Cowboy Stew

This is our nute version of an old family favorite from the camp. 


Ingredients:

Beans - your choice, one or two or more kinds, cooked as directed (or canned, rinsed)

1 bag frozen organic corn

1 large potato (sweet or white), precooked or grated

Other Vegetables:
Carrots
Onions
Bell Pepper
Garlic
Tomatoes - 1 or 2 fresh or 1 can no salt tomatoes

Seasonings, to taste (pepper, red pepper, garlic powder, cayenne)


Cook the vegetables first in the soup pot, saute with 1 cup water until onions are translucent.   Then add the other ingredients (beans, corn, potatoes) and 4 cups water or vegetable broth.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes, adding more water if needed.

Optional - for the adults, we like to add chopped mushrooms to the onion mixture.  Not only does it make the soup healthier, it makes its own sort of gravy to thicken the broth.   You can add a little flour or other thickener (we used to use the brown gravy in a dry packet).  

Split Peas and Carrots Soup

This is another quick, easy and delicious soup for a cold day, like today.

Ingredients:

1 bag dried split peas
3 extra large carrots
1/2 extra large onion
4 large cloves garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil (optional) *
water
Seasonings (pepper, garlic powder, red pepper, salt (optional))
Optional - frozen organic sweet corn (no sugar added, of course)

* if not using olive oil, I recommend adding a bit of nut butter (we used cashew butter) to the cooked soup or topping your servings with a tablespoon or so of diced avocado.   A little healthy fat helps with nutrient absorption.


Follow instructions on the bag to cook the split peas on the stovetop or in the crockpot.




 Meanwhile, wash, peel and process the carrots, onions, and garlic in the food processor or chop by hand.   Add the olive oil, if using, along with the chopped onions, garlic, and carrots to a soup pot on the stove.   Add 2 cups water and cook on medium until the onion is translucent and the carrots start to soften.   Keep adding water to prevent it from drying out and sticking, and simmer until the split peas are ready. 



Pour the cooked split peas into the vegetable mixture and season to taste (pepper, garlic powder, crushed red pepper, and salt, if using).  





For our non-soup-loving Little Guy, we added a tablespoon of frozen, organic, sweet corn to sweeten the soup.   He pronounced it "not good" and proceeded to eat it all anyway :) 

Things My Kids Eat

How do you get kids on board with healthy eating?  

1. Set the example
2. Give good, solid reasons as to why certain foods are good for us and what they do to the body
3. Give good, solid reasons as to why certain foods are not good for us and what they do to the body
4. Provide good tasting, eye pleasing, foods that they already like.  Build on pre-existing favorites such as cherry tomatoes, cut up raw carrots, and the like.
5. Slowly introduce new flavors and tastes and let them adapt at their pace

Breakfasts:

• Cereals ( here )  with plant milk (we use unsweetened almond milk) 
• Oatmeal with fruit and honey, cherry pie and ice cream oatmeal, apple pie oatmeal
• overnight oatmeal, eaten raw, tastes like cold cereal 
• Smoothies (green smoothies with raw oatmeal makes a thick, stick-with-you, smoothie)
• Banana Bread here  or the Health Nut Cookie here

Lunches:

• His banana peanut butter roll up creation  here
• Bean burrito (whole wheat tortilla, fat free refried beans)
• Peanut Butter & Honey on whole wheat bread
• Whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce
• Whole grain pizza crust with tomato sauce
• Whole grain bread, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, with avocado & mustard

Dinner:

• Beans & Rice
• Beans & Corn
• Beans & Tortillas (Bean Burrito)
• Beans & Tortilla chips (Corn tortillas, baked in oven or microwave)
• Sometimes soup - but rarely
• and,
• anything on the Breakfast or Lunch list.  

Snacks:

We're not big on snacks usually, but he will occasionally want something before bed.  In those cases, we have the banana bread or healthy cookies or else just a piece of fruit.  

Desserts:

• See above about banana breads and healthy cookies! 
• Also, we do banana "ice cream" with frozen bananas, strawberries, vanilla, almond milk.  Or with cocoa powder for chocolate "ice cream"

How he gets his G-BOMBS:

Smoothies (greens, berries, seeds (chia))
Beans (onions & mushrooms get pureed into the beans)

Obviously, these two foods (smoothies & beans) are the most important things he eats, so we try to always squeeze them in somewhere during the day.  

Today's Menu, At a Glance

We often get asked, if you don't eat meat, eggs, dairy, sugar, white flour, processed foods, oils, etc., then what exactly DO you eat? 

Here's my answer....

Breakfast ~



which translates to this:




Lunch ~ 

Recipe here




Recipe here    (I only ate the burger part, not the bun, but couldn't resist posting the picture of the fully formed one! It looks like a real burger.)





Dinner/Dessert ~


Quick Soup, Healthy Soup  here


Chocolate "shake"   here


Cookie here

Peanut Butter Roll Up

Recipe by our Guest Blogger today, Ryder:

Ingredients:

1 tortilla (whole wheat)
2 banna
3 peanut butter
4 honey

Potato Mushroom Burgers

These taste like a healthy hashbrown - so good!    No need for a bun, for sure. 


Ingredients:

2 cups black beans
1 # mushrooms
4-5 potatoes (sweet or white)
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 cup oats or oat flour
2 organic eggs or 2 chia/flax "eggs" 
seasonings to taste

Start the chia "eggs" first if you're using them (2 Tbsp chia+1 cup water in the blender, blend on high, let sit 15 minutes, hit "high" and blend once or twice more during the 15 minute wait. 

I put the mushrooms, potatoes, onions and garlic through the Grater blade on the shredder.    Add this mixture to a large bowl and put in the eggs (or "eggs"), beans, and oats/flour.    Mix well with a large spoon or your hand and season it well.   

Bake at 325 for 45 minutes (flipping once) or in a pan with a little oil or water misted into it (Note:  baking didn't turn out as well as the pan "frying" did with the potatoes for some reason).   This is a big batch of burgers because we like to freeze them, but you can definitely cut it down some. 

Not the prettiest picture since I burnt half of it, but the taste makes up for it.    The reason I had to take a picture of the half burnt one is because the rest were gone so fast! 

Food Preparation, Shopping List

Garlic, 2-3 bulbs

3-5# raw carrots

Purple cabbage

3-5 large onions

4-5 bell peppers, various colors

2# mushrooms

Other vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, celery, etc)

Cooked or canned (rinse, drain) beans, various kinds

Dried Lentils

2 cans/jars diced or crushed tomatoes

2 bags frozen organic corn

Cooked vegetable stock (optional)

Potatoes (sweet or white)

 

Pantry ( olive oil, chia seeds, unsweetened almond milk, dijon mustard, cashews/cashew butter, lemons, nutritional yeast, balsamic vinegar)

 

 

Simplifying Food Preparation

Our goal is to cut down on as much of the food preparation as possible, especially for busier weeks.   Shopping list here.

This week's plan:

• Roast 2 bulbs of garlic in the oven, remove, let cool, peel

• Wash raw vegetables, remove cores, ends, and prepare food processor.   Process:
• raw carrots 1-2 lbs   (grater blade)
• purple cabbage  1/3 large head or 1/2 small head  (grater blade)
• 3 large onions  (S blade)
• 4 bell peppers (S blade)
• mushrooms (slicing blade)
• along with any other raw vegetable on hand (broccoli, cauliflower)

• In 2 stockpots (or 1 stock pot, 1 crockpot), add 1 tablespoon of olive oil or water, add 1/3 or so of onion, pepper, garlic, mushrooms and cook them on medium until soft (for crockpot, cook vegetables in a pan and then transfer to crockpot)

• For vegetable stew, put in 1/3 of vegetable/mushroom mixture, 4 cloves of roasted garlic, 4 cups beans (one or more types), 1 can or jar of tomatoes (diced or crushed), 3 cups water or vegetable broth, 1 bag frozen organic corn, diced potatoes (optional), seasonings to taste.  

• For lentil soup, rinse lintels and add 1/2-1 pound of lentils to crockpot or stockpot and enough water to cook them (see package for details) plus 3 cups water or vegetable stock.    Add vegetable/mushroom mixture, 1 bag frozen organic corn, 5-6 roasted garlic cloves.   Cook until lentils are ready.   Season after this, not before lentils are cooked. 

• For bean burgers, take 2 cups of the vegetable mixture, 1-2 cups of sliced or grated mushrooms, 1-2 cups of shredded sweet potato and add to black (or other) beans.   Season well and add 1 cup oats.  Optional:  1 organic egg or 1 chia/flax egg.   Press into burgers or loaf pan or muffin cups and bake at 350 until cooked through.  

• Save the rest of the vegetable mixture (without raw mushrooms) for confetti salad topping.   Season it to taste. 

• For salad dressing, add 1 cup unsweetened almond milk, 1/2 cup cashew butter, 2 Tb nutritional yeast (optional), pepper, garlic powder, 6-8 large cloves roasted garlic, 2 Tb or more lemon juice, 1 Tb dijon mustard.    Optionally, leave out the nutrtional yeast and add in dill, lemon.     (And/or, make a second salad dressing like the Balsamic Garlic Dressing here)

Ideally, ahead of time we've shopped for the necessary ingredients and cooked some beans in the crockpot.  

Caesar Salad Dressing

This one is taken from Dr. Fuhrman's website, called Casinera's Famous Caesar Salad Dressing, created by a member.  We've made a few changes such as almond milk instead of soy, but otherwise it's pretty close.


Ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
5-6 cloves garlic, roasted or raw (or less, about 2 large cloves) 
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
4 oz cashews or cashew butter, raw
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
Juice of 1/2-1 lemon, to taste
salt, if desired, to taste
pepper, to taste


Mix milk and garlic in blender and blend until smooth.  Add other ingredients and blend.  Note: if using raw cashews, process them into cashew butter first.   4oz of cashew butter is about 1/2 cup. 


Wayne thinks we're trying to kill him with garlic, so my next experiment will be to find a stinky-garlic-free dressing for him.  

Update - we have switched to always using roasted garlic in this recipe.   Also, we make a version without the nutritional yeast as some in the family don't like the flavor it adds (crazy people!). 

Three Sisters Harvest Soup (Stew)

For some reason, all my healthy soups turn out split pea dark greenish brown.  Not a very photogenic color, but apparently a sign of a soup with lots of healthy foods blended together. 

This one started out as soup but the family wanted it more like a stew, so we've included both recipes here. 


Ingredients List


The three "sisters" :

• 2 cups Butternut squash (or pumpkin or sweet potato**)
• 2 cups beans, any 
• 1 bag frozen corn

Other ingredients:

• 1 large onion
• 5 extra large cloves garlic
• 5 large carrots
• 2 large fresh tomatoes
• 1 pound mushrooms
• 1/2 pound spinach, chopped (or any greens, fresh or frozen) 
• Pepper, chipotle chili powder, garlic powder, cilantro or parsley
• 1/4 cup cashew cream (raw cashew butter), optional

For stew: 

• 2-3 cups of other beans or lentils, we used black beans since we had them made
• Additional vegetables such as green peas, diced carrots, more corn. 
• Reduce water slightly

Cut butternut squash in half lengthwise, put in pan with 1 cup water, and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.    Scoop out flesh, using 2 cups for soup and freeze or use the rest for other recipes. 



Put garlic cloves in a pan, rub with a scant amount of olive oil if desired but is not necessary, and bake the first 15 minutes of the squash's baking time to roast the garlic (if desired).   When cool, squeeze out the roasted garlic, dice, and add to medium low heated soup pot with 1 tsp olive oil or just a bit of water.   Let cook while you prep the veggies. 



While the squash and garlic are baking, chop remaining veggies (carrots, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach).  I sent the carrots and onion through the food processor (s-blade) to mince them very fine. 



Gather all the chopped veggies and add to soup pot with about 12 cups of water (or some veggie broth and water, but this kind of makes its own veggie broth with the onions, garlic and carrots diced so fine and simmered for so long).   Use slightly less water for stew, about 8-9 cups. 
 



When the squash is ready, add to soup, then add cooked beans and frozen corn.   Simmer about 15 minutes more and serve. 

A personal step that is unnecessary but that I like to do to make the soup creamier is to take out 1/3 of the soup, let it cool a bit, and send it through the blender.   You can also add in 1/4 cup or so of cashew cream (raw cashew butter) for a bit of fat to allow for better (more) nutrient absorption. 

Creamy garlic salad dressing

Picture to follow soon...


Ingredients:

1 cup water
2 tablespoons chia seeds

* blend for 10-15 seconds, let sit 5 minutes, blend again to break up seeds, let sit 15 minutes or so to thicken

1/2 tsp or more of balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp or so to taste of Dijon or spicy brown mustard
5-8 cloves of garlic, raw or roasted
1-2 sp of olive oil, optional
Pepper, Garlic powder

Add above ingredients to chia mixture in blender and process until smooth.  Store in fridge overnight to ripen flavor, but it can be used immediately.

Chocolate ” ice cream” Shake

A happy accident....



I'd frozen a banana to make chocolate banana "ice cream" but added too much almond milk.  It turned out like a somewhat thin ice cream shake.  Yum! said the boy.  

Ingredients:

Frozen banana
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup almond milk

Blend or process in food processor until smooth.   Less almond milk = ice cream thickness.

Quick Soup, Healthy Soup

Most of the time, I can let beans soak or cook in the crockpot, simmer the vegetables, and have a nice soup from scratch.    Other times, I forget to soak the beans or don't have time to saute veggies but still want healthy soup from scratch.    Last night was one of the latter times.   

A quick cooking but still healthy made from scratch soup ~ double the ingredients easily doubles the amount of soup you have.   For us, that's still just a few nights' of soup, for others, it would make enough to freeze half.  


Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large bell pepper, chopped
• 4-5 cloves garlic (to taste), smashed or chopped
• 1 cup water

Heat a soup pot on the stove and add the above ingredients on medium (optional: add 1 tsp olive oil for sauteeing, or just water saute).   Let cook while you finish assembling the ingredients.

• 1/2 pound carrots
• 1/2 pound purple cabbage
• 1/2 pound of mushrooms, sliced
• other vegetables (whatever you have - frozen or fresh - that you want to add in)
• fresh or frozen greens (kale, spinach, collards, etc.)

Add all ingredients to food processor or chopper and put in soup pot as you are finished.

• 1/2 pound dry lentils - rinsed well
• Add lentils plus 4 cups of water (or 2 cups water, 2 cups veg broth).
• frozen sweet corn (organic, unsweetened)

  
When the soup is finished cooking, season with your favorites to taste (pepper, garlic powder, and a touch of cayenne) and add a bag of frozen sweet corn and let it heat through.  

You can easily double or triple this.  It was gone in 1-1/2 meals here...even the bean-hating little guy ate it, and it freezes very well.

Super fast cooking instructions - use your food processor.  Get out your veggies, wash and clean them.  Then using the food processor, process the onions, garlic, peppers with the S blade and add to the soup pot to start the saute.   Change to the grater blade, and process the carrots, cabbage, and other veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, sno peas, etc!  Bags of frozen vegs work great in this.)   Then swap to the slicer blade and do the mushrooms.  Drop these vegetables plus frozen or fresh greens (spinach, kale) in the soup pot and add the lentils & water.   Wash/rinse out the food processor immediately, pop the unused veggies back in the fridge - and done.   Soup in 10 minutes prep time, 40 miinutes cook time.
 
Crockpot instructions:  (optional, saute seasoning vegetables in a pan first, then add to crockpot with other ingredients as above. )   Cook on high until lentils are finished, about 4 hours.

Shopping list:
1 large onion
1 large bell pepper
1/2 lb. mushrooms
1 garlic bulb
carrots
purple cabbage
dry lentils
frozen sweet corn (no sugar added)
frozen kale or collards or spinach