Hubris...

This post isn't about vegan / plant-based, but I felt I should write it. In 2010, I had my vitamin D level tested and it was lovely... 62. I was proud. I kept taking my 2,000 IU a day. I just had them re-checked. I expected all would be grand and I'd be celebrating my 50+ result again.

cue ominous music...

Nope... 30. What??!

Yes, 30 is "in the normal range" for my lab. But it is THE LOWEST normal value. I got a call from the nurse happily telling me it was normal. I do not consider 30 good at all. I have some inflammation issues and 30 isn't enough for me.

From this site, the Vitamin D Council, it sounds like I need to take 5,000 IU a day of D3 to achieve a level of 50.  Guess I'll be popping Vitamin D capsules for a while.

Black bean burgers with Kale

I always forget about my my black bean burger recipe.  They are actually are "green black bean burgers" because they have so much Kale. I love them.  The vegan who doesn't like vegetables loves them, too.*  I need to remember to make them more often. They take a while to cook, but the prep isn't too bad. I notice that I'm much more comfortable using the food processor in the kitchen than I was even a year ago. If you're new to cooking as a vegan, it will get easier!

*Surprisingly, the vegan who loves veggies doesn't like them--she's a purist when it comes to her black beans.) 4 out of 5 in our family love them and so do others outside the family who have tried them.

back to school: lunches

This summer, we discovered "green noodles." We bought them at one of our favorite vegan restaurants, then found them at Whole Foods. They make quick lunches (only 2-3 minutes in boiling water), and 2 out of 3 girls and 2 out of 2 adults like them. The website makes you want to go buy them and eat them... (They talk about how green their company is and how good the product is.) They have no fat, 6 grams of fiber, and ingredients that are pronounceable, so at the very least, they aren't bad.


My oldest wanted to take them to school for lunch; I got each girl a stainless steel thermos (they were less expensive at Whole Foods than Amazon) and now they can take green noodles or pasta for lunch. They were all getting a little sick of PB sandwiches, it seems. 

If you eat GreeNoodles, what do you think of them? How'd you find them?

A hearty cookie

I found the inspiration for this recipe over at Oh She Glows. It looked fabulous, but I knew I had to make some changes. (I don't like coconut, I don't use coconut oil in my cooking, and they seemed like they might be a little sweet.)

DRY INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup gluten-free rolled oats, blended into oat flour
• 1/2 cup almond meal or almond flour
• 1/2 cup gluten-free rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons chia seeds
• 1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup of flax
• (If you like coconut, add some--up to 1/4 cup shredded. I don't like it and I didn't add it.)

WET INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup "drippy" raw almond butter (or other all-natural nut butter)*
• 1/4 - 1/3 cup pure maple syrup (I used 1/3 cup in the first batch I made and 1/4 cup in the second batch. I liked it both ways and will stick with just 1/4 cup.)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• about 1/2 cup of water to achieve the right thick cookie texture in the batter (I have no idea how much I added, but I don't think I added more than 1/2 of a cup, but in case you need more, feel free. The batter should be VERY thick and hard to mix by hand, but it shouldn't be "dry.")

The most important INGREDIENT**

• 1/3 cup mini dark chocolate chips (or finely chopped chocolate) (or more!)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with silicone baking sheet.
2. Grind the cup of oats into flour
3. Very coarsely grind the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds--I did this because I don't like big seeds in cookies. I really like the effect!
4. In a large mixing bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients.
5. Add the wet ingredients all at once EXCEPT the water. Add small amounts of water at a time (maybe a tablespoon or two) 
6. Add the "most important ingredient" (you could add dried blueberries--if you're using dried blueberries, add a little cinnamon to the dry ingredients in step two (I'd use a teaspoon or two--this is my next experiment).
7. Portion small balls of dough (just smaller than golf balls) onto the baking sheet, and pat them down. We made 17 cookies, but only 15 would fit on the baking sheet so we ate two in batter form.  (Vegan cookies are AWESOME 'cause you can eat them raw!)
8. Bake cookies for 10-15 minutes. I have no idea how long I actually had mine in the oven, but I'm guessing around 12 minutes. I just kind of patted them on top until they felt cookie-like.

Cookie RePort

3 out of 5 of us loved this cookie (my husband, my oldest daughter, and me)! My vegan who doesn't like vegetables didn't like the cookie; she was suspicious when I offered her cookies for breakfast. (I originally called these "breakfast cookies" but later decided they should be "hearty" cookies since you can eat them anytime!) My vegetarian (youngest daughter) deemed it "okay" and she ate one. We'll see if she comes back for more. Note, I don't think this cookie will travel very well as it's a pretty fragile cookie.

Notes

*I didn't have any almond butter so I tried to make my own in the vitamix. Every site I read on the web said it took a lot of patience to make almond butter in your vitamix. I should have listened as I wasn't feeling particularly patient. After about 5 minutes, the almonds were a very fine flour, and just starting to get "oily," but I was having to stop the blender and stir them every few seconds--this wasn't working for me. I added a little water to the flour and blended for a few more minutes and called it "good enough for cookies." Indeed, it was good enough for these cookies as the cookies were very tasty. I now have to decide if I'll use (store-bought) drippy almond butter (and be tempted to eat it on other things) or just make more of my clumpy homemade mess.

**If you hadn't guessed, we love chocolate around here! I am excited to try these with dried blueberries and will report back when I get around to it.

I was so excited to modify this recipe that I got up early on Saturday morning to do so. My husband was surprised when he heard the blender going before 8 am, but delighted by the cookies!

Quick soup

I've never made soup in my Vita Mix, but recently, when we were at Whole Foods, there was a demonstration of Vita Mix soup making.

They made a vegan variant of the minestrone in their cookbook that they called tomato bisque. Here's my interpretation of what they told me they did. (They didn't have the recipe written down.)

2 cups vegetable broth
1 can of diced tomatoes (or 4-5 fresh ones)
1 garlic clove
1 small carrot
1 small onion (I might go with 1/2 a small onion)
1 stalk of celery
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt (if no salt in your tomatoes)
2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)

Blend it up and when it's blended, turn it all the way up to (very) high for 6-7 minutes. They say the blender will heat the soup up and you'll see steam after that amount of time on high. Add a little Kale and blend it until the pieces are small, but not all the way blended.  I'm going to try it and see if it works. The soup was yummy. I figure, if it doesn't work, I'll just blend it and stick it in a pan on the stove for a little while.

This would be yummy and more filling for girls with some pasta added. My vegan who loves vegetables tasted it at the store and enjoyed it. I think my vegan who doesn't love vegetables might like it without the kale. I think my vegetarian (girl) will like it, too.

Apples! Crisp!

Also, from the trees... We love the fruit trees in our new backyard.

We picked these...

And then we cut them up...

Poured a little maple syrup on the apples (2-3 Tablespoons for a whole big pan)...

Made the crisp recipe from here or below:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup flax

1 cup quick-cooking oats

1/3 cup maple syrup

1-2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons canola oil (optional)*
1/2 cup walnuts ground into a flour**

1/4-1/2 cup water

And it turned into this!

I think we've managed to make 4-5 crisps from our first apple tree.

We need to get a ladder and harvest the top.

The next apple tree is almost ready to give us apples!

Tip: if you fill your pan up with apples, you may want to bake them for a while before you put the crisp topping on so that it doesn't get too crispy. The last time we made this, we used fewer apples, so it cooked faster. The crisp was nice and soft.  (I liked it, but maybe I liked it because it was different.)

*I don't use oil any more.

**I added this to the most recent crisp I made, and liked the addition of a little fat and a little more flavor.  

Soy is not magical, nor is it harmful...it's a bean

Read more here:  http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-debunking-the-antisoy-myths.html

No, it's not bad for you, nor is it a magical elixir. It's a great protein source. It doesn't raise your risk of breast or prostate cancer when eaten in natural forms e.g., tofu, tempeh, edamame). It should be Non-GMO. (I think it should be eaten with iodine in your diet.  See this post for links.)

Fast, easy, and good for you!

 

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fast and healthy dinner.

A friend asked for tips on making fast, easy, and good for you food. One trick is to cook up a whole bunch of a food and eat it all week. This is certainly not a new trick, but it works. Earlier this week, I made a big pot of Pinto beans. These are similar to my almost homemade black beans.

The girls had this for dinner a couple of nights this week and I had it for lunch a couple of days. It turned out we were a little burned out on pinto beans, but no worries, you can either use them to make a "bean burger" or freeze them. Since I'm a little out of time right now (we just moved!), I chose to freeze them. They'll microwave quickly in a couple of weeks for a VERY fast dinner. They are already spiced nicely.

I also made a bunch of quinoa to go with the beans. You can have the beans with rice, quinoa, veggies (my fav is brocolli) or tortilla. We eat a lot of salsa, too.   

A big batch of soup is also really handy. I made one this week, and we had soup for a few dinners / lunches, too. We almost ate it all, but I managed to put some in the freezer before we did. When I make a big batch of something, I like to freeze some of it. It's a great treat to find a frozen batch of soup in the freezer on a night when you are really busy. As we get ready to start school, my goal is to get a few more things in the freezer. A helpful tip is to label the items and date them when you freeze them. I haven't always labeled things and I managed to move a couple of "mystery" items. One has already been composted and one will be tossed in the compost bin soon. 

The reason why 2 out of 3 girls are vegan...

In April 2012, we met Vida the cow. We love her. She was a young cow being weaned and she wanted to be petted. She was crying when she was alone because she wanted her mama. This made the girls very sad and they (2 out of 3) decided to give up dairy. It's been over a year and there's been no looking back. I was reminded of this when I was reading the vegan next door's recent blog post.

My own reasons for turning vegan were health related and someday I will post about those; however, since the girls became vegan for animal reasons, I have become more aware of the myriad of problems in the food industry. I knew about some, before. I was a vegetarian for a long time and like most, I was willing to turn a blind eye and eat eggs and dairy. Now being an "outsider," (a plant-based eater) it's easier to see the problems with the meat and dairy industry and acknowledge them. (I also see lots of problems with not-sustainable practices in agriculture, so I try to buy local and organic whenever possible and do as many "green" practices as I can. I'm still learning.)

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of Vida and the girls. Vida lives on an organic farm and will produce milk when she is older and has her own calf. The people on the farm will consume the milk. Vida won't ever be subjected to hormones to increase her milk supply. Vida is a lucky cow.

 

Carra what, again?

It's carrageenan.What is?

A thickener commonly added to milks of all types (dairy and plant-based). Research has potentially implicated it as a cause of inflammation in the body, gastrointestinal disease, and also diabetes. A brief overview can be found in the Wikipedia; Below, I included an abbreviated version of the abstract from a recent paper implicating carrageenan as a cause of diabetes.

However, the jury is still out. A recent video from Dr. Greger http://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-carrageenan-safe/ comes down on the side of it's okay. I think it might be one of those things that affects  people with a predisposition towards inflammation, or leaky gut while heartier others are fine. Since part of my reasoning for a vegan diet was because I want a low-inflammation diet, I'm choosing to avoid it.

By some odd luck, it's not in the brand of Almond milk we drink (Whole Foods 365 brand of Almond Milk). It's in every other almond milk I've looked at, and it's many soy milk brands.  I found Eden Foods unsweetened doesn't have it so we switched to that brand. It's in my favorite vegan ice cream so I'm going to learn to make a homemade version (in a little while after we get settled.) It's also in the soymilk at Starbucks, so I know have a big incentive to limit my consumption of Starbucks. If I'm traveling, I won't worry too much about it, but I'll limit it when I can.

(It's in some "fake meats" and I'm trying to avoid those. The girls read labels and help me at the store when I explain why we're avoiding certain ingredients. I remember when Kira was 6 and she refused to eat a granola bar because it had high fructose corn syrup in it. That's my girl!)

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The study on carrageenan and diabetes:  Bhattacharyya S, O-Sullivan I, Katyal S, Unterman T and Tobacman JK (2012) Exposure to the common food additive carrageenan leads to glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and inhibition of insulin signalling in HepG2 cells and C57BL/6J mice. Diabetologia 55(1): 194-203

Abstract

Aims/hypothesis

The aim of this study was to determine the impact of the common food additive carrageenan (E407) on glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity and insulin signalling in a mouse model and human hepatic cells, since carrageenan is known to cause inflammation through interaction with toll-like receptor (TLR)4, which is associated with inflammation in diabetes.

...

Results

Glucose tolerance was significantly impaired in carrageenan-treated 12-week-old mice compared with untreated controls at all time points (n = 12; p  < 0.0001). Baseline insulin and insulin levels at 30 min after taking glucose during the GTT were significantly higher following carrageenan treatment. 

...

Conclusion

This is the first report of the impact of carrageenan on glucose tolerance and indicates that carrageenan impairs glucose tolerance, increases insulin resistance and inhibits insulin signalling in vivo in mouse liver and human HepG2 cells. These effects may result from carrageenan-induced inflammation. The results demonstrate extra-colonic manifestations of ingested carrageenan and suggest that carrageenan in the human diet may contribute to the development of diabetes.

Plants got your back...

Good info about iron for vegans from Plant Based Dietitian:

Pasta with kale (or kale with pasta)

 

Dinner last night was "almost my Dad's spaghetti sauce," whole wheat pasta, and kale (a whole serving of kale under the 8 or so noodles).  It looks like Christmas in July.  Fortunately, I ate it last night (while it was still July); it's now August--oh my!

(The girls skipped the kale in the pasta dish and just drank their green smoothie; the recipe can be found here.)