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Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 11 a.m. PST

Title: Making the Change – Why people resist cost-free health

Description:  In this live webinar, Dr. McDougall, MD, will discuss why people are hesitant to change their diet even if they will save thousands of dollars. Q&A will follow.

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Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 11 a.m. PST

Title: Cardiologists Acting Criminally

Description:  In this live webinar, Dr. McDougall, MD, will discuss why some cardiologists withhold life-saving information from their patients. Q&A will follow.

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Confessions of a Low Class Vegan: 3 Years Later

A few years ago, Karl Seff, PhD, did a video for the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii called "Confessions of a Low Class Vegan" that I wrote about in this blog post (along with a bunch of other off-topic stuff).

Now he's done it again. The reason for the re-do was that the brightness was off on his original recording so he was invited back to give the talk again. Much of the information is repeated, sometimes word-for-word, in the new one, but this man is such a joy to listen to, it's worth hearing it all twice.



I really should make more of these super-simple, low-class meals. I did it a number of times during those hot summer days, and they're so much easier to do in the Instant Pot. With winter rapidly approaching, I guess it's time to get serious about streamlining and simplifying meals. I already started the Great Winter Stock-Up and have been buying extra rice and dried beans whenever I can. I do have to check the dates on the canned vegetables - I know some of them must be outdated by now - and get fresh ones for this coming winter. After watching this new video this afternoon I even tossed a bag of wheatberries into the Amazon cart - he says they go great with home made into beans, especially with added beets, zucchini, and beet greens. I even ordered freeze-dried soup vegetables to make bean soups with handfuls of dried veggies when snowed in so I don't have to make those treks to the local mom and pop grocery store as often as I did the past 2 winters. That's something Dr. Seff never has to worry about in Hawaii, and if/when we ever move back to Florida, neither will I.

Speaking of simple, I better go check on my lentils and soon-to-be mashed potatoes. Unlike Dr. Seff, my lentils, Sloppy Lentil Joes, do have more than 1 or 2 ingredients. Still, it's all tossed into one pot and simmered an hour. My spuds are in the Instant Pot cooking up with the milk and spices - you can't get much simpler than that, right?

Beans and Rice

We've been eating a lot of this lately.



And of course, a side dish of veggies and some kind of sauce to go with it. Most of the time I use Chef AJ's Yummy Sauce, some variation of a nutritional yeast based cheese sauce, Mary McDougall's mushroom gravy, or just dump some store-bought salsa on top.

It's not always plain old beans, either. One of our new favorites is Chef AJ's Red Lentil Chili.



While she enjoys hers over potatoes, we prefer rice or Happy Herbivore's cornbread.



I still can't get our son to go along with this meal (He's still as picky an eater at 30 as he was at 3), but now my younger brother and his wife eat this way a couple times a week for dinner and he said he takes leftovers with him to work every day. I'll make a McDougaller out of him yet!

As you may be able to tell, now that summer's heat is here I'm not doing as much experimenting in the kitchen. I've made some of the simple recipes Chef AJ demos in this video:



but mostly it's been some old tried-and-true sauces over beans and rice, beans and potatoes, beans and pasta, beans and quinoa, beans and faro, etc. with veggies. I pop the rice into the rice cooker, the veggies into the microwave, and when all is done, mix them together in the rice cooker to keep warm until my husband and I feel like eating. People have told me I could also cook the veggies in the rice cooker at the same time, but I prefer the softer bite from microwaving. So one extra dish to wash, no biggie. My kitchen stays a bit cooler (it stays a steady 85 during the summer months, thanks to being on the top floor with a flat roof overhead), and every degree counts. 

Casseroles and other dishes that require the oven will have to wait for October again. With the Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook coming out in early September, I'll be itching to try new meals about then. For now, we're happy with our monotonous meals of beans and rice.

New Chef AJ Video

Chef AJ, of the book Unprocessed and the Chef and the Dietician video series on YouTube, as a great new video out. Filmed in her own kitchen, she tells of how she finally lost those last few pounds that were dogging her and shows some of her favorite fast meals, some requiring no recipe at all.



After hearing her say she now substitutes beans in many of the recipes in her book Unprocessed, I'm now going to dig out that book again and take a new look at them. Looks like I found some new recipes to try while waiting for Jeff's new video to be released.

Making Rice Milk At Home

I love rice milk and use it almost exclusively for cooking and in tea. I know I really shouldn't be drinking the Rice Dreams brand because of the small amount of oil in it, but it's tastier than soy or nut based milks, and less gritty than oat milk.

Mary McDougall posted a few decades ago her recipe for making rice milk in your own kitchen using a cup of cooked rice (white was fine, she said) and 3 1/2 cups water, whirred together in a blender. The addition of a bit of sugar and/or vanilla is optional.

This person on the Protective Diet blog makes hers using a half cup of uncooked rice and 3 1/2 cups of water, then straining it through a nut/paint bag.


If my cars stay iced in much longer I'm going to have to start making my own milk, like it or not. If I have any rice already cooked (In my new Zojirushi Rice Cooker - another post), I'll use that, but if not, I'll try this method of using the rice uncooked. 

Just before the last 3 storms that dumped 2 feet of snow and ice on us and encased our cars in solid sleet, I picked up a jar of raw almond butter. My son prefers the almond milk when he makes his mac and not cheese for lunches and dinners, and Ann Esselstyn says almond milk is what she and Dr. Esselstyn uses. Although I still have 2 quarts left in the pantry, they won't last forever, especially with more snow predicted for next week. As luck would have it, I purchased a nut milk bag recently, before all this bad weather hit, but never stocked up on almonds. The only place that sells them is the HFS, and even though my husband has taken the bus down to the store a few times since we've been snowed in, they haven't gotten any nuts in. I'm so glad I thought to buy the nut butter!


I made this for him once before and poured it into a washed out almond milk box and he never noticed a difference. Isn't it sad that I still have to play these kinds of tricks with a 30 year old? I feel sorry for any future wife of his! LOL

When these containers we currently have are gone, I'll tell him what I did in the past and let him know this is how we're going to do it from now on. It'll save a heck of a lot of money, and one little jar of almond butter is easier to store than a few quarts of ready made milk. And I'll set a good example by making my own rice milk, too. At least I'll finally get to use that strainer bag.

Dee's Christmas Soup

A few years ago, McDougaller "landog" posted this recipe he called "Dee's Christmas Soup," so-named because he likened the red and green veggies in it to Christmas colors. In going with my Christmas-colored food theme this week, I decided to make up a batch for yesterday's Christmas lunch. Here's how he shared the recipe:

Dee's Christmas soup
Can of diced tomatoes (no added salt)
can of tomato sauce (no added salt)
2 cans of water (rinse out the cans of tomato)
kale (lots)
chopped onions
sliced carrots
1/2 - 1 lb. frozen corn
black pepper
paprika
oregano
basil

Bring to boil, then simmer 20 minutes.


Here's how I made it:

Tomatoes - I used a box of Pomi chopped.
Sauce - 2 8-ounce cans of Hunt's no-salt added tomato sauce
Kale - About a cup of frozen chopped kale
Onions - Half a bag of frozen diced
Carrots - a cup of shredded carrots. The rest of thebag went into the lasagna for dinner.
Corn - a whole bag of frozen sweet white corn
Spices - I just went by feel and even though I added some early in the cooking, I added more near the end. I used maybe a tablespoon total of oregano, a teaspoon each of paprika and basil, then another half teaspoon of smoked paprika. Pepper I added at the table.

It went together nice and quick, perfect for a lazy holiday lolling about watching A Christmas Story for the 5th time in one day while opening gifts. Served with a slice of hearty home-made multi-grain bread and it filled our tummies nicely.

When my husband is finally able to tolerate beans again after his gout finally settles down (Dr. Fuhrman says in a few months to a year, in some posts on his forums, before reintroducing higher-oxilate foods), I'll toss a can of either kidney or cannelini beans in the pot and make this hearty enough for a dinner soup meal.

Disorderly Lentils

Finally, a new recipe post!

It's Disorderly Lentils from the McDougall Quick and Easy cookbook. I know I never made this in the past because for a long time red lentils were hard to come by. Now that our grocery store is carrying the Goya ones, I have no problem buying as many bags of these beauties as I want. It's so much nicer to pay under $2 instead of the almost $5 a pound that the HFS charges for organic red lentils.

Disorderly Lentils

Serving Size: 6    
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minues

2 cups red lentils
4 cups water
1 onion -- chopped
1 green bell pepper -- chopped
1/2 cup grated carrot
2 cups low sodium tomato sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce, low sodium
2 tablespoons parsley flakes
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh garlic
1/2 teaspoon basil

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. 

Recipe Hint: This recipe could also be served over baked potatoes or grains. This recipe freezes well and reheats well.

McDougall Quick and Easy Cookbook
Mary McDougall
page 116

First of all, unless you're also serving a salad, soup and/or cooked veggies with this, don't believe the "serves 6" unless all you serve is a measured cup of this to each person. In this family of big eaters, this makes a comfortable 4 servings when served over large baked potatoes or large (2 cups or so) servings of rice, couscous or quinoa.

Now that that's settled, on to my changes.

Not many, really. I used the whole bag of Goya red lentils, and instead of water, cooked them up in a pot with veggie broth. 

I used half a bag of frozen diced onions and green peppers instead of fresh.

And I skipped the bay leaf. I'm not crazy about the taste of them, and I always forget to remove the leaf before serving, a real no-no unless the cook is trying to purposely injure one of the people she's cooking for.

I've been having bad luck with potatoes again, and just yesterday tossed out an entire 5 pound bag of red potatoes because each and every one was green under the skin. And I'm still re-introducing foods after hubby's gout flare so I wanted to avoid high protein quinoa for now, so I served this over plain old brown rice.  

Half a serving

Yes, I'm calling what's in the picture half a serving, because after I snapped the shot my husband insisted I add at least twice as many lentils to the bowl, completely covering the rice, and then some. After eating that, he asked for more, and still ate a bit more than what's pictured for his seconds but with less rice.

I'm glad his gout flare is over, because so far every food I've re-introduced he's tolerated well with no twinges to the toe.

This was a good tasting meal, but very gassy for some reason. Maybe because it was cooked in broth? Maybe too many onions? Maybe we're just not used to all the legumes and have to start our gut flora from scratch again? My poor husband said he was in agony waiting for his train to pull into the station the next morning so he could sneak off into an isolated area and let 'er rip. After that, he said, the rest of the morning was back to normal. Poor guy! LOL

Confessions of a Low Class Vegan

I discovered this video a few weeks ago when someone on either the Fuhrman or McDougall forums mentioned it. I had no time and/or energy to watch it then, so saved it, burned it to a disc, and put it aside for future viewing. I do this with lectures I really want to see because things tend to vanish on-line, and what's there today may not be there tomorrow.

I started watching it in the afternoon and had to pause it to get supper going and take care of a few other things, and didn't get a chance to get back to it until after dinner. By then my husband had collapsed into the bed next to me and was watching along with me.

He was impressed. He said as much as he loves all these new recipes I've been trying out, he wouldn't mind if we went back to the old way of eating we used to do. That was really easy - I made the same foods each day of the week, week after week, with only slight variations. I did as Dr. McDougall says to do - one starch was the centerpiece and the rest of the meal evolved around it. For instance, Monday was usually a casserole with rice or potatoes as the base or a Jeff Novick SNAP meal; Tuesday was rice with veggies and each person chose which sauce between all the soys and terriyaki we have to add to their own bowl; Wednesday was a non-tomato-based pasta dish; Thursday was a potato-based meal; Friday pizza, made with homemade whole wheat crust and either nutritional yeast-based cheese or cheeseless; Saturday was pasta with tomato-based sauce; Sunday was burger or other sandwich day on whole wheat rolls.

Plain and simple. Many potato meals were just baked potatoes with a bowl of veggies on the side and maybe some gravy. Many Wednesday pasta meals were pasta with veggies and either gravy or a nutritional yeast cheese sauce. Saturday pasta was pasta and jarred sauce, nothing else.

When the flu hit, the schedule went out the window, and we had lots of pasta meals, lots of rice and veggie meals, and (big confession here) delivery pizza or Chinese food on days neither of us felt energetic enough to cook.

In-between all this, the elderly relative I mentioned many times before started going downhill fast, and every few days we would get a call from the nursing home, sometimes at 2 am, telling us to meet her in the local hospital's emergency room. After some blood work was done they would admit her with IV fluids running to rehydrate her, and the next day the doctor would send her back to the nursing home. This was repeated a number of times, even after the doctor told the staff at the nursing home her kidney's are failing, there's nothing to be done for her at any hospital. They finally had us sign a DNH  - Do Not Hospitalize - form and hospice care was started. Finally the nursing staff at the nursing home realized the end was near, and a week after starting hospice care she died a peaceful death at age 94. So we now had the wake, funeral, and probate details to run around with. During all this my husband and I were still coughing with the flu, and more than once I had to leave the church to go outside with a coughing fit as not to disturb the other mourners.

But now that all this is over with, including the flu (knock wood, cross fingers, say a novena) I started cooking more elaborate meals again, as you saw in the the other posts in this blog. It was nice, getting back in the kitchen, and the meals are definitely tasty. Aside from some of chopping, can opening and bag cutting, they went together pretty easily. But one thing most of these meals have in common is the  large number of ingredients. 8 to 12 ingredients in some of these "quick and easy" recipes!

Then we watched this video:



And now we're thinking of going back to our simpler meals. It'll certainly save time in the kitchen and grocery shopping, and may even save us a bit of money, too. Go back to making up pans full of roasted veggies, mashed potatoes/Caulipots and gravy, pasta with some jarred sauce and a handful of kale or spinach tossed in, even a loaf of homemade whole grain bread and roasted red pepper hummus. Good, decent food.

Maybe it's time we returned to eating like the low class vegans that we are.

Quick and Easy Salad Dressing

From leftover hummus!

I made red pepper hummus last week and had just a little bit of it left - not enough to dip or to spread on bread for a sandwich - so decided to take a hint form an Internet post and add a bit of water, mixed it all up, and poured it onto the simple salad I had (baby romaine and Cherub tomatoes). Delicious! Tastier, cheaper - and much healthier - than Annie's Organic Goddess Dressing, for sure!

VeganMoFo Day 10 Alfredo Sauce

Wednesdays will be pasta days this month, thanks to Thanksgiving. Today I'll be trying this alfredo sauce by Mary McDougall instead of the one I usually use.

I have no access except by mail-order for those boxes of Mori-Nu so I bought a 1-pound Naysoya silken tofu to use. To lower the sodium I'll probably skip the soy sauce. And knowing this family's love of the nooch, I'll definitely be adding a bit more than a tablespoon!

Although this would probably go okay over just about anything, today I'll be using eggless ribbon noodles.



The recipe and photo for the noodles come from this post on the Penniless Parenting blog.



* Exported from MasterCook *

Alfredo Sauce

Recipe By :Mary McDougall & John McDougall, M.D.
Serving Size : 4 Preparation Time :0:10
Categories : McDougall Acceptable Pasta
Sauces Vegetarian

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
10 1/2 ounces tofu, silken, Mori-Nu Lite
1/2 cup soy milk -- or water
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes
1 teaspoon garlic -- minced
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
black pepper -- freshly ground

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.

Pour into a saucepan and heat through, about 5 minutes. Do not boil.

Serve over pasta, sprinkled with soy parmesan cheese, if desired.

Source:
"The McDougall Quick & Easy Cookbook"
Copyright:
"2001"
T(cooking):
"0:05"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Per Serving: 95 Calories; 5g Fat (47.4% calories from fat); 8g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 335mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 1/2 Lean Meat; 0 Vegetable; 1 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.


Nutr. Assoc. : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

VeganMoFo Day 9 - More Tears

We found out yesterday that after the health insurance pays their share, we'll still owe the hospital over $4,000 for our share of the cost of cardiac rehab. For what - 40 minutes of exercise while the nurses sit on the phone or take turns running to the cafeteria for cupcakes and coffee?!? I have a treadmill and exercise bike at home, and I've already been taking my own blood pressure multiple times a day for years now, so why are we paying them $388 for a 45 minute exercise session? There's no other therapy, no counseling with a pharmacist, dietician, cardiologist or therapist - only exercise, something I can do in my own home and DID do before the heart thing. My husband and I will talk it over together this weekend and if we can't figure out how to beg, borrow or steal $4,000 by Monday I'm just not going back. Of course, I've been in a depressed, pissy mood since we got that notice in the mail yesterday. It's been one bitch of a week - no thyroid med increase, jury duty summons, asthma problems from a moldy library book that forced me to take my rescue meds three nights already, a reprimand from one of the rehab nurses to mind my own business when I called her over to help one guy who was turning blue, and now this. I'm ready to ditch it all - the healthy eating, the exercise, the doctors - and just live life to the fullest and hope I do die early, cuz at least I'll die happy with at least a few pennies in my pocket.

Because we were already running on financial fumes even before my expensive hospitalization (Over $75,000 for the 2 day stay, many charges denied by our insurance) we try make every cent count. In the past, any leftovers from dinner would become my lunches during the week. Now, because my guys don't have to eat low sodium but I do, many of the leftovers I can't touch, so our refrigerator is filling up rapidly with their leavings. Instead of our traditional Friday pizza today I'm insisting we eat leftovers - ALL of us. I still have some rice and veggies and that lentil stew that are salt-free so that's mine, and the boys have leftover spaghetti and Poorman's Meal.



When I made this in the past I used Julie's seitan sausages



or veggie dogs and and a jar of regular spaghetti sauce. I tried it recently with the no salt added/low salt tomato sauce and the guys hated the way it tasted, so this week I made it the way they liked it and I ate that lentil stew on Wednesday.

Hopefully we'll get rid of all the leftovers by Monday and I can post a different recipe for VeganMoFo. I feel like such a poser this year, adding nothing new to the thread. :(