Good Food!

On the busiest, most stressful days, when I most need good nutrition, I’m more likely to eat something quick – like a pre-made Trader Joe’s Indian dinner or some other pre-packaged meal.  This Christmas brought me a Slow Cooker which allows me to eat whole, unprocessed food with very little prep time even on a busy day.  I add ingredients to the Slow Cooker in the morning while my tea water is boiling, hit “Go” and 8-10 hours later I have something delicious to eat that is completely made out of fresh ingredients.

Whole foods, by the way, is my favorite subject and I am very, very into it for good reasons.  I feel dramatically better when I eat unprocessed organic food and since I switched to this diet my health has improved radically.  In fact, I first started with the diet when I was very sick – and what the doctors could not do with their prednisone and other wacky chemical cures – my diet did for me.  I have been very healthy and mostly happy since I started migrating towards this diet years ago.

My friend and hair cutter, Liz Gingerich, calls this food “real food” and describes it as “Nothing from a jar, box, or wrapper!”   That means eating food left in the same state that it arrived on the Earth from the diety or scientific power of your choice (however you explain the miracle that is food!).  Foods that have been flash frozen, pre-cooked or have additives, preservatives, stabilizers etc. are not eaten.  Those processing methods and additives may make the food last longer or speed up preparation but they also take away alot from the inherent wisdom of untouched foods nutritional patterns.  I can’t recommend this diet highly enough whether you are vegetarian or not, especially if you don’t feel that great – tired, sick, depressed etc.

Back to Slow Cookers: slow cooking can help those most likely to eat fast junk food – the busy and stressed – to eat healthy, good tasting food without having to spend time they don’t have preparing it.  As an added benefit the slow, low heat cooking of a Slow Cooker helps food retain it’s naturally healthful profile which can be damaged by high heat.   I’m happy with my Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker.

The only thing that I wasn’t crazy about – was all the recipes provided were for meat – not interesting for me being a vegetarian.  This is not a terribly big deal since any recipe that has a somewhat liquid base should work.  I’ve made Cuban Black Beans, Corn Chowder and other soups using my standard recipes.

I also just got the cookbook “Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker” by Robin Robertson.  I’m trying my first recipe right now and some very tantalizing smells are coming from the kitchen so it looks promising.

This is a super low calorie dessert – and while it might not be Tiramisu – it is a lovely sweet treat you can eat while remaining faithfully on your diet!

Summary: Low Calorie but delicious dessert

Most people think of salt as simply salt but the table salt you buy at the store is heavily refined.  Refined table salt is of chemical, inorganic origin and has gunk in it -  the base is chemical sodium chloride and added to it are anti-caking chemicals, inorganic potassium iodide, and sugar (dextrose).

“Modern salt reminds one of the state of such other highly processed substances as refined white sugar and the white breads, pastas and pastries.  Unfortunately relatively few people are informed about the denaturing of real salt.”

Paul Pitchford – Healings with Whole Foods

So what’s real salt?  Whole natural sea salt, also called solar salt, is just evaporated sea water….brine of the sea that has been dried by the sun.  Nothing’s been added and nothing’s been taken out.

Often it is lightly colored due to the geology of the area where the salt is farmed.  Hence, Celtic Salt is slightly grey from the clay in the area where it is collected on the coast of France.  Himalayan Pink Salt is harvested from ancient beds with sea salt deposits in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains.  The slight pink color is due to the presence of iron.

Paul Pitchford, a respected teacher of Chinese medicine, believes people often crave salt and take in excessive amounts of it because they want the trace minerals found in real salt.  Refined, processed table salt doesn’t contain those minerals so the craving goes unsatisfied leading the person to take more and more salt.

I switched to Celtic Salt several years ago and I find myself using far less salt and enjoying food more than I did with regular table salt.  Every geographical area creates a salt that tastes a bit different than the others so it’s good to buy small amounts in bulk if you can and find out which sea salt you like.  Even Celtic Grey Salts vary from one brand to another.

There are intriguing salts I have yet to try:  Portuguese “Salt Cream” Sea Salt and Hawaiian Black Lava Red Alea Clay Sea Salts…I’m sure there are many others.

I just bought some Pink Himalayan Salt at Trader Joes for just $1.99 and it is very nice!  I also recently bought some black salt or Kala Namak at the local international grocers.  If you’re  like me, once you start tasting these salts and adding them to your diet, this once boring condiment will become very interesting.   Even simple foods come alive by adding a dash of real sea salt containing naturally occurring minerals.  Salt craving also diminishes significantly with use of real salt. Most Westerners are said to take in far too much salt – six times more than the current guidelines for daily salt consumption, which can lead to a series of health ailments.

Naturally mineralized salts are a great way to add zest to all kinds of food and to cut down on salt intake.

We decided to make an Indian Feast for our Christmas dinner this year.  This could very well turn out to be a tradition…  It was both delicious and enticing and warming like Christmas dinner should be – but it was also, dare I say, healthy.  It’s funny how “healthy” in our culture has come to suggest something mediocre to unappealing in the taste department – something you virtuously eat because it’s good for you.  Indian food, prepared using whole foods, flies in the face of that myth because it’s a treat to the palate and it’s kind to your body.

Indian spices sauteeing are poetry.  It’s easy to cook intuitively with these spices.  I don’t like Coriander so I don’t add as much.  I like Cumin Seeds so I add more.  We’re light on Cinnamon Bark around here.  So I roughly follow a recipe but I also make it up as I go along…yet it always comes out just right!  I used organic, unrefined peanut oil instead of ghee.

The spread for our feast include Sag Paneer (with homemade paneer), Dal Tarka, Khumbi (Mushrooms with Coriander and Cumin), Raita, and Mango Chutney.

You can catch a buzz while drinking one of the healthiest drinks on earth.  Raw Green Juice is amazing!  You’ll feel something happening on your first sip and from there….it gets even better.  First of all – it staves off hunger with very few calories and a super dose of health enhancing nutrition.

Mega-doses of Chlorophyll that are abundant in raw green vegetables increase the flow of oxygen to every part of your body – you can actually feel it happening when you drink this juice!

Loads of enzymes flood your system, detoxifying and balancing your body… I’m not just saying this out of a book – drink Green Juice – it’s a direct experience of health and radiance.

Alas, you really need a good juicer.  I think the best is the Green Star but there are others that do a good job.  It’s a great investment in your health and well being.

My recipe, which I inherited from my friend and raw food counselor Christian Bates, follows:

One bunch celery
1 head Chard
1 head Kale
Parsley
Lemon (peel first)

My partner who doesn’t like celery or parsley loves this juice so even if those vegees aren’t your favorite – give it a try.  I sip mine like a glass of wine but it’s a thousand times better than even the best bottle of wine.  Your liver will heal instead of cry and your brain will wake up, be extra aware and most likely, if you pick up the juice habit, you will feel better and better in a way that’s hard to believe.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I recently had Dal Tarka for the first time at my favorite restaurant and I was blown away by how delicious and satisfying this simple dish can be. I came home determined to make my own.

Dal, made from any of a variety of pulses (dried beans or lentils), is a mainstay in South Asian vegetarian cooking. Dal Tarka is made by pouring Tarka over the Dal after it’s been cooked. I made my Dal from yellow split peas.

Tarka is more a method than a list of ingredients. Also called chaunk, bagar, popu and a several other names – Tarka is essentially whole spices fried briefly in oil or ghee to release the essential oils from the spices. The Tarka is then poured into the dal and voila! – Dal Tarka!

I used the Tarka spices from a recipe in my “Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking” by Adiraja dasa. I also used unprocessed, organic peanut oil instead of ghee – so that the end result would be vegan. The peanut oil worked perfectly as a replacement providing the rich flavor that ghee gives – without the butter. The whole spices included:

• a couple of bay leaves
• a cinnamon stick broken in 1/2
• 1 1/2 t. turmeric
• 1 1/2 t. cumin seed
• 1 dried chile, crushed
• 1/4 t. asafetidda
• 2 t. crushed ginger

I squeezed half a lemon into the Tarka before pouring on the dal. Served with Basmati rice, coconut yogurt, cilantro and chutney, it was a meal in itself.

We used Cilantro Pesto on half the pizza and homemade Basil Pesto on the other half. They were both amazing but I found the cilantro slightly more interesting. For the Basil Pesto we just whirled 2 cups of basil leaves with 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 or 3 garlic cloves and some salt. It was earthier than the cilantro and also delicious!

I used half spelt flour in the crust which was a thick crust pizza dough from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone“. (If I had a list long enough to include a bunch of ingredients, this is hands down the book I would bring to the desert island to cook them with….Joy of Cooking for Vegetarians….more about this later.) The author, Deborah Madison, is one of the founding cornerstones of contemporary vegetarian cooking. She worked with Annie Sommerville at Greens Restaurant, the landmark San Francisco Vegetarian restaurant in the Fort Mason Center in the Marina District overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA with Alice Waters.

Back to my pizza! The spelt addition is not in the recipe but not only is spelt much better for you than wheat, it’s lighter texture and nutty flavor are perfect for a thick crust pizza.

We slathered the two pestos on each side of the rolled out pizza dough and topped it with generous helpings of those amazing fire roasted tomatoes they sell at Whole Foods, Kalamata olives and whole milk mozzarella.

The pizza bakes at 500 degrees and as usual the fire alarms in the house went off. It’s the price you have to pay since a lower temp will not do justice to the crust.

Pizza’s always good but I loved the twist with the green sauces….we just kept smiling and eating until it was gone!

We just had an amazing gourmet meal that was tantalizingly delicious, deeply satisfying, vegan, lo-cal and a blast to prepare! I do know the tradition is to eat a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin pie etc. but I’m a vegetarian, ertswhile vegan, for goodness sake…and I still wanted some exceptional food on this special day.

It doesn’t get much better than this for a vegan feast. We marinated baby Dutch Potatoes, Butternut Squash, Red Peppers, Red Onions, Zucchini, Garlic, Fennel, Turnips, Brussel Sprouts and Parsnips in Virgin olive oil, lime, sea salt and fresh ground pepper and then slow-roasted them. This was served up with a side of Orzo, Wild Rice, Roasted Leek, Raisin & Walnuts. A fantastic Cilantro dipping sauce tied everything together to make it one of the best meals we’ve had!