As the holiday rush, spirit, and energy begins to really launch into over-drive, it’s time for Your Elf to join in with some foodie stuffs. We are pretty low-key here in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen, so we don’t get into a lot of holiday bakin’. We used to but want to watch the food intake during these food-centered days. We’ll move on to our cookery for the week in just a second BUT FIRST, we wanted to tell you what fun we had last Tuesday speaking to some fellow Plant-based folks who are part of the Dean Ornish program. The group is called The Cohorts and provide such a great support system for Ornish’ers. For those of you unfamiliar, Dean Ornish has been at the forefront of healthy eating (whole food, plant-based, no oil) for decades. His eating regimen has helped literally thousands of people reclaim their health from cardiac disease.
To be totally frank, when one is told that in order to LIVE, dramatic changes need to be made in their eating habits, it’s not an easy row to hoe. For most folks, it’s a dramatic change in what people eat…going from, most likely, high fat, fast food, high calorie to a plant-based, extremely low fat diet. With so many eating/diet options/fads floating around out there, one can become so over-whelmed as to be completely stopped in their food tracks. With a proven record of reversing heart disease, the Ornish Program remains at the top of the list. So Your Elf was tickled pink to be able to speak to this group and offer some ideas, recipes and resources to help along the way. We’d like to thank Sam Vinson for inviting us and we hope to make a return visit soon. We talked so much the next group using our meeting room had to run us out! And, of course, we forgot to take a picture!
Ok, so let’s get to cookin’ and eatin’… Last week Your Elf’s ‘Movie-Mate’, Terry Woosley, mentioned this awesome Lemon Lentil and Spinach Soup she’d made. So, since we LOVE soup and especially Lentil, we decided to give it a go!! Well, we did and OH BOY!! We were Elfishly Delighted!! One of the things Terry said about the soup was that she thought she’d cooked it a bit too long, as the lentils got softer than she preferred. With this information in hand, we opted to use French (or Green) lentils, as they are a bit more hardy and stand up to longer cooking times. We searched the recipes and found one that sounded particularly delicious. It’s by Tori Avey and here’s the link.
Since Your Elf has a tendency to jump the preparation gun and rush into a recipe BEFORE reading through it a couple of times, we REALLY did go through it carefully. First to assure that we DID have all the ingredients on hand, to look at the comments from folks who have prepared it for any tips they may have, and to make sure we understood the cooking order of things. We also determined to tinker with the recipe just a bit by adding some sautéed oyster and shiitake mushrooms as well as a little liquid smoke. But HEY!! We are getting ahead of ours-elfs! After chopping and dicing and all that prep stuffs, we finally got underway by sautéing the onions and carrots in EVOO until they were getting soft, then adding the garlic.
Next up we added some tomato paste, cumin, cayenne (which we doubled), salt and freshly ground black pepper. This was sautéed until the aroma indicated the flavors were really beginning to mesh.
Then the recipe calls for the addition of vegetable stock but, as you know Your Elf, we used The Gentle Chef’s Golden Chikun Bouillon.
(Quick digression: the chikun bouillon recipe is from Chef Skye Michael’s wonderful meat analog cookbook, Seitan and Beyond. It’s a mix of dry ingredients that are blasted into a powder with a high speed blender and transformed into a wonderful stock/broth.) Also added were the lentils.
This cooked for about 30 minutes on a simmer as the lentils and veggies softened. The soup was taken off the heat, the bay leaves removed.
Using a hand-held blender, the soup is then pureed ‘halfway’, meaning the blending stops when the soup has substance but not totally ‘mushed’ and maintains some texture. Then we added the greens…we used a package of power greens which included spinach, baby kale, baby chard and arugula.
Those cooked down pretty quickly at which time we added the mushrooms in a departure from the recipe! In the Kinky Elfery Kitchen, you can never have too many ‘shrooms.
To this we added the juice of two Meyer Lemons…we love the lemony tang and a bit of liquid smoke. The finished product was quite a lovely, thick, tasty, and healthy soup.
You know, as more and more folks become interested, intrigued and/or otherwise curious about plant-based eating, Your Elf fields more questions about ‘how to become plant-based’ or ‘what do/can you eat’. We are only TOO happy to be a resource for folks as they explore changing the way they eat. For instance, we do NOT cook a wonderful recipe every night. We are just like any other person when it comes to preparing meals, only we DO love to cook. But sometimes, the day slips up on us and when it comes time for dinner/supper, we are standing in the KEK (Kinky Elfery Kitchen), staring into the refrigerator saying, “What are we gonna eat tonight?” There are staples that we keep ALL THE TIME for just such an occasion and Wednesday night was ripe for a ‘throw-together’. We cooked some whole wheat pasta…one of the many pastas in the Elfin Pantry; steamed some broccoli florets, another vegetable we keep always at the ready, cooked some Delight Soy Chicken Nuggets and some Gardein Meatless meatballs, and invaded our stash of sautéed mushrooms. In less than 20 minutes, we had a terrific meal.
Instead of a heavy sauce, we grabbed a couple of lemons and the EVOO and drizzled the dish with that combination. Big Solid added some shredded Daiya cheese and the dish was consumed with gusto. And finally last night, we explored how to replicate our favorite salad from a local favorite restaurant, Anjou. Called the Bistro Salad, the restaurant version has bacon and blue cheese (which they know to NOT put on ours), Hearts of Palm, various greens/lettuces, and avocado slices. We also added the Delight Soy chicken nuggets which we LOVE! Thankfully, Anjou allows us to bring them with us when we dine there.
So, this was really easy to replicate using butter lettuces and topping with Susan Voisin’s wonderful Fat Free Balsamic-Raisin Vinaigrette. To get to the Vinaigrette, scroll down as it’s found at the end of the Salad recipe. It is delicious as are the variations you can try.
So, if you are of a mind to explore eating plant-based, BRAVO!! It’s not as hard as you may think and there are so many easy ways to give it a go that offset many of the challenges. And like we said, we are here to help as well. We aren’t credentialed or licensed, but we do know a thing or two we can pass on to help you along the way. And it appears we’ve come to the end of yet another week and as the holiday crush continues to build, keep in mind the following and take every opportunity to practice it. LOOK for the GOOD, be an EXAMPLE of the GOOD, and ACT for the GOOD as HARD as you can, in as MANY WAYS as you can, EVERY DAY that you can. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to YOU ALL!
Your Elf
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