Stuffed Peppers! #vegan #kosher #pareve #foodISmedicine #millet #glutenfree

Stuffed Green Pepper with Millet

I was at the local bulk food store to pick up nutritional yeast and quinoa. Right next to the quinoa was a bin of millet. Not knowing what it is I got out my trusty phone and Googled it. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it is a gluten free seed with pretty good nutritional value.

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup
Amount Per Serving
Calories from Fat 16 Calories 207
% Daily Values*
Total Fat 1.74g		3%
	Saturated Fat 0.299g	1%
	Polyunsaturated Fat 0.884g
	Monounsaturated Fat 0.32g
Cholesterol 0mg		0%
Sodium 3mg		0%
Potassium 108mg
Total Carbohydrate 41.19g		14%
	Dietary Fiber 2.3g	9%
	Sugars 0.23g
Protein 6.11g
Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0% Iron 6%

     I bought some and made patties in the shape of hamburgers. Two of them came with me to my office for lunch. When I got there, I was handed a bag of veggies picked that day from the garden of my office manager. Talk about fresh! I got green peppers, cherry tomatoes and snap peas. So instead of just eating my plain "burgers" I crumbled them and made stuffed peppers with cherry tomatoes and snap peas in the microwave with vegan catsup on the side. Really delicious!

Recipe:

1 cup millet 

1 cup rolled oats

1 large portobello mushroom cap

4 cups salted water (or vegetable stock)

1 small onion chopped fine

6 T nutritional yeast
3 T light soy sauce

2 T paprika

1/2 Jalapeno pepper

Bring salted water, nutritional yeast, onion and paprika to a boil. Turn the heat down to simmer covered for 30 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.

Put the mushroom cap, soy sauce and Jalapeno pepper in a blender or food processor and puree it.

In a medium sized mixing bowl add the millet, rolled oats and the puree. Knead them together until the mixture is the consistency of raw hamburger. Add more rolled oats if its too gooey. 

Let it sit in the fridge overnight uncovered.

Form it into patties and bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper for 30 to 40 minutes.

Let them cool then separated from the paper. Put them on the grill for 5 minutes per side to make grill marks.

You can eat them like a hamburger or squish them up and stuff peppers like I did. Enjoy!

30 Months a Vegan! Before and After pics. #EatLikeAGorilla #EatToLose #FoodIsMedicine #VeganDiet

Bulgur Wheat and Vegetable Stew

     Another month has come and gone leaving me still a vegan.  I'm keeping the weight off (103 lbs) by eating strictly plants with no oil and getting in my exercise every week to keep my heart pumping, my brain firing and my mood cheerful. It feels great to be healthy! I have to wonder why more people aren't working toward optimum health simply by eating whole foods from plants? 

I think the answer to that question is:

1)  Nobody told them.

2)  They aren't ready yet.

     When I changed over to a totally vegan, whole foods, plants only diet there was no health scare. I got tired of being so fat and my friend, Joel Kahn M.D. gave me enough information via his articles to convince me it was worth a try. Cows and chickens feared me back then. There was no way I was going to change my eating habits.....until I did. I was ready. I set New Year's Day 2014 as my starting point. Yada yada, I lost over 100 pounds since then just by eating. No meds, no surgery, no exercise; just eating lots and lots of fresh fruit, veggies, grains, legumes and a few nuts. When I say lots and lots I'm talking upwards of 5 pounds of food a day. I eat more and weigh less. Go figure. It feels like I'm younger now!

     I started writing this blog tonight feeling all empowered, thinking I have all the answers even if nobody is asking any questions. If you aren't ready yet, reading what I have to say probably won't make much difference. Hopefully, you won't wait until you have a health issue before you start asking.
     Instead, I'll show you my Before and After pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's two:

Me July 4, 2016 180 lbs
Totally plant powered!

Me 4 years ago 283 lbs
Omnivorous

If you think of any questions, I might be able to help.
If you aren't ready yet, I understand.
You might want to bookmark this page though, just in case.
Or you could click the orange block with the B in it at the top left of this page and add me to to your reading list to follow this blog.  There's PLENTY of time, right?

Chocolate Frozen Creamy Treat! #vegan #nutfree #dairyfree #glutonfree #kosher #parve #halal

CHOCOLATE!!

Frozen Creamy Chocolate Treat!

Don't know if you love chocolate but you will after this! No processed sugar, no dairy, no nuts and gluten free.  Four ingredients:

3 over ripe bananas - Slice up and freeze 

1 Tablespoon vanilla plant milk of choice

3 Tablespoons cocoa powder

6 Pitted Dates 

Blend until completely smooth.

Freeze for 4 hours. 

Makes 2 generous servings.

If it freezes over night and is too solid, pop it into the microwave for 15 seconds.

....and you thought vegan meant bland!

The Ninja CREAMi Deluxe Frozen Treat Maker is PERFECT for this!!  Click the link.

It lets you skip the FREEZE  for 4 hours step.  Instant gratification!!!!!

Fun with Tempeh! #glutenfree #Kosher #tempehBEATStofu #proteinpacked #foodISmedicine #eattolose #VeganProtein

Tempeh and mixed veggies

     There are days when I plan a meal based on targeted shopping, rational thought and established recipes. While I find that serves the purpose with consistency, the flavor of creativity is lacking. Where's the fun in that? It is so much more satisfying to gather, chop, season, cook and eat an original dish ala MacGyver. You can feed, amuse and amaze yourself all at the same time!

     Here is what I had to work with:

Tempeh, Swiss Chard, a jalapeno pepper, broccoli, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, sweet red and yellow peppers, nutritional yeast, low sodium soy sauce, smoked paprika, basil and fresh parsley.  

     Here is what I did:

I don't measure anything. I just add things until it looks and tastes right to me. (feel free to substitute different veggies) 

     Cut the Tempeh into bite size pieces and marinate it for about an hour in the soy sauce and basil.

Slice up the onion and caramelize it in a pan. I don't use any oil so I just use a non stick ceramic pan and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until it browns. Slice up one leaf of the chard including the stem and the rest of the veggies and add them to the pan with a cup of boiling water (I love the sound). Stir in 1/4 teaspoon of smoked paprika, chopped parsley and the other vegetables all sliced up. Add soy sauce (an/or salt), season to taste, stir and cook until the vegetables soften. 

     Strain the veggies and save the broth. Put the broth, Tempeh and nutritional yeast back in the pan and cook until the liquid is gone. Add more water and soy sauce if you want to cook it longer.

Put the veggies on a bed of Swiss Chard and top with the Tempeh.

Here is the truly amazing part. I ate about half the plate, came back later and finished it off. I weighed myself the next day and I lost 1/2 a pound. Full and lighter. Counterintuitive and delicious!

Enjoy!

So Good!!!

28 Months A Vegan! #eatcleanandgreen #plantstrong #foodismedicine #eatmoreweighless

  The journey continues. It's already 28 months since I've eaten any animal products. No beef, lamb, veal, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, shellfish, seafood, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, butter, eggs, very little if any oil of any kind and I've never felt more healthy in my life! I used to eat ALL those things. Often many of those things at the same time.
     While commuting from one office to another it was not unusual for me to stop at a fast food place for fries or chicken nuggets to munch for the drive. When filling my car I would get a bag of chips and soda pop and/or a candy bar with a frozen Coke. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Judging by the line at the cash register, these habits were not unique to me.
     According to the Harvard School of Public Health, obesity related diseases add an extra $190,000,000,000.00 per year to the cost of health care in the United States. That's 190 BILLION dollars that we all pay for through rising insurance premiums, government insurance programs and out of pocket expenses. By comparison, the estimated cost of fixing all of the crumbling roads in Michigan per year is 1.8 Billion dollars. This is money that could be funneled into our financially strapped public schools or used to replace the pipes that leach lead into the drinking water of Flint and so many other US cities. That's PER YEAR!!!
     The number $190 billion is just a number. It is far beyond my ability to comprehend anything that enormous. In perspective, at a cost of $71,000.00 for heart bypass surgery with no complications, that is enough to pay for 2,676,056 operations. (In the U.S. 500,000 bypasses are done per year)
    An interesting fact about heart bypass is that 4 percent of these patients do not survive the operation. That is 20,000 deaths per year that need not happen. It need not happen because heart disease  is essentially a foodborne illness. We can choose to not fall victim to it by improving our food choices.
Cardiovascular disease including stroke is responsible for 787,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone and 17,300,000 globally.  Again, numbers too large to understand. What I do understand is that almost 50% of the time the first symptom of Cardiovascular Disease is sudden death. Do not try to take comfort in the notion that you can eat and drink whatever you like and when it eventually causes heart problems a pill and bypass surgery will be the answer.  You are flipping a coin where one side is risky and the other is sudden death.
  "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food".  A quote from Hippocrates 2400 years ago. Take the time to learn about healthy eating. Find out about the simple changes you can make now to avoid heart disease. This is not a new concept.
     There are so many free places that will help you get started. I mentioned a number of websites in a previous article. Click the highlighted link to find out more.  I've lost 96 lbs by changing my ways.
Are you ready?

Day 6 of Vegan Passover! #MovingMatzo #LeavingTheLeavening

Here we are at day 6 of Passover already. How much Matzo is left in YOUR house? I'm down to 2 boxes. Hopefully exactly the right amount to run out on Saturday night.

A plate full of mostly Matzo!!!

It's quite the versatile building block! Even the kitchen frog took valuable time away from being a plague to express his amazement! 

That thing on the bottom that looks like a potato with slices of tomato and topped with cracked pepper is not Matzo, but everything else is.

When stacked and layered with cooked vegetables and "cheezy" sauce that has been firmed up in the fridge overnight, the excess moisture softens the Matzo. I also microwaved it for about 2 minutes to soften everything up and squish it down. It needed squishing. 

This made 2 hearty portions. 

You can guess what those yellow things in the middle are. That's right. Matzo mixed with the yellow cheezy sauce and shaped by hand into curls. Salt and pepper added made it taste like a whole new holiday!

This whole foods plant based Matzo infused week has been challenging but absolutely delicious! 

What's that old saying? Necessity is the Matzo of invention! Accept the challenge. 

Choose health. Go Vegan! 

Vegan Passover, day 5. Keeping things moving! #PottyAllTheTime #foodismedicine #eatToLose

Matzo-roni and "cheese"

 One thing you can depend upon during Passover; The 11th Plague.
It insidiously crept up on us shortly after the Hebrews fled Egypt in such a rush they didn't even wait an hour for the bread dough to rise.
The effect of the resulting Matzo on the lower intestines added a second dimension to:
Let My People Go!

Having converted to a Whole Foods Plant Based diet, constipation is not an issue. Matzo or no Matzo, everything else I eat is so high in fiber that the digestive issues are eliminated. (pun intended)

Keeping the faith and and the lifestyle!

No oil! Green Beans, Red Bell Pepper, Pineapple, Onion Flakes,
Fresh Grated Garlic and Ginger with salt and pepper to taste
Stir cooked in a ceramic pan with water