VeganMoFo Day 19 - Mac & Tato Cheese

One thing my husband has been hankering for since his appetite returned was mac and cheese. Before his heart thing, I had recently been using various recipes for faux cheese sauces made with cashews instead of my older favorites that used tofu or white beans. While they all tasted delicious, those nuts alone probably contributed to my increasing weight gain and possibly his artery blockages accelerating. That first night he told me about his chest pains I vowed no more nuts in this house, hence the search for another cheese sauce.

This time I'm going to experiment and use another mac and cheese recipe from Mary McDougall:

Mac & Tato Cheese
Servings: 8
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

2 cups water
1 cup cooked potatoes
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 tablespoon onion powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4-ounce jar pimientos
1 pound uncooked elbow macaroni

Place all the ingredients except the pasta in the blender jar and process for several minutes until mixture is smooth and well blended. Pour into a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until thickened.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Cook the macaroni until just tender and drain.

Pour the macaroni into a baking dish, pour the cheese sauce over the top and mix thoroughly, then cover and bake for 30 minutes.

The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 349


I already have some cooked potatoes in the fridge but I'm pulling the peels off before tossing into the Ninja blender.

My pasta of choice is a whole wheat tri-color penne, store brand.

Instead of using the jar of pimientos Mary calls for, I just grabbed the appropriate amount of roasted red peppers out of a jar. I use roasted red peppers so often there's always an open jar in the fridge, especially with my husband home and making pepper sandwiches for lunch a lot of the time. I can pay $2.99 for a quart-sized jar of the roasted red peppers, as opposed to $2.49 (on sale) for a 4-ounce jar of chopped pimientos.

I'm adding veggies to this, like I always do for my mac & cheese recipes. Today it was a bag of Bird's Eye mixed veg and 2 cups of frozen kale.

Most mac & cheese recipes call for some breadcrumbs over the top - it's traditional - so I'm carrying on that tradition and put a layer of whole wheat panko crumbs on.

For the cover, I usually go with Mary McDougall's suggestion of putting a layer of parchment paper then aluminum foil, so the foil doesn't touch the food. The other day in the grocery store I found a new (to me) product - non-stick foil. The company's web site for this product doesn't say exactly what the coating is, just that it's a proprietary formula and food-safe. It's much heavier than regular foil wrap. None of the pasta stuck to the foil, but then again, even on those days I forgot to put parchment under the foil, the most that stuck was 3-4 elbows. If I didn't have a coupon and the store had a sale price on it, I would never had bought this stuff, and I can say right now I probably never will again.

I had a few different tastes with this casserole than with other noochy mac & cheese recipes. At the first bite, I tasted the potato, but it was gone by the second. Also on my tongue was the peppers, which I never really tasted in other recipes, even though this one called for the same amount. The other taste that hit me, but this one stayed for most of the bowl, was the lemon juice. This recipe called for twice as much as all my other nooch sauce ones. Next time I'll cut it down to one spoonful.

My husband is like a dog, he'll eat anything put in front of him, and he said he couldn't tell the difference between this and all the other mac and cheese recipes I've made.

Out of the blender, thanks to the 2 cups of water, this was a very liquidy sauce, but by the time the dish came out of the oven it was all absorbed by the pasta.

All in all, aside from the lemon, I liked it. This one if definitely in the running to replace the cashew-based sauce from Rip Esselstyn that I used for almost a year.

VeganMoFo Day 18 - Spinach Rice

Forgot to mention I tossed some kale in those Mexican potatoes yesterday. The doc reiterated how important it is to get more dark leafy greens into my husband to get his blood count up when we saw him yesterday for my appointment, so I did a "Jeff" and just poured some frozen kale in with the potatoes as they cooked.

No worries about leafies today, because the dish is loaded with spinach, my husband's favorite green veggie.

Spinach Rice
Servings: 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes

1 small onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup water
1 cup uncooked long-grain brown rice
2 cups vegetable broth or water
4 ounce can chopped green chilies
4 ounce jar chopped pimientos
1 1/4 cups corn kernels
1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cups packed fresh spinach
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
freshly ground black pepper to taste


Place the onion, bell pepper, green onion and garlic in a medium saucepan with the 1/3 cup water and cook over medium heat about 3 minutes, until the vegetables are softened slightly and the water has evaporated.

Add the rice, broth/water, green chilies, pimientos, corn, parsley and cumin. Stir, cover and cook for 45 minutes.

Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook for 2 minutes longer.

Serve at once.

The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 335

As for my changes:

For the first 2 ingredients I used half a bag of frozen onion/pepper mix. The store brand is this very fine dice of both onions and green peppers, perfect for this, and a number of other, McDougall dishes.

For the canned chilies, yesterday I took a tablespoon out of a can, and I'll use the rest of that can today in this.

I forgot to buy fresh spinach with the grocery order so had to run out and get some. Believe me, this dish needs fresh, not frozen. Frozen tends to stay together in clumps in a dish, whereas fresh easily disseminates throughout. While the frozen my taste as good as fresh, it looks nicer with fresh.

And I skipped the cilantro and didn't bother with fresh parsley in its place.

Tastes as good as it looks.

The recipe says 4 servings, and that's what it made. My husband and I each had 2 bowls and there were no leftovers.

The only thing I would change next time is to put the whole bag of baby spinach in instead of the 2 packed cups (1/2 bag) called for. We haven't been eating enough greens (Can anybody eat enough?) and this is a good way to get them. I think the dish can handle that much more without them being over-powering.

VeganMoFo Day 17 - Potatoes Mexicali

Another McDougall masterpiece today.

My family loves Mary's frozen diced hash brown based meals, and it's been a while since we had one. It's a real stretch of the imagination to call this any kind of Mexican food, but it is tasty and each family member can choose how spicy they want their own dish of it to be.

Potatoes Mexicali
Servings: 6
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

6 cups frozen hash brown potatoes
2 2/3 cup water
1 tablespoon canned chilies
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon parsley flakes

Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook uncovered for 25 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and the liquid has evaporated. The potatoes will be very mushy.

Serve with salsa and chopped green onions, stuffed in a pita bread or rolled up in a tortilla shell.


The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 346

We had enough for 6 tortillas with about a half-cup left over, which hubby ate on a plate. I rounded the meal off with some baby carrots and a big pile of paper napkins. As usual, hubby used hot salsa and poured a liberal amount of sriracha sauce on his and I used the mildest salsa I could find. 

So sloppy! We're not tortilla or burrito people, and the second we picked these up the filling starting falling right out of it until more was on the plate than in the tortilla. It tasted just as great either way.

Our son took one look at it, grimaced, then went and made himself a box of Road's End mac & chreese. I now buy these by the case from Amazon. He uses rice or almond milk and skips any instructions to add margarine to it. It may not be a "plant perfect" or even "plant strong" food, but it's still better than the store brand mac & (gooey dairy and high fat) cheese he used to eat.  Almost 30 and he still eats like a little kid.

He does not like sloppy food, even as a toddler and throughout his childhood and now young adulthood. This kid wouldn't even eat pizza until he was shamed into it in college, then he became addicted to it. He would never attempt anything as sloppy as this meal was, even after I suggested he just eat it from a bowl. Oh well, his loss is our gain.

VeganMoFo Day 16 - Doctor Day

It's my turn to get some medical attention for a change. Nothing serious, just a follow-up and new blood draw.

Back in July, the same day my husband saw the doc for his chest pressure, I had my own appointment for my yearly lab work. We both had our blood drawn the same afternoon. His was fasting, mine was 7 hours after breakfast, but the lab tech assured me it was good enough to count as fasting blood work.

Well, we all know what my husband has gone through since that doctor visit. As for me, the day before my husband's stress test I saw the doc for the lab results, but only a handful of the tests were back. The cholesterol panel was one of them, and it showed my number up higher than the last few times and trigs over 220. I told the doc that this wasn't fasting, and besides, I'd been following the eating program quite strictly and really don't believe these results and wanted a repeat. He said after the rest of the results come back we'll talk about it.

Then my husband had his cardiac interlude that he's still recovering from.

In the meantime, every week or so I would call the doctor's office to see if the rest of my labs came back, and they never did. 2 weeks ago I made an appointment for today, my doc's first day back from vacation. I reminded them I need those bloodwork results. I was assured they would get it all. I called this past Friday to see if it they got then and no, they didn't. I blew up. I reminded her that I've been waiting 2 months for these results, that the dosage of some medications depends on these results, like my Synthroid, and future treatment depended on the results of the slew of auto-immune tests that were done. The nurse was now a bit apologetic instead of snarky and promised to track them down and would call me back later that day to let me know they were in my chart. I was out of the house when she called over 6 hours later and the only message was "Her labwork is complete." I guess I'll find out in a few hours if they're all there or not.

I did get some of those results the day my husband was doing his pre-admission work before his cardiac cath. The nurse in the out-patient admissions office got his lab work and found mine on the computer and printed out the screen capture. It didn't have any of the "comments" or specific results on the auto-immune tests, only if they were positive or negative, that the comments that would appear on the official copy the doctor would get would give the actual titers and other specifics. I did find out my Vitamin B-12 levels were on the high side of normal, so I cut that pill down to twice a week, and that my Vitamin D level dropped once more into the low 20's, so I increased that to 5 days a week from the 3 I was already taking it.

So, I guess I'll find out if the doc thinks I have lupus or not in a few hours, and I want a repeat of at least the cholesterol panel and Vitamin D, now that it's been 2 months since the last ones were drawn and today will be a definite fasting, not just 7 hours without eating.

What I cook today will depend on how long I'm stuck in the office and what time I get home. If it's late, we may just have pasta; if we get in earlier, another recipe from The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart. You'll find out in the morning. :)

VeganMoFo Day 15 - Pea Soup

Hot soup for a cool day. The storms that blew through here finally brought lower temps with it, so I got a chance to make this family favorite for lunch.

I have so many good recipes for this soup, but in keeping with my theme, I'm using Ann Esselstyn's this time:

Split Pea Soup
This is one of my favorites. I love its thickness but make it as thin as you wish by adding extra water. - Ann Esselstyn

3 cups dry split peas
7 cups of water or more as needed (8 in the book)
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 cups minced onions (about 2)  (one in book)
4 to 5 medium garlic cloves, crushed
3 stalks celery, minced
3 medium carrots, sliced or diced
3 small potatoes  (5 in the book)
Lots of freshly ground black pepper
3 to 4 tablespoons red wine or balsamic vinegar  (4 to 5 in the book)
l ripe tomato diced
Lots chopped cilantro or parsley

1. Place split peas, water, bay leaf and mustard in a heavy pot. Bring to a boil, lower heat as much as possible, and simmer, partially covered for about 20 minutes.

2. Add onions, garlic, celery, carrots, and potatoes. Partially cover, and leave it to simmer gently for about 40 minutes more with occasional stirring. Add more water if it looks too thick.

3. Add black pepper and vinegar to taste and serve topped with diced tomatoes and minced cilantro/ parsley or just mix the tomatoes and cilantro into the soup.

Tip: To make this soup quickly, use a pressure cooker. Brown onions in the cooker, add other ingredients, then turn to high and cook for 8 minutes. 

For an amazingly delicious variation, combine everything through carrots. Do not add potatoes. Cook until dry peas have completely softened and lost their shape. Transfer some of the soup to a blender and slowly add 16 ounces frozen peas (or use an immersible blender, adding the frozen peas to the pot). Return to pot and heat. Add pepper and more water, if desired.


Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
Caldwell Esselstyn, MD and Ann Crile Esselstyn
page 198
AND
http://www.meetup.com/Dr-Es-Vegan-No-Oil-Diet-Cleveland-Akron-Ohio/pages/Recipes_by_Ann_Crile_Esselstyn/

Thick is right! Notice this uses a pound and a half of peas instead of the usual 1 pound (2 cups). Also notice the recipe says in a few places ". . . in the book." This is because I copied the recipe from that web page of recipes in the MeetUp site, then compared it to what the book says. I'm using the book's amounts for the water and potatoes, the book's amount for vinegar.

Other changes:
I skipped the bay leaf.

Instead of fresh onions I used frozen.

Instead of fresh celery I used dried from Spices, Etc. I've been using dried vegetables from here for years and decided after last week's fiasco I'll use them in these recipes again, just as I would if making this when it wasn't for VeganMoFo.

Yukon Gold potatoes are what I bought this week so that's what I'm using here.

I always break up my pea soups with an immersion blender, and this one is no different. Neither of us likes the chunkiness of unblended pea soup. 

And my final changes, instead of a fresh diced tomato, I'm using a can of no-salt added petite diced. It's mostly being used as a garnish and not as part of the soup itself. Same with the parsley. I sprinkled some dried on the top, and added some frozen peas as garnish.

This potful will serve us well for the entire weekend for lunches. If hubby needs something more, I have plenty of whole wheat bread he can dunk in it.

VeganMoFo Day 14 - French Toast

My husband isn't much of a breakfast eater, but he doesn't mind eating breakfast foods at lunch time. He had French toast made the tradition way, with eggs, for breakfast while recuperating from by-pass surgery in the hospital. Yes, it's a crime what they serve heart patients! That was the first time he's had it since, oh, who knows! I may have made it fresh once or twice in our 36 year marriage, and when our son was a kid, frozen was the name of the game. I've made them for myself a few times while he was at work, but he never had a vegan version of them before.

French Toast

Servings - 8
Prep time - 5 minutes
Cooking time - 5 minutes (in batches)

1 1/2 cups non-dairy milk
2 teaspoons EnerG Egg Replacer
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
Pinch of turmeric
8 slices whole wheat bread

Place the milk, egg replacer, and turmeric in a blender jar. Process until mixed and pour into a shallow bowl.

Preheat a non-stick griddle until a drop of water skitters across the surface.

Dip slices of bread in the milk mixture, coating both sides, then cook on a dry griddle until brown on both sides.

The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 292

Another quick and tasty meal, just right after a hard day at cardiac rehab. I always eat mine plain but he enjoyed maple syrup on his. Unfortunately, even with a non-stick griddle, these things stuck like they were fused on. I can make Jeff Burgers with no problem, but things like French toast and pancakes are another story. I may have to start putting a bit of oil on the pan first if I make these again, but I hate to have to do it. I'd rather find something else to eat, but today I promised him the French Toast so this is what he got:

Looks lousy but tastes great

I have to keep an eye on his sugary stuff intake. His latest lab work showed total cholesterol down under 150, thanks to the statin, but his triglycerides are over 200, thanks to the cans of ginger ale and glasses of OJ he's been drinking. He used the old excuse that they gave it to him at the hospital, so why can't he have it at home. I reminded him they gave him chicken with gravy and salisbury steak, too, but he knows them to be unhealthy foods. So I'm the bad guy taking one of his last vices away from him. I'll let him have one 7-ounce can of ginger ale a day with his dinner, and when this container of OJ is gone I'm not replacing it. By doing this, it'll be safe for him to have the little bit of sweeteners with meals, like the syrup on this and next week's pancakes or raisins in an upcoming dinner dish.

Now while I understand his triglycerides *might* have been elevated because of his recent rapid weight loss, if I can get him off of soda permanently, I'll avoid his puppy dog eyes and keep the liquidy sweets restricted.

VeganMoFo Day 13 - Your Kids Will Love This Soup

We had a very busy morning - a 3 hour wait at the cardiologist's office, a few phone calls afterwards, then buying new sneakers for hubby so he has something to wear at cardiac rehab when he starts. All of this with the temps hovering in the 90's once again. 

By the time dinner came around I was in no mood to take a long time to cook anything and didn't want to heat the kitchen any hotter than it already was. It's a good thing I had already planned on this family favorite, both mine and the McDougall's apparently. Mary McDougall had written that she served this a lot to her kids.


 YOUR KIDS WILL LOVE THIS SOUP

Preparation Time:  5 minutes
Cooking time:  12-13 minutes
Servings: 4

¼ cup finely chopped onion
¼ cup water
2  16 ounce cans fat free refried beans
1 ¾ cups vegetable broth
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1/3 cup mild Mexican red sauce
½ teaspoon ground cumin

Place the onion and water in a medium saucepan.  Cook and stir until the onion is tender and the water has evaporated.  Add the remaining ingredients, mix well, and cook over very low heat for 10 minutes.  Garnish with fresh cilantro if your child likes cilantro.

The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, MD and Mary McDougall
page 322

My favorite Mickey Mouse spoon makes a nice touch

I buy Eden lower sodium refried beans from VitaCost, because our local health food store would rather dedicate shelf space to gluten-free than salt-free or low fat foods the past few years.

Bryanna's broth powder is what I use to make the broth.

And I always assumed the "Mexican sauce" is plain old salsa.

Mary recently included this recipe in a newsletter devoted to children's favorite meals. It has also been shared under the name "Bean and Corn Soup" but with some Tabasco sauce added, so if it looks familiar, it's in the Quick and Easy book and possibly MWLP, too.

So quick and easy to make, heavy, filling, and flavorful. My husband enjoys this with some of Lori's Cornbread, but it's too darn hot to light the oven, and we just had some earlier in the week, so tough titties, he had to do without. When finished he said the cornbread would have been too much, that this soup was just right the way it was. I'm glad I didn't cave in to the guilt and make it anyway!

VeganMoFo Day 12 - Goulash

When I was a kid growing up in a very urban oil-refinery town (Well, I still live here, but the refineries, and just about every other business, are long gone), my grandparents owned the 6-family apartment house we lived in, and they lived in one of the units on the first floor while we were on the second. I never knew exactly what country in Europe they came from, and after a few years, neither did they, because both families moved a lot when they were young, and after 2 World Wars, borders changed and countries got renamed, some multiple times. One of my uncles finally had his genealogy traced, and although my grandmother always said they were from Austria-Hungary, in the present day (1980's) he discovered the town they were both born in is now part of the Ukraine. My grandmother would be so mad if she knew this before she died, because she had this weird dislike of things Ukrainian. To her, they were on par with bring a Gypsy (capital G, meaning people of a certain ethnic group). When she was really mad at you, you were called a "gypsy," and you knew you were in trouble! She was a proud Hungarian, belonged to a Hungarian church, had friends who were Hungarian.

And she cooked Hungarian food.

My favorite dish of hers was always her goulash. My parents had to be married 25 years before she gave my mother the recipe, and my mom could never make it exactly like my grandmother could, so she must have left off an ingredient or 2, and she never told my mom what it was, either. My mom died before she could pass the recipe down to me. She had a smattering of notes in her recipe card file box, but no details, like how many tomatoes and what cut of meat. I asked a lot of little old ladies how they made goulash - it helped that I worked in a nursing home at the time - and each one had her own cut of beef she preferred using, and no two recipes were ever the same. My dad and his 2 wives afterwards did the same, always seeking the goulash his mom used to make. None of them got it right, either. 

Since I went McDougall decades ago, I stopped the quest, because I knew there was no way to reproduce my grandmother's goulash without using meat. But I still collected goulash recipes. Here are 2 of them, both from heart-healthy doctors' books. 

Goulash
Servings: 4
Prep time: 15 minutes (using cooked pasta)
Cooking time: 15 minutes

1/2 cup water
1 large onion
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
28 ounce can stewed tomatoes
4 cups cooked elbow macaroni

Place the water in a large pot and add the onion, bell peppers and garlic and cook & stir several minutes until all the vegetables are softened.

Add the seasonings and continue to cook over low heat for several more minutes.

Add the tomatoes and cooked macaroni and mix well. Heat over low heat for another 10 minutes to blend the flavors.

The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 332

This is the recipe I use when I don't feel like eating beans for any reason. My husband has a cardiologist appointment tomorrow and he requested a bean-free dinner, and he approved having this one.

For the onion and green peppers I use a bag of frozen diced onion/green pepper mix. For the red pepper I use a pepper from a jar of water-packed roasted red peppers.

I like this better with whole wheat pasta, either the elbows or ribbon noodles, but forgot to buy some, so Tinkayada elbows will do. I'll make up the whole bag and use the excess for either the leftover Kanieski sauce or Speedy International Stew leftovers that are in the refrigerator. The heaviness of the whole wheat pasta makes up for the lack of meat or beans and makes for a heartier dish than with the rice pasta.

A nice light, but filling, meal that will offer no surprises when the doc palpates my husband's abdomen tomorrow.

The next recipe comes from Dr. Neal Pinckeny as is a little more traditional than the McDougall recipe. You can see why hubby didn't want this one tonight, between the beans and all that garlic!

Hungarian Bean Goulash

    A hearty but delicate main course

2 cans beans (white, pinto, garbanzo, black, etc)
1½ lb potatoes scrubbed but unpeeled, diced ¾"
2 large onions, chopped
2 sweet bell peppers, thinly sliced
10 cloves garlic. minced
1 T caraway seeds
1 T honey or other sweetener
1 large tomato, sliced
5 T Hungarian paprika, sweet or hot (or ½ each)
2 T vinegar

In a large pot, saute onions and garlic, caraway seeds and bell pepper in a small amount of veggie broth, wine or water until the onions begin to become translucent. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 30 minutes.

Serve as a stew or over noodles or rice.

4 servings, each 471 calories:   4% from fat (2.4 g),  80% from carbohydrates (98.4 g),  16% from protein (19.4 g).  Sodium 30.3 mg,  Fiber 16.5 g.

Healing Heart Hint

This dish will be a success only if fresh Hungarian paprika is used. The usual small-jar supermarket spice-rack paprika will not work well. You can find imported Hungarian paprika in many larger markets in the gourmet section, often cheaper than the spice-rack jars.

Hungarian paprika comes in two versions, sweet and hot. Although the hot paprika is not as spicy as many peppers, such as cayenne, it does have a bite. If you prefer dishes that are not very hot, use the sweet paprika or use a blend of both.

Many other vegetables can be added to this dish. Try broccoli, celery, zucchini, cabbage, sweet potato, carrots or your favorite veggie.

Neal Pinckney, MD
Healing Heart Handbook

I usually use white or cannelini beans.

Yukon Gold or red potatoes go well with this, but my grandmother always used plain old Russets. so when I'm feeling traditional (and have some on hand), russets is what I use.

Regular onions, not the sweet or Vidalias that I usually have around the house.

The instructions say to thinly slice the green pepper, but my grandmother never did - she just chunked them up, about an eighth of a pepper per chunk, so that's how I usually do it.

Yes, 10 cloves of garlic, and many times I use even more. The taste does fade a bit in the cooking.

My grandmother used fresh tomatoes from her garden, but I have no garden and the fresh tomatoes nowadays taste nothing like those grown in the 1950's, so I use a can of diced (no-salt added, of course), whole, or just dump in a box of Pomi chopped. The more the better when it comes to tomatoes and goulash.

Hungarian paprika is the only kind I have in this house. My grandmother never measured how much she would use. She always gave a very liberal shake of the stuff to her pot and that's what I do. Sometimes I go overboard and make it a bit too spicy for my own taste, but my husband loves it better that way. 

Nobody ever cooked goulash in his Polish family and he really loves this dish. He was blessed with having my grandmother's goulash only a few times in his life before we got married, and with my mother's sudden death just six weeks after our wedding, he was as sad as my father that she never wrote the complete recipe down, but from what he remembered, he said this dish is pretty close to it. My dad didn't even want to try it, being the devoted carnivore he was. To him, if it didn't have meat in it, it wasn't worth eating. Is it any wonder he suffered from 5 different forms of cancer for the last 17 years of his life?

When I make this dish during the winter I'll try remember taking a photo of it to post, 

VeganMoFo Day 11 - Golden Kanieski Sauce

Sauce, gravy - whatever you prefer to call it, it's a nice, flavorful topping to mashed potatoes, pasta or grains.

Golden Kanieski Sauce
Servings: 8
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours for beans, 35 minutes for sauce

2 cups dried garbanzo beans
6 1/2 cups water
4 carrots, diced
2 onions, sliced
2 tablespoons minced fresh gingerroot
4 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in 1/2 cup cold water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup chopped fresh parsley

Soak the garbanzos overnight in water to cover. Drain and place in a large pot with 6 cups water. Cover and cook over medium heat until tender, around 3 hours. When done, remove from the heat and set aside.

Place the carrots, onion and gingerroot in a large pot with the remining 1/2 cup of water and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.

Remove about 3 cups of the garbanzo beans from the pot and puree in a food processor. Place the pureed beans, the remaining garbanzos and their cooking water into the pot with the cooked vegetables. Cook for 10 minutes.

Add the cornstarch mixture and stir until thickened.

Add the soy sauce and parsley, stir, and continue to cook for a few minutes longer, stirring frequently.

Serve over your preferred starch.


The McDougall Program for A Healthy Heart
John McDougall, M.D. and Mary McDougall
(1996), ISBN: 0-452-27266-1 
page 324

I forgot to soak the garbanzos overnight so did a quick soak in the morning. I would have used canned but the recipe depends on the cooking water for liquid for the sauce. Maybe next time I'll use the canned and add some broth.

Because I couldn't find any onions that looked good in 3 different stores, I used half a bag of frozen ones. I chopped up 4 nice big organic carrots into a small dice.

Instead of removing some beans and liquid and adding them back, I just used the immersion blender for a bit. I prefer the beans broken up, anyway. I stopped before they got liquidy and still had at least half beans whole. I use organic "baby" garbanzos (Is this also called "chana dal"?) from the HFS, and these are already about half the size of the garbanzo beans I used to get from Goya, so no need to break up all that much.

I made up a batch of mashed Yukon Gold potatoes and served the sauce over those.

To be honest, it was a wee bit bland to me, but a few more shakes of pepper and a bit of salt remedied that in a flash. My husband loved it is-is and went back for more, then decided he really was full and put it away in a container for tomorrow's lunch.

Even with him doing that, I still had 2 of my 3-cup Pyrex containers almost filled with the leftover sauce. I'll use this later in the week over some noodles.

As for the name, calling it a "sauce" may be a bit of a misnomer, because this stuff was so thick and rich it practically qualifies as a stew. 

A nice meal for those cold winter days that are ahead.

Invisible Illness Awareness Week

I never knew anything like this existed!

http://invisibleillnessweek.com/

Aside from his fading scar, my husband's coronary artery disease is invisible. My CFS is invisible, as is my hypothyroid, hypoglycemia, partial deafness, asthma, and degenerative disc disease and other arthritis and neuritis problems. And now that my labwork is showing I have an autoimmune disease, add that to the list.

I think I'll be spending a lot of time on that web site the next few days.