Vegan Gluten Free Oil Free One Pan Pasta Primivera!

Happy 2018! 

I was at Costco over the weekend and came across this gluten free chickpea pasta. I have no problems with gluten but I saw this on the shelf and thought I would try it. I wasn't disappointed! It's easy to cook and 5 times higher in protein than regular wheat pasta. Coincidently,  I was watching a video of a guy who made some changes to a Martha Stewart one pan pasta recipe and all he did was add some spinach. If that's all you have to do to make it your own, then I have it covered! The only equipment I needed was a skillet, a very sharp knife and a wooden spoon. If you want you can use this same recipe with regular spaghetti or any dry pasta. It's really easy!

Easy One Pan Pasta

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Everything in the skillet

Servings: 2.

Ingredients:

2 Cups uncooked pasta

2 Roma tomatoes

4 Baby Portobello mushrooms

1 medium onion

1/2  of a sweet yellow pepper

1 medium Jalapeno pepper

1/3 cup of chopped fresh parsley

1 T dry basil

1 T dry oregano

6 stalks celery chopped fine

1/8 t black pepper

2 Cups water (or vegetable stock)

Using a very sharp knife slice the veggies as thinly as you can so they will cook quickly. Put everything in the skillet and add the water. On high heat, bring it to a boil. Cook it down and stir so it cooks evenly. 

As it begins to thicken, lower the heat to simmer and continue stirring until you cook off most of the water. 

Put it on a plate and serve hot. As an option, I also sprinkled some nutritional yeast over the top. 

It makes a great main dish or a wonderful side dish. Eat! It's good for you!!!

One Pan Pasta Revisited

I like to tweak my recipes once in a while. Here is a pasta tweak. Costco now has an Italian pasta made from wheat and Lupini beans. It is high in fiber and protein while very low in fat. This recipe works with any type of pasta, but rotini or fusilli gives it body and texture. You can make any pasta into a resistant starch by simply refrigerating it over night and warming it up again. Resistant starches are heat stable. Once formed, your body will absorb the carbohydrates at a slower rate. In addition, the Lupini beans break down in your intestines to form butyrate, a short chain fatty acid that nourishes the cells of your intestine and help you avoid colon cancer. 

Recipe

2 cups of dry Pasta made from wheat and Lupini beans. The rest is veggies...onion, purple cabbage, red, green and jalapeno peppers, celery, basil, fresh pineapple, 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast (nooch),  an orange with orange zest. 4 cups of water. 

Put everything but the nooch in one covered pan. Simmer on low heat until most of the water is gone (30 to 40 min), then uncover and stir in 3 TBSPs of nooch. It's done when the rest of the water cooks away. Turn off the heat and cover it for 10 minutes to deglaze the pan. Salt to taste. (I use way less salt when I add a pinch at the end)

Whole Wheat Pasta Primavera with Marinara Sauce #vegan #foodismedicine #eatlikeagorilla

I'm always trying variations of recipes that I like. My ONE PAN PASTA PRIMIVERA is a great example. Different seasons bring different veggies into our kitchen. This time I took a massive leek (😅) and used every bit except the roots. Keep your eyes open at the grocery. Try things!

1 cup of whole wheat elbows, 1 leek, 1 red bell pepper, I portabella mushroom cap minus the ribs, 2 TBSP's each of PB FIT peanut butter powder and Nutritional Yeast (Nooch) and 1.5 cups of marinara sauce.

I boil the pasta in water seasoned with onion powder and garlic salt. Save 1.5 cups of the seasoned starchy water. In a non stick pan sauté the veggies adding the starchy water as needed. Boil off much of the water, stir in the pasta, marinara, Nooch and the peanut powder. Cook over medium low heat until it thickens. Serve hot.

Diet Toolbox #thatappleiswatchingme #eatyourGBOMBS #FOODisMEDICINE

For various reasons I've had a hard time maintaining my weight over the past few weeks. Its hard to adjust and easier to put it on than it is to take it off. It may be the decreased level of activity due to the winter weather.  More likely it's the increased time indoors, stress associated with the slow season and just plain paying no attention to how much and how often I'm eating, hungry or not. Stress has me eating for comfort when I'm already full. There is no accountability. In spite of perfect compliance with a whole food plant based no oil diet my portion control has failed.

Back to basics. I thought I'd gotten over the need for a food diary. For most of the year it's not necessary but right now it is a simple tool to help me regain control. My brain does not want to acknowledge how full my stomach is through the usual neurological and hormonal pathways. The food diary gives my brain the feedback I need to know how much I have already eaten and when to stop!




Here's how it's going so far today:

Breakfast
7:00 am.  One cup of dry quick oats mixed with 2 cups of boiling water, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, 2 tablespoons of milled flaxseed and 4 tablespoons of mixed berries.
I cooled it down with 1/2 cup of vanilla almond milk.

10;00 am. One cup of black coffee.



Lunch
Noon
Leftover 1 pan pasta with gluten free chickpea rotini pasta, red Swiss chard, curly parsley, fresh grated ginger, fresh tomato, sliced carrots, sliced celery, garlic, onion, purple cabbage, onion flakes, cayenne pepper, 2 pinches of black sea salt and 2 cups of water. Also fresh pear slices on the side and another cup of black coffee.

2:00 pm.  One 16 ounce bottle of water.
3:00 pm.  One large apple.

Already by the end of lunch I got in my Greens, Beans, Onions, Berries and Seeds.
All I have to do to complete the Dr. Fuhrman acronym is eat some Mushrooms and I can cross off my G-BOMBS for the day.

The more I write down, the more aware I become of all the things I put in my stomach today and the fuller I feel. That's why I'm putting in all the detail. It becomes a change in thought pattern between "what can I eat next?" and the healthier  "what have I already eaten?".

That's the idea. It's not complicated and doesn't cost anything. Spring is around the corner and I want to get back into the 5K races. I started training yesterday. It's my way of taking control of my own health. It's not my Doctor's responsibility to make me healthy, its mine.
I can do this and I know you can too!  All it takes is 1 step at a time. Take that 1st one!!!

Curly Protein Pasta #WFPBnoSOS

Brami Curly Mac Protein Pasta

The pasta is from Costco. It is made from Italian Wheat and Lupini Beans. Each serving contains 21 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber with 4 grams of fat from the beans. 350 calories per serving. 

If you do the math, 10.2% of the total calories come from fat. The goal is between 10% and 15% of calories per day from fat. This is a WINNER, WINNER, PASTA DINNER!!!

RECIPE

One serving is 3.5 oz = 1 cup of dried pasta.  Boil for 15 minutes and strain, keeping a cup of the pasta water. Do not rinse the cooked pasta.

1 clove of garlic, chopped.

1 green pepper, chopped.

1 red pepper, chopped.

2 handfuls of kale, chopped.

1 handful of cilantro, chopped.

1 medium sweet onion, chopped.

1 TBSP nutritional yeast (optional).

2 TBSPs lemon juice.

Put the boiled pasta in the fridge to cool and form resistant starch. Your body will break it down slower, form butyrate, a short chain fatty acid, which feeds the cells lining your large intestine.

Put the pasta water, lemon juice and all the chopped veggies in a pot or skillet that you can cover and cook them over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or until most of the water cooks off.

Add the pasta to the cooked veggies an stir until the pasta is heated up and the water has completely cooked off. Put the lid on tight, take it off the heat and give it 5 minutes for the pan to deglaze. Plate it and sprinkle on the nutritional yeast.

Enjoy!!!

Vegan Lasagna #eattolose #foodismedicine #plantbasedwholefoods #oilfree #veganpasta #Kosher #pareve

Vegan Lasagna

Being a whole foods plant based vegan, I get asked all the time if there are any foods I miss.
Well yesterday I was missing lasagna. With very little effort, I managed to veganize my old recipe and was amazed at how well it came out!
I already had a big container of oil free marinara sauce in the fridge that I cooked up over the weekend. All I had to do was come up with a substitute for mozzarella and ricotta cheeses.
Just to make it a challenge, in addition to dairy free, let's make it nut free and oil free too. Nuts and oil add a ton of calories. I already lost the weight. No need to risk packing it back on if I can avoid it.

Off we go to the market! I have a friend who is like me but will only eat whole grain pasta. Challenge accepted!  Barilla has it right on the shelf at my local supermarket. It only contains one ingredient: whole grain durum wheat flour.
Well that was easy!  I already have a recipe for a gooey white cheesy sauce that can substitute for mozzarella.  That just leaves the ricotta cheese.
I found a basic recipe online and twisted it around until it met my oil free, nut free and dairy free vegan parameters. I used extra firm tofu, nutritional yeast, white vinegar, salt, ground pepper, basil and parsley flakes, fresh garlic and starchy water. This part was left grainy for texture keeping the layers of the lasagna distinct. After all, as remarkably delicious as this main course proves to be, we need to complete the picture. It has to be visually pleasing as well. Taste is not limited to the tongue. It already smells great so we just have to make it look great.
While that delicious mazzarella-ish layer on the top is stretchy and tastes wonderful, it just does not easily brown. We need to do something about that.
Here's my solution. Coincidentally, I happened to be walking by the deli case in a restaurant and saw their beautifully presented servings of lasagna displayed with slices of tomato covering the top.
Brilliant and simple! Off we go to the produce department one more time. Colorful, inviting Heirloom tomatoes were on the shelf. The red and yellow varieties were large, firm and plentiful so I got 3 of each. After cooking the lasagna for an hour, I covered the top with thin slices of tomato then ground up some fresh garlic and spices to sprinkle over everything.  Another 5 to 10 minutes under the broiler gave it the finishing touch.   I let it cool for 20 minutes and cut out a slice, just to make sure it held together and tasted right.  It was perfect! Lasagna always tastes better the next day, so after it cooled completely I covered it and put it in the fridge. Now I can just cut out a slice, microwave it for 2 or 3 minutes and I no longer have to miss lasagna!! This time I wrote down the 3 building block's recipes so the next time I have 3 or 4 hours to kill...well...you know.  I don't have to miss lasagna anymore and neither do you 🇺🇸

Vegan Lasagna

The prep and cooking time was 4 hours. I made  the 3 building blocks over 2 days and kept it refrigerated until I was ready to put it together.

Marinara Pasta Sauce

1 can of tomato sauce 28 oz

1 can of diced tomatoes 28 oz
1 can of tomato paste 12 oz 
1 large sweet onion chopped
4 cloves of garlic chopped
2 TBSP of Oregano
1 TBSP of Sweet Basil

1 TBSP of dried Parsley

2 tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

6 dates finely chopped

    In a large pot bring 1 cup of salted water to a boil. Add the onion and garlic. Let it boil and stir until the onions become clear. Add the Basil, Oregano and Parsley. Add the tomato sauce, diced tomatoes,  paste and dates. Bring it to a simmer, cover and reduce the heat for 30 minutes.  
    You can add salt and pepper to taste.

Vegan Mozzarella Sauce

4 Yukon gold potatoes

6 TBSP nutritional yeast

6 TBSP Tapioca flour

1 TBSP salt

¼ cup white wine vinegar

1 TBSP lemon juice

¼ tsp smoked paprika

¼ tsp Tabasco

Salt water to boil the potatoes

Peel and boil the quartered potatoes in salted water for 40 minutes. Save 2 cups of the starchy water.  In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients together to prevent clumping. Put the potatoes, 1+¼ cups starchy water and all the wet ingredients in a blender. Pulse a few times to chop it up. Add the dry ingredients and  puree until completely smooth.

Pour it back in the pot from the potatoes. Over medium heat stir constantly with a wooden spoon until it thickens for about 15 minutes. Add a little more starchy water if it gets too thick. Set it aside to set up.

Vegan Ricotta Cheese

1 lb extra firm tofu

6 TBSP nutritional yeast

¼ cup white wine vinegar

2 TBSP starchy water

1 TBSP salt

1 TBSP basil

¼ tsp ground pepper

2 TBSP parsley flakes

2 cloves of minced garlic

Press the water out of the tofu. Crumble it up in a bowl using a fork. Mix everything together. Set aside.

1 box of Lasagna noodles of your choice cooked per package directions in salted water. Do not overcook. Drain and lay it flat until cool enough to handle.

Line a 9 x 13 inch lasagna pan with parchment paper. Put a double layer of noodles in the bottom of the pan. Cover evenly with the marinara sauce. Sprinkle evenly with Ricotta then cover lightly with Mozzarella. Put a single layer of noodles on top of that and repeat the layers of marinara, Ricotta and Mozzarella Sauce making the outer layer thick enough to cover smoothly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Cover the top with thin tomato slices and sprinkle with a mixture of minced garlic, dried parsley, Oregano, basil, rosemary and thyme. Put it back in the oven under the broiler for 5 to 10 minutes to cook and brown the tomatoes.  Let it cool for 20 minutes and cover with foil. Refrigerate over night because lasagna always tastes better the next day. Slice it. Reheat it and serve.