Another Complete Protein

This little power house vegan meal I whipped up was yummilicious! Yummy and nutriticious that is if my dietitian is to be believed! Learning about complete proteins is new to me, so I have just been getting the hang of it. According to my dietitian, quinoa is a complete protein on it's own, and brown rice is a complete protein when combined with seeds, so this meal has 2 complete protein sources in it, no meat, no dairy, and is tasty to boot.

Here is the recipe. In one meal I ate it with a seeded roma tomato mixed in, but the tomato's texture was not to my liking so the next time I had it without  and enjoyed the nutty flavor even more.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup brown rice
1/4 cup quinoa

1 onion chopped into small bits

3 cloves of garlic chopped into fine pieces (minced)

1 teaspoon olive oil (or your favorite oil)

Instructions:

cook 1/4 cup brown rice and 1/4 cup quinoa in 1 cup water like you normally would cook rice. while it's cooking, chop 1 onion into small pieces, and chop 3 cloves of garlic finely. Cook onion and garlic in 1 teaspoon of olive oil (or your preferred oil) until they are see through. When rice is ready, stir in onion, garlic, and 1/8 cup sunflower seeds, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Slice bell pepper and use to scoop up the rice mixture and enjoy!

I suspect this would be good with other vegetables mixed in. I ate it with a green smoothie on the side to get a good mix of nutrients into my day, and was quite satisfied.

Complete Proteins

BBQ Veggie Pita Pizza

First Mondays of the month I participate in a  phone call with a dietitian paid for by my insurance. I would prefer in person nutrition classes and the like, but this is what my insurance pays for. It's a bit like having a life coach for health. At the end of each call she asks me to set goals. I said I should keep the same goals since I was not satisfied with my follow through from last month. But then I realized, I also want to focus on making sure that I am eating enough complete proteins. Since I am no longer eating beef and I have greatly reduced my cheese intake, she was concerned that I make sure I am getting enough protein. I think I have been, but it's possible that some of my recent fatigue and negative emotions have been related.

We discussed what a complete protein is. Many people have told me that I need to make sure I am getting enough protein, or complete proteins if I am reducing and/or removing meat and cheese from my dietary habits, but one friend explained it as such:

"Any combination of 2 or more of these food groups makes a complete protein:
seeds &  nuts
beans & legumes
whole grains
eggs & dairy"

My dietician basically confirmed, and added that of course it is easier to get complete protein by eating meat, eggs or dairy, but if I'm going to focus on vegetative matter to get my protein, the above list minus the eggs and dairy is right. She also mentioned that the only complete protein found yet in a non meat or dairy food is quinoa. Complete proteins apparently have to do with amino acid chains or some such. I tried to look it up on diabetes.com as she suggested but haven't found it yet. Still, complete proteins are not impossible or even that hard to attain without meat or dairy, so I can still continue my quest to see how I do on less meat (no beef) and at least 50% less cheese (which I think is much more than 50% less at this point) For example in today's breakfast I had both the protein that was available from the veggies and almond butter. I'm not sure if that's technically a complete protein, but it's definitely healthier than one or the other. If I had put the peanut butter on some whole wheat toast it would have met the dietitians requirements. It also would have doubled my carb intake for the day, so I chose to forgo the bread. Not sure if that was the best decision or not protein wise, but it was good for my blood sugar. I'll run things like that by the dietitian next time. I did however make sure to get complete proteins in my lunch by having both whole wheat in the pita, and cheese on it. Plus I had good fiber, added extra veggies, and if I had made the cheese vegan by making it out of nuts it would have been non dairy but still complete proteins.

 Update on cheese changes. I have been asking myself the question "Do I really need or want cheese with/on whatever I am eating?" as I planned, and that has greatly reduced my cheese intake. Plus, when I do eat cheese, I am starting to eat 1/2 as much. For example on today's pita pizza, I decided that since I do not have any vegan cheese around right now, I did indeed want cheese on my pizza. BUT I used 1/8 cup shredded cheese instead of 1/4 cup. Also, I added salad greens to my pita pizza for some added herbal flavor, and I really enjoyed it that way! The full recipe is below.

 BBQ Veggie Pita Pizza
Ingredients:
1/3 Red Bell Pepper (I ate the rest on the side raw which was delicious)
 1/2 heritage tomato
 1 roasted serrano chili pepper
 1 cup of salad greens (I used a basil arugula mix)
1 tablespoon bbq tomato sauce (home made)
1 whole wheat pita

Instructions:
Cut roasted chili pepper into small bits and mix into bbq sauce spreading evenly over pita chop 1/3 bell pepper and 1/2 tomato into bite sized chunks and spread around pita. Sprinkle 1 cup of salad greens over all the rest sprinkle 1/8 cup shredded cheese of your choice on top cook at 250 for 10 minutes (for crispy crust cook the pita for 10 minutes before adding toppings)

Later I may combine chickpeas and sesame seeds to make a complete protein and eat a snack of veggies and hummus. And for dinner I will have quinoa with roasted veggies and a side salad. For desert I am asking Patch to bring home bananas which I can try eating since apparently bananas are only a mild food intolerance and not a complete allergy as I had thought. I have a recipe I have been wanting to try out for chocolate banana brownies. Meat Free Monday should be a success!

Pizza Yumness!!!!

Today I got a message that a friend had left basil on my front door... yesterday. Being that this is a hot part of the country, we suspected it had wilted. However we were pleasantly surprised to discover it had not. She also sent me some dehydrated and ground sweet peppers which are a sweet and delicious spice I have now added to my pantry and will be making more of in the future once we get our dehydrator. These combined with a recent conversation with a dietitian inspired today's Pizza Yumness! BEST home made PIZZA EVER! No seriously, it was the best home made pizza I have ever had.

We have been using pitas to make pizza in the past, but the dietitian recommended we try out a tortilla instead. So today I did, and it was SO GOOD! I have been making a lot of mandalas lately, and so that may have affected my pizza making a bit.

Small Ancient Grain Tortilla, 1 tablespoon pizza sauce, 8 leaves spinach, 1/6 cup mozzarella cheese, 5 leaves torn basil, 1/2 small red bell pepper, and then after taking a photo, I sprinkled another 1/6 cup mozzarella cheese on top.

To go with it, I had a salad with some of the sweet pepper on it, and some Jicama. And it was so good I practically licked the plate clean: http://web.stagram.com/p/299471837680307655_220092754

I will definitely be making my home made pizzas with tortillas in the future. Made a perfect portion. Only down side to this was the relatively low protein for a meal. Any suggestions for having a vegetarian meal like this with more protein? I thought of having a bit of hummus with the jicama.

Black Bean Italian Flavored Burgers

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HealthyRecipeSharing/

Did not end up eating the pasta, the rest was plenty

Marjorie from the Healthy Recipe Sharing group on Facebook shared her Black Bean Burger recipe with me. It sounds really good, but you know me, I had to tinker with it a little bit. I happen to have some extra ricotta cheese laying around and was looking for recipes to include it in, so here's the tweaked version that I came up with:

Tips:
Since there is no meat in this burger, it is safe to taste the ingredients before pressing into patties and cooking. I would suggest doing just that to get the flavors the way you like them.
This might be a good recipe to try out with sprouted black beans, but since I couldn't wait to try it, will have to do that next time.

Black Bean Meatles Burger Mix looks a lot like Meat

Ingredients:
1 can black beans or 1 1/2 cups rinsed and drained
3 cloves garlic, minced/pressed
1 red bell pepper finely choppped
10 leaves fresh basil finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
3 Tablespoons already prepared marinara sauce
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup rolled oats
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Rinse and drain 1 can black beans (or 1 1/2 cup)
mash about 1/2 of the black beans with a fork, leaving the rest for texture
mince or press 2 cloves garlic
finely chop 1 red bell pepper
finely mince 4 leaves fresh basil
grind flax seed and measure out 2 tablespoons
Mix all ingredients, taste and add salt and pepper in whatever amounts you prefer
Form into patties and fry up in a tablespoon of olive oil  or bake in an oven at 400 degrees F for about 10 to 15 minutes (tho baking may make them dryer than you'd like, it will reduce the fat content)

Tested Various Patty Sizes, Liked the smaller ones

If you like hamburger buns go for it, or serve in 1/2 a pita or thin wrap bread to lower the carb count, or open faced with no bun to lower even further. Next time I might try this out with 1/2 the beans and replace them with some grated eggplant instead. I think this would be delicious with caramelized red onion on top.

I made these to go on the side with an egg replacer instead of the eggs: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/spinach-and-ricotta-dumplings-recipe/index.html#

Turkey Sloppy Joe in a Pita

Recipe to come

Meatless Mondays

Today is our first ever official Meatless Monday as a family. I'm a flexitarian, as in I eat some vegetarian and some carnivorous meals. Most days, I get at least one vegetarian meal. Recently at work, Patch asked their dietitian how she could lose weight and be at her healthiest, and told the dietitian about my current method of eating. The lady said "Do what he's doing" so Patch has started heading down the same path towards health I'm on. Now I'm no dietitian, so I plan to meet with a dietitian myself to make sure that we're getting all the necessary nutrients, but in the mean time we're basically following the DTOUR plan with some vegan or vegetarian meals mixed in, and a few of our standard favorites, or some new twists on old comfort food.

While on vacation, Patch and I agreed that we will start having vegetarian and vegan meals all day every Monday starting today. Carlie wasn't there and I can't remember if we shared this little gem with her, but the two of us are a go, and Carlie will either join in or not. Often if we prepare delicious food, everyone else eats it too, so maybe she'll start having some accidentally vegetarian days. I'll ask her tonight if she wants to try it out with us.

So here's what today's food adventures look like:

Breakfast: (serves 1)
Shredded Wheat spoon sized cereal, 1 cup
Almond Milk, unsweetened, original, 1.5 cups
Raw cashews, 1 oz
(Shredded wheat really soaks up the milk and I would have liked to put some berries on there too, but we were out)

Shopping trip! I looked up a couple of vegetarian meals, made a list of the ingredients plus a few salad fixins, and we went to Fresh and Easy where found everything on our list, most of it in the organic section. Put Vegetarian Chili on to cook after shopping for Dinner, it takes 3 to 6 hours to cook down to the correct consistency depending on method of cooking.

Snack: (serves 2)
1 head of Romaine Lettuce
1 cup arugula
2 oz pistachio nuts
1 stalk celery
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon white balsamic

 Lunch: (serves 4)
Vegetarian Stir Fry
1 cup uncooked brown rice
2 cups water
1 head bok choy
1 can baby corn
1 can water chestnuts
1/2 cup raw cashews
3 baby sweet peppers (1 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow)
1/2 onion (chopped)
1 stalk celery
2 cups bean sprouts
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons seasoning sauce of choice

 Snack: (serves 2)
1 apple
1 whole grain bagel
4 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

Dinner: (serves 8)
Vegan Chili (This smells amazing!)
2 cans sliced pear tomatoes, 28 oz each
1 can diced roasted red tomatoes, 15 oz (in basil sauce)
1 can tomato paste, 4 oz
1 can black beans, 15 oz (remove liquid)
1 can butter beans, 15 oz (remove liquid) 2 cans pinto beans,
15 oz (remove liquid)
1 medium sweet potato
2 cups diced celery
1 medium red onion
3 baby sweet peppers
1 tablespoon garlic
3 tablespoons chili powder
top with cheese if you're vegetarian, cheese substitute if you're vegan

Dessert: (serves 3)
6 whole grain fig cookies
12 large strawberries, sliced
6 tablespoons spray whipped cream (fat free)

Movie snack:
Kale Chips from 1 head of Kale, flavored to request (see previous entries for various recipes)

Obviously these are just lists of ingredients and not full recipes. If you would like to see the full recipes for lunch and dinner, please let me know and I'll write them out.

Cajun Orange Pork Chops

I really love this Diabetes Family Friendly Cookbook magazine we picked up. The best recipe we had yet was the Cajun Orange Pork Chops. I can't wait to have it with some salad tomorrow as left overs. It was so good, I'd like to share the recipe with you, and you can find it here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Cajun-Orange-Pork-Chops thanks Patricia Harmon from Baden, Pennsylvania. So if you want to check out the magazine I think they're for sale online at tasteofhome.com and some of the recipes are there as well.

I was worried about trying this one because I'm not big on spices usually, but I've been trying out new recipes. Turns out, the Cajun Orange Pork Chops weren't that hot after all. Just a nice spice to go with the intense orange flavor. DEEEELICIOUS! The orange juice, marmalade and seasonings made a really great marinade. Who knew!?

It's really worth trying new things. Food can be delicious AND healthy. And the left overs are so much more awesome when it's home made.

Accidentally Veggie - Fried Zuchinni

I have been slacking on my job of planning meals this week. In part, from a lack of energy which I had been thinking was weird, but since rereading my blog, I realize is pretty normal considering my week so far. Day after a migraine usually is a fatigue filled day, and although I didn't have bad migraines yesterday and managed to be productive and rode my trike, I also ended the day with a migraine which was probably due to packaged food I ate. When will I learn and stop eating packaged foods you ask? I don't know. Sometimes ease outweighs caution. I was quite active yesterday so between that and the headaches last night, I think it makes perfect sense that I was sluggish today. HOWEVER ...

We had delicious fried zucchini with mixed grain rice and quinoa for dinner. DELICIOUS!  So much so that we ate it before we thought to take pictures. SORRY! The mixed grain rice and quinoa was prepackaged, but has nothing I'm allergic to. The fried zucchini was made from scratch by Carlie.

The zucchini was from the Market on the Move, so was plentiful and low cost, but we are having a hard time eating all we got there. Market on the move is great because it's $10 for 60 pounds or so of produce, I didn't get to attend the class on how to properly preserve produce bought in large quantities, so I will have to explore that at a future date instead. I was thinking of perhaps asking Zenjen if she will come teach the class in my kitchen, and I can invite neighbors over to join in the fun and learning.

So our dinner was accidentally vegetarian, but it was delicious, nutritious, and I felt energized afterwards. I think perhaps tomorrow I'll try to stop by a store which sells local foods and pick some things up to go with the zucchini. Maybe I'll try my hand at some zucchini parmesan or something. And eventually I'll get around to making zucchini bread, which I loved as a child, but tweak the recipe so it's eggless.

What to do with eggplant but no eggplant lovers?

Today I did a search on the internet for recipes which will win over non eggplant lovers since no one in my household is particularly fond of them. They are usually expensive, so we don't bother buying them and forcing ourselves to try them. But this week we got 60 pounds of produce from Market on the Move for 10 dollars. Included were 4 or 5 large eggplants. So now we're trying out eggplant recipes for all sorts of stuff.

In my search I happened across this great food blog on which the author posts an eggplant recipe a week: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com, this article about eggplant recipes from cookinglight.com,: http://www.cookinglight.com/cooking-101/essential-ingredients/choice-ingredient-eggplant-00400000047702/, and later this week we'll try the Eggplant Papriksash from the Fat Free Vegan: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/08/eggplant-paprikash.html. I'll take pictures and be sure to let you know if it wins over my household, a group of non eggplant lovers, but who love eggplant. I think I'll also try her Eggplant Pesto and Rigatoni with Zucchini and Eggplants since the box also had plenty of zucchini, and I love Pesto but rarely eat it because it has so much oil.

In particular Carlie and I found this one interesting. Since we're the ones home right now, we thought we'd be trying it tonight with some slight alterations based on what we happened to have in the pantry. But it turned out to take an hour and we weren't willing to wait. Quick and easy eggplant parm it is: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe-Tools/Print/Recipe.aspx?RecipeID=13943&origin=detail&Servings=2&metric= We used milk instead of egg because of my egg allergy, and sliced them slightly thinner which made them a bit crispier which I particularly liked. It's the texture of eggplant that I usually have a hard time with. I'll take pictures and post how we like it, but in the mean time check out this awesome blog entry: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2011/01/eggplant-and-chickpea-curry.html

Pork Ribs and Mash with Salad

Tonight we are having guests over for dinner. We don't do that very often, but we wanted to spend some time with our friends, and they happen to be free on a day Patch has off. We ran to the store to make sure we had everything we needed, picked up a couple extra items, and it's going to be delicious. I'm preparing a slightly altered version of a recipe I got from a food magazine for the mashed potatoes and making a salad. Patch is cooking ribs, which were on sale, just in case there's not quite enough food to go around. Leftovers will be eaten I'm sure, so that's not a problem. We got some delicious organic sweet peppers and oranges which I plan to have in the salad along with some smoked gouda, so it should be delicious!  I'll upload pics as soon as I have them. Our friends brought strawberries and we had them over angel food cake for dessert since Patch didn't get a birthday cake. (well she had cupcakes, but apparently she wanted this instead)

Dinner by Teamwork

The problem with planning meals based on recipes in magazines or from health food sites is simple. They are not based on what is low cost and available locally.

The positive thing is, it gives us new ideas, encourages us to try new things and is really fun! Plus eating delicious healthy food is a good thing. Plus it gives us a chance to cook together or for each other. This one was dinner by teamwork. Patch took me to my favorite store where I bought the fruits, veggies and cherry preserves. Carlie bought the meat. Patch prepped the meal, and Carlie cooked it. Teamwork!

Tonight we had lamb rib chops with cherry sauce and salad. Patch and carlie had hash browns with theirs. I had cherry cider with mine which i like watered down 50/50 cuz otherwise its too strong.

It was delicious! And of course if you use terriaki sauce without gluten, it's gluten free, which is good for my gluten intolerant friends. I believe it was one of Rachel rays recipes and it us super easy. We just seasoned them with salt and pepper, mixed cherry preserves with terriaki and cooked them about a

Accidentally Veggie

Vegetarian meals for the day:

Breakfast: pear, strawberries and blood orange salad with toast.

Lunch: mango date shake at the fruit and bread barn plus some of carlie's chili fritos. We were going to share the shake and sandwich, but it turned out the store put mayo and mustard on the bread without asking. They also gave us packets of mustard. I can't eat mayo and have always hated mustard, so missed out on the meatloaf sandwich. Interestingly enough, that meant a meatless day. Who knew? Didn't try for it, which is clear when you look over what I ate. Not enough protein, and not enough at all.

And best yet, a dinner of tomato, red bell pepper, dark lettuce, and jack cheese on french white bread, toasted. We bought the bread and veggies 2 days ago at the Fruit and Bread Barn and the cheese Patch got from her work. It was Deeeeelicious. You have got to try this sandwich, preferably with home made bread or freshly made bread from your favorite local bakery. Gotta tell ya, these tomatoes are incredibly flavorful and juicy. I can only imagine how much better they are straight off the vine. If my sister reads this she'll probably flip cuz I hated tomatoes as a kid. I still get a little squeamish when I think of it, but I know they are good for me, and I know that I like the taste if not always into the texture. This one however was amazing.

Snack: apples, crackers and cheddar cheese with unsweetened tea

Dessert: strawberries