Just Another Meatless Monday -- Afgan Carrot Hotpot

Here's Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live suggested meal plan:

                Breakfast: fresh fruit

                Lunch: salad, beans on top, and more fruit

                Dinner: salad and 2 cooked vegetables (1 lb.), fruit dessert

Here’s what I'm eating today:

                Breakfast: smoothie

                Lunch: Afghan Carrot Hotpot and Salaata

                Dinner: chopped salad, banana for dessert

I adapted the lunch recipes from The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian by Sally Butcher. The author is based in London, and the book has a decidedly English tone, but the measurements are all given in U.S. terms so no translation or conversion is necessary. I got the book from the library, and there are some other recipes that I’d like to try. Adapting the recipes I used to fit the Eat to Live principles was easy. I basically just omitted the oil and salt. I also subbed ras al hanout, a Moroccan spice mixture, which I had, for ground cloves, which I didn’t have.

For the hotpot, I just put the following in a large pot in this order:

1.5 cups chana dal (from Indian grocery)

2 medium onions, chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 habenaro chili, ribs and seeds removed, chopped fine

About 1 inch ginger root, peeled and chopped fine

1 pound baby carrots

3 large tomatoes, chopped

1 heaping tsp ground turmeric

1 heaping tsp ground cumin

1 heaping tsp ground coriander

1/8 tsp ras el hanout (recipe called for ground cloves, but I thought this would do)

1 Tbs tomato paste

1 Tbs red wine vinegar (recipe called for 2 Tbs sour grape juice (a specialty item) or 2 tsp vinegar)

Then I poured a good 2 cups water over all and brought to a boil, then simmered for an hour.

The original recipe instructed to fry the onions in a little oil, then add the garlic, chili, and ginger, followed by the spices, carrots, and chana dal when the onion had softened, followed a few minutes later by the tomato chunks and paste. Then salt to taste plus the sour grape juice/vinegar and water. Omitting the sautéing actually speeded up the prep work; although I probably lost some flavor this way, I upped the spices a bit from the original recipe to compensate and the hot pepper was still plenty hot enough, even though I took out the seeds and ribs. If you don’t like hot, I suggest a milder chili.

When I make this again, I’ll probably just use a can of diced tomatoes and their juice, plus enough water to make a little more than 2 cups liquid, instead of the fresh tomatoes. Also, the author says you can make this with pumpkin instead of carrots. I’ll probably try using butternut squash in the fall. I made this on Friday and had the last of it for lunch today. It was still very good and plenty hot.

As for the Salaata, I just chopped:

1 cucumber, seeded

Fresh tomatoes chopped to equal the amount of cuke

3 green onions/scallions, using both white and green parts

A good handful of cilantro

A good handful of mint

2 jalapeno peppers, some ribs and seeds removed (chopped fine)

Then dressed with juice of 1 lemon and popped in the fridge until dinnertime.

The only real change I made to the original recipe was to omit the salt and a chopped small onion, as I thought the green onions would be enough onion-y flavor. I finished off the last of this today, too. If I made this again to go with the hotpot, I’d probably omit the jalapeno so that the salad would be a refreshing counterpoint to the heat of the chili in the hotpot.

If you’re not following the Eat to Live plan, Sally Butcher suggested serving the hotpot over plain white rice, with yogurt and bread in addition to the salaata.

This was my first time trying these recipes – or any from this book. I don’t buy cookbooks much anymore, but I do get them a lot from the library. This one’s good. I'll definitely make this hotpot again. In addition to recipes, it has interesting sidebar articles. And the breezy tone of the author makes it fun to read.

 

Salt Sugar Fat

Michael Moss is an investigative reporter, and he has written an eye-opening book on food manufacturing and marketing. Salt Sugar Fat goes a long way in explaining why eliminating processed foods from your diet helps you lose weight and improve your health. It also helps explain why both Dr. Fuhrman and Mark Bittman experienced a profound change in food cravings after following their respective eating plans for a while.

Want to know why you can’t eat just one potato chip? Most food in American supermarkets is engineered to get you to crave it and to buy more of it. Food companies have figured out the “bliss point” of their sweet products, creating cravings for sweets. While there is a point at which a food can taste too sweet, there is no upper limit on fat. No wonder almost anything – including an ice cream sundae – can be improved by adding bacon. Salt is another ingredient that creates food cravings. And the interplay between these three ingredients – salt, sugar, and fat – can be very powerful.

Food manufacturers play on our desires for convenient, inexpensive foods (as well as our biology), and load up their products with these three ingredients to give us more and more of what they have conditioned us to crave. Salt, sugar, and fat cover up the unpalatable taste of all the other ingredients and processes used to make processed foods more and more inexpensive and convenient. Even the inventor of Cheez Whiz, who loved the stuff and ate it daily, discovered one day in retirement that Kraft had removed real cheese from the product and left it tasting to him like “axle grease.”

The food manufacturers have succeeded in their quest for more and more sales and profits. Americans now eat triple the amount of cheese and pseudo-cheese than we did in the early 1970s. Cheese consumption has increased 3 pounds per person per year since 2001. Consumption of sugar-sweetened soda more than doubled in the 30 years since the 1970s, and although it has since tapered off from its high of 40 gallons per year per person, consumption of other sweet drinks, such as teas, energy drinks, and sports drinks, has increased.

This book is full of interesting stories about people involved in the food business, fascinating facts, and insight into food manufacturing corporations. I guarantee you will be amazed by what you learn from this book. You will never look at a food label or supermarket shelf in the same way again.

VB6

There's no question that eating according to Dr. Fuhrman's "nutritarian" principles is not always easy. If the thought of going 100% vegan 100% of the time seems too daunting, Mark Bittman has devised a flexible plan that is not nearly as demanding to follow. He calls it VB6, and the title of the book tells it all: eat vegan before 6:00 [p.m.].

This slim book explains why he began eating this way and the considerations he took into account in creating this way of life for himself. He discusses the problems of both the Standard American Diet (SAD) and various weight-loss diets, as well as why this eating plan worked to help him lose weight and have better health. He gives lots of tips on how to make this eating plan work for you and your particular lifestyle, and nearly half of the book consists of recipes. And Mark Bittman's recipes are good! As usual, many of his recipes give several variations on the theme (which increases their usefulness), and he includes some very basic "building block recipes," including big-batch rice, grains, and beans, and "fast and flavorful vegetable stock" to make sticking to this plan easier. He includes a 28-day meal plan for those who want more structure in getting started

The VB6 plan is easier and less strict than the Eat to Live plan. Bittman allows oil even in the vegan part of the day, and you get to eat whatever you want for at least one meal per day, too. But he sides with Fuhrman in encouraging home-cooked rather than processed foods, and lots of fruits and vegetables over meat and dairy products.

Even with this more flexible, relaxed eating plan, Bittman reports losing weight and having better blood tests and overall health. He also reports that his dinnertime cravings began to change after only a few weeks of eating vegan meals for breakfast and lunch -- he needed less food to feel satisfied, was happy with just a few bites of dessert (or none at all), and ate such items as pizza and burgers less frequently. 

Right now, I'm happy following the Eat to Live plan. But I can see how VB6 would be much easier for me to follow while traveling, for example.

Eat to Live

The See Your Folks website got me thinking about life expectancy, so I looked for a few life expectancy generators.  SSA has an easy one at SSA.gov. And it is useful in deciding when to begin your Social Security payments. There's a longer one at UPenn. The 2 life expectancy generators came out a year apart when I used them, so the quick SSA one is probably just as good as the longer one, but it is interesting to see the factors that influence your longevity when you fill out the longer questionnaire.

Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., got my interest when I really began trying to eat healthier. It provides an easy-to-read explanation of how the Standard American Diet (SAD) falls short on nutrition and promotes bad health. Most chapters begin with a short anecdote about a person who had good results following Dr. Fuhrman's "nutritarian" plan. It's simple. For the first six weeks, eat fruits, vegetables, and beans, with some nuts and ground flaxseed. You can add some starchy vegetables and whole grains and avocado, but dairy products, animal products, fruit juice, oils, and snacking between meals are off-limits. You completely eliminate processed foods.

Eat to Live also includes meal plans, recipes, and a final chapter answering Frequently Asked Questions. Although the first six weeks are strict, the Life Plan does allow for 10% deviation from the basic plan -- about 200 calories per day of animal, oil, or dairy, if you wish, or about one meal per week, so you can still enjoy Thanksgiving turkey and pie, or other holiday and special occasion meals.

One of Dr. Fuhrman's mottos is: The Salad is the Main Dish. So I took that to heart last summer and ate chopped salads with a variety of colorful vegetables and fruits for lunch and dinner, and a smoothie with greens and blueberries for breakfast. Summer is an easy time for salads. There are lots of fresh veggies and fruits available, and the farmers market provides plenty of choices. Even though I ate basically the same meal daily, the variety of fruits and vegetables kept me from becoming bored with my food. But I lost my taste for salads as the weather became cooler last fall, and fell back into my old eating habits.

I didn't feel quite as energetic and regained my lost weight, even though I tried to keep up my exercise routine. Going back to a "nutritarian" way of eating this summer has given me back my energy, and I feel much better. My blood pressure and blood test results have improved, too. And the weight is falling off again, without hunger pangs.

See Your Folks

A small item in today's Washington Post Health section highlighted See Your Folks, a website created by four guys in less than 24 hours. Using life expectancy data from the World Health Organization, the site -- seeyourfolks.com -- tells you how many times you will see your "mum and dad" before they die.

Why did they create this site? Well, in their own words:

• We believe that increasing awareness of death can help us to make the most of our lives. The right kind of reminders can help us to focus on what matters, and perhaps make us better people.

Try it. You might be surprised at the results.

PS -- Mom will be happy to know she is already living 5 years beyond her life expectancy.

Arlington County Fair

It's that time of year again: county fair season. Arlington may be small, and we may not have any agriculture to speak of, but we do have a county fair. It has everything you could want -- fair food (most important!), games, rides, entertainment, and exhibits. I spent an enjoyable evening at our county fair.

 

 

 

FOOD

 

 

EXHIBITS

 

 

GAMES

 

RIDES (ok, mostly for kiddies!)

 

 

RACING PIGS (they're fast!)

 

Go have some fun at your nearby county fair.



April Tag

I finally did the April Tag techniques from Tim Holtz' blog last week. Again, I just used what I had on hand rather than buying the exact items Tim used to create his tag. The main technique this month was stamping on the embossing folder to get the effect of the stamped image appearing behind the embossed image. Tim used his own Reflections stamp, which stamps reversed text that appears correctly once you run the paper in the embossing folder through the sizzix machine. Since I didn't have any Reflections stamps, I first tried using a tiny leaf background stamp. This worked OK but the leaves were very tiny and the green leaves were hard to see against the background of blue and green distress ink I had already put on the tag. For my second attempt, I used one of my favorite background stamps, which has diamond shapes, and I chose a contrasting dark green ink to show up against a new background of pink distress inks. This worked MUCH better. The rest of the stamp featured lots of embossing powders on a grungepaper die cut. This is one of Tim Holtz' sizzix dies, although not the one he used on his tag. I like it because you can use the heart, wings, and crown separately or together. It is very versatile. I used distress embossing powder on the heart, but regular gold embossing powder on the crown and white/iridescent embossing powder on the wings. To hide the fact that the embossing folder is shorter than the tag, I glued paper with the word "gratitude" (printed from a font on my computer) on the bottom of the tag. I would like to play around some more with the technique of stamping on embossing folders. It does create a very nice effect.