KITCHEN SINK SOUP

I threw in everything but the kitchen sink.  The trick to this is to do things in layers so you don't have one thing overcooked and something else under-cooked.

1 carrot chopped
4 celery stalks chopped
1 large onion chopped
8 cloves of garlic thinly sliced
2 russet potatoes quartered and sliced
2 small yams halved and sliced into rounds
1 large parsnip peeled and rough chopped
1 small head of broccoli cut the florets off and dice the stalks keeping the two separate
1 large zucchini halved and sliced
1 head of lacinato kale deveined and chopped
1 15 oz can of kidney beans (rinsed well)
1 15 oz can of pinto beans (rinsed well)
1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans (rinsed well)
15 oz can low sodium diced tomatoes
10 cups Roasted Vegetable Stock (or other low or no sodium vegetable stock)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons dried rosemary (crushed)
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 teaspoons smoked sea salt (or regular works as well)
1 teaspoon crushed black pepper

Saute the carrot, celery and onion in a dry non-stick pan using the stock to keep it from sticking.  Add the garlic and continue the saute until you can smell the garlic cooking. When the vegetables begin to soften, sprinkle them with the oregano, thyme, rosemary and paprika.  Add the rinsed beans and Vegetable Stock..  Add the potatoes and yams.  You are going to bring this mixture to a slow boil and continue until the potatoes and yams soften.  Add the salt and pepper.

In a steamer first steam the parsnip and the broccoli stalks for about 3 minutes.  Add the broccoli florets and steam for another 2 minutes.  Finally add the kale and steam until the leaves are tender, about 3 more minutes.  Add all of these to the pot with the stock and beans mixture.  Mix well and test for seasonings.

THE USDA ANSWERS THE QUESTION ABOUT HEALTH AND EGGS

Watch this video

There's a lot of controversy about how healthy, safe and nutritious eggs are.  This video shows the back and forth between Marketing and Advertising and the United States Department of Agriculture.  Hint, the USDA has rules about truth in advertising so this is the exchange between the two.  Kind of interesting and flies in the face of everything we've been taught.

CHICKPEA TUNA OR CHICKEN SALAD

This is really easy and really tasty.  You can adjust each of the ingredients to fit into your favorite chicken or tuna salad recipe.


1 15 oz can chickpeas/garbanzo beans rinsed (they're the same thing)
1 stalk celery fine dice
3 tsp sweet relish
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dill (dry) seed or 1 tablespoon fresh finely chopped
2 tsp dijon mustard
2 Tbl mayonnaise or Aioli  (this is no oil and no dairy mayo)
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Pulse the chickpeas in a food processor.  Don't over do it.  You want them to be chopped but not a paste.  Add all of the remaining ingredients and mix well.  This will taste better the longer it sits.  Adjust the mayo, mustard and seasonings to your own taste buds.

MOTHER NATURE CANNOT BE TRAPPED IN A BOTTLE

This interesting video explains the benefits of eating your vitamins (antioxidants) rather than taking supplements.

The vitamins in food act together like a symphony to create the balance of necessary vitamins and nutrients your body needs to fight off disease.  If you have an abundance of one particular vitamin your body will store it to be used when it needs it.  Studies show that it is impossible to say one vitamin will help you with one particular ailment when, in fact, it's a combination of all of the vitamins and nutrients you get from food working together to benefit your body's needs.  It's the marketing by pharmaceutical and supplements companies that sell you on a particular drug or supplement.  Don't believe everything they tell you about "The Magic Bullet".  Eating right is all you need.

It's really simple, to save big money and improve your health:

1.  Don't buy or take supplements
2.  Don't buy or eat animal products ever (meat, fish, poultry)
3.  Don't buy or eat dairy or eggs
4.  Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants. Michael Pollan, Author, Journalist

GALLO PINTO

This is a staple in Central America, specifically Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  It can be found at any meal and is often accompanied by a bottled sauce called Salsa Lizano.  Loosely translated it means "spotted rooster", and it is made by cooking the rice with the beans.  This WFPB version is done with brown rice instead of white and is accompanied by Pico De Gallo and fresh cilantro.  It doesn't contain a lot of spices as you add condiments when you serve it.  I like to cook it with onions and garlic powder and instead of water I use RVS (roasted vegetable stock).  Make a big batch because it freezes well and can be used for any meal or quick snack.  Below I used it in a quick taco salad served as you see it above with mixed green salad, tomatoes, carrots and radishes.  I tossed it together with a spicy Thousand Islands Dressing using my aioli recipe and adding ketchup and sricha sauce.  You can also just add rinsed black beans to already prepared rice.

TODAY I MADE....

I'm introducing a new section that will show people what I make on a daily basis.  One of the biggest complaints I hear from people is that this is so hard, so I thought I'd document, as often as I can remember, what I made and what I bought that was already made.  You can check in on this page by clicking on the tab TODAY I at the top of the blog.  I'll have the most current date at the top.  I'm obviously not eating all of this and I do give some of the food to my twin aunts that in a nursing home because I want them to be able to continue on a WFPB diet.

February 11, 2014



2 loaves of sourdough bread with chia seeds and flaxseed meal
2 pumpkin/banana breads
1 batch of cream cheeze
1 batch of aioli mayo
1 pot of split pea with lentil soup
For food; today I ate a bowl of cheerios with bananas and almond milk, honey crisp apple, toast with cream cheeze, pistachios, bowl of roasted cauliflower soup, not so beefy stew, Green salad

UNDERSTANDING NUTRITION

      PART OF A WHOLE FOOD PLANT BASED DIET (PHOTO CREDIT: LUCAS)

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry, Cornell

The Health Care Doctors Forgot: Why Ordinary Food Will Be the New Medicine of the Future

Posted: 02/03/2014 6:01 pm EST Updated: 02/03/2014 6:59 pm EST

Few if any topics get more press than the effect of food on our health. It's constantly present, even if buried in our subconscious mind. Sex, politics and religion are intensely personal topics, but food and health is in that same rank.

Intense interest, however, does not translate into a consensus on which diet best nourishes us. I've been a professional in nutritional science for more than five decades. But I must confess my disappointment in the inability of my field to help the public to understand and use the underlying science of nutrition.

Medical schools almost completely ignore the topic. Biomedical funding agencies mostly give it a pass, at best dedicating only a small percentage of their funding for nutrition research. The public therefore must fend for itself when trying to understand which nutrition information is correct and which is not.

Yet, if we assess the public's interest in this topic, it is massive, but also it is massively disconnected. Information on this topic is served up by food companies, who cook it for their own tastes. Coalitions of industry join hands and minds to "help" government authorities develop the right kind of food and health policy -- I've been there, seen that. Rather like monopolies controlling the marketplace by controlling the information.

I hesitate to call this mess a conspiracy, because they are doing nothing more than pleasing their shareholders and selling products to customers what they want to buy. I'm a free market guy, and I must say, "It is what it is." But, I strongly object to those who claim they have supporting health evidence when it is nothing more than a stretch! Been there, seen that, too.

We live within a system loaded with an unfathomable number of details that invite abuse. Some might call this an invitation for conspiracy (an evil thing, I think). But I prefer the explanation that we are living within a paradigm that encourages the production of details that invite abuse. We think of nutrition as the summation, more or less, of the independent functions of individual nutrients and related food chemicals. Think nutrient supplements -- out of context bits of whole food. But we now have exceptionally strong evidence that they do not serve our long-term health. Think integrative nutrition or integrative medicine, strategies that promote combinations of even more individual nutrients or medicines that compound the problem. Think recommended daily intakes of individual nutrients and specific quantities of nutrients in foods and on food labels as if they infer better science. Think also of targeted drug therapy that is generally unmindful of side effects virtually guaranteed to happen.

It's all the same. It's unacceptable to assume that we can understand all we need to know about overall health by identifying the properties of individual nutrients acting in isolation. It is not because nutrients don't have these properties. But when provided by whole food, they work in symphony (the topic of my book, Whole), harmoniously when provided by plant-based foods, discordantly when provided by animal based foods or in concocted processed foods (even if made from plant parts).

An impressive body of evidence now shows that a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet produces profound effects like reversing and treating heart disease, diabetes and many other ailments and chronic pains. Other evidence suggests similar effects on cancers. These outcomes are much more than I once thought, especially concerning my having come from a family farm and milking cows then doing graduate work to "prove" that the high-protein, high-fat animal-based foods diet was best for our health. I succeeded only in proving myself wrong.

Unfortunately, this WFPB strategy has long been a secret, perhaps the best-kept secret in medical history. Remarkably, it can treat and reverse existing ailments (quickly) as well as to prevent future ailments. No other diet plan comes close, especially those of the low carb ilk.

It is time to reject frivolous arguments to the contrary. If there is merit to alternative hypotheses, it is time to use them to prove wrong those of us in the profession who have studied and used this approach to solve illness. It's time for the naysayers to show that they can do better if they wish to be heard.

The stakes are now too high to allow for self-serving interests paving our way to health. We have imposing problems, many tracing their origins to food choice. Health care costs, environmental degradation and unnecessary ethical behavior head a list of impending crises that must be resolved for the sake of our humanity and our planet. More of this commentary may be found here.

PUMPKIN OR BANANA MUFFINS

To make muffins, use paper cupcake paper cups and muffin pans.  Put one paper cupcake (muffin) cup in each of the muffin slots.  Fill each cup 3/4 full.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  A toothpick in the center should come out dry if they're done.  

Here are the recipes:

Pumpkin Muffins/bread recipe

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER SOUP

My niece made a version of this the other day and it was tasty and easy.  I added a couple my own tweeks to the recipe that truly add richness and flavor.  Great meal for a cold winter night.  We're suffering through 75 degree weather in California but thinking about our freezing friends on the East coast.  Enjoy!