Sweet Potato Lunch

Thanks to Rip Esselstyn for Rip's Sweet Potato Bowl in The Engine 2 Diet   book for the inspiration for this unusual salad. I had a huge sweet potato but I didn't have the mango or red bell pepper called for in Rip's recipe. So I improvised and ended up with a very tasty and quickly prepared lunch.

Ingredients per serving:
1 cup cooked sweet potato chunks, skin removed and discarded
3/4 cup cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 avocado, cut into bite size chunks
1/2 cup canned diced tomatoes with chopped green chilies
chopped cilantro
juice of 1/2 a lime
splash of balsamic vinegar

Take some already cooked sweet potato and cut it into chunks into about as big as you think you would like to place on a fork.  If the potatoes are very cold, warm them in a microwave to about room temperature. Put the sweet potatoes into a bowl, add the beans, avocado, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice and vinegar.

A healthy and satisfying lunch for a plant-strong diet.

More soba noodles

Soba noodles with vegetables and sesame seeds

Soba noodles keep calling to me. This salad is bursting with the flavors of ginger and lime juice.

What an excellent salad to eat at room temperature, the way I like to eat food. The salad could also be chilled in the refrigerator and eaten cold. Since the vegetables remain raw, it is important to keep in mind the size of the pieces that will be combined with the noodles. You will want them large enough to have a taste, but not so large that they are difficult to eat.

juice of 1 medium lime
¼ cup reduced sodium Tamari
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced
1 tablespoon peeled and grated ginger
3 garlic cloves, pressed
3 ounces fresh spinach, washed, stemmed and coarsely chopped
½ small head red cabbage, shredded
3 medium carrots, shredded
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
1 small cucumber, peeled and finely diced
6 scallions, thinly sliced
1 10-12-ounce package soba noodles
2 tablespoons sesame seeds or Gomasio

Prepare the vegetables and set them aside.

In a large pot of boiling water, cook the soba noodles according to the package instructions, being careful not to overcook them. Drain and set aside.

In a small food processor, buzz the lime juice, Tamari, sesame oil, sugar, jalapeno, ginger and garlic for about a minute. Pour the dressing over the noodles in a large serving bowl, tossing to coat them well.

Add the remaining ingredients including the sesame seeds and toss to combine.

Serve immediately or chill to serve as a cold salad.

Serves 4 - 6

35 new salads to make

Now that your garden and your local farmers' market are overflowing with with fruits and vegetables, you have a perfect way to eat the bounty in salads. Mark Bittman, in his New York Times Minimalist column, has written 101 "recipes" of just 2 or 3 lines describing inventive combinations of ingredients and dressings. Many of them are vegan and most are vegetarian.

The first one combines cubed watermelon with tomato chunks with basil and vinaigrette. The second features wedges of tomatoes, peaches, slivers of red onion, crushed red pepper, and cilantro with an oil and citrus dressing.

There are 33 that I want to make! This could be half of my menu planning for the rest of the summer and beyond.

What is your favorite?

A vision of breakfast

Nearly every morning I have a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. I wake up so hungry that I just have to eat right away. While the oatmeal is cooking, I chop apples, walnuts, dates or raisins and then feast on a huge serving.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had a vision of the breakfast I would eat today and the blog post I would write about it. A message that powerful should never be ignored, so as soon as I opened my eyes, I went to the kitchen. The vision may have been inspired by the fruit I had leftover from trying a recipe by Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen. You can see her recipe on Veggie Queen Adventures blog.

Jill's Bright Autumn Salad includes pomegranates, persimmons, and kiwis. The pomegranates were buy one, get one free at Publix, so of course, I had to buy two. That gave me a fruit drawer with pomegranate, kiwis, tangerines, apples, strawberries and a hand of bananas on the counter. I sprinkled chopped walnuts and shredded coconut on top of the salad and enjoyed quite a feast without any oatmeal.

(I try to use local produce whenever I can. The tangerines and strawberries were local, but everything else traveled. The strawberries, bananas, and walnuts were organic.)

When I bought the pomegranate, I also picked up a clever full-color brochures from POM Wonderful showing how to get the arils (the flesh-covered seeds) out of the fruit. I had never successfully used a pomegranate in spite of trying on numerous occasions. I followed the instructions in the brochure and was rewarded with easily removed arils and a delicious fruit that I can now serve whenever I choose. You can see the same instructions at the POM website and become expert at opening a pomegranate.

Yes, sometimes we do eat salads

When we talk to people at the pool about going out to eat, they often tell us we could eat with them at the restaurant they have in mind because the restaurant serves salad. As much as I would enjoy sharing a meal with them, I do not enjoy having a plate of iceberg lettuce with a tomato slice and watching everyone else eat a complete meal. And that is what happens at many restaurants which seem to have no vegetables except French fries and iceberg lettuce.

The reality is that we do often have salads because we eat many, many vegetables and we like many of them raw. The salad above is a typical salad at our house. It contains field mix, sliced radishes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, sugar-snap peas and whatever dressing I feel like making that day.

This time of the year the weather is perfect for spending late afternoons at the pool. Of course, that severely impacts the time available for cooking and salad is a quick option for dinner. Today was a pool day and we came home hungry.

A couple of days ago I cooked cannellini beans and had them in the refrigerator. At Whole Foods the other day, I bought a large head of escarole. Together, they would become beans and greens, but I didn't want to serve another salad with greens, so tonight we had a different salad. Checking the refrigerator, I found one left-over cooked ear of corn, 3 fresh mushrooms, some sugar-snap peas, a spectacular organic red pepper, half a red onion, and a third of a beefsteak tomato.

A recipe isn't necessary, but this is what I did. I cut the corn off the cob, sliced the mushrooms, cut the peas into pieces about the size of my thumbnail, diced half of the red pepper and the remaining tomato. I tossed that with a couple of teaspoons of Paul Newman's Italian Dressing and topped the salad with thinly sliced onion. You could use any fat-free Italian dressing or make a quick vinaigrette if you are avoiding all added fat. A handful of fresh, sweet organic cherries completed the dinner and I still had time to blog.

The pantry - storm and otherwise

After our trip, I went to Whole Foods, The Boys and Publix to restock the food supplies. I am not a tidy housekeeper, but I have decided to show you the food I have in the kitchen when the cabinets and refrigerator are full. People often say to me that our diet must be so limiting. You can see from the overflow of food products that is not the case at all. In fact, we eat a wide variety of foods, probably more than most people on a Standard American Diet.

In the refrigerator, I keep mainly fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as several kinds of flour, soy milk and the usual door full of mustard, ketchup, etc. The freezer contains more flour, breads, bagels, and a few frozen vegetables and fruits, in addition to Boca soy products. This time of the year I try to empty the freezer as much as possible because it is hurricane season. Last year we were fortunate and had no hurricanes, but in previous years, I was really sorry to have a freezer full of food thawing and spoiling in the drawn-out electricity free aftermath of the storms.

The pantry is stocked with canned beans, broths, cereals and vinegars. This is also where Jerry keeps his salsa and home-baked tortilla chips, his main snack foods. Although he cooks almost nothing, he does make the tortilla chips on his own from corn tortillas we buy at Publix.

The pantry also contains the hurricane supplies that can feed us without electricity for storage or cooking. I buy small cans of vegetables and fruits so we will empty them at one meal since there is no keeping leftovers in Florida after a big storm. There are some wonderful recipes for that kind of meal preparation in The Storm Gourmet: A Guide to Creating Extraordinary Meals Without Electricity by Daphne Nikolopoulos. My favorite recipe from that book is the one for Salad Nicoise with canned cannelini beans replacing the tuna. I never use canned potatoes or green beans, preferring to use fresh vegetables. However, after a hurricane, this has tasted fabulous.

Salad Nicoise Hurricane Style

1 8-ounce can sliced white potatoes
1 15-ounce can cannelini beans, drained (not rinsed if water supply has been interrupted)
1 8-ounce can green beans
1 small jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained (or used as dressing)
1 2.75-ounce can sliced black olives

Toss together with a simple dressing of red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and salt and pepper. Serves 4.

Memorial Day

Since I am old enough to remember when Memorial Day was actually a day (May 31) and not a 3 day weekend, I like to be contrary and celebrate on the "real" day. So last night we had a picnic meal without the Standard American Diet and watched the movie "Glory" on television. Both were excellent.

I am back to a meal without a recipe, however. We had Boca Chickin patties on an onion bialy, mine toasted and Jerry's not. All of the rolls I have tried are just too much dough for the patties, so I was happy to find that the bialy has just the right amount of bread to make a good sandwich. Layer the sandwich with mustard, sliced sweet onion, sliced tomato, lettuce leaves and you won't miss a burger.

The green salad contains field mix, chopped broccoli stems (left-over from yesterday's pasta marinara with broccoli), halved cherry tomatoes and vinaigrette dressing.

The potato salad is composed of boiled red potatoes with the skins left on, chopped sweet onion, chopped celery, a sprinkle of red wine vinegar and fat-free mayonaise. Top it with ground black pepper and a few capers.

The cabbage salad is so simple. Shred red cabbage and toss it with a dressing made with a tablespoon of unseasoned rice vinegar and a tablespoon of seasoned rice vinegar. Something about the vinegars gives the salad an oily mouth-feel which is a good thing.

Processed foods, yes, but food that Jerry will eat and not miss eating a Standard American Diet which is my primary goal.

Couscous Salad

Lunch today was quick, easy and delicious. I love to use couscous because it is simplicity itself. Follow the directions on the box, but you will find that couscous is basically made by pouring boiling water over the couscous in a bowl, covering the bowl for about 10 minutes and then fluffing with a fork and serving.

While the couscous is absorbing the water, chop red onions, celery, and carrots. Stir in drained and rinsed chickpeas from a can. Cut grape tomatoes in half and add them along with a pinch of dried oregano. Add a finely sliced small clove of garlic if you love garlic. When tomatoes are in season, I also like a slice of tomato which I dice and add to the other vegetables. Stir in a little red wine vinegar and olive oil (optional). Add the completed couscous. Squeeze a little fresh lemon juice over the mixture. Garnish with a few spinach leaves and serve with pita toasts.

It takes so little time you can find the time to blog.

Greek Salad

I don't usually like substitutes for meat, cream, or cheese. My dislike is partly the taste (often disappointing) and partly because they often contain chemicals which I try to avoid consuming. Even so, I keep trying them out to see if I find any that are really good. I like many of the Boca products and some of the sauces I have made with nutritional yeast.

I also try to keep the recipes here as healthy as possible, full of whole foods (unprocessed) as much as possible, and full of ingredients you will easily find at the grocery store. That would make tofu a pretty good possibility.

I have to say this is an amazing substitute for Feta cheese. Is the taste and texture the same as that fabulous sheep’s milk Feta we used to buy at Wegmans? No, of course not, and don’t be silly. But after a couple of years of vegan eating, it is a very satisfying and healthy alternative.

Thank you to How It All Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer for the basic ingredients.

Faux Feta

1 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1 package extra-firm tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

In a large bowl, mix together all of the ingredients except the tofu. Place the tofu cubes in a single layer in a glass or ceramic dish and marinate the tofu in the mixture for several hours.

Use in a Greek salad in cubes or crumbled. The salad can also contain romaine and other greens, chunks of tomatoes, pitted Kalamata olives, red onions, pepperoncini, sliced cucumbers, and whatever else you like. The salad in the photo happens to contain spinach for the greens because that is what I had in the refrigerator.

For a dressing, you can use plain lemon juice or a simple vinaigrette. I often use this one.

White Balsamic Vinaigrette

3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons water
1 garlic clove, pressed
salt, pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar


Whisk together and pour over salads. Makes enough for 2 servings of salad.

Eating Wisely

Everything important you learned at home or in kindergarten. In "Six Rules for Eating Wisely", an article by Michael Pollan in Time Magazine, he says

Once upon a time Americans had a culture of food to guide us through the increasingly treacherous landscape of food choices: fat vs. carbs, organic vs.conventional, vegetarian vs. carnivorous. Culture in this case is just a fancy way of saying 'your mom.' She taught us what to eat, when to eat it, how much of it to eat, even the order in which to eat it.

Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, says that even Mom was no match for the $36 billion dollars spent on food-marketing. To overcome this influence, he offers 6 great rules for healthier eating. I recommend reading the article and following his rules. I would also add, however, get the fat out!

One of the things that the food industry has taught us is to like high fat foods. Now that I have been eating so long without the taste of fat, I wondered what a simple Waldorf salad would taste like without all of the mayonnaise I used to put into it. I was pleased with the result which was a quick, easy, and healthy lunch that tasted fresh and light.

No one really needs a recipe for this meal! Chop apples, celery, walnuts and mix it all together with raisins or grapes and enjoy the taste of fresh whole food. Or as Pollan ends his article, "So, relax. Eat Food. And savor it."