Beet Chickpea Salad

This is inspired Dr. Fuhrman's Greek Chickpea Salad, but modified so much I think I can call it my own.  Plus I mainly just want to remember what I did which is why I'm posting here.  I modified it because I don't like store-bought tomatoes in winter, and I wasn't in the mood for a potato, and I was in the mood for a beet, and wasn't in the mood for nuts, and other random reasons.

Ingredients:
~2 cups cooked chickpeas or 1 can is fine
1 beet, chopped and steamed
1-2 Tbsp finely chopped onion
1 red bell pepper
2 Tbsp spicy pecan or other flavored vinegar
1 large granny smith apple or 2 small-medium
chopped cilantro
a head of lettuce chopped

Combine everything except the lettuce.  serve the mixture on top of lettuce.   I'll try to remember to snap a picture tomorrow when I eat another serving.

Food for a sore tooth

This doesn't really look like food for a sore tooth does it?  It's a compromise.  A few weeks ago I got a temporary crown and didn't follow my dentist's advice to not eat raw veggies.  I've done that before, no problem but this crown does not fit well, leaving a gap between it and another tooth.  So my gums got more and more sore and I decided yesterday to stop all crunchy raw veggies and just go for smoothies and soups until Wed when I get the new crown.   I didn't last very long.  It was kind of fun making the smoothies.  The taste was fine.  I even had a weird one with beans and romaine and chives, and ramps and fruit-infused vinegar.  That tasted alright.  My morning smoothy with kale and cabbage and berries and ginger and lime tasted good too.  But it's just not my preference!  I really like salads.  I like the crunch and taste of romaine, the crunch and taste of orange bell peppers and jicama.  And especially, the taste of fresh strawberries, blueberries and blackberries.  They are really good this time of year and I want to taste each one.  I like taking a long time to eat and enjoying it.  I like feeling full afterwards.

Another funny thing about the smoothies was that they made me more hungry.  You'd think they would be more satiating because more of the calories are probably bioavailable compared to my partially chewed salads.  I don't know if the hungry feeling was due to a less full-feeling from the smoothies, a bigger insulin surge from the smoothies, or a mixture of both.  I definitely eat the smoothies faster so the insulin surge is not out of the question.  The insulin spike causes low blood sugar (by transporting the sugar in your blood into your cells) which makes you feel more tired and hungry.

Today I looked at my strawberries and romaine lettuce and decided on a compromise for tomorrow:   salads with the easy crunching veggies, soup, and cooked veggies for dinner.  Breakfast has romaine, spinach, blueberries, strawberries, and I'll top with with a serving of home-made soy yogurt.  This is my favorite breakfast!   Lunch is romaine, spinach, orange bell pepper, jicama, and some chopped chives, cilantro and ramps (fresh from the garden and the woods!).  That will be topped with an orange/seed dressing.  Also I'll have along two bowls of yummy soup I made yesterday.  It was my GOMBS chili (without the corn) and it was even better than the first time so I modified the recipe a bit.  This is very easy to chew.    Dinner will be a bunch of cooked veggies:  broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, asparagus, mushrooms.  I'll throw it all together and top with a light sauce (maybe just fruit-infused vinegar or lemon) and some ground seeds.  I used to have all those veggies raw on my salads, but this actually might be a better way to eat them because they are more digestible cooked.  So maybe I'll start doing this more often.  I changed my schedule around so I can actually eat dinner most nights at home, which allows for cooking (quick cooking since I will be hungry).

Refreshing Veggies

Yes, veggies are refreshing to us, but I'm actually referring to refreshing the veggies.  A guy in the produce section at the co-op was saying some other guy claims he can keep his lettuce fresh for a few weeks!  How the heck can he do that, I asked.  He chops off the bottom and soaks it in water.  So I tried it!  The romaine this time of year sometimes looks pretty tired by the time we get it.  Same goes for the broccolini, which I really enjoy but it looks pretty pathetic sometimes.  Here's a picture showing what I did.

I just cut off the bottoms, and put them in a bowl with water in the fridge (the next time I decided to use a ceramic bowl instead of plastic).   It totally refreshed the broccolini!  The lettuce was noticeably crisper too.  hmm, I think I will go refresh the lettuce in my fridge right now.

Comfort Food

One of my most favorite salads is also one of the most healthiest.  I've not been eating berries much this winter because they are out of season in the US.  But housemate started clamoring for fruit salads so I bought the berries from faraway places and was surprised to find that they taste good.  Well, I guess I may as well enjoy this extreme privilege to eat berries from chili in winter in Wisconsin.   So I'll probably start making this salad twice a week (the days after I go grocery shopping).   The carrots and sugar snap peas are just my first course (this was my packed lunch for work).  Underneath that is lettuce, red cabbage (locally grown and very sweet this time of year), broccoli, cauliflower, seed mixture, flavored vinegar, some combination of berries and maybe bananas depending on what looks fresh and ripe when I shop (e.g., strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and banana).   This is so yummy.  So are the carrots.  I'll discuss that in my next post.  Oh, and I don't just have one of these, I have 3 of them:  breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Yummy Salad

I make salad every day and this one was so good I want to remember it.  It includes kale and collards because I'm going on vacation next week and want to trim down the plants in my garden before leaving.  I think what makes the salad good are the combination of pears and mango and the kale and cabbage.  It's a great combo.  Apples would probably work in place of pears.

Ingredients for 3 salads:

cabbage, 277 g or 3 cups chopped

kale, 168 g or 2-3 cups chopped  (or however much you want, this is just how much I picked from the garden)

collards, 41 g, or 2 big leaves (or however much you want)

1 medium cucumber chopped

1 medium yellow summer squash, chopped

1 large pear or 2 small

1 cup chopped mango (I used frozen)

3 Tbsp balsamic or fruit infused vinegar (not sour)

1 oz seed mixture or chopped nuts

How easy is that?  combine everything.  I made this the night before because I don't have time in the mornings.   Well, that's okay for the kale and collards because they marinate overnight and are more tender.  Oh, and an important thing I do with the kale and collards is I mashed them, or massage them, with my hands after chopping them--that helps tenderize them also.  Oh, you de-stem them too before chopping.

Mid-Summer Salad

Almost all of my food is local now and boy is it good!   My garden is overflowing with collards and kale.  Actually I can keep up with it by making large daily salads that I will describe below.  I learned about massaging kale from some posts on the Fuhrman forums and it is a great discovery for me.  You just mash them and roll them around in your hands and it breaks down the cell walls.  Then when you soak them in orange juice and vinegar, it tenderizes them some more.  So you don't have to cook them.  Not that there's anything wrong with cooking them but I spend as little time in the kitchen as I can in the summer, and salads are faster for me to make. So here's my summer salad recipe, pretty much all local, either from local farms or my garden.  This can feed 5-6 people or 1 person (me).

Ingredients:
About 1/2-1 lb of kale and collards (total)
About 1/2 lb of cabbage (or less, our local cabbage just happens to be really good right now)
1 small cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 small summer squash (pattypan is my favorite maybe because of the name), chopped
1-2 cups fresh cherry tomatoes

...and/or other local vegetables in season

juice of 1 small-medium orange
4 Tbsp vinegar (I've been using riesling raisin and spicy pecan, half and half)
1/2-1 oz seed mixture
fresh herbs if you have them (optional), e.g., dill, cilantro, chives, basil
a day's serving of beans or edamame

Clean and cut up the kale and collards.  Then smash and roll and try to pulverized in the hands.  Or massage it, as they say.  This darkens it and makes it have less volume and tenderizes it.  Add the vinegar and orange juice, mix it up and let that tenderize it some more while you chop and add everything else.    I do the herbs next so they tenderize too.  Then the cabbage and seed mixture to mix get those all mixed in.  Then the cucumber, squash and beans.  Save the tomatoes for last so they don't get mushed in all the stirring.    If you can get local cherry tomatoes, you'll be happy!

Here's yesterday's salad:

I think it has some cauliflower (not local) that I needed to finish up.  I don't plan on getting anymore cauliflower and broccoli from the store as I have enough food from my garden--my grocery bills have gone way down!  I have a broccoli stalk in my garden that's ready to harvest!   I've got cauliflower plants too but don't see anything in them yet except big leaves.  I'll be able to eat the leaves from all my plants in addition to the kale and collards:  brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and broccoli.  I did buy this cabbage from the store:

It is locally grown and it's sweet!  (well, if your taste buds aren't desensitized by the standard American diet).  It also has an unusual shape.

usual trip salads

I'm on a mini-vacation at a Golf tournament with friends.  Fortunately I have my awesome Coleman electric cooler since we couldn't get a fridge in our room (oops sorry about the bra in the picture, ha):

It plugs in both to the car and the wall socket.  

I contacted a nutritarian from the Fuhrman forums who gave me the scoop on where to get good produce in this town.   It seems the farmer's market is best.  I brought enough fruit to get me through the trip and will stock up with greens and veggies tomorrow at the farmer's market.   

Here are my salads the last few days.  The greens are lettuce and spinach.  For the breakfast salad, just add seed mixture, balsamic vinegar, 1/3 can of beans, and fruit of the day.  Lunch and dinner salads also have onions, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, red cabbage, tomatoes (along with the lettuce, spinach, beans, seed mixture, and vinegar).  Oh, you can see my roommates' food to the top-right of the salad.  They are SAD eaters.  

I also am eating carrots and sugar snap peas.  Most of the produce ran out today so my new salads will be whatever I get at the farmer's market.  My fruit is super yummy:  Strawberries on Thursday, blueberries, and raspberries today, cherries and small peach tomorrow, and grapes and orange Sunday.  I had some grapes for dessert tonight and maybe will tomorrow too as there are more than enough for Sunday.

munchies

This was kind of pretty actually.  I cut off the end of a head of Romaine, put it in a bowl and sprinkled on some cherry balsamic vinegar.  Then just munched on it.

Grand Canyon Salads

I was going to call these salads "6WP in a bowl" because they include everything Dr. Fuhrman recommends in his 6-week plan (from his book Eat to Live).   But they started turning into what I felt were masterpieces, because of my layered approach, and it reminds me of the geologic layers of the Grand Canyon, which I happen to be visiting this week.   So I call them Grand Canyon Salads.   I start by putting fruit in the bottom.  I bought 6 days worth of food at the Whole Foods in Albuquerque so I got fruit with staying power:  oranges, apples, and bananas.   So one orange, one apple, and 1 banana gets cut up and put into 3 large bowls (breakfast, lunch and dinner, yes I am boring).   I top that with a can of no-salt beans.  Then spinach, arugula, lettuce, and kale.  Then 1 Tbsp of fruit-infused vinegar in each bowl.  Then scallions, mushrooms, seed mixture, red cabbage, then 1 Tbsp of fruit-infused balsamic vinegar, then broccoli and cauliflower.  Then smash down and put the lids on.  Oh, on the first day I had a tomato and used strawberries and banana for the fruit.    Here's what one looks like:

First you eat the raw veggies with a nice slight vinegar taste.  Then the mushrooms and seeds and scallions and leafy greens with some more nice vinegar taste.  The romaine lettuce and kale stay crisp but the spinach and arugula get a little soggy which I like--sort of like they have been sauteed. The dessert is the fruit and beans with a little of everything else mixed in.  It reminds me of some desserts I got in Taiwan that were made with beans and fruit.

Here I am eating my lunch at the Desert Watch Tower

and dinner at Mather point:

I'm also eating a bunch of raw carrots.  

I can verify that being a nutritarian transforms your body.  I hardly notice the altitude or get out of breath walking up the canyon, partly because I'm slowing down for others.