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.

Pressure cooker chick peas

 

Another fine recipe based on one from Susan Voisin at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen! I cooked the chickpeas in the pressure cooker and have made real progress with learning to use it thanks to The Veggie Queen. This time I got all of the steps right and ended up with perfectly cooked chickpeas in a very short time. 

I  had half of a huge raw sweet potato leftover in the refrigerator and nearly a pound of okra that had to be used really soon. I found this recipe at Fat Free Vegan and changed it some, of course. First, I liked it much better without the peanut butter that the recipe says to add at the end of cooking. I tried it both ways because the broth tasted so good without it. I would not include it or the liquid smoke flavoring. With enough smoked paprika, the liquid smoke, which I do not have, was unnecessary. I had no green peppers either, only half a red pepper, so I made half of the recipe. The next time I would use a green pepper.  I left the celery at 2 ribs, used regular diced tomatoes, and Sriracha Hot Sauce because I like the heat it gives to the food.

Although the recipe recommends cooking all of the ingredients until the sweet potatoes are close to falling apart, I found that after 90 minutes, they still were not near falling apart and finished the cooking at that time. 

So this is what cooking is supposed to be like. Start with an idea, use what you have on hand and like to eat and then make the recipe your own.

Chili with pressure cooker beans

It's my same old 1970's recipe for chili, updated to remove the meat and fat and now made with (mostly) pressure cooker beans. One of the best ways to avoid the BPA in canned vegetables and beans is to avoid the canned products themselves. So yesterday, I used my pressure cooker to make pinto beans and kidney beans for chili. I say (mostly) pressure cooker beans because I could not find dried dark red kidney beans at the grocery stores in my area. Dark red kidney beans taste so much richer than regular red kidney beans that I had to add one can of them to the chili. At least I reduced exposure to BPA by a lot and maybe next time I will leave out the dark red beans.

I am still a novice with the pressure cooker so I looked for help in cooking beans. Jill Nussinow, the Veggie Queen, has a blog, "Green Cooking in a Pressure Cooker" and dvd's with instructions. The most useful and most accessible information was provided by Miss Vickie . It was a great help with the steps and timing, but some experience is necessary. I didn't remember to turn down the burner once pressure was reached so the beans were unevenly cooked with some still quite hard and some already mushy. But, guess what? They tasted fine after stove top cooking for an hour this morning.

I really like the speed of food preparation with the pressure cooker, so I will try it again.

ADDITION
Thank you to Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen, for a link to her video on how to cook beans. Jill tells you everything you need to know about the basics of pressure cooking beans in just over 2 minutes.

Green Cay Open House

On Valentine's Day there was an open house at the CSA we belong to. The farm is about a mile from our house by car and much closer if we could walk and there wasn't a canal between us. That is really really local. It was a beautiful sunny day, cool, of course, because that is the kind of winter we are having here in Florida.

We had signed up for the 11 AM tour, so we arrived a little early to deliver our contribution to the potluck lunch and be sure that we could get to the tour starting point in time. We were warmly greeted by the farmer, Nancy and her husband. The event was very well organized and went perfectly. With the tour beginning at 11 and ending at about noon.

We walked to the fields and up and down rows as Nancy explained some of the challenges of growing produce: insects, rabbits, the weather. They now have some electric fencing to try to keep the rabbits from eating all of the green beans. I like it that they use organic methods whenever possible. I also liked it that we had the opportunity to pick cherry tomatoes (lots of cherry tomatoes) and some greens as well.

It was fun to meet other members of the CSA and to talk about what they cook with the fabulous vegetables we are getting in our boxes. After a tasty lunch, we said good bye and drove 3 minutes back home.

Green Cay Heirloom Tomatoes

The cold weather in Florida has caused considerable damage to agricultural crops, but the CSA I belong to has not had extensive loss of vegetables in the fields. I had been worried about it, of course, because as a member of a CSA,  I have made a commitment to the farm and that makes it so much more real. Remember hearing about the citrus crops that might be lost because of the freeze? If you  are like me, you thought, "Oh, that's too bad." and went right back to what you had been doing.

I am not saying that my concern about the loss is anywhere near the concern of the farmer whose money, sweat and worries are all wrapped up in the farm. It is just that now that I have a share in a farm, losing the crop would mean that people who have entered my life are having a bad time and I would not have the wonderful heirloom tomatoes you see in the photo.

Today was my first day to pick up my box in quite a while because of the holiday season and I was thrilled to return home with a box overloaded with fresh vegetables grown 1 mile from my house.  In addition to the cherry tomatoes and arugula in the photo, I received red cabbage, kale, summer squash, green beans, French breakfast radishes, yellow and orange carrots, and fennel.

The summer squash will become muffins. The red cabbage is going to be a coleslaw with rice wine vinegar dressing, and the green beans my favorite vegetable dish, and the kale will be perfect in beans and greens.

It may be cold in Florida, but we still can enjoy local vegetables in January.

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

Soba Noodles with gingered bok choy

The bok choy from my CSA has inspired me to adapt a recipe I found for bok choy over soba noodles. A big fan of these Japanese buckwheat noodles,  I can never seem to get enough of them. For two days in a row, I have made this dish for my lunch. But the recipe still isn't quite right, so I have to keep trying before I have a recipe I  want to share.

If you happen to have Rip Esseltyn's "Engine2 Diet: the Texas Firefighter's 28-day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds," you will find a recipe in that book. I prefer not to have the flavors of the brown rice vinegar and mirin Rip uses in that recipe. However, that is such a matter of personal taste that you may find Rip's recipe perfect for you just the way he wrote it.

Rip was one of the great presenters at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo I attended last month in Woodland Hills, California. It was so worthwhile and inspirational that I hope to attend again in 2010.