Top o’ this
Sunday Mornin’ to you! This is the week when we all find some Irish in us
somewhere! Even Annie and Elf-red discovered their Irish Heritage!
BUT FIRST!! We
need to report out on our FatFree Vegan Kitchen recipe of the past week...Best
Rigatoni and Vegetable Casserole
It’s a
surprisingly easy dish to prepare even though there are several ingredients. We
followed Susan’s suggestion and prepped the casserole filling the night before,
so all we had to do when we got home from bakin’ E.P.I.C. cookies was cook the
pasta, put the casserole together and bake it.
First, we
sautéed all the veggies (and this is chock full of great veggies) and finished
up the sauce.
The next night, it was a piece of vegan cake to just throw it all together. We
have a close-up of the casserole and a full shot of it as it was oven ready.
The result
(which we FORGOT to take pictures of because we were HUNGRY) is a delicious and
filling casserole. We had plenty left for a couple of lunches. This is a recipe
we would HIGHLY recommend. If y’all remember, we said Big Solid was/is not a
big pasta man but he loved this casserole!
Since this week
is all about being IRISH, our FFVK
recipe will be one we’ve never heard of or tried, so that will be fun! Dublin
Coddle with Vegan Irish Sausages. Now, Susan does say in this recipe that you
can use any vegan sausage (which we have a ‘frig full) BUT we wanted the whole
FFVK experience to report out, so we will be following the Sausage (fauxsage)
recipe Susan recommends.
NOW!!
Welcome Susan Marquez to The Elf in the Kitchen and enjoy this great story of
loving and learning.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Call
us the “accidental vegetarians.” This is NOT a path we decided on our own
to follow. But now that we have, we never want to eat any other way.
My
name is Susan Marquez, and my husband, Larry, and I have been eating a
plant-based, low-fat diet since August 2015.
It started when Larry’s long-time heart murmur
became a serious health threat. He has a leaky mitral valve, which is not that
uncommon, and his cardiologist monitored it regularly, always advising Larry to
lose some weight. For a week or two following his visit to the cardiologist,
Larry would do pretty well, then he’d slip into his old
habits. (They really do die hard.)
In
July 2016, Larry went to a regularly scheduled visit to the cardiologist and
got news he had not expected. His heart was enlarged due to working so hard on
account of that leaky valve. Larry’s extra weight was only making the situation
worse. It was time to schedule surgery. Nothing like a wake-up call to, well,
wake a person up!
About
that same time, I saw a little article in Mississippi magazine about a program
at St. Dominic Hospital that caught my eye. It was about the Dr. Dean Ornish
Heart Disease Reversal Program, a nine-week intensive program that takes
patients on a path to wellness through nutrition, exercise, stress management
and group support. I cut it out and Larry took it with him on his next visit to
the doctor.
His
cardiologist, Dr. Michael McMullan, was not aware of the program but told Larry
he’d check into it. The next day, Larry got a call from Dr. McMullan, who told
Larry he needed to sign up right away!
I
went to the orientation with him, and it was there that we learned it was a
plant-based diet. We also learned that patients whose spouses participate with
them have a much higher success rate. That meant I was all-in. But hmmm……No
meat for nine weeks? We decided we could do anything for nine weeks! And so we
did.
I
started by GIVING AWAY all the meat and seafood in my freezer. Turns out I had
a bit of a hoarding problem in that area, as it easily filled three ice chests.
No temptation there, we began reading Dr. Dean Ornish’s books in earnest.
I made menu plans and grocery lists and dove in with both feet. We
also learned how to eat out and still stay within the Ornish guidelines.
By
week four, we were both feeling better (and dropping weight). Larry announced
that he wanted to adopt this as his permanent lifestyle, beyond the nine week
class. I certainly felt better, and saw the difference already in my skin tone
and energy level. I agreed, and we made that commitment together. We began
seeking out vegetarian and vegan cookbooks and blogs like The Elf in the
Kitchen and Susan Voisin’s Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.
NOTE: I am a freelance writer
and a few years ago I was assigned to write an article about Susan Voisin for
PORTICO magazine. At the time, I thought there was NO WAY I could eat the way
she does, and now I look to her blog for inspiration several times a week!
The
results for Larry and I have been staggering! Larry has lost 60 pounds and his
total cholesterol went from 285 to 125 in just 8 ½ weeks, with NO statins! I’ve
lost over 20 pounds, and both of us have good blood pressure for the first time
in years.
There
have been some bumps along the way. We hosted our big family Thanksgiving and
attempted to alter a few recipes. That was a big FOOD FAIL. We know from now
on, we’ll have THEIR food and OUR food, and that’s OK. We have an annual New
Year’s Day dinner party featuring Paul Prudomme’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cabbage
Roll recipe. It’s very labor-intensive and calls for ground beef and ground
pork. We made a double batch using meat, as usual, then we made one batch using
Boca Crumbles as a meat substitute for the vegetarian version. Turns out, all
our guests wanted to try ours and they couldn’t tell the difference!
While
we are learning to eat as close to the source as possible, we do depend on
products like Boca Crumbles and Garden Burgers for times when we need a good
meal, quick. One of our go-to meals has always been spaghetti. We now use whole
wheat pasta, and we use rotini or penne, as you actually eat less pasta than if
you use spaghetti noodles. I used spaghetti sauce in a jar, careful to choose
organic when possible, and always under 3 grams of fat per serving. I’m also mindful
of the sodium content. We are cheese lovers, and this low-fat diet won’t allow
for that, so we have discovered Go Veggie! brand cheese, and we really like it.
The Go Veggie! Parmesan is really tasty.
Here’s
how we do it:
Boca
Crumbles are found in the freezer case in the healthy food section of most
grocery stores.
When
it’s on sale, I buy bunches of it and store it in my (now empty) freezer
Boca Crumbles look like and brown up like
ground beef. I sauté diced onions and zucchini squash first, to add more
veggies to the dish then add the Boca Crumbles. Note, because we are low-fat, I
sauté with a bit of vegetable broth. I do it all in my iron skillet.
Next I add pasta sauce and heat it all
thoroughly.
Note the low fat content and relatively low
sodium content. Plus, it’s organic!
We have served this to our (grown) children
and their friends, and they had NO IDEA it wasn’t ground beef and real Parmesan
cheese! Served with a side salad, this is an easy week night meal.
Larry still has to have surgery, and it
will happen this spring. But a recent heart catheterization showed he has NO
blockage (A great thing! No stints, no bypass!) and he is a candidate to have a
minimally invasive procedure done with a robot at Baptist Medical Center in
Jackson to repair the leaky valve. His recovery time should be much quicker because
of his healthy lifestyle.
We may have stumbled into this lifestyle by
accident, but we are grateful we did and look forward to a long and healthy
life together!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WOW!! Susan,
thanks for sharing and letting people know that becoming plant-based can be
done and the awesome results that can occur!! Since working at The Crossroads
Café, so many people have said, “I just can’t give up…cheese, eggs, meat, milk
(take your pick).” EVEN thought they KNOW they may be over-weight, have cardiac
disease, diabetes! We so often look for a pill to ‘fix’ us that we miss the
opportunity to do it on our own through good nutrition.
The Elf is
always looking for great stories like this, so please let us know if you have
one to share. Contact us at jswearen@gmail.com
to submit a ‘guest’ appearance.
So until we
meet again, keep those Elfish Eyes Smilin, DO EPIC, eat plant-based and love
life.
Yours ever so
truly—The Elf in the Kitchen
