beans and beans and bananas

Okay, I think I am getting the hang of cooking non-icky Eat to Live food. The trick is basically to not cook any recipe that was ever submitted to a mailing list.

This is the best dinner from last week. It looks ugly but it was good.

It is Nacho Cheese-ish Substance on roasted vegetables. The cheese sauce is not like cheese and not even as cheese-like as most of the other fake cheese sauces I have tried, but it made of only ETL ingredients (white beans, salsa, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, onion powder) and if you appreciate that then it is pretty good. It is kind of like tangy hummus. I’m not sure how I feel about its use in a mexican pie, where you put it on top of beans, so it is pureed beans on top of beans. I have not been brainwashed enough for that yet. And it turns out you can spray a tiny bit of olive oil on vegetables with one of those atomizer things instead of giving them a severe dousing and they roast just fine. I did one tray of cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and brussels sprouts and one of onions, bell pepper, mushrooms and zucchini. Before I was too lazy to cook more than one vegetable at a time so it is exciting to have so many.

Today we had taco salad (+ cilantro) for lunch and it was the first meal that I liked so much that I wanted to eat it again. There are not very many recipes that I make more than once in general though.

And can I tell you how amazing the pressure cooker is. Oh the freedom from the tyranny of canned beans and also the tyranny of having to soak dried beans way ahead of time and then boiling them for hours and they are still hard forever! The only price to pay is a slight fear of a giant steamy explosion whenever it makes a weird noise. That seems to be wearing off though.

For dinner I made a soup that was sort of like Moosewood minestrone with random healthful things added.

Mollie Katzen is apparently all about eating meats now, which is just another reason the dislike Moosewood Restaurant along with how they are always serving fishes and also how it is not good. Believe me, I lived in Ithaca and both times I ate there everything was bland and either over- or under-cooked.

Mollie Katzen: I’ve never been that committed to vegetarianism. There is a difference between eating vegetarian and vegetarianism. I love vegetarian food. One of my favorite things is a big plateful of vegetables and greens with tofu and nuts. That is how I eat about 95% of the time. However, if I’m feeling like I have low blood sugar and I’ve got a long day ahead of me and I am at a lunch meeting and the two different sandwich choices are grilled eggplant or roast beef, I am going to go for the roast beef. This is because if I eat the eggplant, I am going to get faint and dizzy and crash in an hour because I need the protein. So I need to go for the most nutritionally dense food available. I’m also slight and thin and I don’t have a lot of reserve, so I am very conscious of the nutritional density of food. Of course I want it to be pure and I want it to be wholesome and healthy as well.

Poor little thing! Maybe you should put some almonds in your pocket, you dummy. Anyway you don’t need protein, you’re just detoxing.

Nonetheless I do make the minestrone and ratatouille recipes from the original cookbook a lot.

This time I changed it a bit because noooo pasta.

tiny bit olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 cup celery — minced
1 cup carrot — cubed
1 cup eggplant — cubed
2 small zucchini, cubed
1 green bell pepper, chopped
3 large leaves of kale, ribs removed, chopped
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 cup fresh parsley — chopped
some basil
2 cups cooked great northern beans
28 oz can crushed tomatoes in puree
1/2 cup dry quinoa
3 1/2 cups water or stock
3 tablespoons dry red wine

In a soup kettle, saute garlic and onions in olive oil until they are soft and translucent.
Add carrot, celery and eggplant.
Mix well.
Add oregano, black pepper and basil.
Cover and cook over low heat 5-8 minutes.

Add zucchini, green pepper, kale, quinoa, water, puree, cooked beans and wine.

Cover and simmer until quinoa is cooked, ~20 minutes.
Add parsley.

One thing I think I am not doing quite right is that I have been eating a crap ton of bananas. The banana is not doing well on the hallowed nutrient density chart. In fact it is worse than skim milk and shrimps! I could just be eating milky shrimps every day! So I’m going to work on my banana habit. So I made Dr. Fuhrman’s YUMMY BANANA OAT BARS…

I added some cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and a little bit of agave nectar instead of the date sugar but still I’m gonna say that maybe “yummy” is a bit of an overstatement. Because it’s not like you bite into it and you think “mmmm, yummy!” as happens with traditional desserts. It’s more like “this is not so bad, hey this is kind of good in a way, oh god what has happened to me, this is not a real cookie but it is sort of yummy because I have not had anything cookie-like in so so long.” It is pretty good to have one with a cup of tea. Of course you are not supposed to have tea so I did not have tea, just like I did not have a hanger episode that led to eating an entire 1000 calorie chipotle burrito yesterday. (It was waaaay too salty.) (Hence no weight numbers today.) (Due to the bloats.)

i went on vacation, i ate some junk, i gained 2 lbs

We went out of town this past weekend and I had really good intentions and I purposely got a hotel room with a fridge and microwave and brought a giant tub of lettuce and some stuff to make healthful burritos. It worked for the first day and a half.

I brought a tupperware of sauteed onions and peppers and a can of refried beans and some whole wheat tortillas and a jar of salsa and it worked quite well. And I brought fruit and oatmeal for breakfast. But then there was a Harris Teeter next to the hotel and they have these really good vegan cookies and I started to have a little fit about how I am not that fat and can I not have a cup of tea and a cookie once in a while goddammit. Then we ate all the cookies and then we had a black bean burger at a local health food store and then we had a hundred soy lattes and then I had vegan fish tacos in Norfolk on the way home because I never have a chance to have vegan fish tacos where we live. Oh then we had pancakes when we got home because it was so much driving that the prospect of pancakes was the only thing that made me not drive off the road. We also walked a million miles though so maybe my two pounds is just water weight from the unaccustomed huge amounts of salt, right.

Well today we are back on track.

Breakfast: 1 cup oatmeal + 1 Tbs ground flaxseed with big pile of unfrozen berries and cinnamon; 1 cup coffee with soymilk

Lunch: salad bar at work, as always

banana

Dinner: salad, pile of broccoli, small sweet potato, black-eyed peas with tomato sauce/onion/pepper/celery

things are looking up! in case you were worried

I guess I could be characterized as a “critical” or “nitpicky” person. So it is amazing that in all of the Eat to Live book there is only one thing that I think is really crazy. Well there are two things, but one thing is how Dr. Fuhrman says that people who get shakey and low-blood-sugary when they don’t eat are not really dangerously hypoglycemic, but just detoxing from whatever animal-protein laden junk they just ate. I definitely get hangry to the extent where my psyche has a melt-down and I cannot do anything but act crazy and irrational, not even find a food item and eat it. For this reason I never go anywhere without a Luna bar. Anyway, *I* am not detoxing from animal bits. But I guess I could be detoxing from my previous Luna bar. So I’m refraining from final judgment on this one until the 6-week trial is over. It would be worth it to follow this diet forever for the sole reason of curing my hanger episodes. I think Chris O would like that too.

The second thing is luckily part of the google books preview so then I am not really violating copyright to show it to you, right. Now, Dr. Fuhrman is not at all dumb, and he is a reasonable writer. My finicky scientist brain had no problem with any of the chapters about sciencey things, not even the one that I believe is titled “I am The Greatest Doctor There Ever Was” or something like that. (Okay, sometimes he repeats the same exact sentence within the same page, but that just makes me wonder where the crap the editor was. Then I give him the benefit of the doubt; he is probably just repeating himself to hammer home his point to all the dummies.) BUT I really am not so sure about the recipes. For an example:

So, to summarize, that is liquified tuna fish, to be used as a dressing. (There is a nonvegetarian option to the diet. The idea is that if you cannot give up the flavor of meat, you should season your food with it rather than eating a giant hunk of meat. The recipe is a pretty direct practical application of this idea. But HELLO, yuck. I guess the cats would like it.)

That’s not even the crazy thing, this is it, it is part of a soup recipe:

Ok, WHAT? Who is this doctor? Isn’t there something not legal about selling soup as a cure for cancer? Does this “doctor” travel around the country a hundred years ago? This paragraph has been on a loop in my brain since last Friday: it must be a joke – but it’s not really funny – but isn’t that illegal? – it must be a joke… Dr. Fuhrman, I know you google yourself and respond to crazy people on their pro-Atkins blogs. I swear I ate a pound of raw vegetables today and I’m sorry I made fun of the tuna dressing. Who is this doctor friend who sells soup! Is this a joke that I will understand when I am at 1% body fat???

So actually other than that Chris O and I are both feeling pretty good and we both lost 5 lbs. I think my problem was that I was making too many different and weird recipes and it’s better to just think of things you already eat that can be modified (which was also a handy way to transition to veganism). So last night we had the Moosewood ratatouille (no oil, canned tomatoes, with added chickpeas) and a sweet potato and a big salad. We had iceberg lettuce because I have bought iceberg lettuce maybe twice in my entire life and I thought it might be exciting. And it sure was.

So now I just have to think of more things we eat that contain only vegetables and beans and not frosting. For dessert lately we blend a banana, some frozen fruit, and a little bit of soymilk in the food processor. It is quite good and I am sure it will be even more enjoyable when it is not minus a million degrees outside.

I would definitely like to eat a million cookies right now but everyone at work is watching me like a hawk and getting all ready to judge Eat to Live and veganism in one fell swoop and that is actually pretty motivating. Peer pressure does something useful for once after all.

Oh January, how I love you

There’s nothing like January 1st to help me go from none to all. And I am totally at ALL. There is no fat-off at my work, since there are only 6 people in my little teaching unit and I am the only fatty. But I am having a fat-off contest with my sister, although we haven’t decided on a prize yet. So far I am doing very well, I weighed 211.2 lbs on January first and this morning I am down 5.8 pounds to 205.4. I have the chance to exercise 2 hours every day with no child-care conundrums, I can ride my bike 30 minutes each way to work and then I can go to the hour-long masters swim workout at 11 everyday that is about 100 yards from my office. I did at least one of those things every day last week, and 2 days I did both. My goal this week is to do them both every day, although that has been messed up by the furlough day I had to take today. But I did my new Wii Active game tonight, it was quite challenging, so that makes up for it a little bit. It has a very hard inline skating thing that I just cannot figure out, but it is a nice game, I get to watch my fatty avatar make all the movements I am making. And it is very hard to cheat. It is supposed to rain torrentially for the next two days, but I am planning to ride anyway and get soaked.

My eating plan is to eat less junk, more whole grains, and eat more small meals and only when I am hungry. I have done too many limiting-type diets in my life to try one again, I just need to figure out how to eat when I’m hungry and stop before I’m stuffed. I bought Alicia Silverstone’s Kind Diet book and have read most of it. It’s mainly stuff I already know, and she’s pretty reasonable, but she does get kind of kooky with body alkalinity and sea vegetables. Some of the recipes sound good, and I did make some weight-loss tea tonight with million dollar umeboshi plums. I’m sure it does nothing to help weight loss but it didn’t taste terrible.

I have been cooking up a storm lately, I have to get better at taking pictures. Here is a crappy one from my phone since I cant find my camera. Tonight I made the aloo gobi and Swiss chard with caramelized onions from the Vegan Table and brown rice. I have made aloo gobi 3 times now, it is one of my favorite recipes in that book so far. The chard was good, I have never cooked chard before. I have lots of leftovers for lunches, and I still have the 18-step macaroni and cheese, pad see ew, tempeh sloppy joes, and roasted Brussels sprouts in the fridge from this last week of cooking too. I guess I don’t get to cook dinner tomorrow night.

how can we have more kitchen explosions for 2010

It is the end of our second day on Eat To Live. We both feel like we are going to die (perhaps we are DETOXING) so I think we will relax a little from now on…

Here Chris O is sad because he wants to have pancakes and instead he is having fruits, almonds, and oatmeal. This is what we had yesterday. The oatmeal has NO SALT and NO SUGAR. For lunch we had giant salads. For dinner we had little salads and 12-bean soup made in my brand new fancy pressure cooker:

The pressure cooker is AMAZING in its ability to cook beans, but I am not too keen on making soups in there. For one thing, you cannot see what is going on because if you open the lid you will explode. Also it makes vegetables have a weird texture. I think it is doing something weird to them on a molecular level. For example those carrots are very odd now. Maybe they are just overcooked. Also this soup has no salt, as per Dr. Fuhrman. I never thought I cared much about salt but it turns out that I like it. Then we had applesauce with a few raisins for dessert even though dry fruit is FORBIDDEN.

Today we had salt-less tofu scramble for breakfast with a piece of dry whole wheat toast and some grapes. Then we had leftover soup, cut-up vegetables, and oil-free hummus for lunch. Then we had this lentil and potato thing for dinner along with the big salad. It was so ugly that I will not show it. Basically potatoes take way less time than lentils in the pressure cooker so they liquified and it was a total waste of my starchy vegetable of the day. The goal for the rest of the week is not to make gloppy brown things for dinner.

So far we both feel awful (we might be getting colds) so I think we are going to not limit our starchy vegetables and whole grains as much and add back a little olive oil. Perhaps we will also use a bit of salt as having no salt makes me resent the amount of time it takes to cook something that tastes so blechy. But we will still eat our enormous salads (basically I have no choice but to do this since the only vegan thing at lunch is the salad bar, it is just a matter of not loading it up with olives) and we are not going to have any sugar, non-whole grains, or processed items. I definitely see how this diet could work for very overweight unhealthy people and how they would lose weight very quickly. I bet they are pretty unhappy on the third day though. Basically you can eat as much as you want of your salads and vegetables, so you end up eating a ton and then you are really full but then a couple hours later you are hungry again. I find this type of thing very frustrating because I get annoyed at how long it takes to eat a salad and it is all just WASTED. There is just so much CHEWING. And for what?? No caloric usefulness! So I think this is a good diet for people who like to eat in general but personally I think eating is a pain. I only like to eat cookies. And pie.

how can we be more crazy for 2010

Chris O and I are going on a lifestyle change. I ate a million things over Christmas but now I have joined my work “Fat Off” and I had to pay $20. Whoever loses the greatest percentage by February 12th wins all the $20s. My starting weight on Monday was 141.9. That includes all my shoes! But the winner in the last round only lost 4.7%, so I only have to lose 7 lbs! I wish to lose 10. On The Biggest Loser they lose that in five minutes!

Chris O is going on a diet because his Mii is so fat:

Ha haaaaa!

Anyway I think we are going to do the 6-week regimen of Eat to Live. The Eat to Live guy seems like a sell-out based on his recipes which include Butter Buds and how he sells soup on his website for $4.80/can but the diet is supposed to be based on The China Study which sounds to me like it might be a real thing. Basically it is vegan, with limited grains and starchy vegetables (1 cup per day) and fats (1 oz nuts or 2 oz avocado) and unlimited fruits and vegetables. The challenge is going to be cooking things without starting with a giant glug of olive oil like I always do and giving up tofurkey sausages and pancakes. We have ordered the book but it is not here yet so in the mean time we have to eat up all our bad things including our stash of Sweet & Sara S’mores.

Tonight we ate the Tempeh Bolognese from the January Vegetarian Times (only $5 for a year!) (coconut creamer instead of evaporated milk and way less oil) on cauliflower puree.

The point of cauliflower puree is that it is better for you than potatoes, but if you look at the vast majority of recipes on the internets people are all adding butter, heavy cream, and cream cheese. I can’t believe you dummies don’t know why you are so fat! Anyway I just added some Smart Balance. We will wait until official Eat to Live time to see how it is without…

chestnuts roasting in my crummy oven

I made the Veganomicon chestnut and caramelized onion and butternut squash casserole to see if it is any good because I am considering making it for christmas eve dinner.

I thought it was kind of bleh. Maybe I should not be impatient and caramelize the onions more which hello takes way longer than 30 minutes in the oven stupid book. Or maybe I should cut everything into smaller pieces. Maybe I should measure the spices instead of sprinkling them on randomly.

donut disaster

Has anyone made the apple cider donuts from the September Vegetarian Times?

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/11081

I made them last weekend and the batter was insanely thick and would not go in the pan and then I added more soymilk and then it turned into a horrible gummy disaster that made me want to pitch the whole mess in the creek. WHY???

we had thanksgiving a while ago

Thanksgiving at my parents’ house was vegan other than the turkey. I removed it from the picture to protect your delicate sensibilities. Generally a certain member of the family acts like an ass by dangling a piece right in my face but on the other hand Lenny was extremely pleased to have it there. Otherwise there are brussels sprouts, Bryanna’s soy and seitan turkey, stuffing, squash AND sweet potatoes tho they are the same, salad, and not-pictured cranberry sauce.

Pies! Apple, pumpkin from Joy of Vegan Baking, and 3000-calorie chocolate pie from the November Vegetarian Times. The cookies are not vegan. Also not naturally colored.

After dinner I discovered something fun, which is that if you rub a fake-fur pillow vigorously on someone’s head it makes their hair crazy staticky and they end up looking like Helen Keller before Anne Sullivan showed up. This is relevant to Thanksgiving because we got this fake fur pillowcase in our gift bag at the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary Thanksgiving last year.

Stay tuned to hear about Christmas promptly on January 20th.

Cookies and brownies and cookies and beautiful coal tar poison

We have had a sweet-filled kitchen the last few days.

These are the oatmeal raisin cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, which I am just going to call VCIYCJ because I am lazy. And also I think I might make all of these recipes and that is a lot of typing that stupid name. These used flax seeds for an egg replacer, and my ground flax seeds are quite old, so maybe that made a difference. They came out too smooshy so next time I’ll bake them longer (the recipe says 10 minutes for soft and 12 minutes for crispy, I did 11 minutes and got almost unbaked, and my oven is the right temperature). I put in golden raisins instead of regular because they were on sale but they are not aesthetically pleasing to me. And some chocolate chips too since I don’t even like oatmeal raisin cookies.

These are the brownies from The Joy of Vegan Baking that sweetie made on Sunday. I was very skeptical since they are missing the key ingredient in any baked good (fat), but they are quite good. They are very chocolatey and fluffily cake-like. They have chocolate chips which helps a little bit with the lack of other fat. They have apple sauce, which I made myself, not because I am Martha-like crazy but because I had 11 sad looking apples (recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking as well). I would still like to try some other fat-filled brownie recipes.

I just finished making these damn cookies (and it is after midnight). Thumbs up to yummy even better then Oreos, thumbs down to the most time-intensive cookies I have ever made. I didn’t have a 1.5 inch cookie cutter so I used a skinny IKEA vase, it worked ok but some of the edges are sloppy. And rolling out all that dough a million times to 1/8 inch got very old very quick so some are too thick. Bryan thinks they are worth it, which of course he does since he wasn’t here when I was making them. Although he did take a fancy picture so I guess I’ll let him enjoy them. They were a request from my office mate whose birthday it is tomorrow. And it’s the big 3-0 or I would have abandoned these at the cut out stage.

And I gave in to the siren call of my copious amounts of poisonous food coloring. I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTotW with oil. The red is kind of pale because that’s the one color I didn’t have any fancy super-poison gel color for, since I used that all making my baby her first birthday cake, the evil mother that I am. And I should have figured out the amounts a little better so the circles would turn out more the same size. I have to haul the cake and frosting on my bike tomorrow and frost and decorate the cake at work. I wonder what the inside looks like! Can you handle the suspense?

Oh and I did day 1 of couch to 5k today, even though it was dark AND raining. I am very proud of myself.