greens & mushrooms in creamy sauce

This feels like decadent comfort food and yet it's super healthy! I didn't measure so I'll try to estimate reasonable amounts. I'll update as I experiment more.

Ingredients:

a bunch of kale or collard greens or other greens

1/2 head of cauliflower (can substitute 2 stalks broccoli or mix), cut into big pieces

1 leek, cut in big pieces

1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped

1/2-1 onion, chopped

1 Tbsp vegizest (optional)

1 Tbsp d'angou pear vinegar or lemon juice (don't yet know which is better)

2 Tbsp seed mixture or any nut or seeds

4 dried apricots or prunes (mango?) or 1/2 cup pomegranate juice added during blending

optional: 1-2 cups beans

In one pot, steam the cauliflower, dried fruit, and leeks until tender. In another pot, steam the greens, mushrooms, and onions until desired tenderness. Blend the cauliflower, leeks, dried fruit, vegizest, vinegar, seed mixture and water from steaming in the blender. Combine this sauce with the greens, onion, and mushrooms (and beans if using) in a large serving bowl. yum!

post-surgery food

note: I will be typing with one non-dominant hand for several weeks (months?). so I'll be terse--could be a good thing eh?

Here's what I took for my 2-day stay at the hospital:

way too much food! All I ate on day 1 were the 3 clementines. day 2 was the bean soup and some carrots and an apple. I ate the rest on days 2-4.

I don't remember when I had this but it was too much food:

it's now day 6. I had some yummy veggie soup brought over by a friend, my bean soups from the freezer, yummy collard green's in sweet potato sauce (forgetting that this version tastes better), housemate smoothies in the morning--we're sharing a batch (serves 2). It is better fresh than freezing and thawing. raw carrots and cabbage and romaine. a wonderful meal from friends last night: black bean soup, salad w/ sunflower seeds, chickpeas and balsamic dressing (and some oil), a wonderful quinoa salad with potatoes and sweet corn from their garden (frozen). that was lunch today too.

I'm planning a super nutritious dinner with greens, mushrooms and onions in a creamy sauce. If it's good I'll post it. oh and in case you are wondering how am I preparing food, I'm supervising housemate. She is way out of her element--as I would be mowing the lawn--but is doing an excellent job. My parents will stop in for a few days to help out. And my friends have been wonderful. I'm very blessed!

Here I am in dress rehearsal for the big game. was advised to get a cheesehead and face paint. may just do it for fun.

And in case you are wondering, surgery went well. coming out of it is somewhat horrible. well, the whole experience is kind of horrible even though I got excellent, kind treatment by everyone I encountered. I was a druggy for a few days: antibiotics--gotta do it; pain killers--yucky detox when I stopped that; and no matter what you eat, pain killers put your bowels to sleep so you have to take stuff for that too. I got edema in my surgery hand. I guess it's normal, but it's freaky. I'm glad to see that going away. now I'm in the long process of rehab. I hope that all goes spendidly too. I hope none of those 1% chance complications occur. I never want to be a surgery patient again. knock on wood.

Dang!

Broke my elbow, have to have surgery and antibiotics and pain killers---yuck!!!! constipation, here we come. needless to say I'm bringing my own food to the hospital. What's the most powerful anti-constipation food??? Ill bring lots of raw carrots for sure. raw veggies too.

I'm eating simply, not real hungry anyway. just grabbing raw veggies and fruit from the fridge, soup from the freezer.

tomorrow's food

For tomorrow I made a large confetti salad from lettuce, cabbage, mango, banana, pomegranate seeds, seed mixture and a little orange vinegar. That plus a bowl of chili will get me through the day. I measured amounts to see if I'm following Dr. Fuhrman's general guidelines. He recommends (about):

1 lb of raw veggies

1 lb of cooked

1-2 lb of fruit (1 if trying to lose weight)

1 cup of beans

1-2 oz nuts & seeds (1 if trying to lose weight, more than 2 if an athlete).

1 cup starchy vegetable or grain (optional)

I measured:

2 lbs of raw veggies

not much cooked, just whatever's in chili

1.2 lb of fruit

about 1 cup of beans (counting tofu as a bean)

small amount of starchy vegetable (corn in chili)

That should be good enough. I'd like to incorporate more cooked greens and starchy veggies but it's more work during the week. It's easier to make a big portion of one thing and eat it for all the meals in one day. So maybe the cooked greens will happen more on the weekends.

Today's food

Today I entertained again and had lots of fun in the kitchen and with the guests. It also kept me from paying too much attention to the stressful Packer-Bear game. But it was still stressful, especially the ending. Fortunately we won. And both teams are going to the playoffs so our Bears-fan guests weren't too devastated.

I had fruit salad for breakfast (blueberries, strawberries, bananas, mangos), and chili for lunch. I snacked on a head of romaine lettuce while preparing Dr. Fuhrman's Vegetable Bean Burritos for the game. These are excellent, way better than I was expecting! I shouldn't post the recipe since it's not on any of Dr. Fuhrman's public sites, but it's on the member site, and in the 2nd edition of Eat to Live. It's a lot of vegetables cooked up with spices and pinto beans, and cashew cream. The cashew cream and spices added really nice flavor and creaminess. Yum! Here's a picture of it in a big pan (it makes a lot!):

I ate mine on lettuce:

The others had theirs on flour tortillas. I had actually purchased some healthy sprouted wheat tortillas but the filling was so good, I just wanted to enjoy it on lettuce. We also had salsa, guacamole and fruit (apples, bananas). I didn't eat much of that, but I ate some ice cream later from the leftover bananas. That was more than I needed. I have a hard time resisting frozen bananas.

Then I fixed tomorrow's meals.

confetti salads

This is my new name for my "microprocessor" salads, which can be misconstrued with electronic devices. Carol has a beautiful presentation of her confetti salad on her website. This is a much better name for it. I think she was also inspired by Carrots' thread on the Fuhrman forums.

New Year's Day food

Today I wasn't too hungry after the rich treats from yesterday--I ate more than enough of that almond chocolate dip, oh yeah, and the ice cream. So I didn't eat until after noon when I started getting hungry. Then I snacked on raw veggies while I was making Dr. Fuhrman's "Easy Three Bean Vegetable Chili." Here's a picture:

I didn't make it exactly like the recipe because I used a fresh onion, and romanesco broccoli instead of frozen broccoli and cauliflower; but it was pretty close overall. I like this recipe. The crumbled tofu (after freezing and thawing), and finely chopped vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower) have the consistency of ground beef, though obviously not the taste. The finely chopped zucchini when it cooks makes a nice thickener. However, without salt, the chili was a bit bland. I added some more cumin and chili powder and it was still bland. Then I got inspired and added some cinnamon and a finely chopped apple (in the food processor). That and the sweet corn provided just enough extra sweetness and flavor to make up for the lack of salt. Then it was very good.

Dinner was chili, a pomegranate, and some raw veggies during the rose bowl. It's not looking good for the badgers so I'm distracting myself.

Tomorrow will be another day of entertaining friends and stressing out over a football game.