Dr. Alan Goldhamer

I love this guy:

http://www.healthpromoting.com/learning-center/truenorth-tv/dr-alan-goldhamer-success-plant-based-sos-free-diet

It's only 4 minutes long, worth it.  Watch him enough and you learn to say "meat, fish, fowl, eggs, and dairy products" really fast, and also "salt, oil, sugar, flour".

Vegan vs. Paleo

Sorry, if you thought I was going to debate this, I'm not.  I've noticed that I don't care about this issue but I didn't realize why until a friend asked me to give my scientific assessment of this critique of the China Study.  Now I realize the reason I have no interest is that I'm vegan for other reasons (animals and environment).  I'm interested to know what the healthiest vegan diet is, not whether it's healthier than a meat diet.  Going vegan improved my health dramatically so I am experientially convinced that the Standard American Diet is unhealthy, and likely it's due to too many animal products and processed foods.   But whether or not the optimal diet includes some animal products doesn't interest me because I'm vegan regardless.  I feel more healthy than I ever have in my whole life, and it seems healthy enough to me.  It's easy to be an unhealthy vegan, and maybe that's why some vegans become ex-vegans.   The books I've linked to at right tell me how to be a healthy vegan.  I'm very happy to be a vegan.

June 11 Food logs

Brekkie:   baked oats and fruit.   This is one of my favorite breakfasts.  I found this really little baking pan that's just the right size for one person.  I put about 2/3 cup fruit in the bottom, sprinkle cinnamon, add 2/3 cup oats and 1 cup water, bake for at 350 for 30-40 minutes while I go meditate, then I turn on the broiler for a few minutes to toast the top.  I buy whatever fruit looks good, and cut it up and freeze it. Today's fruit was strawberries, blackberries and bananas.   Here's the end result dished out in my bowl.  

Now last week I would have added a chopped date to this but I'm on the Captain's challenge.  And you know what, it tasted great.  The date would have covered up the taste of the oats and berries.  So I'm quite pleased about this!

For lunch I tried a baked plantain for the first time.  I just threw it in the oven and baked at 375 for 1 hour because I'm all about taking the easy way.  It was kind of dry.  It had an interesting taste, sweet and...lemony?  New things always take getting used to so I will definitely try this again several times (I'll experiment with cooking methods) and see if it sticks.  I also had the veggies I cooked up last night:  onion, oriental yam, kale, broccoli rabe, asparagus, mushrooms, beans, herbs from the garden, a little singapore seasoning.

Afterwards, I nibbled on some frozen peas and corn and some romaine lettuce leaves.

Early Dinner:  we had family over for their traditional meatloaf dinner.  I had the baked potato topped with a big pile of those veggies from lunch and yesterday, peas and corn, salad.   While others ate their cake and ice cream, I had a little of that frozen fruit which tasted lovely.  Sure it was easy, but it's only day 2.  Temptation doesn't usually hit me until about day 15...

Snack:  small baked potato.  small bowl of peas and corn.

Exercise: walked 4 miles.  meditated 30 minutes.

okay, I promise my future posts won't be so long, because my food is pretty similar day to day.

I'm back, maybe, with a challenge for myself, maybe

By now, no one will be reading this, and yet, I still like blogging even if it's to no one.  Plus I don't have the pressure of worrying that I'm wasting people's time, haha.   I've been thinking about getting back to this for a while--I've been snapping pictures of food to blog about, and I have more time--and just haven't taken the last step.   What got me going this time was a challenge that I thought of after eating a potato yesterday.   It was a cold baked potato that I grabbed from the fridge to to hold me over to a late lunch.   And it was soooo good.  I was thinking, do I like a cold plain baked potato more than my wonderful potato fries topped with seasoning and dipped in home-made soy yogurt (with garden chives and dill) or home-made ketchup?   It's possible!   And I was reminded of some food I made last week that was just cooked veggies and sweet potatoes and beans.  and that was soooo good.  The produce I get is so good, it doesn't need to be overly spiced and sugared and salted and all that stuff.   A lot of recipes and restaurants include sauces and spices and the 3 favorite additives (SOS: salt, oil, sugar), not to mention chemicals, to make up for what are probably low-quality ingredients.  That's true of the food industry, and it was probably true of many traditional recipes, since it's only been recently that high-quality food is available in abundance at low-cost.   

Then I was thinking, our plant-based healthy diets contain a lot of recipes that are imitating our previous unhealthy recipes.  It's understandable.  But often those things make me crave the original unhealthy thing a little too much.  What if I came up with a new paradigm for myself, that's not trying to imitate anything, just making up new dishes from my high-quality produce that doesn't need any additives (SOS)?     

Another thought for me is that I still have a problem with craving sugar, whether it's the so-called healthy things like dates and turkish figs (love those especially), or okay-to-eat-in-small-amount refined sweeteners (maple syrup, mmmmm), or the really bad stuff (SOS baked goods, vegan ice cream).   So what if I dumped the sugar for a while, both refined and dried fruits.   Whole fruit is okay, in modest amounts.
   
Finally, I'm a member at E2X, and haven't been participating for months, and my membership is due to expire and I need to decide if I should renew, and they are doing a 28-day challenge, and the Captain's challenge is pretty much what I'm considering in my new paradigm (they are one step ahead of me) and I really like the coaches there (Natalie and Ami and Char), so why not participate the Captain's challenge?  This will help me decide if I should renew.

I'm especially curious about this sugar thing, so I'm tempted to try to go longer than 28 days.   I heard it takes 12 weeks to break a sugar addiction, which is 84 days.  But I like the number 100.  So I'm going to try a 100-day Captain's challenge.   Don't worry, I know I won't succeed 100% every day for 100 days.   But I am keeping in mind the advice of the E2X coaches:  "Will every day be perfect?  No.  We're not perfect people.  What we want to see is that drive and desire to be the healthiest person you can be."  The most fun part is that there are several people eating the same as me. Where else am I going to find that?  It's lonely out here and it's easy to feel weird and extreme, which is one reason I stopped blogging.  But it's okay to be weird and extreme as long as no one is harmed.

Here's the diet plan I've come up with for myself.  It's very simple. 

When hungry, eat:

• starches and intact whole grains:  potatoes, beans, sweet potatoes, oats, rice, corn, quinoa
• non-starch vegetables
• spices
• fruit

When full, stop eating.

How easy is that?   I'll try log my food to see what glorious creations can be made from this. 

Dinner

This is a good time of year to have oriental yams for dinner.  There isn't any fresh local produce to tempt me away from the yams just yet (sweet corn season is a few months away!).  The California veggies are good so I have them too.   This is one of my most favorite meals ever (beside my lunch potatoes and my breakfast grains), so I've been having this most nights.   As I described in this post, I cook a big pot of veggies every few days and distribute it into 2-cup bowls for lunch and dinner (lasts me 2-3 days).  I cook up a baked potato and yam every night or morning to have for lunch and dinner.   I just eat the oriental yam plain.  It is sweet like dessert.  It needs nothing else.  I eat the skin first so I can enjoy the inside all by itself.   yum yum yum.  The veggies are great too.   Here was last night's dinner.  As with lunch, I was too lazy to make a proper salad so just ate the Romaine leaves, which were quite good:

Today's included some blackberries for dessert.  My plate of veggies was bigger than usual because I had some leftover after serving up tomorrow's and the next day's into their bowls.

Lunch

I've absolutely been adoring my lunches lately.   I repeat it every day because it's so enjoyable and filling and it's a great inoculation against being jealous of other people's food.   It's also really easy with just a little preparation:   Always have some cooked beans in the fridge, and bake a potato ahead of time.   Also cook up a bunch of vegetables every 2-3 days and store them in single serving (2 cup) containers.  I like to combine lots of veggies like onion, kale or cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, frozen okra (hard to get fresh where I live), maybe some tomato, zucchini, asparagus, whatever looks good in the produce aisle (don't buy it if it looks lame!).    So here's what I do for one of my favorite meals.   Take the potato, cut it into large bite-size pieces, add seasoning if you want, and broil it in the oven for 7-10 minutes to toast it.   Heat up 1/2-1 cup beans in them microwave.    Put the beans in your bowl, with liquid, add the crispy potatoes, enjoy.  You won't believe how good it is until you try it.   The potatoes eventually soak up the bean juice but don't get soggy.   If you take this into work for lunch, it still works without toasting the potatoes--just don't combine them with the beans until you are ready to eat them.  Or if I think I'll be out for lunch but home for dinner, I might switch my lunch and dinner meals.   The potatoes and beans, along with your pre-cooked veggies make a very delicious meal.  I eat this with my friends and I can't imagine wanting to eat their food.   Here's an example with some big black beans and tandoori seasoning on the potatoes:

Here was yesterday's lunch.  My "salad" was just a bunch of romaine pieces.  I was lazy.  Plus the romaine was unusually sweet and fresh so it was quite good.   My potatoes were seasoned with Penzy's Mural of Flavors, and the white beans asked to be served with tomatoes so I added some tomatoes from a can (from our garden last summer).  The veggies also asked for some tomatoes

Today I finished off that can of tomatoes on the beans, and drank the juice from the can (just a few oz). I had some blackberries too.  My salad was more proper, all cut up with some flax meal and high-quality balsamic vinegar added (diluted with water), but truthfully I think yesterday's salad was better.  Sometimes simple is better especially when the ingredients are fresh and high quality.

Breakfasts

This is what I've been eating for breakfasts lately:  some grains, maybe some beans, and fruit or veggies.    For example,

Here was a "mango salad":   oat groats, beans, mango, lime juice and cilantro.  I had this for 3-4 days:

Here was a "savory" breakfast.  I cooked up a batch of rice of different kinds (brown, wild, forbidden).   I store that in the fridge and have a serving each morning so can make a quick meal out of it.  Here I cooked up some onion and spinach and garlic, and some spice (don't remember, but some good ones are tandoori seasoning, singapore seasoning, cumin, curry, or nothing at all--it's quite good all by itself).   At left is some teeccino (chicory barley drink), top are a few frozen blueberries, top right, a few gulps leftover after making housemate's smoothie (usually just a few Tbs are left):

Next day it's the same rice mixture, cooked up with spinach and onion (probably some garlic too) and red bell pepper.   I also accidentally got to enjoy part of a potato.  When you bake a potato, if you forget to punch holes in it with a fork first, then it's best not to handle it just after it's done cooking; if you grab it a little too forcefully, it can explode like this one did.  so I enjoyed what was left after it exploded in the oven.  Along with that is a bit of frozen mango and the leftover gulp from housemate's smoothie.

Here's more of the same.  You start to see the picture.  This day I was in a hurry.  I just added frozen peas to my grains (heated up), and cooked up some spinach in the orange bowl (I love cooked spinach just plain).  There's a few frozen mangos and blueberries, a few gulps from the smoothie, and some teeccino.

This day I cooked up some oatmeal, cooked up and onion, red bell pepper, and spinach, combined them with some curry and nutritional yeast---it was very good.  with the usual suspects on the side:

For the last few days, my grains were kamut, barley and rye.  I had them with a banana for a couple of days (and cinnamon), with the usual suspects on the side (cooked spinach, blueberries, etc).  Oh, and I like to read a blessing from this book before I eat:

Today I was in the mood for beans with my grains, so I had beans, grains, strawberry and banana, and the usual suspects on the side.

This is a filling and satisfying breakfast.  I love it!