WEIGHT LOSS TIPS FROM DR. JOHN AND MARY McDOUGALL

Yes, another webinar about the Mary's Mini diet, and another set of guideline updates.

 

AJ Interviews Mary McDougall

And Doctor McDougall sticks around and tosses his own 2 cents into the conversation frequently. :)

Texas Armadillo Tater Tots and "Special Sauce" Ranch Dressing

My husband has been in a potato mood lately, and frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of plain old IPot steamed spuds with Golden Gravy and veggies on the side and wanted to make something different but still easy enough to make.

Enter the Esselstyn family instead of the McDougall one.

Here are the potatoes I'm making:

Texas Armadillo Tater Tots
makes 18 tots

18 red baby potatoes (or any color)
1 cup (8 ounces) hummus
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning

Preheat oven to 425ºF and line a baking pan with parchment paper.

Slice most of the way through each potato at 1/4 inch intervals (Hasselback).

In a food processor, combine the hummus, water, and 1 tablespoon of the seasoning and blend well. Place this into a bowl.

Put all the potatoes into the bowl and stir to coat each potato and get the seasoning mix to sneak down into the wedges of the potatoes.

Place the potatoes on the lined pan and pour the remaining mix over them.

Bake until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked, about 45 minutes or longer, depending on the size of the potato. They should be tender in the middle and crispy outside.

Serve with ketchup or Rip's Ranch Dressing.


Engine 2 Cookbook
page 108

Of course, I used the Esselstyn's Our Hummus.

Our Hummus
From the book by Ann Crile Esselstyn and Jane Esselstyn. "The Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook."

1  (15 oz) can no salt added chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 large cloves garlic
2 T. fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 T spicy brown mustard
freshly ground black pepper to taste.
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)

  In food processor, combine the chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, mustard, and pepper to taste. Add salt if desired and 2 T water and process until smooth. Serve immediately.

Variations.: Top with Caramelized onions, blend in cooked sweet potato, or add green onion.

But when it came to the ranch dressing, I didn't want Rip's because it contains cashews. Instead, I went for a ranch dressing from the McDougall forums:

Special sauce
post by Alvah » Tue Oct 06, 2015 5:14 pm

I'd like to share my version of a ranch dressing I use all the time, in salads, on baked potatoes, over vegetables, in panini. I modified the recipe by omitting the dill and jalapeño and adding a few other things.

Process in food processor:

2 green onions
1 package low fat silken tofu
1 t seasoned rice vinegar
1 t onion powder
1 t garlic powder
1 t salt
1 t sugar
2 t mild curry powder
1/3 c nutritional yeast
1/2 c low calorie plant milk

Yummy!

Yes, I had tofu! Last week I noticed our grocery store changed the endcap in the "healthy" section from chips and cookies to assorted other foods, from organic pickle relish to organic Kosher jelly, assorted fizzy waters (organic, of course), and there, behind some organic chocolate bars, I noticed the familiar lilac of the MoriNu Lite silken tofu box peeking out! There were 2 of these beauties hiding back there! Just when I had given up hope that this tofu would ever reappear in the United States again (It's been sold out everywhere since March), I was blessed with these! Just in time (OK, maybe a little late) for summer salad season! I had no idea exactly what I was going to do with them, but I grabbed them. The expiration date is next month, but I'm sure I can use the other one next week in one of Mary McDougall's recipes, like a potato salad. 

As for Alvah's recipe, since I haven't had ranch dressing in a long, long time, I can't really say how close this came to it, but I do know I'll be making this sauce again. Next time, though, I'll either reduce or skip the salt entirely and use half the curry powder. It is a great tasting sauce, though.

The execution . . .

Well, some mistakes were made.

I made the hummus a bit too thick. By the time I was ready to use it, it was as thick as clay and just as difficult to use. Because of that, I wound up using too much water in the armadillo sauce. Since I had a bag of 40 of those tiny potatoes, I planned on making double the sauce. Two cups of the hummus went into the food processor. I reached for the Cajun seasoning and saw I needed to open a new jar. There were 2 jars in my spice box, 2 different brands, neither the one I just finished. I opened the first and tasted it. It had a weird chemical taste. Opened the other, and it was different, but not at all like the older one.  Oh, well, it’s going to have to do. In that goes into the food processor. My husband walks into the room and offers to help. I hand him the 2 cup measuring cup, tell him to double the amount of water on the paper and pour it into the machine. He does that and the water starts pouring out around the spindle! Instead of at most 1 1/2 cups of water he used 2 cups. He misunderstood what I told him to do.  You would think an 11 cup food processor could hold more than 4 cups, but you’d be wrong. I learned that last year when I tried to make that corn soup.

So, after I blended up the “batter” he cleaned the mess. It looked like hummus soup.

While he cleaned, I started in on cutting all those tiny slits in those 40 tiny potatoes.  My hands were so sore afterwards. The batter got poured into the bowl with the potatoes and I let them soak in it while the oven preheated and I got the parchment paper on the pans.

Using a slotted spoon, 20 potatoes went on each tray, and a bit of the liquified hummus got poured over each. The pans went into the oven, a timer was set for 20 minutes so I could rotate them, hubby helped clean everything up, and away we went into the air conditioned bedroom to watch TV for a few minutes. When the timer dinged I moved the trays around, reset the timer for 25 more minutes.

45 minutes came and went and the potatoes were still hard. How? These were those tiny things! Checked again in 5, then 10, and just took them out after an hour in the oven. Here’s how they looked:

Good enough. If they’re still too hard to eat I’ll nuke them, but as it turned out, most were okay enough. The few we have leftover will be eaten during tomorrow’s lunch and they'll soften up as they get nuked. The 2 pounds of cauliflower were devoured, though, as well as over half the ranch dip/dressing. The saltiness seemed to have died down a bit since I made it in the morning.

The verdict:

My husband loved every morsel of it, including some of the baked on batter that he peeled off the parchment paper. It tasted a bit like cheese crackers our son ate when younger. He liked the tiny slices that made these baby potatoes disguise themselves as Hasselback potatoes. The ranch dip, now as firm as I wish my hummus was, he declared “good” but not “great”. Even so, he already asked when I plan on making this meal again.

As for *my* opinion, if I had my druthers I wouldn’t bother with the slits and I wouldn’t bother with making these in an oven. I wouldn’t even be opposed to skipping the “batter” part, either, but the next time I will make the batter, but all by myself, so I can keep track of how much liquid it needs. Hopefully it comes out right, and the batter adds a lot of flavor, and roasting it in the oven transforms them into something magical. To me, that ranch dressing/dip made the whole meal.

Black Bean Chipotle Slow Cooked Soup

Now that the CrockPot is in a place of honor on an appliance table and not buried in storage, I've been using it more and more.

Yesterday I made up Mary McDougall's Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooker Soup from The Starch Solution book. I figured with Dr. McDougall about to release the Starch Solution certification program into the wild for free and Gustavo Tolosa is going to do an 8-week webinar covering a chapter a week, I may as well focus a little bit more on that book.

Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooked Soup
prep: 10 minutes
cooking time: 8 hours
serves: 8 to 10

2 cups dried black beans
2, 16-ounce cans fire-roasted chopped tomatoes
4 ounce can chopped green chilies
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Put the beans, tomatoes, chilies, chili powder, cumin, red pepper, and chipotle powder in a slow cooker. Stir in 6 cups of water.
Cover and cook on High for 8 hours.
Serve the soup hot, stirring in the cilantro as you serve it.


Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution

This recipe is also known as Slow Chipotle Black Bean Soup on the McDougall website. 

Here's a photo of it after just 4 hours on high in my Crockpot. The water level dropped over an inch already.

Notice how most of the water is already mostly boiled out. I left it on high for another 2 hours and at the 6 hour mark turned it down to low. More water had evaporated by then so I added a bit of boiling water and stirred. At 7 hours I turned it down to keep warm and tasted it - a bit flavorless to me, but I chose not to add anything at this point.

Dinner time and I served it over Mary's Corn Bread. I've been making this for so long I don't even look at the recipe any more and sometimes forget to add the cup of frozen corn. It's just as good without it. 

I chopped up a little cilantro to add to the Crockpot.

Uh, oh. I think I ruined it by doing that.

I'm one of those "cilantro is soap" people and used maybe a tablespoon of cilantro leaves, cut up real fine. The smell alone turned me off. I tried remove them as soon as I put them in the pot, but many had already sunk into what little liquid there was left. I served our bowls then spent 15 minutes pushing beans around and removing every trace of green I could find in my bowl. It still tasted like soap. My husband just shook his head, told me he'll take the leaves I took out of mine and pop them in his bowl, and then merrily munched away, helping himself to another piece of cornbread and bowl of this beany stuff. 

I can't call it a soup - it was way too thick and lacking in liquid for that. He said he'll call it "Soapy Chili" in the future. I growled at him and told him cilantro will never pass through my doorway ever again. He reminded me I said that multiple times in the past. I guess I never learn.

Without cilantro, this would be a great use for some of those black beans I loaded up on at the beginning of the covid panic, when stores like Amazon still had food in them. Now, just about any bean I click on says it's currently unavailable, whether from Amazon, Vitacost, or Rancho Gordo. I do plan on making this again, but maybe with spinach instead of cilantro next time.

Hot Yam Soup

And here's another Mary McDougall recipe I never made before!

This one comes from 1992's Doctor McDougall's Health-Enhancing Recipe Book, another out-of-print book that, unfortunately, is not available in e-book form on the McDougall web site. At least it can be purchased new (at a ridiculous price) or used (as low as $4 plus shipping) from places like Amazon or Ebay.com,.

Last weekend we hit Whole Foods once again for various sweet potatoes and yams, so we'll be eating a lot of them over the next 2 weeks, even if only for lunches or snacks. This time I'm using one of the nice sized red-skinned Garnet yams for this soup.

Hot Yam Soup
servings: 8
prep time: 30 minutes
cooking time: 30 Minutes

2 onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup chopped green beans
2 cups chopped peeled yams, sweet potatoes, or winter squash
5 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups cooked garbanzo beans
1 large tomato, chopped, 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
1 bay leaf
3 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons basil
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (optional)

Place onions, garlic, celery, green beans, and yams in a large soup pot with 1/2 cup of water. Cook over medium heat, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and cook over simmering heat for 20 minutes.

Hint: If you don't have any green beans, use a cup of peas or chopped green pepper instead.

Once again, I'll be using a can of petite diced tomatoes instead of fresh, frozen onions, and dehydrated celery. I'm also using a quarter cup of dehydrated green beans that I bought from Harmony House and used only once since last year's purchase. I'll toss in an extra half cup or so of water, too. I bought them for a soup recipe by Jeff Novick that I made only once before. I know I gave that soup high praises in that post, but that was before its, um, laxative effect hit us! My husband was in no rush to have that soup again, but after all these soups we've been having lately, maybe I will try it one more time. I'll make sure we plan on being home the next day with no plans to leave the house, just in case.

I wish I had a sturdy device - and the arm muscles - to chop up that sweet potato! Now I remember why I started pre-cooking those potatoes, even if just for a few minutes, when I needed to cut them up for a recipe. I do have a jar of dehydrated sweet potatoes (also from Harmony House) but I'm saving those for emergency meals when stuck indoors and unable to go shopping, thanks to winter's blizzards.

Back to the soup.

It looked good, but tasted weird. I'm not sure if it was the paprika combined with basil and cinnamon spice mixture, or that flavor profile with the sweet potatoes, but I just wasn't a fan of this. My husband declared it "Okaaaaay, but something is 'off ' with it." He thought it was the sweet potatoes themselves, but I told him to put just a potato on his spoon and eat it. He did and said it's not the potatoes, they taste fine by themselves. Neither of us could put a finger on it. He did eat his usual 2 big bowls full, so I guess it wasn't that "off" but we both agreed I won't be making this one again. 

It's one of the rare Mary McDougall flops for this family. In fact, probably only the second. The first one was over 20 years ago, some kind of potato stew, I think - I can't even remember which recipe it was. I can't even remember what was wrong with it - too bland or too spicy. Oh well, since I can't even remember what it actually was, I'll most likely unknowingly wind up making it again at some point in the future.

But not this soup.

Give it a try and report back with your opinions. It's possible it's just us and our taste. In the book, Mary wrote about this: "Be adventuresome - I promise you'll enjoy this richly colored, richly flavored soup." It's obvious the McDougall family likes this soup, and yours may, too, just not mine.

Heather's Vegetable Soup

This one comes from an old McDougall newsletter, and is currently posted to the McDougall website recipe section. Here's how Mary McDougall posted it:

Vegetable Soup
Prep: 15 minutes Cook: 60 minutes
Serves: 6
By Heather McDougall

          This is a soup that my daughter, Heather, makes often for her family. Our grandsons, Jaysen & Ben, love it and will often eat several bowls of this for dinner.

Ingredients
4 cups vegetable broth
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups water
1 yam, peeled and cubed
1 white potato, peeled and cut in large chunks
15 ounce can chopped tomatoes
15 ounce can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 bay leaf
1 tsp basil
1-2 cups chard, chopped
1/2 cup uncooked pasta

Directions
Place 1/4 cup of the broth in a large soup pot. Add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften slightly, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining broth, the water, yam, potato, tomatoes, beans, bay leaf and basil. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook for about 45 minutes, until all vegetables are tender. Stir in the chard and pasta. Cook for about 10 minutes until pasta is tender

The recipe is fine for all versions of the McDougall program (and most other WFPB ones, too), but if you're following the Maximum Weight Loss Program as written by Doctor McDougall, omit the pasta. If you're following Jeff Novick's revised MWLP guidelines for pasta, you can safely leave them in.

First, a moment of silence for my THIRD Vidalia Chop Wizard device. In the past, it was the blade part that broke. Today, the lid split in 2 down by the hinge.

I was able to finish chopping the carrots that were already in there by leaning one arm down on the hinge end and putting the rest of my weight on the other side to push down onto the carrot quarters. As you all know, you have to slice your carrots first into small and thin enough chunks to fit in the small section where the blades are, then slice the pieces thin enough the long way because this chopper has trouble chopping anything firmer than a hard boiled egg. As soon as I finished those pieces of carrots that were embedded in the blades I pushed this chopper aside, grabbed my knife, and cut the rest of the carrots the old fashioned way. No more of these choppers for me - I wasted enough money on them!

Now, on to what I did with the recipe.

Let's see, I used frozen diced onions, dehydrated celery, 2 small peeled red potatoes, half a large Hannah yam, petite diced no-salt added canned tomatoes, no-salt added small white beans, and frozen diced collards instead of fresh chard. You already know about the carrots. For the pasta I used Tinkyada shells. I looked around in 2 different Whole Foods stores and couldn't find any smaller gluten-free pasta shapes, like ditalini or orzo, in any brand. Turned out they were small enough.

Look at this nice, chunk soup! Loads of veggies, good tasting broth, very filling. We finished it off, again with me having one bowl and hubby having 2 full bowls (Plus some bread for dunking. I don't know where he puts it all!).

The pasta is a bit plump because I forgot to turn the heat off 10 minutes after adding the pasta and collards. I set the timer, and remember turning off the timer, and I swear I got up and turned the gas off, but when we finally went into the kitchen to eat I saw the flame was still on. Thank goodness I use those aluminum flame tamers when I know food has to heat on low simmer! This stove runs so hot I have to use 2 at a time to keep things from boiling away on the lowest setting.

Right now my husband has a cold, and has been coughing and sneezing, not just during the day but during the night, too. When he coughs, I wake up, and I'm awake for at least an hour after that. I just about doze off again and he coughs or sneezes again. This has been going on for a while now. But remember, I'm the one who's been coughing since mid-August and waking him up, but luckily, he can usually fall right back to sleep within seconds of waking. Anyway, during those sleepless hours many things toss and tumble around in this crazed head of mine, and one of those things last night was this soup. There was a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. I had no idea what - I had all my ingredients measured out or out of the cabinets ahead of time. Looking over the recipe when I put it in this post, I saw what I did wrong - I forgot to add the additional 2 cups of water. To be honest, it didn't need it. Maybe when my appetite returns to normal and I'm eating larger amounts of food again I'll appreciate the extra 2 cups of this soup, but it was fine for us yesterday.

And this soup will be made again. I've said many times that the Mary (and Heather) McDougall recipes are family favorites, and this is yet another one to add to the list.  

Mary's Favorites, Part 2

I admit, I haven't looked at the McDougall Cookbook app for a few months, so maybe this has been there for a while now, but the app just updated a day or so ago and this morning I'm awake since 5am and bored, waiting for my husband to get up (He usually arises around 9 on Sundays), so decided to take a peek and see what, if anything, changed. The last time they updated they returned the print function.

Imagine my surprise when I notice they now have the same categories as the McDougall website, including the Mary's Favorites one!

Okay, now you can all holler at me for not looking more frequently, that this has been there for ages. Go ahead, you have every right to embarrass me for not diligently looking at this app. I deserve it. LOL

Mary's Favorites

For those who haven't explored the McDougall web site lately, it's s-l-o-w-l-y being updated. Like, taking a year or 2 to see any changes on the site or message boards.

For those who have signed up to receive email notices from the McDougall Program, I'm sure you've seen the weekly resending of the old McDougall's Moment videos and the occasional recipes post. Well, earlier today another group of recipe links came into my mailbox, this time labeled McDougall Family Favorite Recipes. Yes, these are the same old tried-and-true recipes that I've been serving my family for a few decades now, but I noticed at the bottom of the list of links the orange button that says Click Here for More Delicious McDougall Favorites. I assumed it would just to to the general recipe page, but I'm bored so I clicked it anyway.

Guess what! It didn't go where I thought it was going!

One of the changes to the web site over the past year was the recipe section's links being divided into categories, like Appetizers, Breakfasts, One Pot Meal Recipes, and so on. It never dawned on me that there was a section with all my favorite recipes, the same recipes that are classified as Mary's Favorites!

From now on, when someone on Facebook asks for the community's members to post their favorite recipes, all I have to do is send them to the Mary's Favorites section!

Now if only they would add a Kids' Favorites category! That's the second most requested category of recipes asked for on McDougall/Starch Solution Facebook communities (OK, maybe tied with MWLP recipes, which does have its own section).

Making the Change

Remember many years ago, when Dr. and Mary McDougall talked about their very first "book" that they made up in 1979 to give their early patients? It was hand typed and bound with those little loose-leaf binder clips.

Every now and then I roam the Internet used book sites hoping to see someone trying to sell theirs. I was even on Ebay this morning looking.

Then suddenly a message appeared in my email in-box at 9:01 - The McDougalls have scanned this little book into digital form and it's now available for free as a PDF download on their website!

Of course I immediately downloaded it!

Oh, it's so cute! OK, maybe not "cute", but I'm so happy to finally get my hands on this. I haven't read through the whole 252 pages yet, obviously, but I did flip through it. Definitely hand-typed, and there are even hand written page numbers and the occasional notes in the margins or between paragraphs.

Of course, the food plan is basically the exact same thing Dr. McDougall teaches today. Just like he did in the Health Supporting Cookbooks, The McDougall Plan, and other early books, the foods are broken down into categories I to IV based on what they're composed of and whether they're health-supporting or not, very similar to the current stoplight differentiation of the more recent  The Color Picture Book.

Glancing through the recipes, there are a lot of old tried-and-true ones that I still make to this day, like the enchilada sauce or the Easy Curried Pea Soup. There are many others I never saw before that look interesting, like a gravy called Whole Wheat Sauce or the variations of refried beans.

I'm going to have fun with this!

Thanks, Dr. and Mary McDougall!

Where's Dr. McDougall

Back in June, a thread was started on the McDougall forums asking where Dr. McDougall was. The webinar page had a note saying the McDougalls were travelling, that the webinars would continue in July.

It's now well after July and no webinars yet.

Then yesterday afternoon Jeff Novick, who now seems to be the public voice of the McDougall program, posted this:

Re: Where's McDougall?

by JeffN » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:46 pm

As an FYI, this is going up on the Webinar page in the next few days

As you may know, Dr. McDougall retired from practice this past June of 2018. He is no longer seeing patients and is working more with legislation, healthcare systems, and education projects.

https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=5e5 ... 5NBiWx8kP8

After over 40 years of tireless working for the cause, he and Mary have recently taken some time off for some long deserved R&R.

As of this moment, we can’t say definitively whether we will continue the webinars or not. If we do, they will be announced in the mailings, along with any other McDougall updates, news, recipes, etc, which we will continue to send out on a regular basis. Make sure you are subscribed to them, which you can do here:

https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/mailings/

In addition, please make sure you are taking full advantage of our website and all of the resources that are available for free. You can see a full listing here:

https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/educ ... resources/

Thanks again!

Best of Health,
The McDougall Team

Well, I guess that's the end of the webinars. I really don't think he's coming back to them.

I'm not surprised, really. Dr. McDougall has not seemed the same since that fall he took a few years ago, when he broke a few bones, including the strongest bone in the body, a femur. Then came the fire that turned all their lives upside down. And in the last webinar he did he mentioned Mary had shoulder surgery. I would be a whimpering fool if all that happened to me, and for him it was probably the last straw. Since then he stopped doing newsletters, retired from seeing patients, and a few weeks ago the office said he's no longer going to reply to emails. People have said he does make an appearance at the 10 Day programs, but doesn't do the lectures like he used to.

Thanks, Dr. McDougall - and Mary. It was a fun ride while it lasted.

Mary's Bean Stew - Take 4 and Take 5

Yes, today is the fourth time I'm making Mary McDougall's Bean Stew in my oval Crockpot, and I can say without a doubt it will be the LAST time I attempt to make this in this appliance.

I wrote all about the first time I made it, how it kept drying out, how I kept adding water, when I added twice the amount of water to beans to start, because it had steamed and dripped all over my counter when I started it in the Instant Pot.

I did not write about the second and third times making it. Each time I used another variety of Rancho Gordo beans. For today's batch, I'm using Rancho Gordo Aluba Blanca small white beans. I usually save this type of bean for when I make baked beans, but what the heck, I figured I'll use these in the stew.

Mary McDougall has said many times she never soaks her beans, that she just tosses beans and water in her slow cooker, and each time I make this recipe that's what I've been doing. Rancho Gordo people have even said their beans are so fresh they really don't need soaking. But darn it, every time I make this recipe, whether I use 4 cups of water to start or the almost 9 cups I used today, I have ALWAYS needed to add more water. Maybe next week I'll try a quick soak first. I don't want to soak these overnight - they're so fresh they'd probably start sprouting.

And definitely next time I'm doing things differently. Instead of making this recipe in the Crockpot, I'm going to cook my beans in the Instant Pot, after soaking first, and follow Jill McKeever's rule of adding enough water to cover at least the first knuckle of your index finger. When done, I'll do a 10 minute natural release, and add the seasoning and sun dried tomatoes, and hit the Keep Warm button for the rest of the cooking time.

Some changes I did make today - I started it off on High, and after an hour had to add more water. After it started to boil again, I lowered it to Low heat for the next 3 hours. At the 4 hour mark I had to add water again, and again let it come to a boil. As soon as it did I again turned it down, and at this time I added the seasoning and sun dried tomatoes. I also added half a pound of frozen mixed greens that I bought in Whole Foods. After an hour on this temp I then turned it down to Keep Warm. Right now, the beans are fully cooked and soft, the tomatoes are rehydrated, the greens are hot - in other words, everything is ready to eat, but it's still a few hours until dinner time. When the time comes, I have some steam-in-bag Yukon Gold potatoes I'll make, then serve it all up.

At least today it's not a dried out, gloppy mess, but a nice stew with lots of flavorful bean broth. Hopefully next week I can just cook it up without having to add another drop and have a meal just as good.

Why am I so determined to get this recipe to work? Well, I did mention I rejoined the Rancho Gordo Bean Club. The other day, the club box plus the other beans I ordered arrived. Yes, I was greeted by yet another bag of runner/lima beans.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

IDN why I never posted the above message when I wrote it out last week. Here's this week's making of Mary's Bean Stew.

Changes:
I used Rancho Gordo's Yellow Indian Woman bean. 

In an attempt to make sure they don't get dried out, I did a soak. Steve Sando, the owner of Rancho Gordo, says his beans are so fresh that if people insist on giving them a pre-soak, do it no more than 6 hours, otherwise they'll sprout. This morning I picked through, cleaned and started to soak the beans before I headed out to a doctor's appointment. By the time I got back from there and a quick grocery store trip, they were not only well soaked but starting to split. All this in only 2 hours! Next week, no soaking.

The next change was where these beans were going to be cooked. Instead of the CrockPot, I tossed them into my Instant Pot with 8 cups of water. According to this chart, soaked Yellow Indian Woman beans take 8 to 10 minutes. I hit Manual, lowered it down to 8 minutes, and let it go. After it hit the Keep Warm stage I let it sit for a while, and after a half hour finally released the last of the steam. It still took 4 minutes before it finished.

The beans looked - and tasted - beautiful! Like miniature pinto beans, so small and pinkish.

At this point I added 2 tablespoons of Mrs. Dash Table Blend and the bag of smoky sun-dried tomatoes and closed the lid, keeping the pot on Keep Warm mode.

A half hour before dinner I popped in an 8 ounce bag of baby spinach and mixed it up. Here's how it looked about 15 minutes later:

By Jove, I think I've got it!

In about 5 minutes I'll be spooning this out over rice for me, cornbread for my husband. I know we're only supposed to have an average of a cup of beans a day on the McDougall program, so I purposely had no beans yesterday and have none planned for tomorrow. I can tell you right now there will not be any leftovers of this stew today.

Maybe I'll get brave next week and try one of those many bags of lima beans I have from the Bean Club over the years. Wish me luck!

Mary McDougall's Bean Stew

In Mary McDougall's video entitled "Planning Meals", she talks about all the super simple meals she makes for herself and Dr. McDougall. Throughout this past winter, I took her advice and made many of these really simple meals. Two or 3 days a week I make potatoes and vegetables, either with the Fat Free Golden Gravy, some leftover chili, or one of the Dr. McDougall Right Foods cups or boxes of soup or chili on top. Two days a week I make rice with veggies, and one day we use the Engine 2 Sweet Fire Dressing and the other our respective favorite sauces (the kid and I like teriyaki, hubby uses the Esselstyn 3-2-1 dressing). One day I make pasta (Jeff's Basic Marinara Sauce or Mary's Puttanesca Sauce are our favorites, although sometimes I switch it up and make mac and cheese using Mary's Oaty Mac and Cheese sauce). The other days I either make a Jeff Novick SNAP recipe, a Chef AJ chili, or one of Mary's many soup recipes (Festive Dal, Mexi, Black Bean, Your Kids Will Love This are our usual choices). Once in a while I would try something from an Engine 2 cookbook, or one of the older McDougall recipes from their books or newsletters, but not that often.

One thing I hadn't tried until now is Mary's Bean Stew recipe that she did in that video.



I have so many bags of beans on my pantry shelf, some leftover from when I belonged to the Rancho Gordo Bean Club, others I just picked up along the way for a recipe and never used. I figured before they get too old, let me try this. Here's what I copied down as the video ran:

Bean Stew

Cook a bag or 2 of unsoaked beans in a slow cooker
2 (or 3) x as much water as beans  (See my note way down below)
Turn power on High and cook 4-5 hours
Add 1 tablespoon or more of no-salt seasoning (Kirkland)
Toss in a handful of dried tomatoes
Re-cover and let cook a few more hours
Add at least 2 cups baby spinach, kale, chard or other greens
Serve over potatoes, rice, or other starch. 

Mary said she uses her older simple Crockpot and never used the slow cooker feature on her Instant Pot. Well, I did use my IPot. More on that later.

In the video, Mary said she usually uses 2 pounds of beans, and the night before used cannelini beans. I used a one pound bag of Good Mother Stallard from Rancho Gordo because that's what I have the most of at the moment. That and the water went into the I-pot, I put my largest Revereware skillet lid over the top, turned it to High slow cook, and walked away. About an hour and a half later I was walking through the kitchen talking to my son and noticed that for the first time ever, the little water catcher on the back of the Instant Pot had something in it besides crumbs of food. My son looked even closer and said not only is there water in it, it's over flowing and leaving puddles on the counter and it's flowing towards the floor! ACK! 

Now came a mad dash to staunch the flow, clean up the water that was already there, find my tried and true 40 year old brown round Crockpot. Well, it wasn't where I last saw it, and between mopping up water and going through storage spaces in this cramped apartment, my son found it buried behind the bread machine that hasn't been used in about 5 years. I take the lid off of it and YUCK! There was something growing in it. Apparently it either wasn't washed all that well or still damp when it was put away that last time and there was mold in the bottom of the crock. OK, keep calm - I still had a larger oval Crockpot that was purchased about 10 years ago for only $10 on sale at Target when they first opened the next city over. It was unused because I never needed the volume, then I bought the Instant Pots. Luckily I knew exactly where that was and it was easily dug out, crock part washed out, and the  search for a space in the kitchen - ANYWHERE in this apartment - big enough to fit it began. Eventually we were able to set up a tv tray in the hallway and find a heavy-duty extension cord (the cord on the new Crockpot is only about 15 inches long) and got it set up. I poured the beans and water from the Instant Pot into the Crockpot, turned it to High, added a bit more water to make up for what leaked all over, popped the lid on, and gave a sigh of relief. My son helped me put all the stuff that was pulled out of the cabinets during the searches back, poured soap and hot water in the old crock and left it to soak in the sink, found a new home for the newer Crockpot so I can easily get to it in the future, and tried to find a new home for the old Crockpot after I get it scrubbed out again.

Next time I just might make my beans in the Instant Pot under pressure, and for the next steps just put it on keep warm in the I-Pot. Unless these come out fantastic, that is. This kind of bean tastes pretty great made in the I-Pot, and since a lot of people say their beans taste better when slow cooked, if these taste any better than they already do you can be sure this will be added to our weekly menu.

The first 5 hours have now passed. The house smells fantastic. Some people can't stand the smell of beans cooking but my husband and I both love it, especially when the beans are from Rancho Gordo. 

Now it's time for the flavoring. Mary sings the praises of the Kirkland Signature Organic No-Salt Seasoning, a Costco product she now purchases through Amazon. I've tried a number of no-salt seasoning mixes over the decades, and I think I'm the only person alive who hates Benson's Table Tasty and Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute blends. I don't taste the other spices, only the citrus. It's just overwhelming. Instead, when a recipe calls for a no-salt seasoning, I go with Mrs. Dash's Table Blend. It, too, has orange peel and the other citrus flavorings that the other 2 have, but the taste is so muted I don't even notice them. So into the pot goes a tablespoon of it.

As for the tomatoes, Mary uses dried dehydrated tomatoes made from tomatoes picked from their own garden. I use this bag of smoked sun-dried tomatoes.

Stir everything up, make sure there's still enough water in there (or so I thought), lid goes back on. Now to wait until about a half hour before dinner so I can drop a ton of the baby kale/baby spinach greens mix into the pot. While that wilts up I'll make the same baby multi-color potatoes that Mary made. I usually microwave my tiny taters but to keep true to Mary's vision I'll cut and boil them for the 15 minutes she suggests.

Here it is in the Crockpot just after I added the greens. It was in a dark hallway and the only light came from a flashlight.

And here's the potatoes in the pot getting ready to boil:

Sorry for the lousy photo

Voila! He's the bean stew that Mary envisioned as a super simple meal, but in reality gave me a bit of grief, all served up in a bowl.

Notice it's very dry and not at all like stew as it is in Mary's photo. I can think of 2 reasons for this: 1) I lost more water than I thought when it dripped everywhere when in the Instant Pot, and 2) Mary used an older Crockpot whose temperatures were way lower than more recent Crockpots. I know my 40 year old pot has temps much lower than pots made even 25 years ago, about the time when they raised them because of botulism and other food borne bacteria scares. When that happened, so many writers of older recipes posted that the timing on all their recipes will now be off and if adjustments aren't made, food will burn. Well, this proves it. Even though I kept adding water, these beans still came out fairly dry. Mary said to use twice as much water when cooking the beans, I'll either use three times the amount (I adjusted the recipe to reflect this), or just make the beans in the older Crockpot or, if done in the Instant Pot, then continue cooking them on the Keep Warm setting for the rest of the cooking time.

Now for the taste test. Did the beans really taste better 1) slow cooked instead of pressure cooked, and 2) made without all the other flavorings I usually add to beans when I cook them, like onions, garlic, and Liquid Smoke? Aside from the dryness I already addressed, the beans tasted - - just okay. The addition of sun-dried tomatoes did add a different flavor than the usual onions and garlic that I usually add to my pots of beans. Not better or worse, just different. I do believe this dish would have been better served over rice instead of potatoes. I had mine as-is, but my husband doused his in sriracha sauce and was very happy with them.

I will make these again, probably as soon as next week, but will use a white bean, like cannelini, next time. And now that the older pot is scrubbed out and sparkling clean again, I may be using that one instead of this newer, hotter pot. I expect it to come out a little different once it has the right amount of water in it.

Thanks again, Mary McDougall, for another simple and tasty recipe. Well, it will be simple for me, eventually! LOL

Another Oldie - Stovetop Zucchini Casserole

There are so many tiny McDougall cookbooks out there that were released in the days before the internet and bookstores like Amazon.com. Back then, you had to know a book existed, and if you wanted to pre-order it or even buy it after its release, in some cases, you had to know the exact title, author, and ISBN number. Or be lucky enough to have a bookseller who knew of Dr. McDougall and ordered his books to have on his shelves.

I knew about Dr. McDougall back in the mid- to late 1980's, when our local health food store had 2 battered copies of The McDougall Health-Supporting Cookbook Volume 1 and Volume 2 in their little library nook. Each time I went to that store I brought my notebook and copied a few more recipes from it. The back of the books mentioned the author (Mary McDougall) was co-author of another book called The McDougall Plan, but it wasn't in our library's card catalog (This was also the years before inter-library loans, too), and the only bookstore in town looked in his catalogs and said it wasn't in any of them so if it did exist, he couldn't order it anyway.

Flash forward to 1992 and our first computer and a subscription to the Prodigy Bulletin Board network. It was there I found all I needed to know about John and Mary McDougall, especially their next book, The McDougall Program: 12 Days to Dynamic Health. Since it was a fairly new book it appeared in the catalog the local bookstore ordered from, and from that day on I would purchase every McDougall book released, usually as a pre-order, and thanks to Amazon now, have it in my hands the day of release. In the meantime, I would find out about all the other McDougall books I had missed over the years, and would pick them up when and where I could. Those original Health Supporting Cookbooks I got when the health food store decided to close the book nook and I got them for a total of $5. The New McDougall Cookbook I got at a mall bookstore's close-out department. Books like The McDougall Plan and the Doctor McDougall Health Enhancing Recipe Book would be purchased from vendors on Half.com. And if you're just looking for something to make for dinner, no book is even needed - there's a great recipe section right on the McDougall website.

Anyway, this recipe has appeared only once, in that very first McDougall book I saw, The McDougall Health-Supporting Cookbook Volume 1. It's never been in any other McDougall book or cookbook, nor has it made an appearance in a newsletter or the web site, as far as I know. I recently acquired a half dozen zucchini, and not being too fond of the fruit (Yes, botanically that's what they are), I went looking through my McDougall recipe cardfile to find one that used a lot of this stuff and found this one:

Stove-Top Zucchini Casserole
SERVINGS: 4-6
PREPARATION TIME: 15 min. COOKING TIME: 45 min.

6 medium zucchini, thickly sliced
3 potatoes, chopped
4 celery stalks, sliced
6 green onions, sliced
1/2 tsp. basil
1/4 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. low sodium tamari
1 cup tomato sauce

In a large saucepan, saute the onions and celery in 1/4 cup water about 5
minutes. Add the remaining ingredients. Stir gently to mix. Cover and cook
over medium-low heat until tender, about 35 minutes.

McDougall Health Promoting Cookbook
page 77

I used a bit more scallions, because I like them, but otherwise made it exactly as written when I tossed it all into the skillet:

As you can (barely) see, the tomato sauce has already been added. I really didn't have high hopes for the meal at this point. But I turned on the gas, popped the lid on the pan, set my timer, and walked away. 

After 35 minutes, I was greeted with about a quarter to third volume of veggies and a very watery, nearly tasteless, pink sauce.

How do I salvage this mess? First, I took out my handy tube of tomato paste from the refrigerator and squirted about half of it into the pan and mixed. In hindsight, I should have just gone to the pantry for a 6 ounce can and put that in. It still needed a little something more and grabbed my jar of Mrs. Dash® Tomato Basil Garlic Seasoning Blend and started shaking and mixing and tasting.

Perfect!

I forgot to take a photo at that point because by now my husband was already sitting there, fork in hand, waiting to eat. Here's a picture of my bowl after a few bites were taken out of it:

Ok, maybe I already ate half of my serving. Unfortunately, that was almost half the entire recipe! I gave my husband the larger half, and after he finished his bowl he took his loaf of Dave's Killer Bread and used 2 slices to sop up any sauce left in his bowl, another slice to finish off mine, and another 2 slices to sop up the skillet. So, a bit more than half the recipe's volume plus 5 slices of bread to satisfy one 6' tall, 160 pound man. About an hour later, I opened up a can of garbanzo beans, rinsed, and ate them. Finally I was no longer hungry!

Now I know why when others posted this recipe on-line they marked it as a side dish. This would be great if served with the Esseslstyn's Grandpa's Eat Loaf or Jeff Novick's burgers, but not by itself like I did it.

Would I make this again? Well, I'll think about it during the late summer, when all the stores are selling zucchini at cut rate prices. I'll either make twice as much or serve it with something else. After I doctored it up a little it really was quite tasty.