Eating to Live: Tuesday, July 6

In an effort to eat and feel better, I decided to try out Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live plan. The creative Vegan Epicurean writes about the plan here and there, and her recipes reflect its tenets, so I decided to give it a go. I’ve been trying to incorporate the overall philosophy (basically to eat tons of raw veggies, steamed veggies, beans and fruit; some grains and nuts; and very little or no dairy, eggs, added fats and sugars) over the past couple of weeks. My mother had a health scare last week, and somehow it allowed me to convince her to give it a try. We are now doing it together – or as together as two people who lives three hours away can – so I’m giving it a bigger push. Here is my Eat to Live day of munching.

Tuesday started off with my new favorite smoothie technique:

Stacked in there, from bottom to top, you see a large handful of spinach, a banana, frozen pineapple, frozen peaches and frozen mango. Then I added the creamy liquid that makes it so much more delicious: hazelnut milk. Yum! The consistency is far better than when I make smoothies with water. I only use about 1/4 to 1/3 cup, so it doesn’t add too many calories. Plus, I am not counting calories on this diet, so woo hoo! Unpictured is the tablespoon of flaxseeds I always forget to throw in until the last second.

Beaming in all its green glory.

When I got to work, I brewed a cup of Choice Organic Moroccan Mint Green tea. I always mix in 1/2 to a full tablespoon of local, raw honey to my morning tea. It isn’t actually my favorite, and it does disobey the no-added-sugars thing, but it keeps my allergies under control. I’d rather swallow it than an antihistamine.

Then the lunchtime fairy bestowed upon me this glorious spread:

Ahhhh…I cannot even express how delicious this meal is.

The mushy mess in the bowl is red lentils cooked in garlic, a little veggie broth, a bay leaf and water. It is then topped with maitake mushrooms (from the farmers market) sautéed in veggie broth and more garlic. It tastes like heaven, seriously. The original recipe (from my beloved World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey) called for something like 1/4 cup of olive oil for four servings. Mine has none at all, and you wouldn’t even miss it.

Maitakes = drool.

On the plate is red leaf lettuce topped with my favorite dressing (a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and a healthy dose of cumin) plus a dash of balsamic vinegar. I should have added some other vegetables to the salad, but I didn’t. Oh well. It was still good.

A couple of hours later, I got fruity:

My friends the nectarine and the Cripps pink apple. (How nice that gangbangers are growing such delicious fruit these days!)

And now, let me introduce you to dinner:

Okra (from the farmers market) cooked in tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano and veggie broth; steamed zucchini (from a friend’s garden) and purple new potatoes (farmers market) topped with Italian seasoning and nutritional yeast; and black beans. The okra recipe is from Dr. Dean Ornish’s Everyday Cooking, and it is incredibly tasty. The prep work for this dinner was minimal, just a little chopping and dicing. It all cooks pretty quickly and with little supervision. Next time around, we will drain the juice from the canned tomatoes, because the result was a bit soupy, but it sure is tasty.

Then I proceeded to make dinner for another night. I tried to use this recipe. I say tried because, while the purple hull peas are perfection, I am a pancake-flipping failure. The batter that supposedly makes 8-10 corn cakes for me made two that looked somewhat fine, two that were burnt nearly to a crisp, and a bunch of runny, blackened garbage-disposal fodder. I ate the two blackened ones, doing my best to remove the charred, cancer-causing bits. I forgot to take a picture before I'd inhaled everything, so this is what you get to see:

The not-so-hideous side.

Oh no! Someone keep the carbon away from this girl!

To be honest, they were really tasty, even with the not-at-all-like-the-picture appearance.

That was my Tuesday in food.