My 15-Day Reboot, Part 1

I'm on a 15-day "reboot" right now, and day 3 is drawing to a close.  The decision to do this was inspired by my recent viewing of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  For those of you who haven't already seen it (and if you haven't, you should!  Find it on Netflix or check it out of the library!), the film follows a guy named Joe, who suffers from obesity and an autoimmune disorder and embarks upon a 60-day juice fast in an attempt to cure himself of both conditions.  The fast is a success, you see him lose weight as the film is being made, and about halfway through he inspires a random stranger, who is also obese and suffering from the same autoimmune disease, to do the 60-day juice fast. 

Since the film was completed, Joe has started this whole "reboot" concept - learn more on the Reboot Your Life website - which encourages people to embrace healthy eating and lifestyle changes by committing to a "reboot" in which they consume nothing but fruits and vegetables (as in no beans, no nuts, no grains), often in juice form only, so that the body can benefit from daily megadoses of phytonutrients.  I've been intrigued by the idea since watching the film, and I decided before running the Columbia Marathon that the second half of March would be the best time to give it a try, since I'm taking the rest of the month off from running and I just might benefit in ways I don't expect.  Last week I loaded up on protein (soy milk, cashews, big spoonfuls of peanut butter) because my sore muscles needed it right after the race.  Friday night Steve and I went to a St. Pat's pub crawl in the Vista, and my reboot started Saturday morning.  The "Classic Reboot" that I'm doing consists of 5 days of juicing plus eating fresh fruits and vegetables, 5 days of juice only and 5 days of juice plus eating.  I'm making up my own meal plans as I go and consuming however much I want while staying within the parameters of the reboot.

Since I went vegan a couple of months ago, I don't feel like I'm suffering as much as if I ate a lot of meat (or a lot of processed junk), but here and there it's been hard to deal with the hunger pangs.  As a runner - and as one who recently trained for and ran a marathon - I'm not used to letting myself go hungry.  I eat healthy snacks, but as a rule, as soon as I notice that I'm hungry, I take care of it.  At work this past weekend (days 1 and 2), I found myself having to gulp down extra water between juices, fruit snacks and meals in order to trick myself into thinking I was full.  Today I was off from work, so it wasn't so hard to poke my head in the fridge and see what I could snack on (like carrots) and to move around at my own relaxed pace, which I don't always get to do at work.  I'm thankful that I'll be off at least two of the five days of the juice fast, because I have a feeling that it's going to be rough.

Anyway, the Vegetarian Times must have caught wind of the fact that I bought four kabocha squash (similar to acorn squash) at Rosewood Market this morning, because this recipe showed up in my Facebook feed after I got home.  As soon as I saw it, I knew what I'd be making for dinner.  I mostly followed the recipe  but substituted fresh ginger, Rasam powder (a type of curry powder available in Indian grocery stores) and cayenne for the sherry and left the skin on the squash because it's perfectly edible and a colossal pain in the ass to peel when it's raw.  I found that by bringing it to a boil and then reducing the heat, rather than just bringing it to a simmer, it cooked even faster and was ready to go in the blender even before I was done getting everything together for the salad. 

The salad was simple: a couple of handfuls of spinach (one for each of us), about two ears' worth of baked husk-on corn, cut from the cob after cooling, one big, ripe tomato and one avocado.  Just arranged everything on two plates and poured over a dressing made of one tablespoon of lime juice, two tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.  Yumminess!  Plus I made a double batch of the soup, so there will be plenty more to enjoy during the next couple of days before the juice fast begins!

One nice thing about still being able to consume things like sweet potatoes and winter squash, the usual way or in juice form, is that they provide a little extra bulk and natural sugar, so you don't feel completely deprived.  I've felt pretty okay today, but my fingers are crossed that I'll make it through the juice fast without killing anyone...

My Sweet Sixteen Birthday Dinner Revisited

For those of you who don't already know, today's my birthday.  Over the weekend, when I was thinking about what I might like to do for dinner tonight (go out or dine in?), it occurred to me that the most memorable birthday dinner I've ever had was for my sweet sixteen, on this date 20 years ago.  (So guess how old I am now?)  I remember that, after a bad day at school, I came home crying about something or other, and when I settled down my dad asked me what I'd like for dinner.  I told him kielbasa, sauerkraut and black-eyed peas, so that's what he made. 

Das ist richtig, y'all.  And when I say my dad "made" it, I mean he heated everything.  The black-eyed peas and sauerkraut were from cans, and the kielbasa was sliced lengthwise and thrown on the skillet just like any other day.  That was how we ate back then, and until I learned to cook it was all good. 

As it happens, we've had frozen black-eyed peas and a package of Tofurky kielbasa in the fridge for a few weeks now, waiting to be used, and tonight seemed like a special opportunity to bring those unlikely flavors together once more and make the most of my vegan cleanse.

I "made" the vegan kielbasa the same as before - sliced and heated in the toaster oven until slightly browned.  Instead of popping open a can of black-eyed peas, I thawed some of the frozen ones and threw them in the pressure cooker along with some chopped bell pepper, onion and broth, adding a couple of teaspoons of chipotle Tabasco sauce at the very end.  In place of the sauerkraut, I picked up a head of cabbage and made the equally flavorful cabbage with coconut poriyal recipe from my Indian cookbook.  Delish! 

On a side note, Steve gave me a copy of Skinny Bitch which I can't wait to read!  But not tonight - after the dishes are washed (also his treat), we'll be settling in front of the TV, indulging our new addiction to Breaking Bad (we just ditched the cable and are Netflixing all the episodes in order) while munching on vegan cupcakes that he also picked up at Earth Fare today!

Hope everyone's having as lovely an evening as me!  Until next time...

North African Vegetable Soup

When shopping for Christmas presents on Amazon last week, I came up a few cents short of the $25 minimum order that qualifies for free shipping.  So, I looked around in the food/kitchen part of their website for a little something for myself and found this prepared harissa from France.  The four-pack cost about $15.  En tube, no less!

Then I felt like a jackass when I Googled "harissa recipes," hoping to find recipes using harissa, and instead found a slew of harissa recipes I could have easily made myself.  Oh, well.  I still got something to remind me of the wonderful time I spent in Geneva and of all the weekend shopping trips in France with my Swiss and German roommates, buying groceries with ingredient lists in several languages because they were being sold throughout the European Union.

So, when I changed the search to "recipes using harissa," this Moroccan vegetable stew recipe from Sara Moulton came up in the results.  This worked out well, since I'm a little under the weather today (and, thankfully, home from work), so I haven't had an appetite for the Indian yumminess that I made the other day.  Whenever I have a cold, all I really want is liquid, so I turned this stew into a soup, used up several veggies that had been hanging around for a while and got to use some of the harissa to boot.  I made numerous changes, as shown below the photo, based mainly on what was on hand:

2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
4 cups vegetable broth (I used Better than Bouillon veggie base)
1.5 cups thawed frozen yellow squash, sliced in 1/2-inch rounds
1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained
1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
harissa for serving

In a soup pot, heat oil over medium heat.  Add onion and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add celery and garlic, stir and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  Add the next three ingredients and stir to combine.  Add tomatoes and sweet potato, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes.  If sweet potatoes are not tender after this step, add the squash and chickpeas, raise the heat slightly, cover and simmer another 5-10 minutes or until sweet potatoes and squash are tender.  Turn off heat, stir in cilantro and serve.
***
I tasted the result before and after adding the harissa, and it's really good both ways.  I was able to taste the cinnamon more before I added the harissa than after, but I also liked how the harissa gave the broth a little more color than the liquid from the canned tomatoes could do on its own.  The harissa wasn't quite as hot as I expected (maybe I'll taste a difference once I'm no longer congested), but it was still very tasty and has great potential for being used in other soups and stews as a zippier alternative to tomato paste, particularly in Turkish recipes like chickpea and zucchini moussaka that I blogged about last year.

I'll be taking it easy for the rest of the day so that I can go back to work tomorrow and also be well enough to enjoy all the fun stuff going on this weekend, like tomorrow's holiday drop-in at work and Columbia Veg's "'Tis the Season to Party Like Veg*ns" potluck!

Hope everyone's having a happy and safe holiday season, and I'll be seeing some of you soon!

Time for more juice

This made a nice combination side dish/dessert after warming up a vegetable teriyaki frozen entree for lunch today.  I had already thought about making another juice after finishing off the almost half-gallon of the Mean Green juice that I produced last time by making a double batch of the recipe, and Steve was helpful enough to pick up some more kale, cucumbers and a big bag of apples from Hendersonville, NC.  The apple, beet and carrot juice that I made today (second from the top in the recipe list) left enough of the kale unused that I'll probably make some more of the Mean Green in a day or two.

The Reboot Your Life website has a whole host of resources for people wanting to try a Reboot (juice fast) or just learn more about juicing.  As someone in the latter category, I'm already finding it very useful even though I've never even been a very enthusiastic user of my blender or Cuisinart.  You know, because of all the extra parts that have to be cleaned afterwards.  But a perusal of their juice recipes has helped me to realize that there's more to juicing than big bags of carrots or going to a lot of trouble to make fruit juices that are readily available at the supermarket. 

I'll say one thing...I'm not sure if it was the relatively high beet content or the juicer, but there seemed to be a lot of beet pulp in the bottom of the glass.  Maybe I didn't shake it well enough before pouring?  Still, it was a nice complement to the frozen entree, which, for me, is never enough food.  Must be a runner thing.

A couple more juice experiments will be happening soon...stay tuned!

My initiation into juicing

Over the weekend, Steve and I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, in which the overweight narrator chronicles his mission to improve his health through a 60-day juice fast.  Highly recommended, and if you live in Richland County, they have the DVD at the library.  (At least they will after we return it.) 

Anyhoo, one of the recipes featured in the film is a creation of Phil Staples, one of the people the narrator meets during his quest to lose weight and start feeling better, called Mean Green Juice.  For some reason I couldn't find the recipe on the movie website, but a Google search brought me to the blog of someone also undergoing a juice cleanse, and the blogger very helpfully provides the recipe here.  After seeing the movie and the impressive results achieved by the narrator and others, I figured it was worth my while to at least try out the juicing thing and start with a recipe from the movie.  As luck would have it, Steve inherited a juicer from an aunt who died a couple of years ago, so it was simply a matter of buying the ingredients and getting started.

I'll admit that I never really had any interest in juicing before watching the movie because it looked like more trouble than it's worth, and I'm not really into vegetable juices anyway (except for using V8 to make Bloody Marys).  I mean, if I'm too lazy to deal with the cleanup from making smoothies or daiquiris, why bother making a juice drink that I can buy at the store?

Well, as it turns out, it's really not that bad.  All I had to do was learn my way around the juicer, figure out how thinly the ingredients need to be sliced in order to fit through the chute and then take the juicer apart to clean it afterwards.  Steve was very helpful with all of the above, and the resulting juice was pretty decent.  I used a little less kale than what the recipe called for, just because the bunch that we had only added up to nine leaves and I made a double batch so that Steve and I could both have some.  All the other ingredients were in the same proportions as the recipe.  The smaller amount of kale may or may not have made a difference, but the result was very appley.  I'd actually consider having this for breakfast some time, even though I don't normally consume green things first thing in the morning. 

So now I know one juice recipe that I like, and I'll be trying my hand at some others in the near future.  If you have a juicer collecting dust like we did, break it out and give juicing a whirl!

Fun with radishes

Here are my radishes - the first veggies I ever grew from seeds!

I was pretty anxious to use them once they were out of the ground and washed, because I've noticed in the past that radishes can dry out after just a few days in the fridge.  So, I replayed the radish sambhar recipe here but left out the bell pepper (didn't have any), used more radish than the recipe called for (all the ones pictured above) and used extra yellow split peas in place of the toor dal that I was fresh out of.  I also had a bunch of cilantro that all went in at the end.  Word to the wise: when making any recipe using yellow split peas plus veggies, start cooking the yellow split peas about 15 minutes before the rest since they take a while to soften completely (about 45 minutes).  Here's how it turned out, served over brown rice:

I also figured I'd be cheating myself if I didn't come up with a use for the greens as well.  I have a recipe on file for a pureed radish green and potato soup, but another use came to mind that also allowed me to dispense of half a block of tofu, a package of mushrooms, a zucchini and about four carrots that I had no other plans for: the hot pots that I first made back in January for Steve's birthday.  The broth was pretty much the same as before.  The rest included sliced mushrooms, zucchini and carrots cut into matchsticks, cubed tofu, the last of my rice stick noodles and radish greens sliced into ribbons.  I sauteed the carrots to soften them up a little before assembling the dish. 

Yummy as always, with or without sriracha!

This week's looking like it will be too hot for soup, so be on the lookout for some sort of salad recipe that will use at least one ingredient from the garden.  Stay cool everybody!

Back in the kitchen

...after nearly a month of not blogging and hardly cooking.  It's not that I didn't cook at all, but on the rare occasions that I did, I simply replayed favorites like the sweet potato spinach praram and pasta salad or just made a plain Greek-style spinach and feta salad.  The rest of the time, when I wasn't up for making anything, it was either frozen dinners or chips and hummus.  Clinicals are over, and I've had a little more time to cook this week.  That's a good thing, because I'm back to having a lot to work with and not a lot of time before it goes bad. 

Bring on the Indian (-style) food.

Yesterday I dispensed with a couple of carrots and a big bunch of cilantro by making something like chickpea soondal but with carrots and cilantro and no coconut.  Easy peasy.  I was afraid that the big bunch of cilantro I had would be too much for two chopped carrots and one can of chickpeas, but it actually came together really well and the leftovers were just as good in today's lunch.  I cooked up just enough brown rice to mix with both of the generous helpings I got from it.

Tonight I made palak tofu.  The inspiration was actually a frozen dinner that Steve buys sometimes called Mattar Tofu.  It's a vegan version of mattar paneer that uses tofu instead of the cheese.  Well, I just happened to have an unopened bag of spinach and half a block of tofu leftover from the last time I made the praram, so I made the palak tofu using those ingredients plus a few seasonings I always have on hand:

3 tablespoons canola oil
3 dried red chilies, torn into pieces
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon ginger paste
9 ounces fresh spinach
1 onion
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder (medium hot?)
8 ounces extra firm tofu, pressed and sliced into 1-inch squares

Heat the oil over medium-low heat, add the next three ingredients and saute until fragrant (just a few minutes). 

Meanwhile, puree the spinach and onion in a blender or food processor until smooth.  Add to the ginger-garlic mixture in the pan.  Add salt, curry powder and tofu, stir well, cover and cook until onion flavor no longer overwhelms the dish, about 15 minutes.  (Avoid the temptation to over-salt it before it's done; the onion flavor will cook out.)

Serve over rice.

Indian Rice Salad with Cabbage Poriyal

I finally cut into that head of cabbage that's been sitting in my fridge for over a week.  That means I'll be hurrying to find a recipe (probably Greek) to use up the rest in the next couple of days. 

I also happened across this basmati rice salad recipe for the complementary beans/rice dish and wondered why I hadn't used it since I got my Indian cookbook.  Then I read through the reviews, a couple of which talk about how bland it is.  When I read the quantities of each spice, I couldn't help but agree.  As Indian food and Emeril's cooking go, this recipe is kind of bland.  Maybe that's why I hadn't made it in five years.

Until tonight.  I substituted brown rice for the basmati since we've pretty much switched to that here, used half the rice and kept the spice quantities the same, in effect doubling up on the spices.  If you like spicy food, try it this way.

"Poriyal," according to the authors of Healthy South Indian Cooking, is a type of stir-fry dish to which unsweetened shredded coconut is added at the end.  The ingredient list was relatively short:

2 tbsp canola oil
4-6 curry leaves (I chop mine to distribute them further through the cabbage)
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 dried red chilis
2 tsp urad dal
4 cups chopped cabbage
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp unsweetened shredded coconut.

I started this when the rice was almost done because it comes together fast and you don't want it sitting around getting soggy while your rice or whatever else is still cooking.  Just heat the oil in a frying pan, add the next four ingredients and cook until urad dal turns brown and mustard seeds pop, then add the next three ingredients, stir and cook just until the cabbage wilts, then turn off the heat and stir in the coconut. 

Easy and delicious!  And if you use the basmati rice, it should be done in about 15 minutes, during which you can whip up the cabbage and coconut poriyal. 

Off to watch the last few minutes of Jeopardy.  Good night!

Mattar paneer

Second cooking experience with the new stovetop.  I was so glad to finally get around to this!  It was also good to use up the paneer, which I was tired of looking at in the cheese drawer in the fridge.

I used this recipe with a few adjustments.  The yogurt seemed like overkill (didn't have any anyway).  I used cayenne pepper instead of the green chilies I didn't have and canola oil in place of the ghee I never buy.  I didn't have any cilantro ("chopped coriander leaves") so I skipped that, although this is one recipe where it really would have added to the flavor.  Also, I couldn't see using garam masala as a garnish, so I just stirred it in before covering it and letting it simmer.

Any vegans out there could just as easily use cubed tofu instead of the paneer in this and any other paneer recipe.  I kinda wish I had myself, since I'm coming down with something and try to avoid dairy products when I have a cold.  Oh, well.  Some of the soup from Saturday is still in the fridge; hopefully it will get me through the next day or so...

The Occasional Vegetarian Gets a New Oven

So, the self-cleaning oven with flat-top range that Steve found on sale on Home Depot's website last week arrived while I was at work Friday morning.  Thankfully, Steve was here to let them in and make sure they leveled it right.

Check it out - it even has that new oven smell!

So guess what I did to christen it, even though I still had three turkey and stuffing leftover meals in the freezer?





Chickpea Soondal and Kale Pitas

The chickpea soondal recipe is in Healthy South Indian Cooking, and I reheated the last of the kale from the other night to fill out the pitas with some greenery.  I've only made the soondal once or twice before (in the four years I've had this cookbook) and usually served it with rice and one other veggie side dish, but this was the quickest and easiest thing to whip up, since nothing needed to be chopped for it and the kale and pita were there and ready to go.

1 can chickpeas
1 tbsp canola or corn oil
1 dried red chili pepper
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chutney powder
1 tsp minced fresh ginger root (I used ginger paste from the Indian grocery store)
1/4 cup powdered unsweetened coconut (also from the Indian grocery store, along with all the spices)

Drain the chickpeas, rinse and set aside.

Heat the oil in a saucepan or skillet over medium heat.  When oil is hot, but not smoking, stir in red chili pepper, black mustard seeds and urad dal.  Fry until mustard seeds burst (listen for popping sound) and urad dal is golden.  (The cookbook says to cover the pot at this point, but I often forget to check things while I'm chopping and end up burning the urad dal and whatever else is in there.  Better to leave it uncovered where I can see that the urad dal are browning.)

Immediately add chickpeas, turmeric, salt and chutney powder and mix well.  Add ginger and cook for another minute or two.

Add coconut and stir.  Remove from heat and serve.

The kale went in the microwave for 1 minute and 15 seconds, sliced the pita in half and then filled the pita pockets in layers starting with the soondal, since it was dryer and would help retain any liquid from the kale.

As you can see, I was so hungry by the time it was ready (oven/range photos taken at 1:03, before I started cooking) I almost forget to take the picture.

I also made this on the slow-cooker, so I'd have it when I got home from yoga.  The yoga didn't happen and this took longer than I expected, but it still made a nice, warm lunch today:

North African-Inspired Stew

They used to make this one soup sometimes at Smith, called North African Vegetable Stew, that had chickpeas, potatoes, zucchini, carrots, onions and a ton of spices.  Well, I had the chickpeas, onions and carrots, but I had to substitute sweet potatoes for regular potatoes and frozen yellow squash for the zucchini.  I was hell-bent on clearing out the cupboards and some of the produce that didn't become part of Thanksgiving dinner, so although I would have preferred it the usual way, this at least cleared out some ingredients with nothing better to do and, I hope, improved my chi a bit.

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, diced

2 cans chickpeas, drained
4 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 bag (8 oz?) frozen yellow squash
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1.5 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Saute the onions in olive oil until translucent.  Add to the crock pot with the remaining ingredients and 8 cups of water.  Cover and simmer on low for 12 hours.

I enjoyed a bowl of this while Steve was outside raking pine straw, and he came in later and enjoyed some too.  Since he picked up some more spinach at Food Lion today, I'm thinking that at least one near-future lunch or dinner will be of the soup-and-salad variety.

Dinner will probably be out of the town tonight.  More later about fun with my new appliance.  Thanks, as always, for reading, and "Go Gamecocks!"

Dudhi chick pea masala

Adventures in new veggies part one: The dudhi. 

I'm taking an online nutrition class right now, and one of our assignments (for bonus points at the end of the semester) was to find a vegetable we'd never eaten before and share the experience, and/or recipe as appropriate, with the class.  Well, I didn't think I'd have much luck at a regular grocery store - sometimes they have jicama, sometimes not - so after work on Friday I stopped by Royal India Bazaar (formerly J.M. Emporium, next to the Big Lots on Two Notch Rd. in Columbia) to check out their modest produce section.  It turns out that they have several items there that I'd never heard of, and the three that I ended up buying are called dudhi (pictured above), Chinese okra and bitter melon.  In the near future, I'll post on new veggie adventures 2 and 3 as well.

But back to the dudhi: unfortunate name, good squash.  According to my quick Google search, "dudhi" translates to "bottlegourd" in English.  It's about the size and shape of an eggplant, and the texture of the raw vegetable is about the same.  Unlike with eggplant, you do want to peel the skin before cooking.  Some people recommend removing the seeds, others say they're fine.  I went with a recipe that called for removing the seeds but didn't do a very thorough job.  A few seeds made it into the final product, and they didn't hurt anything.  I borrowed heavily from this recipe but made several changes: I added about two teaspoons of urad dal with the aromatics at the beginning, skipped the potato and onion (didn't have any), only used two cups of water and added a can of chick peas (drained) at the very end.  And since I don't have chappatis in my freezer, I served it over rice."Salt to taste" ended up being about 2 teaspoons.

The end result (pictured here) is what we had for lunch today.  The wedge-shaped things on the plate are the stewed bottlegourd.

This definitely would have needed 3-4 cups of water had I used the potatoes, even if they were cooked ahead of time.  Without any extra starch to thicken it up, this maybe would have been all right with only one cup of water, simmered with the lid on for about 10 minutes and then cooked uncovered on a higher heat setting until it was thick enough to eat with a fork.  With two cups of water, I had to cook it for about 30 minutes on medium heat and then on medium-high heat to thicken it up.

Since I did use the sambhar powder, it came out spicier than it would have with the garam masala.  This, I suspect, is the reason that Steve suggested having some sour cream or plain yogurt on hand as a topping the next time.  Anyone who has difficulty digesting spicy foods might consider adding a dollop of plain yogurt on top or even stirring in half a cup of yogurt right before serving.  (Sour cream's too pedestrian for a dish like this.)

So this was my experience with my first new veggie since...okra, I guess, but that was about 15 years ago.  If you live near an Indian grocery store and want to try something different, the dudhi/bottlegourd runs about 99 cents a pound.  Some things, like shallots, are also cheaper than at a supermarket.  Plus the people are very nice, love new customers and will answer any and all questions you have about whatever catches your eye!

Happy Sunday, and enjoy this beautiful weather while it lasts!