlic, minced 3 chilis minced 1 jalapeno minced 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2-3 stalks celery with tops, chopped 2-4 carrots, peeled and cut-up 1/4 tsp himalayan salt and fresh black pepper to taste 1/2 tsp of ground red pepper 1 dried bay leaf 2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme 1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, undrained 1/2 cup of barley juice of 1 lemon Braggs Liquid Aminos to taste and some nutritional yeast to round out the flavor.
OPTIONALLY:
other veggies as available, root vegetables such as parsnips, or taro
(aka edo, or coco), turnips, ginger, fennel, celeriac, turmeric, potato,
rutabaga
Preparation
You
can cook them directly (dry) in the Instant Pot, for 45 mins or so. I
usually soak them and then cook them in the Instant Pot for just 5 mins
or so, while I am prepping the other stuff. You can add in the savory during this phase.
Then, to cook the soup, I start with the onions, chilis and jalapenos, 5 mins at medium/high, no stirring. By the end of five minutes the lower layer of onions should be starting to turn brown.
Add in the garlic and gradually add 2-3 ice cubes of veggie broth, while doing another 5 mins on medium/high, with constant stirring.
add in the turmeric and spices while simmering on medium low
add in the beans from the Instant Pot, and add in the savory, if you had not done so before.
Now you can simply cut up the veggies and add them in and keep adding some veggie broth, or water. I used tow packs of veggie broth this time.
End result: I have a HUGE bowl of soup for lunch today, and I have a container of soup in the fridge for during the week, plus I froze about 6 quart size freezer bags of soup for another time. In short, since the start of the month, I have now built up 10 portions of frozen soup, and whenever I am in a hurry, I can just heat up a frozen soup and combine with a generous salad with quinoa, and I have a nice lunch. It's all part of making your cooking into a system. After all, there are always times when you have no time to cook. I don't have a microwave, so my reheating of frozen soup means melting it in a bowl of hot water and then pouring it into a double boiler. In that time I can be making my salad, so I have about 30 min prep time for a great lunch.
Note 1: Today I added some edo, a parsnip, some broccoli, turmeric, ginger.
Note 2: The kombu and savory add flavor and nutrients but specifically also are thought to help making beans easier to digest. In fairness, over time, you get used to digesting beans, it is really not a problem, except to people who for a long time already have not been getting enough fiber.
Here is the low down on the health value of Kombu which is a form of kelp - note you can overdo it: https://healthybutsmart.com/kombu-seaweed/ This is an interesting site to consult. Notice that some of the iodide cooks off.
Here is another piece: there is just one disease, which is bad diet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjSeK3wR-vs
A recent report from The Lancet confirms the same thing - Diet is the #1 leading cause of premature death world-wide.
Breakfast
Two oranges,
The usual oatmeal, with blackberries still.
Kale and sweet potato for a snack.
Lunch:
Cucumber salad,
Some toast with home made hummus.
And the soon-to-be famous Brown Rice and Millet Ramen - using up the last of my bunch of collard greens.
Dinner, Easy Peasy:
Salad with red leaf lettuce, watercress, red onion, tomato, quinoa, some salad olives, and 1/2/3 dressing with lemon and lime. Flax seed and chia seeds on top.
Fresh made black & short grain brown rice with left over Thai vegetables from the other day.
End the day by putting on steel cut oats in the rice cooker for 6:30 AM tomorrow.
Trusty steelcuts, today blackberries instead of strawberries, otherwise the same recipe. The backberries were 99 cents a box at Keyfood Unionport this week.
Snacks of fruit and/or steamed kale with sweetpotato
Lunch:
Steamed Kale,
Cucumber salad with chia seeds, garlic and 1/2/3 dressing.
Brown rice/millet Ramen with collards and carrots, and tempeh instead of tofu.
Dinner:
Off the hook - an experiment - this is for a weekend or a holiday, and preferably when you have help. It was Beet Salad, Pesto Pasta, Cooked Spinach, and the pièce de résistance, a banana blossom sauce on the side. This was dinner for three, so I shared with a neighbor and still have a leftover for another day. Cleaning the banana blossom is something that takes too much time, unless you have elves around to do it while you are cooking. The dinner could have worked without it, but it was a great side dish, and definitely something I might do with company. Preparing food together is one of the joys of life. - The rest of the meal is pretty quick to prepare.
16 oz of your favorite pasta I like whole wheat pasta, but you can do quinoa, lentil or chickpea pasta
3 cups fresh basil 3 cups fresh baby spinach 3/4 cup raw cashews ( I did 1/2 cup cashews and 1/4 cup pine nuts) 1-2 lemons juiced 1 large lemon or two smaller lemons or even 1 lemon and 1 lime 1/4 cup nutritional yeast 5-6 garlic cloves or 2 tsp garlic powder 1/4 tsp pink salt add more to taste (or less if you want to avoid salt altogether).
Additionally,
a wad of cooked spinach and some cooking water (with onions, garlic,
chilis and jalapeno), blended in to arrive at a smooth consistency.
optional: highly recommended: add in some sundried tomatoes cut in strips.
Boil
your pasta.
While pasta is boiling, blend all ingredients in food
processor until completely combined, scraping down the sides as
necessary.
Strain pasta (rinse if gluten-free), then mix pesto into pasta.
Serve and enjoy!
Boiled Spinach
Two bunches of spinach, keep some fresh leaves aside for the pesto sauce.
caramelize some onions with some chopped chilis and jalapeno, use about half for a side of spinach, and blend about half into the pesto sauce.
Banana Blossom Sauce
Note: This one was too much work. Fun to do, but too much for one person - you need more than one person to clean the banana blossom, as per this video:
1 Banana blossom - cleaned, chopped 2 onions, chopped fine 4 cloves of garlic, minced 1-2 sheets of nori 1 tsp dill 1-2 pieces of turmeric or 1 tsp of turmeric powder 1 cup of water 1-2 tsp caper brine, or pickle brine 1/4 tsp black himalayan salt 2 tsp gram flour 1 lemon (juice)
Preparation
Caramelize the onions, with some cubes of veggie broth
Once the onions are soft and brownish, cook at medium low, adding in
garlic, turmeric, shredded nori, dill, stir constantly to dissolve the
flour and make a smooth sauce.
Add in the chopped banana flowers and cook on medium/low for 10 minutes
till its soft but still has some spring to it (al dente).
Today, I started with an orange and a pear, while heating up the oatmeal from the other day (I always cook oatmeal for two days), so all I had to do was slice up a banana, add some fresh milled flax seeds (I mill it for a week at a time in my Magic Bullet - see my plant-based kitchen gear collection - and I keep it in a jar in the fridge. milled flax seed just loses its nutritional quality if it lays around for two long, that is why I mill it myself). No strawberries today - I should visit the Keyfoods on Union port, they usually have some of the best selections of berries. Add some hemp hearts (1 tbps) and a drizzle of balsamic et voilà.
Then a cup of steamed kale with sweet potato, mustard seeds, garlic and balsamic.
Zit. That's all folks.
Quick lunch, Cucumber salad and Ramen soup
Cucumber salad
Budget #WFPB No. 1: Ramen
Check out my post on Budget #WFPB No. 1: Ramen for details. Today, I will add some daikon, which I had run out of yesterday.
Meanwhile notice that the Ramen I use is made from Organic Brown Rice and Millet (Lotus foods).
For the rest, I want to make a beet salad tonight, so I am putting 2 beets in the Instant Pot, and they will be ready when I need them. These gadgets are better than having your own cook ;-)
Dinner, regular salad with beets,
Beet salad
cooked beets, finely cut-up onion, lemon juice - plus some minced garlic if you wish...
Rachel Ray has the best way to cut up an onion...
My preferred method is slightly different, I take off the top with a paring knife, so that its flat, then I put down the onion upside down, and cut it in two with my prep knife or a chef knife. Then I make the incisions not vertically as on this video but on the diagonal towards the center line. After that, you can cut it as thin or as wide as you want for the give purpose. Most of the time I like them very thin, especially for salad.
By the way, beets count as a leafy green, keep that in mind for you want 4-6 portions of leafy greens per day.
Main dish
Oh well, I ran late and I just reheated some of the black/brown rice mixture with Thai veggies. Excellent combo, for the black rice has a bit of a sweet, earthy flavor which balances well with the hot and spicy Thai veggies.
The bottom line is there is an endless number of ways to make breakfast, with oats or otherwise, but oats have a lot going for them, and in terms of nutritional quality have it over rolled oats (less processing), though arguably whole oats groats would be even better and, if you cook them with a programmable rice cooker like I do, the fact they take longer to cook is unimportant. Be that as it may, Cutting the oats is minimal as far as processing goes, so whole oats groats and steel cut oats are pretty close in terms of nutrition. Steel cut holds a slight edge, so if it's for breakfast cereal, I would prefer them.
One of the biggest things with steel cut oats is that the glycemic index is lower, so it's better for diabetics. And whole oats groats would be even lower.
Anyway, I cook them overnight, using my trusted Zojirushi Induction Heat 3-cup rice cooker. Before I go to bed I put them on for 6:30 AM, on a brown rice cycle. That seems to give me a satisfactory result.
When they are ready, I keep them on keep warm for a while meanwhile I prepare the additions:
a grated apple (preferably Granny Smith)
a half a pint of blueberries
1 tbsp goji berries
2 tbsp raisins
cinnamon
I leave that on "keep warm" for a minimum of 5 minutes. Once it's finished, the toppings are added, typically:
a sliced banana
some strawberries or other kinds of berries, or fruit
one tbsp of milled flaxseed
one tbsp of chia seeds or hemp heart
a generous drizzle of balsamic vinegar
more cinnamon
mangia, mangia!
Here's an alternative pic with Jack fruit:
Steelcut Oats with strawberries, blackberries and Jackfruit
Lunch kale, and Ramen
My standard steamed kale with sweet potato, mustard seeds and balsamic, plus I added some fresh garlic. Budget Ramen with Collard Greens (Sorry, no daikon today)
Dinner a Salad and Thai Veggies over Rice
A Salad of redleaf lettuce, with finely cut red onion, red and green peppers, quinoa, flax seed, tomato, some capers and salad olives, and 1/2/3 dressing.
I already had a mixture of black rice and short grain brown rice ready.
Thai veggies:
Caramelize two/three finely cut-up onions
add in some garlic
Mushrooms
a can of Thai curry paste (watch the labels, avoid the ones with oil or too much sugar, but there are plenty of good ones).
peppers in all the colors you can find, green, red, yellow - equivalent to a whole pepper.
simmer the above for a while and then add:
Napa cabbage sliced in 1/4"strips
Sprouts
bind it with some arrow root or corn starch at the end.
Various fruit for snacks in betwean and some more kale. I usually steam a batch that gives me 4-5 portions, and it stays great in the fridge.
Cook soup ahead. I usually have 2-3 different soups in the freezer, so that I am never caught short.
Also some form of dal, or curry, or beans can be cooked ahead. Rice can be cooked ahead.
Since my freezer was empty, I made some Split Pea soup this weekend, to get my month started right. I will cook more soups during the month eventually building up to having 2-3 soups to choose from, until I build it down again and start the cycle anew. I do not believe in fossilized soup in the fridge.
For the rest, I have some frozen mixed vegetables, and some frozen spinach in the fridge, for an emergency, and some whole wheat flour and gram flour that just keeps better in the freezer.
I also always have icecube trays with frozen veggie stock for when I caramelize onions.
Split Pea Soup
Great basic recipe for vegan split pea soup, adapted for #WFPB, by leaving out the oil.
It might be of interest to compare to the basic recipe I started with online... I removed the oil, but used more onions and garlic, among other things.
Ingredients
2-4 onions, cut fine 4-6 chilis, cut fine 1 seeded, jalapeno, cut fine 3 bay leaves 3-6 cloves garlic, minced 4 cups (2 lbs) dried split peas 1/2 cup barley 1-1/2 tbsp liquid aminos 8-10 cups of vegetable or mushroom bouillon (2 pints) (Alternatively, half vegetable bouillon and half water with a whole king mushroom, cut up) 3 carrots, chopped 3 stalks celery, chopped 3 potatoes, diced 1/2 cup chopped parsley 1/2 teaspoon dried basil 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper optionally other vegetables, such as parsnips, or turnips etc.
Preparation
In
a large pot over medium high heat, saute the onion, dry for for a total
of 10 mins, 5 mins no stir, and 5 mins stirred while adding some 2-3
veggie stock ice cubes, then bay leaf and garlic, cook for 5 minutes on
medium.
Add the peas, barley, liquid aminos and water.
Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low.
Simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, cut up the veggies.
Add more water as needed for the right thickness.
Add the carrots, celery, potatoes, parsley, basil, thyme and ground black pepper.
Simmer for another hour, or until the peas and vegetables are tender.
Breakfast today... as is typical for this time of year...
What is that? I always make the oats for 2 days, and today was the 2nd day, so I'll have the oats with apple, blueberry, cinnamon, raisins and goji berries in the fridge, so I just have to heat it up.
steelcut oats
grated apple
cinnamon
1 tsp of goji berries
1 tsp of raisins
fresh banana
fresh strawberry, or whatever other berries or other fruit I might have
a drizzle of balsamic vinegar
more cinnamon
milled flax seed and hemp hearts
Snack: Steamed kale with Sweet Potato
One bunch steamed kale
One boiled potato (Japanese is my preference)
Mustard seeds
1 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar.
The balsamic is probiotic and a preservative, this mixture stays good in the fridge, so I can snack from if for a day or more. One bunch makes 4-6 portions. The Mustard seeds are courtesy to Dr. Michael Greger, and his research that cooking kale actually destroys certain beneficial enzymes, but some mustard seeds added in after cooking restores that again.
Lunch
Some of that kale with sweet potato salad,
A Cucumber salad with a 1/2/3 with dill and garlic dressing, with chia seeds.
and some of that soon-to-be-famous Split Pea Soup
Step One for Dinner
Rice Cooker #101
For dinner tonight (and a few more days this week) I am having GABA Brown Rice, this time half and half:
Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice,
Black Rice.
I put it on after breakfast, on the timer for 6:30 at night. The GABA brown rice process is the healthiest way to eat rice, but it takes 3.5 hours - but a good rice cooker handles all that automatically. The cycle is a 2.5 hour soak, allowing the rice to germinate, and then an approx 1 hour cooking cycle, in my trusted rice cooker.
Red leaf lettuce
chopped red onion
peppers in 2-3 colors chopped up
tomato cut up in small pieces
quinoa, milles flax seed, and some chia seeds
1/2/3 dressing with lemon, lime, garlic and parsley
some capers, and some salad olives.
Main course: Curry of Broad Valor Beans and Japanese Eggplant
That main dish was a leftover from the weekend, but I'll make this recipe again as I am trying to perfect it.
