Air Fried Eggplant #WFPB #NoOil

Air Fried Egg Plant With BBQ Dipping Sauce

  

     We got an new air fryer a few weeks ago.  I've been trying it out. It's pretty versatile. Its actually an air fryer toaster oven made by Cuisinart. So far, its been great for air fried potato wedges, but that was all I was using it for until yesterday when I burned a butternut squash casserole. Today I got right back up on  that horse, turned the temperature down about 50 degrees lower than the included recipe book recommended and made some air fried eggplant fingers. My recipes are all whole food plant based with unprocessed or minimally processed ingredients and no oil.  

     Why no oil? All cooking oils are processed foods with essentially no nutritional value and 120 calories per table spoon. I'm working hard to keep my weight under control and 120 calories per tablespoon adds up quickly. Eight years ago I weighed 284lbs, went on a conventional diet and lost 10lbs over the period of a year. It was a yo-yo year with ups and downs but the net loss over that year was only 10lbs. Seven years ago I learned about the whole foods plant based no oil lifestyle and that year I lost 80lbs. By the middle of the 2nd year I'd lost a total of 110lbs and now, seven years later and in the middle of a pandemic, I'm still down 110lbs. I'm not counting calories, protein, carbs, fats, micro or macro nutrients either. I'm eating more food more often that I used to and the weight is staying put as long as I stay away from all animal products and all processed oils.  I get my essential fatty acids from whole foods, like milled flaxseeds, chia seeds, a couple of walnuts or a palmful of raw sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds. Occasionally about 1/5th to 1/3rd of an avocado gets included in a salad and that's about it for the unprocessed whole foods that contain significant oil.  It also helps to know that processed oils damage your circulatory system by irritating the endothelial lining of every blood vessel in your body including those in your heart and your brain. That single cell thick lining produces a vasodilator known as Nitric Oxide (NO) that relaxes your blood vessels, dilates them and lowers your blood pressure. By loosing weight and eliminating oils my BP went from 140/90 seven years ago to 108/68 now with no medication. So say "NO" to oils!

RECIPE

1    Medium size eggplant

3    Flax eggs (3T milled flaxseeds and 9 T water. Combine and let it sit for 15 minutes)

3T Nutritional yeast

6 T Flour (I used corn flour, but only because it was looking at me sadly saying "Pick Me!")

1/2 t Garlic salt

1 t   Ground mustard seeds

2 t  Garam Masala

... really any seasoning of your choice

Pre-Heat your Air Fryer at 350F or your oven at 400F.

Make the flax egg mixture per the above directions and set aside.

Mix together all the dry ingredients.

Slice the eggplant into approximately 0.5 x 0.5 x 6 inch pieces.

Dip the slices into the flax egg and then coat them with the dry ingredients.

Place them in a single layer in your air fryer on parchment paper or bake them in your oven on a parchment paper lined pan.

Cook for 10 minutes in the air fryer or until they begin to brown in the regular oven. Flip them and cook for 10 more minutes or until they darken. Serve hot with catsup or your favorite dipping sauce.

 

 

 

   

  

Cauliflower Falafel (Caulafel?)! #wfpbno #foodismedicine #falaflower?

I was at the grocery store and came across Zayad Falafel Mix. I'd seen it before but never bothered to read the label, thinking that it has to have processed oil in it. WRONG! No processed oil! The little bit of fat in it comes as a part of the sesame seeds and chickpeas (whole foods). You don't have to add any oil or fry it either. I baked it at 410F for 30 min and it turned out pretty great! Simple to make too. It's already seasoned and everything in it is stuff I could have put together from my cabinet. This just saved a little time. Of course, being me, I couldn't just leave it at that. There was a whole head of cauliflower starting to look dodgy in my fridge. All I did was pulse it in my blender to make it riced and used some of that to lighten the recipe a little.

Our son and I gave it 2 thumbs up, so here's my recipe...

1 box of Zayad Falafel Mix (about 2 cups) 

1 cup of riced cauliflower 

1/4th cup of coconut aminos

1.5 cups cold water

Mix it all together and let it sit, covered for 30 minutes. Wet hands and form 1/4 cup at a time of the mixture into balls. Place them on parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet and cook at 400F for 30 minutes.

Serve hot and enjoy!!!

 

Mango, Pineapple, Banana Frozen Treat! #Vegan #Dairyfree #Glutenfree #Kosher #Pareve #WFPBNO #NutFree

Mango, Pineapple, Banana Treat

Mango season appears to have arrived! I didn't know they had one, but the stores are full of them so lets just go with it!  There are only 4 ingredients. You won't believe how good this is.  WARNING...BRAIN-FREEZE HAZZARD!

No guilt, just fruit.

1 Mango 

3 bananas - 2 frozen, 1 fresh

4 dates

1 cup frozen pineapple chunks

Put it all in your blender and puree thoroughly until creamy. Pour it into a bowl and freeze for 4 hours. Scoop and serve!

Cheese Omelette but WFPBNO #VeganOmelette #WholeFoodPlantBasedNoOilBreakfast

Breakfast time!  🌼

     It's the weekend!  I found an interesting Plant Based omelette recipe this week, saved it and for once didn't lose it. My cabinet was already bulging with the ingredients I needed to modify and complete the meal, including my own version of cheezy sauce in the fridge. The original recipe called for chickpea flour. That I didn't have. I did have buckwheat flour, which is darker, but filled the bill just fine. All I needed was a non-stick pan and I have a stack of those. So here we go!

First the cheezy sauce:

Recipe

3 medium large redskin potatoes

6 TBSP Nutritional yeast

5 TBSP Tapioca flour

1 TBS lemon juice
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 tsp Tabasco 

1 TBSP salt

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1 3/4 cups of starchy water from the boiled potatoes

Peel, cube and boil the potatoes in at least 2 cups of water with the TBSP of salt. Save the starchy water.
Put 1 and 3/4 cups of the starchy water and everything else into your blender or food processor and puree it until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook it on medium low heat stirring constantly until it thickens (about 20 min).
Add a little more water if it's too thick. Let it cool allowing it to thicken a little more and serve warm.
Season with salt, pepper etc. to taste.

There you go!  Way more sauce than you need, but it's versatile and stores well in the fridge for at least 2 weeks. Try it stirred into the macaroni of your choice; elbow, rotini, whole wheat, chickpea, lentil... all good!

Now the omelette...

Recipe  (makes 1 omelette)

1/4 cup buckwheat flour (chickpea flour or any whole grain flour will do)

1/3 cup unsweetened plant milk of your choice

1 TBSP nutritional yeast

1/4 tsp salt (black salt makes it eggy)

3/4 cup of sauteed mix veggies of your choice divided into thirds

1/2 cup of cheezy sauce

Heat a non stick pan over medium heat. Mix the flour, nutritional yeast, salt, plant milk and 1/3 cup of the sauteed veggies together. Put the batter in the pan and spread it out like a pancake. Cook it thoroughly. Gently loosen it, flip it so there are no soft spots and flip it back again. Mix 1/3 cup of the mixed veggies and cheezy sauce together and spread it out to make a filling. Fold the omelette in half and place it on a plate. Put the rest of the veggies on top, drizzle the rest of the cheezy sauce over it and (optional) sprinkle on some Tabasco sauce. 

I used a Sensarte non-stick pan for the veggies and a Swiss Diamond non-stick pan for the omelette, but any decent non-stick pan will work.

Enjoy!

Low Calorie Density High Volume Dinner

   There's this thing about food. Some people, meaning me, continue eating past the point where their stomach is full. It's as if the pressure sensors in the stomach have lost their ability to communicate with the brain. I have my own first hand experience with over eating and in my case it's not about a failure to sense my fullness. It's about my brain having the power to override my stomach, full or empty. I'm a stress over eater. When the stress levels increase, my ability to control myself decreases.

It helps to keep an accurate food journal. That way both your stomach and your eyes will team up on your brain to force some accountability into the feedback loop.
In light of this fact, I started blogging 6 years ago to keep a record of my thoughts, my recipes and to share my journey to improving health with approaches you can  use to overcome the challenges. There are a lot of challenges. One big one is finding foods that are not conventional salads yet fit the bill of being very low calorie density, high enough in volume to satisfy my bottomless pit of a stomach and still have the high nutrient density that qualifies it as a WFPBNO component of a healthy meal.
A quest on par with finding a unicorn eyelash in a field of 4 leaf clovers.
     Enter a food called "Healthy Noodles".  I stumbled across them one day at COSTCO in the refrigerated section near where they keep the guacamole. The main ingredient is soybean flour. A 4 oz serving is 25 calories. Compare that to a 2 oz serving of whole wheat spaghetti at 180 calories. That means I can eat a whole pound of these noodles and it's only 100 calories!!! The packs are each 8 oz which is supposed to be 2 servings, but I ate the whole pack, pictured above with a lot of veggies. So the noodles were 50 calories, 2 carrots (50 calories), 1 onion (28 calories), 3 stalks of celery (26 calories),  1 ear of corn (110 calories), 2 cloves of garlic (< 4 calories), 2 leafs of purple cabbage (22 calories), 1 T  date syrup (59 calories), 1 yellow bell pepper (44 calories), 1 cup of chopped kale (33 calories), 1 medium naval orange (69 calories). 

That makes 495 calories for 2 servings or 248 calories for 1 normal person serving. Its low calorie with high nutritional density and virtually no flavor of its own.  You make it just as delicious as you want with your favorite spices to make it savory with soy sauce, onion, peppers and garlic or with some vinegar, citrus fruit and date syrup to balance it out against every taste bud in your mouth. This is a serious amount of filling food for one meal, but its so low in calories you could add dessert with no guilt!

WFPBNO Simple Sweet Potato Chocolate Brownies!!! #VEGANBROWNIES #WFPBNOsweetpotatoBrownies

Sweet potato brownies are delicious and so easy to make. I didn't even need a food processor or a pan! I don't have a reason not to use those things, but this way, other than a mixing bowl and a fork, there was nothing to clean! There is 1 tablespoon of maple syrup for added sweetness but you can use more or none. It's still going to be good!
I baked it in our toaster oven.

1 large sweet potato
1 ripe banana
4 rounded TBS cocoa powder
4 TBS unsweetened quick oats
4 TBS unsweetened coconut flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 TBS maple syrup
1 TBS vanilla almond milk

Makes 4 servings

Wash the sweet potato and wrap it in a moist paper towel. Microwave for 6 minutes.  Let it cool for 10 minutes. While its cooling, mash the other ingredients together in a mixing bowl. When cool enough to handle, peel and add the sweet potato. Mash everything together until it's thoroughly blended. Let it sit for 15 minutes to thicken.
Place it on parchment paper and shape it into a square about 1 inch thick. Bake it at 400F for 35 to 40 minutes. Let it cool enough to handle and wrap it in plastic wrap to hold in the moisture, giving it a glossy finish. Refrigerate for an hour.
Cut it into 4 squares and serve.

Soba Buckwheat Noodles and Steamed Veggies. WFPBNO!!! #vegan #oilfree

I found these Buckwheat soba noodles at Kroger and thought of my childhood, growing up with my Mom cooking Kasha; one of my favorite things to eat ever!  Kasha is also made from buckwheat and is not a wheat product at all. It's not a grain, but rather a seed from a plant closely related to rhubarb. It is a gluten free food. However, when buying any new food like these Soba noodles, its important to read the label. This product contains both buckwheat and regular wheat. I don't have any sort of gluten sensitivity, so its no problem for me, but if you have Celiac disease or a true gluten sensitivity, these noodles are not for you. 

Buckwheat Soba Noodles and Mixed Steamed Veggies

This was an easy dish to make. All I did was steam broccoli, snap peas, kale, red cabbage,  yellow sweet pepper and corn kernels seasoned with a little tamari and onion flakes for about 10 minutes. 

The soba noodles were boiled in veggie soup stock for 5 minutes. 

I saved the water for steaming the veggies and the water for boiling the noodles as more soup stock. 

The box of noodles was $1.99 and contains 8 servings. Such a deal!

Prepping the veggies took 5 minutes. So the total time was 20 minutes. 

The choice of veggies was purely arbitrary. That's what I had on hand. I could have easily added a jalapeno, onions, celery, carrot, mushrooms, etc. but I was just looking at these noodles for the first time and wanted something I could make with as little thought as possible.  It turned out delicious!  I even have leftovers for tomorrow!

Get out there and try something new!  You might enjoy it!