Dr. Fuhrman's Holiday Challenge

You can get a free six-week membership to DrFuhrman.com if you join his Holiday Challenge before Dec. 4! This is a great way to see if the membership is useful to you without having to spend a dime for six weeks. The challenge is also a great way to be in community with others who would prefer to eat healthy during this time of year when we are surrounded by the most unhealthy foods. See this link for all the information about the challenge.

Mexican Raw Stew

This was suggested by a reader, Gigi, and boy is it good! Her description is given in the comments of this post. This is the first time I liked a raw soup. Today I tried the Mexican version. Next time I'll try her Italian style. I varied it a bit from her description, so you might want to compare.

Ingredients:

2 medium tomatoes or one 16-oz can of tomatoes (from the garden if you are so fortunate)

1/2 large cucumber or 1 small

1 large celery stalk

2 medjool dates, or 3 tsp date syrup

1 head romaine lettuce (or similar amounts of spinach or kale, or mixture)

1 small leek or piece of onion (optional)

1/2-1 clove garlic (optional)

1/4 cup fresh cilantro

juice from 1/4 lime

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chili powder

red bell pepper, chopped

1 can pinto or black beans

1-2 cups frozen sweet corn

chopped celery (optional)

The base is the tomatoes, celery, cucumber and dates. Blend these in the blender, but do not use high speed. Let it stay a little chunky. Add in the greens, spices, garlic, onion, lime juice, and cilantro and blend some more, not at high power. You can pour the stew into bowls and add the chopped bell pepper, celery, beans, and corn. Or mix it all up in a big bowl. Here' s a serving with everything mixed in:

I really liked this. One thing I'd like to do different next time is substitute a fruit for the dates. I'm thinking frozen mango (or fresh and ripe if you are so fortunate) or maybe an apple or pear? I might not use garlic if I add fruit. Also, I really like purple cabbage as we get it locally and it's downright sweet. I wonder if I could add this in. It might not have enough liquid though. The romaine is nice because it's tender and full of water. I also think I'll add some seeds. I hope to experiment a lot with this!

Thanksgiving pudding

If I named this according to the ingredients, it probably wouldn't be as appealing (mashed carrots and bananas anyone?). But this is super easy and for me, as yummy as pumpkin pie. This was inspired by a couple of other recipe ideas: A reader of this blog pointed out that she likes using steamed carrots rather than canned pumpkin in her Thanksgiving desserts. Well, we get really good local (sweet) carrots here so I thought that is a great idea! And a recipe on the Fuhrman forums uses banana instead of dates as a sweetener so I thought I'd try that.

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, steamed until tender

1 very ripe banana

1/2 oz chopped walnuts

pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon to taste (about 1/4 tsp?).

Mash the carrots, banana and spice with a fork. Stir in the walnuts. Eat heated or cooled. If you want it sweeter, add some date syrup (or dates soaked in water and mashed). This will probably be a weekend treat for a while.

guacamole & chips

This is a good game-day treat.

Here are the ingredients:

That's:

Sprouted corn tortillas, about 4

an avocado (only the pit is remaining in the picture)

Then just a little bit of these:

scallion

cilantro

lime juice

tomato (from a can or fresh)

pinto or black beans (optional)

Here they are before mixing. You can see the amounts I used are pretty small:

Here's another version without beans or tomatoes, before smashing:

Mash it up with a fork. Cut up the tortillas, toast in the oven at 350 F for about 5-10 minutes. Watch carefully at the end.

Yum!

microsalads

Today's microsalad was sooooo good. I was thinking it's as good as any Thanksgiving treat. It's pretty much what I posted a week or two ago, so I just updated the post a bit and added a few pictures. Maybe I'm just insane to think this is so good, but hey, as long as I'm happy with it.

holiday treats

I'm visiting family over Thanksgiving, and don't have the time or inclination to prepare anything complicated so will just be eating my usual travel fare. But when I return, I might be in the mood for some Pumpkin Pie pudding. Here are some other recipes from Dr. Fuhrman's website (you have to be a member to see them): Pumpkin pie, pumpkin pineapple cookies , and Sweet potato apple bake. I'm too lazy to make the pie, but I will probably make the sweet potato apple bake sometime this season. Actually I described the recipe in this post. Those cookies look good too. I wish I liked baking more, or I wish someone would make these for me! For the really lazy cook, there's the mashed sweet potato with pumpkin pie spice.

If you really want to go all out and make a full thanksgiving feast, here's a link to the Fuhrman recipe site (member only) for all the recipes in that feast. It would be fun to plan a nutritarian meetup and have everyone bring one of these dishes. What a feast that would be.

weekend cooking

whew, I did a lot of food prep today. First made a batch of housemate's smoothies. then some nachos for the football game (we won, yea!). Then some chili for a potluck tomorrow. Then prepped a big pot of beans for taking to work for the next couple of weeks. Then a huge batch of apple sauce for the family--and a small batch for myself. Okay, I'm ready to eat for a week!