Planning Meals: Beautiful & Bountiful Dinners with Grains & Veggies

I haven't been blogging our food lately, but there have been many delicious meals made with whatever looked good at the co-op and what I had time to fix between teaching and other commitments. The beauty of the plate is one thing that I continue to enjoy immensely about our meals.  The colors and textures definitely influence my meal planning. I think of the plate, the textures, the flavors. Any of these elements can run the show when it comes to planning a meal based on what I have in the house, or what I am buying in order to have in the house.  Weather can influence me too -- is it a "comfort food" day or a cool temperature meal we need to heal the day's energies and seal in the benefits of nurturing ourselves?

So I thought I'd put up a few photos of how things come together, even though I haven't blogged the recipes for these meals. Most of them are very simple sequences of cutting, cooking and putting together... and I'll try to give enough information so that you could give it a go... or let me know that you really want directions and I'll blog 'em out.

As an experimental, temperamental, spontaneous and intuitive cook, I find it amusing that I am now trying to routinize anything about my kitchen activities and write things down, document what works, and imagine that anyone is following along.  The idea of the eat2thrive blog is truly to inspire you to go ahead and explore this marvelous feast of possibilities. If these meal ideas spark something -- light it and go with it! I'd love to know if your results thrilled you and would be happy to put them up on the blog for others if they are replicable.

A blend of vegetables, joined with a flavorful sauce or spice, and served on a plain grain can be a marvelous anchor for a meal. These medleys of flavors can be combinations. Here I combined in a water saute with bits of ginger and garlic:  carrots, onions, olives, Cremini mushrooms, and fennel on plain millet. The  sides are fresh spinach cooked with small bites of tofu and garlic, and a salad of enoki, Asian watermelon radishes, arugula and grape tomatoes treated with a splash of Mirin.









This blend is slivered lacinato (dinosaur) kale sauteed with bits of onion, and then mixed together with the white quinoa that I cooked separately in the gingery water I used to steam the carrots, sweet potatoes, and parsnips that make up the side dish finalized with roasted sunflower seeds and a tablespoon of dried currants. The salad is a simple chopped endive, radicchio, cucumber and quartered red grapes with a splash of pomegranate balsamic vinegar.  The sriracha hot sauce turned the quinoa into a wonderful complement to the sweet of the root veggies and slightly bittersweet crunch of salad.

Here is a stir-fry model (in water of course, not oil), with sugar snap peas, shiitakes and pea shoots thrown in at the end. The binder is tamari with a splash of ume plum vinegar plus water. Plain long-grain brown basmati rice was the base under it, and then the fun started with the sliced steamed zucchini cooked with fresh cilantro, a little salt and lemon! This added a flavor bite to the salty familiarity of the stir fry.

 Here the rice is the border keeper to separate the veggie medley of sauteed snow peas, carrots, broccoli, and garlic with a light peanut sauce, and the pressed, soaked, and then broiled tofu slabs ... soaked in ginger/tamari/tomatillo/sesame seed. I'm still working on how to get that crispness without oil... and this was a pretty good outcome, broiled on tin foil, and reserving a little of the sauce to continue putting a little moisture on as the tofu began crisping.

Here the rice is transformed into Asian rice noodles, soaked in boiling hot water, and then rinsed. The black eyed peas were cooked with garlic, salt, pepper and lemon, and snuggled up to steamed fresh spinach with a dash of seaweed gomasio. I wanted a distinctly different texture/shape and went for the fresh green beans, steamed plain and served with a squeeze of lemon.  Using the noodles changes the nature of the meal and makes today's dinner vastly different from the rice-based meal of yesterday or tomorrow.

Another way to totally change the rice experience is to play with special heirloom rice grains now available in so many places. This black rice is packed with nutrition, stays a beautiful deep color and has a nutty marvelous flavor. So all I did was add bits of chopped mushroom and garlic to the rice as it cooked, served it with plain steamed broccoli, a leafy salad with scallions, pea shoots and sliced strawberries treated with tarragon vinegar, and then I experimented with the side dish.  This one was a delicious surprise of black grapes, jicama, fresh tomatillo chopped up like tomatoes, bits of scallion and a splash of mirin.





Pasta! I use brown rice pasta to avoid gluten, and because it can be served either soft or al dente.  This variation was served at room temperature on the first hot day... partly because I had no time to cook dinner at dinner time, and made this in its parts before heading out to teach an evening yoga class. Steamed Brussels sprouts were rinsed in cool water and quartered, then mixed together with quartered grape tomatoes, sliced parsnip, bits of green and black olives, and two beautiful fresh scallions chopped. The glue was a red miso sauce -- a heaping tablespoon of red miso mixed with about 1 cup of hot water, a splash of balsamic vinegar and stirred well. I poured this over the whole thing, cooked noodles and all, and let it sit out until I got home later. Simple salad - radicchio, chopped romaine, last of the endive and a little pomegranate balsamic, salt and garlic.



Another quick meal using brown rice pasta and a side salad! This one was garlic sauteed chard with bits of sun dried tomatoes, stirred into the brown rice spirals, and then a quick steam of fresh asparagus spears to cut and toss on top. Beautiful and tasty! Boston lettuce with cucumber, red pepper, bits of chopped celery and tarragon vinegar with garlic to dress it up.

None of these meals were planned ahead more than the day-of. The most important aspect of all these meals was having beautiful fresh ingredients on hand, and a stock of grains/pasta to put in place to round things out.

Desserts are usually sharing a cut up apple, perhaps a perfect pear, a naval orange ... or when the mood strikes, a little container of soy yogurt with granola and fresh strawberries!

Give it a try -- play around with these ideas ... and let me know if you find something marvelous to share or want a more detailed instruction about how to make any of these.  One thing is for sure you will be eating well!

Being Ready: Keep tidbits, Add Color

Flavor makes so much difference in this style of cooking and giving up the familiar patterns is much easier if the food is satisfying and flavorful. One way to make sure of this is to save the parts of vegetables that will make a broth more full flavored, or to add in something unusual that adds sparkle.

 A few leftover cooked beets or a handful of pomegranate seeds, or chopped pea shoots can make a salad zingy. Putting a smattering of enoki mushrooms or fresh cilantro on a rice cake with homemade humus (smash up those remaining chickpeas with garlic and tahini and lemon and you're there with oil-free humus) can turn the quotidien into a subtle and delicious treat. Chipping a couple olives off the pit into a salad will replace any depth of olive oil flavor you might miss, then add a splash of vinegar and a handful of toasted sesame seeds.  And save the stems from your shiitake mushrooms along with unused celery leaves and other bits, like the greens of the leeks, which go a long way towards a yummy soup stock into which you can throw lentils, a cut up potato and some kale.  You only need to simmer the bits in water and then strain the bits out -- you can add some carrots, onion and garlic too and voila!

Lemons and limes are key ingredients to have handy at all times. Drizzling lime on your celery and jicama salad is like having the sun come out from behind the clouds. A squeeze of lemon on the green beans or broccoli is all it takes to make a special taste out of a common one. A smattering of chopped almonds on top will add flavor and deeper layers to your nutrition for the day.  For example, 22 almonds, dry roasted unsalted, added to your salad, would add approximately 6 g of protein, 14.8 g of lipids, 6 g carbohydrates for their 169 calories, according to chronometer.com.

We love to have tomatillos and avocado around too, adding tomatillo tartness to a sauce for our black bean enchiladas (recipe to come) or an avocado's creaminess to a cracker or a sandwich (great with a slab of tomato, slices of cucumber or red pepper and a sprig of parsley) makes a quick and lovely lunch.

One more item that I always keep in my fridge is miso. My local coop carries Miso Master Organic traditional soy paste in several flavors.  I like to try various types, barley, red, white, etc. At lunch I love having that to add to a bowl of boiled water in which I have quickly cooked any combination of chopped veggies (scallion, a grape tomato, a shiitake mushroom, bits of leftover tofu, a spinach leaf). You can also add a bit of soaked Wakame seaweed. Miso can bring depth to a soup, or sauce and is fun to experiment with in no oil-salad dressings.

Stock the Pantry: Out with the Old, In with the New

Commitment is key to any practice. Supporting a vegetable based, whole grain kitchen requires the same clarity and expediency that any kitchen does. There is no point in forcing yourself to bypass the mayonnaise each time you reach into the refrigerator.

After our decision was made that first morning, we began immediately. The next day we weeded out everything in the kitchen that we were no longer going to need. This meant anything with wheat gluten in it, oil, high fructose corn syrup, sugars and dairy products. We kept one very nice bottle of olive oil, one of roasted sesame oil, and what was left of our whole wheat flour and (delicious molasses-rich) brown sugar, along with a couple bottles of store bought salad dressings, and some powdered nonfat milk. That made us feel that we were able to accommodate others who might want "real" milk in coffee or sugar in their oatmeal. Out with the mayo! Amazed at the amount of bread, including in the freezer, pasta, crackers, oils, cereal, salad dressings, yogurt, cheeses, eggs and such, we decided to give them away.

The new team in the kitchen must have flavors and textures ready to go. We invested in some new items as well as replacing old ones, buying Mirin, Ume Plum Vinegar, Black Vinegar, Low Sodium Organic Tamari, unsweetened soy milk, vanilla almond milk, good balsamic vinegar, Brown Rice Wine Vinegar, and seaweed Gomasio. We use our own tarragon vinegar (just put several sprigs of washed fresh tarragon into a  corkable dark glass bottle of white distilled vinegar and let it sit a while) for salad dressings too. Read the labels, some sauces have surprising ingredients.

Then we made sure we had some new flours along with our usual texturized vegetable protein, real maple syrup and cornmeal, we bought the coarse meal that I used in the polenta, chickpea flour, brown rice flour, Teff flour (a real experiment to use this Moroccan favorite), fresh tahini, agave syrup,  dry roasted almonds, fresh walnut pieces, unsalted roasted sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, an extra jar of peanut butter, fresh horseradish, and several new types of hot sauce.

Along with a wide variety of fresh perishables, like vegetables and tofu in different textures, it is critical that you have a ready supply of onions, garlic, winter squash, potatoes of various types (red or yukon gold, russets for baking, sweet potato), and materials that will make delicious smoothies for a quick breakfast. My husband is up at 5:15AM and though he does still have his cereal, he will alternate with a smoothie made with almond milk, that might have kiwi, banana, strawberry, blueberry, apple, cucumber, plus a heaping tablespoon of vegetable-based protein powder. Some would prefer a more pungent smoothie with spinach and kale, ginger and beets, but so far, my guy likes his a little sweet.

Of course you will need an array of foods you like to eat, and some to try out. We made sure we had green, red and Le Puy lentils, along with many types of dry and organic low-salt beans. For us that includes lots of black beans, limas, dark red kidney beans, garbanzo beans (chick peas), adzuki beans, navy beans, cannelloni beans, and mung beans. Don't forget the whole grain rices! You can use brown basmati, short and long grain brown rice, and we went ahead and got sushi rice too, along with Canadian wild rice, and a gorgeous heirloom black rice. Our recent discovery is farro, an Italian grain that is an early form of wheat without much if any of the gluten that seems to trouble so many people. This has made for lots of fun and it all tastes great. It's good to have a wide range of motion to start with, as you will be discovering what you like better and best.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor must you ever have all of these particular things, or all of them at once. That said, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you supply yourself over the first couple of weeks with the materials that will make this easier to do. There were truly NO moments so far in this first month when I have stood in the kitchen and felt that I had nothing to work with. The hardest part is sometimes keeping it simple, to grate that daikon radish on that arugula, throw on some pomegranate seeds and leave it just like that!

So Much Fun Eating Only Veggies, Fruits & Whole Grains

Everything we eat changes our biochemistry and that, in turn, really does make us who we are. Food can have a big effect on mood, energy level, risk factors for a whole host of medical conditions, and in our social and family life. Food has a way of entering into our daily pattern, interactions, budget and sense of satisfaction. It makes a difference when we change eating habits, and even if it seems like a good change, making it work can be complicated.

When my husband declared, the morning after seeing the movie "Forks Over Knives"   (forksoverknives.com), that he wanted to “give it all up” and begin eating a meatless, diary free, no gluten, no oil, whole grain, vegetable based diet, I was delighted if incredulous. So, we took the plunge. From that moment on, we began talking about, planning around, buying, preparing, and sharing delicious whole grain, vegetable based meals. This blog will explore our experiences, my invented dishes with recipes, leftovers that make great meals, disasters, new ingredients, our upstate garden and whatever else happens. 

I invite you to try the recipes and let me know how it goes, what you did, how you changed things, and what you like best.  Perhaps I'll compile the recipes that come out best when tested by everyone else and make that available. I'll try to organize my key words so that you can find recipes for various parts of meals, to use specific ingredients, and so forth. Please let me know how this works for you or not, so that I can improve as we go along.

My way of making food is intuitive, using what I see and hardly ever measuring anything. I’ve estimated quantities, and encourage you to change ingredients depending upon what you have in the kitchen and what you like in the way of flavors and colors. I have been using a free program (chronometer.com) to get an idea of the nutritional values of the recipes and I assign serving sizes to see some measure of the protein, fats, carbohydrates and calories each meal contains. Giving up all dairy, meat and fish all at once made me curious about what all these vegetables and grains would provide, and I wanted some way to know if we ought to be taking some kind of nutritional supplements or not. 

So far, it looks like our meals are giving us just about all the nutrition we need, except for vitamin D and calcium, which we are taking as supplements. We've both lost a few pounds just naturally by eliminating oils, all processed foods and dairy and animals. 

Recipes and photos will follow! Let the deliciousness and fun begin!