What I've been eating

Here is how I've been preparing food lately.  This has served me well in my temporary kitchen in the basement during our kitchen remodel (almost done!), at my meditation retreat last week, and on our upcoming vacation.  I'm using the Instapot pressure cooker to cook 2 days worth of lunch and dinner. I usually start by cooking an onion and brown rice (1/2-1 cup for 10 minutes); then I add a potato, sweet potato, and veggies and spices and cook that up (1-2 minutes); then add a can of beans.  My veggies are whatever I feel like.  Lately it's been local asparagus or broccoli, or cauliflower, and just recently, collards and kale from the garden.  For spices, I have a few handy dandy pieces of paper that tell me how to mix spices for different kinds of food.  Here's an example.  The other one I use is from the E2X website. Tonight I made barbecue flavor.  That included:  smoked paprika, no-salt mustard, pepper, garlic, nutmeg, chipotle powder, and vinegar.  You can look up any recipe for barbecue sauce to get your own ideas.   Next time I think I'll include a little portion of chopped apple which will turn into sauce in the pressure cooker.  Anyway, this was good and will last me through the first two days of my trip:

Our co-op has giant heads of local romaine lettuce, so I washed one and ripped each leaf into a few pieces and put them in bowls that should last through tomorrow.  That's my salad, ha---easy eating in the car, and it tastes good as is.   I've been having oatmeal and fruit for breakfast.   At the meditation retreat, they had a great salad bar and fruit. So I just cooked up my starches in the instapot and ate them with salad and fruit.  

I posted a few weeks ago about a book on human evolution I read and what my conclusions were for the ideal diet.  It was my attempt to form a low-glycemic (because the foods of our ancestors were likely this) vegan diet (my requirement for ethical reasons).  It has lots of vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds (the latter to replace the meat our ancestors ate), and some fruit.  Well, the only problem is, it's not the diet I want to follow.  I tire of it quickly, and I tend to overeat nuts and get a stomach ache.  I think what I want to follow most closely resembles Dr. McDougall's Maximum Weight Loss plan.  Any eating plan with the words "Maximum Weight Loss" sounds drastic and unappealing to me, which always made me think it's too extreme and I'm must be missing out, but in fact it is a very enjoyable and reasonably cheap way to eat, and I wish it had a different name.  like the maximum awesome way to eat.  It has my favorite foods:  oats, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans veggies, and fruit.