A Break from the Nervous Breakdown - BEANS!!

Ah, something I can control! My beloved beans!

A few days ago, I read this post I had saved in my cardfile from 2010 by a member named Essie on the Fuhrman message boards:

Pinto Beans in Gravy
(Copied from another thread. Ha ha, I get to quote myself.)
Quote:
Pinto beans are naturally pretty creamy, especially if you cook them yourself and let them break apart a bit so they make their own gravy.
Put some chopped onion, celery, carrots, dried oregano, whatever, in to cook with them and let those get completely soft and disappear as the beans cook.
Then scoop up a single portion of the tender beans in their own gravy, stir in about a Tbs of tahini and a tsp or so of nutritional yeast.
Tahini will provide the richness of the butter, as well as more body, and the veggies in your broth (especially celery) and nutritional yeast will give it a savory taste. If your DH likes mushrooms, you could put water-sauteed mushrooms or dried mushrooms in as well. 

Simple, easy, and really can't be messed up! Just my kind of recipe! And I certainly have plenty of pinto beans on hand right now.

So, I took a bag of Goya pinto beans I had on my bean shelf. Hmm, this one is dated June 2020, and since Goya beans are usually dated at least 2-3 years ahead of when I purchased them, this is at least a 2 year old bag of beans. So I put them on for a little soak, letting them sit on the stove in a pot of water for 4 hours. They're so small that I knew a full overnight soak or a quick-soak by boiling the water and letting them sit for an hour would be too much for these little things.

After all the lunch dishes were washed I rinsed the beans off, poured them into the Instant Pot with 6 cups of fresh water, about a quarter cup of dehydrated celery, a quarter cup of dehydrated carrots, a cut up Vidalia onion, and a few tablespoons of dried mushrooms, then hit the Bean button.

After letting it cook and come down from pressure naturally I tossed about half a bag of frozen chopped spinach, a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast, and yes, a tablespoon or 2 of tahini. Jeff Novick makes a sauce out of it, so why can't I use a bit in a full pot of beans!

When it was getting close to dinner time I got out the rice cooker and tossed in the Carolina jasmine brown rice. Darn - I didn't have quite 2 of those little rice cups left in the bag. There was another bag in another room, but I was too lazy to go get it. I did have a lot of quinoa in the same kitchen cabinet as the rice, so I filled the rest of the cup with tri-color quinoa. Also into the rice cooker with the rinsed grains I tossed a tablespoon of dehydrated garlic granules and about 3 tablespoons of the dehydrated soup vegetables.  Filled the rice cooker with water a teensy bit above the 2 cup mark to compensate for the dried veggies and cooked that all up. I love my rice cooker! I could never consistently get good rice in the Instant Pot, but have never had a failure in a rice cooker.

Now I know Dr. McDougall says to limit our beans to an average of a cup a day, but in these trying times, a don't think a little protein splurge is going to do much harm. None of the other WFPB docs like Esselstyn or Fuhrman limit beans. We each had a nice sized bowl of rice and beans, then had a much smaller amount as seconds. The rest is put away for lunch.

The same day I made this bean meal, what should appear on YouTube but another Ann & Jane Esselstyn cooking video, this one on making beans from scratch! Ann broke her quarantine to go to Jane's house to watch Jane's husband Brian Hart make this batch of spicy black beans.


I agree with Ann that the beans would be just fine without all those spices, but when the stay-at-home order is lifted and the virus numbers start dropping in our area instead of doubling each day like they did the past week, we already planned on hitting Lowe's and stocking up on more Bone Sucking Sauce, so we'll grab a bottle of the Bone Sucking Rub, too. My husband watched the video with me and practically drooled at the screen, and was happy when I said we'll get the stuff and I'll make it as soon as I can. He asked if it could be made with the Bone Sucking Sauce itself, and I said it probably could, so I have a feeling black beans (But in the Instant Pot, not in the Wonder Bag like they did) will be on the menu for Easter Week. But I'll be making 2 different batches - one seasoned this way for my husband and one without seasoning for me. There is no way on Earth I would eat something cooked with a few tablespoons of chili powder!!! My throat is burning just thinking about it!!

Time to Stop Looking At Covid-19 News, or, NOW Can I Panic??

When in danger or in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout.

Popularized in Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny (1951), which describes it as an ancient adage.

My husband quotes that line frequently, and the above is taken from a Wikiquote post on panic.

Earlier I was reading on the Takotsubo FaceBook community how we people who have had this cardiomyopathy are having a tougher time with Covid-19, and people who have Covid-19 are experiencing new attacks, reoccurrences, or even getting myocarditis which could lead into Takotsubo. Since Takotsubo is also known as "stress cardiomyopathy", and these are very stressful times for everyone, not just those of us who went through this heart thing already, we’re sitting on pins and needles, waiting, watching , stressing! Will we get the virus? Will the stress of trying not to get it trigger another event? If we do get it, will either one then kill us?

Then there are the posts on the Mixed Connective Tissue Disease and other autoimmune diseases communities, again waiting , watching, and stressing, asking the same questions.

And of course there’s the data they already have on people with respiratory diseases, like my asthma. No guesswork there - just about everyone over 60 who had known respiratory disease and contracted this coronavirus died.

Those of us who have multiple medical challenges are either walking around wringing our hands, getting super hyper, reading and watching everything we can get our hands on, and have hair-trigger nerves, or go in the opposite direction and cower in fear, afraid to even open a window for fear of breathing in virus droplets in the air (Well, it’s also allergy season and another good reason not to open them) or go near even our immediate family who live in the same residence, especially if they’re going out frequently. Stay away! Don’t touch me! Don't come near me!! (Um, honey, we sleep in the same bed, eat in the same tiny kitchen, use the same even tinier bathroom. I can't not get near you.)

After listening to Dr. Lisle talk statistics in the Covid crisis in the first part of this video I’m even more scared. I’m a person over 65 with health issues, especially respiratory disease. If I do get the virus there’s statistically a big chance of my dying from it. (BTW, I never finished watching the whole video. I got too freaked out after the Covid part I just turned it off.)

AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

When in danger or in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout.

. . . sigh . . .

The more videos like this I see the more frustrated, sad, and scared I get.



From his Tips for Shopping:

1) Wipe down your cart (not just the handles) - Well, if I had any wipes, I would be able to do this, but stores here haven't had any since March 12.

2) Commit to buying any item you pick up - The stores around here had so few items on the shelves, as a McDougaller I have to read labels of everything first when they don't have what I usually buy. Most items I touched were put right back on the shelf.

3) Don't go to the supermarket if you have any respiratory symptoms or have been exposed - Food shopping is the ONLY thing I've gone out for since I had my 2 doctor's appointments earlier in the month. I could have been exposed then. No doubt everyone in our city has been exposed to *somebody* who has it, especially when supermarkets were elbow to elbow that first week and longer. Heck, my son works at Target and could be exposed every minute he works and then comes home to our apartment, so if exposed to him, does that count?

4) Don't allow your loved ones over the age of 60 to go grocery shopping - Well, I guess we just have to make do with what we have in the house, then, because my under-60 son works all day, would have a hard time carrying groceries home on the train ride home, and by the time he comes home, showers, and gets out of his work clothes the grocery stores are either empty or closed for the day.

5) Buy 2 weeks worth of groceries at one time - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!

Other tips are to leave your groceries outside of your house for a few days before bringing them in. Um, dude, I live in an apartment with no access to the backyard. If I leave my groceries on the front porch, well, remember porch pirates? They steal more than just Amazon packages! There's no place outside my apartment on the landing to put bags of groceries, and every square inch of space inside is taken so there's not even a space to put them aside once they get in. Groceries would go right from the car into the kitchen.

Sanitize your workspace - See #1 (lack of sanitizer) and #5 (lack of space to make into a workspace)

Disposable bags - Sorry, they've been banned in our city and all surrounding cities for months now.

Loose broccoli - I don't trust any fresh produce right now that doesn't come pre-wrapped. Not when you have idiots like that lady who purposely coughed on $35K worth of food (Thankfully she was arrested but not until after the store owner had to throw away all that fresh produce and meat) and teenagers who go around coughing on and even licking food items as a joke/dare. I see his is in a shrink-wrapped bag, so that I would trust. None of our stores sell broccoli like that. Then again, our stores have had no broccoli of any kind for a few weeks, anyway. Same with those oranges and apples (OK, they had some mealy looking apples last week, but ugh).

He took a reusable bag off the floor and put it on his supposedly "clean" surface! Well, it's no longer clean now, is it?!

That fresh baked bread - How many hands touched that bread before he put it in that bag to bring home?

Washing your fruit in dish soap or hand soup? I don't think so! Even the FDA says not do do that, not with dish soap or any soaps or detergents that aren't specifically labeled for use on food.

Take-out food - Sure, go ahead and fling it on a plate and then microwave it. Why not? Who doesn't like sandwiches with the fixings tossed all over the plate and then double-cooked so the bread is now hard and the only healthy stuff on them, the lettuce and tomatoes, are now cooked?

Corona and other viruses can live in the frozen state for up to 2 years? Well, luckily I cook all my frozen veggies, but I never washed those bags before putting them away. And wouldn't do so, anyway, even if I knew about all this when I bought them weeks ago. Take a close look at those frozen veggie bags, especially the steamer bags. Do you see those tiny, almost microscopic, holes in them? Yeah, go ahead and spray Lysol on them and onto your veggies.

You know, Doc, I would be more concerned about the crap foods you're purchasing and eating than worrying about washing my cardboard boxes.

Right now I have a time bomb, um, Amazon package containing 2 bags of Sari nooch, sitting in my apartment on the mat we use to hold our wet shoes and boots. If the virus lives on cardboard for 24 hours, I'll not touch it again until some time tomorrow (It was delivered around 7 last night). Will I wipe down the bags inside the box? Probably not. And the box has to hang around until Tuesday night when recyclables go out for Wednesday pick-up. It'll sit there with the 3 other delivery boxes that came this week from Amazon and Harmony House.

But if following all his cleaning rules is the only guaranteed way of keeping coronavirus out of my apartment, we're doomed.

Baby Shark, Retooled

This is gonna be running through my head for the rest of the weekend!! 

COVID-19 Q&A with Dr. Fauci and Stephen Curry

Dr. Fauci is my new hero. I'm so glad he did this straight talk Q&A to get the correct info out there to the people.

My family is one of those on the "scared to death" side of the equation. We live within 5 miles of NYC on one side, less that a quarter mile over a bridge on the other, so many people who live here work there. My son and I both have asthma, my husband and I are classified as cardiac patients, and I have a slew of auto-immune disorders. Oh, and my son is in a job classified as "essential" so he's on the train to Target every morning working with the public for 8 hours each day. While he doesn't cover up or strip down when he gets home as much as Dr. and Mary McDougall do, he still has a routine he goes through, and I follow behind him with the wipe down.

My younger brother lives in the city adjacent to the NJ hotspot, so close he can walk to the hospital that has dozens of Covid-19 patients. His city is also close to NYC, only 7 miles, so close that over half the population works there. He's on drug therapy that makes him immuno-compromised, and his wife is a cardiac patient.

And all of us, except for my son, is over 60, my s-i-l and husband both will hit 70 their next birthdays later this year.

To say we're all shit-scared is putting it mildly. We may not like everything Dr. Fauci had to say because we all live in the areas needing to be most restricted, but we certainly understand why that's happening and lets us see the light at the end of the (very long) tunnel.

Plant Strong Podcast - Corona Virus

Last week Rip spoke with his brother in law (Jane's husband) Brian Hart in a podcast titled Reflections on Food and Pandemics:

This week he talks with his father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. He wrote:

Hello Friends, 
Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for my dad, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.  I had originally planned to fly to Cleveland to capture this conversation in person, but right now he and my mom are in protective isolation in their home. Thankfully, my sister, Jane, lives next door and checks on them each day. To us, our parents are national treasures and we are taking no chances in exposing them to any of us.
So please forgive the audio—we did the best we could given the technology. But I hope you enjoy this candid Q & A podcast with my dad in which we talk about nitric oxide, iron, cholesterol, and more. We will schedule more of these so keep the questions coming.
I hope you are all staying healthy, staying home, and staying positive.
Peace, Engine 2, Plant-Strong,
Rip Esselstyn
Founder, Plant-Strong by Engine 2

Fast Food - The Basics

Thanks to both Jeff Novick and Jeff Nelson for making this video available. I love these SNAP meals from Jeff Novick and have reported on many of them right here in this blog.

Workout At Home

I am SO OLD I remember when Arnold was Mr. Olympia and appeared all in those fitness magazines (and the movie Hercules in New York with Arnold Stang)! I think I saw this spread in one of those magazines before, too!

Better Listen to Arnold!

Yearly Doctor's Visit and COVID-19

Normally I do all this in April, but thanks to a medical problem and the fear that COVID-19 will force the closure of all public places, like doctors' offices, I went to see mine last week. Since then, our neighboring city has closed all non-emergency medical buildings, including private physicians' offices.
Lucky me - I've been on oral steroids for over 30 years without a problem, then my insurance company insists if a med comes in generic, that's what the pharmacy has to send. Well, I was given the generic of the med I've been on for over 20 years and promptly got an oral thrush infection, most likely thanks to the dairy they use in the inhaler as a filler. So now I'm on an anti-fungal and was prescribed a totally new medication for my asthma. I hope this works - I don't want to be on the "let's see if *this* inhaler works" merry-go-round I was on for almost 10 years before my doc discovered the med I've been on.
It's now been a few days on the nystatin and things are looking a heck of a lot better. I see the doc again on Wednesday - Unless, that is, our city forced the closure of all non-emergency medical offices. It was so scary at the doctor's office the other day - first the list of questions (Have you been out of the country, near anyone who was, near anyone sick, etc.), then everyone who works there wearing masks, gowns, and gloves, bottles of hand sanitizer in every exam room and 4 in the waiting room, and posters everywhere about how to stay safe regarding COVID-19. Oh, and all of us in the waiting room looking each other over, hoping none of them are there for flu-like symptoms. Luckily it was me with asthma, 2 with diabetes, one with an orthopedic problem, one just there for paperwork, etc.
After the doc finished with what had to be done with me, I got the whole "How to stay safe" speech, given the usual list of warnings that's appearing everywhere, told to avoid crowds - if a room has more than 3-5 people in it - leave, and told to take either Emergen C, Cold-Eeze, or Airborne. After my son picked me up when my appointment was over we hit 5 different stores. I elbowed my way through 2 grocery stores and not only none of those but no frozen or fresh veggies, either. I then checked 3 different drug stores and in the third I was able to find 2 bottles of Airborne gummies. I hate gummies - who had the bright idea to put medicine and supplements for adults in candy?? It's bad enough they do it to kids' medicines. I bought both bottles, even though one of the ingredients is echinacea, something I can't take because it interferes with one of my asthma/allergy meds. I looked around to see what else the stores had, maybe something more in the line of herbal supplements, but nothing. When I got home I checked Amazon and a few pharmacies' on-line stores and I was lucky to get what I got. I'm stuck with this candy.

No, I'm not! Once home I hit Dr. Fuhrman's website and ordered his Gentle Care multivitamin and the Immune Biotect supplement. Both are made from actual food products, not chemicals, and the immune one won't be detrimental to me and my autoimmune diseases because it's mostly a variety of dried and powdered mushrooms. I didn't really want to take anything, even these, but since my doc wanted us to take something to boost our immunity - my husband being a cardiac patient and me with my asthma as well as list of auto-immune conditions - it's best to grasp at these straws right now, because with my lungs I may not survive if I get the virus. I would definitely be one of those people who would be put on a respirator, he tells me.
And he wonders why my blood pressure was sky high in the office! It was so bad he changed my med and doubled the strength! I'm taking it without hesitation, though. Yes, I get a big dip 3 hours after I take it, but one look at a news web site and it's back up again. Add to that the fact that 1) We still can't get most groceries or necessary wipes and sanitizers either locally or on-line, and 2) my son works at Target and takes light rail to work, so he's exposed to crowds and can possibly catch this thing and bring it back home to this 5 room apartment. There's no way to quarantine him if he gets it, so if he gets it, all 3 of us do. Hopefully when all this is over in a few months my BP goes back down and I can get off this med, maybe all BP meds all together. OK, since I've been on them since I was in my 20's and I'm now in my mid-60's I doubt that part, but a gal can dream.

And then I see this over the weekend:

So the only way to save ourselves, besides following the McDougall food plan, is to use gloves, footies, face masks, alcohol/bleach wipes, and take the herbal supplements? All items that stores are long sold-out of? Does that mean if you don't have access to those things you can bend over and kiss your ass good-bye? What happened to his proclamation not too long ago that this is just another flu, to keep washing our hands with soap and water and everything will be fine?

Now I'm really scared!

Ann & Jane Esselstyn - Blooper

I'm sure this has happened to all of us at some point in our lives:

Corona Virus - Words from Dr. Fuhrman

Love him or hate him, he does come out with some interesting stuff. While watching this video, just substitute "McDougall diet" , "Esselstyn diet", "Engine 2 diet", "Forks over Knives diet", or "Ultimate Weight Loss diet" - it's the same message:



He also has what he calls an "infographic" about how to protect yourself in PDF form on his site. No need to be a member to see it. You can disregard the ad for his new book at the bottom of the page if you want to. :)

Klunker's Easy Mustard Dressing

Lately, potatoes have really been bothering me, so I've switched from the assortment of soups and plates of potatoes to rice dishes, specifically brown rice (made in my rice cooker), veggies (made in my microwave) and beans (made in my Instant Pot, although sometimes I get lazy and just open a can or 2).

Rice - I have an assortment of brown rices to choose from - par-boiled, instant, basmati, jasmine, short grain, Texmati, and plain old Carolina or other brand of long grain. Every time I go shopping to a new grocery store I check out the rice section and many times come home with another bag of something.

Frozen veggies - it all depends on what the store has that week. It's usually cauliflower, green beans, broccoli, peas, corn, carrots, either 3 pounds of each or mix and match. Peas and carrots is good, as well as peas and corn, even peas and baby onions. Brussels sprouts are reserved for the days it's just my husband and myself eating because our son hates them. I also toss a bit of greens into each batch, maybe a quarter pound, unless, of course, it's already a veg that passes as an Esselstyn "green".

Beans - I'm embarrassed to say I still have bags of beans from when I belonged to the Rancho Gordo Bean Club, and I dropped out of it (for the third time) over a year ago. Do you think that stopped me from buying an 8 pound bag of pintos when I saw them for the first time Walmart a few weeks ago? Or from ordering one 10 pound bag each of organic black, cannelini and dark red kidney beans from Food for Life from Amazon last week, as well as another 5 pound bag of Palouse garbanzos? (Well, I do go through those garbanzos pretty fast and buy a new bag about every 3 months.)  I made a vow to start eating more beans, especially after hearing Ann Esselstyn say you can't eat too many beans, that beans are great (As opposed to Dr. McDougall's guideline to eat no more than an average of 1 cup per day). I rearranged my kitchen appliances so now the toaster oven is back in storage and the big Crock Pot is now in its former home. Remember those attempts at making Mary's Bean Stew a few years back, when I vowed then to make a batch of that every week? I make and break a lot of vows when it comes to food, don't I? 

Anyway, a funny thing happened - the more beans we ate, the more weight we lost. While I'm ecstatic to lose a pound or even just a half pound a week, but my husband isn't. At 6' he was maintaining his weight at around 170 since he lost that big amount post-op CABG surgery in 2013, but since we started eating first potatoes and veg, then soups, and now rice, beans & veg, his weight had dipped down as low as 151 and he looked at least 10 years older and frail. He put a few pounds back on by eating 2 loaded hummus sandwiches on weekdays for lunch and 3 sandwiches plus a snack on weekends. Oh, how I wish I could lose weight as easy as he does!

Toppings - There's the usual lower sodium soy sauce and teriyaki sauce, Bone Sucking Sauce, sriracha sauce, but there's also the Jane Esselstyn 3-2-1 Dressing and Sweet Fire Dressing, and lately the peanut butter based Dragon Sauce that my son loves, as well as Chef AJ's assorted dressings and sauces and Jeff Novick's tahini sauce. My husband has said not to make things like Ann Esselstyn's beet based sauce In the Pink or Chef AJ's Barefoot Dressing because although he originally loved them, he says they're now too sweet for his tastes. He wants more savory, as well as more filling, toppers for our meals.

So, now I'm on a quest for savory, filling sauces and dressings. Later next week I plan on one meal using Michael Klunker's Crock Pot Mushrooms and Ann Esselstyn's Sweet Corn Sauce, and this morning I made a batch of Creamy Easy Mustard Dressing from Michael Klunker that I'll serve with tonight's rice with peas & carrots and garbanzo beans. I could post a photo of my batch in an old salad dressing bottle, but it doesn't look any different than the dressing in Michael's photo in the link. His recipe:

Klunker's easy mustard dressing

Ingredients notes - don't overreact to any of the ingredients, this is dressing, a condiment, so you are going to get a lot of of this. 
You can adjust the ingredients to make as much or as little as you want.  This is for a big batch.  It lasts a long time in the fridge.  You will use it all before it would ever go bad.  It can be used for dip too.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dijon mustard
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup rice vinegar (you can use other vinegar's to change the flavor a bit, like white wine, red wine, apple cider, or white balsamic)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (you can add more if you want, I sometimes do, start with 1/4 cup (quarter of a cup) and go from there.
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of pepper

Blend together well.  Put in a jar of your choice, and store in the fridge.  This travels very well.  Use on anything.  I dip potatoes into it, fries, on salads....the list goes on.  I hope you enjoy.

Creamy version:
Add the above ingredients, add 1c of cooked (canned), drained chickpeas.  Put in a good blender and blend until very smooth.
It will be thick, you can eat as is, or thin out with more vinegar.  I like it thick. :)
Enjoy!!

I did add the cup of canned no-salt added garbanzos and it is pretty thick and creamy. It's also very salty, and I didn't even add the 1/2 teaspoon salt that's in the recipe and used a no-salt/no-sugar rice vinegar! But is also is very tasty! I'll have a wee bit of it over my broccoli and the leftover half cup of canned garbanzos for lunch and tonight we'll have it with our rice. I think I found my new favorite dressing. 

Let's see what else I can put over rice. We're not a fan of all those flavored balsamic vinegars, and since I'm trying to keep my triglycerides down I use the minimum on my greens when I do use some. I'll be looking over the old Potato Toppings List to see what else might catch my eye to use in the coming weeks.