Cruciferous Soup and Smoky Apple Baked Beans

Did a lot of cooking yesterday. First we had a Fuhrman lunch and later was a McDougall dinner. OK, the dinner was good for those who follow Fuhrman, too, but I tend to think of recipes like that one to be more in line with McDougall, especially since I first learned of it on the McDougall forums.


Lunch was another recipe from the Fuhrman forums, this one from a member known as "horsecrazy."

The recipe, as written:

10-10-2011, 01:48 PM  #69
Horsecrazy
 A cruciferous soup
A cruciferous soup that I made last night.
1 - qt bottle Lakewood Carrot Juice
2 - medium to large onions, chopped
3 - cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 head of medium sized cabbage, chopped
3/4 head of cauliflower (chopped in smallish pieces)
2 - 8 oz packages portobello mushrooms, lightly chopped in food processor
1 - 15 oz can Delmonte, no salt added diced tomatoes with garlic, basil and oregano
2 to 3 TBL cashew butter
Spinach
Start onions and garlic cooking in carrot juice at a simmer, when starting to soften add cabbage and cauliflower. When those start to get tender, add mushrooms and continue to simmer. Put tomatoes and cashew butter in either food processor or Vita Mix and blend and add to the soup. When soup is finished, then add however much spinach you like and once it wilts, serve.
If you wanted to add kale or collards rather than spinach, add toward the beginning, along with the cabbage and cauliflower.
If you want to use cashews instead of cashew butter, better to use vita mix. I opted for the cashew butter since the food processor was already out for the mushrooms. Decided not to dirty anything else!
https://forums.drfuhrman.com/showpost.php?p=325946&postcount=69

Remember that this link will only work if you're already a member of Dr. Fuhrman's pay message board.

My changes:
I used about 3/4 of a very small head of cabbage, one about the size of a softball. I'll roast up the last sliver later today as a snack.

Frozen, not fresh, cauliflower.

Store brand no-salt added tomatoes.

Only a tablespoon of the cashew butter.

Next time, instead of hand-slicing the cabbage I'll toss it into the food processor, as long as it's out for the mushrooms, anyway.

Another hit with the hubby! He ate 2 large bowls of it and told me to save the leftovers for him to eat during the week as a snack after dinner. I thought it was just okay, with the carrot juice as the predominate flavor. The brown of the portobellos mixed with the orange of the juice gave it an unappetizing color. Will I make it again? Maybe, if my husband were sick or depressed and needed a pick-me-up. It's a bit too labor-intensive for a lunch meal.

On to dinner. As mentioned above, this was talked about on the McD forums but the recipe is from our favorite fat-free vegan cook, Susan Voisin. You can find the recipe on her web site here.

My changes:
Instead of standing there dicing for a half hour I used a small bag of frozen diced onions and peppers. Jeff Novick taught me to love frozen vegetables.

I left out the chipotle pepper, only because I would have sworn I had a jar of it but couldn't find it when getting the ingredients together.

What will I change in the future? I might leave out the Liquid Smoke. I was never a fan of this product and it was the predominant smell and taste in these beans. Maybe it's a Southern thing and takes some getting used to. 

One big change I'll make in the future is to NOT uncover the beans after the first half hour. Maybe that's how traditional baked beans are made, but I found them too dry and crusty. 

As with just about every dish I make, my husband loved it and went back for seconds, then thirds. I made a pig of myself with one large bowl of it, way more than Dr. McDougall's recommended 1-cup of beans per day rule, but I won't have any beans today to make up for it.

Will I make it again? Probably. I hadn't made real baked beans in a while and my husband really liked this. He commented on the fruitiness of it and I reminded him it had apples and he started gushing about how wonderfully the apples go with the beans, that he would never have thought of doing that. Um, dearie? Remember 2 weeks ago I made the Pioneer Baked Beans that also weds apples and beans together? Oops, he forgot. He did say that the taste was totally different between the two bean dishes, which is why he didn't remember. As I said, these beans had a heavy Liquid Smoke taste, but the Pioneer Baked Beans is more sugary because of the canned Bush baked beans. He said he likes Susan's beans better. Good thing this was easy and quick to put together.

I was brought up in the 1950's and '60's on canned baked beans. Actually, they were the canned "pork & beans" with tiny pieces of ham fat floating around that my brothers and I used to fight over, not homemade beans. My husband didn't even get that, because his mother hated beans and never served them. The closest my husband ever got to a legume as a kid was canned peas. The first time I ever made a dish with beans in it he thought they were the greatest thing on earth. You know what? They may be! 

So, thanks, Susan, for another wonderful recipe.