Topic 191: The Pleasures of Eating

Carol:

Hold the Butter, Please

I know what Megan is going to write about for today’s topic.  She has been taking pictures with her cell phone all weekend of the dishes she has prepared while she and Marc are taking a nutrition class that encourages a plant-based diet.  I am reaping the health benefits of what they are learning in the class. I had almond milk in my multi-grain cereal yesterday and 5 different veggies on my vegan pizza. There is no real cheese in the fridge, no yogurt, no meat. I miss the cheese.

My dictum is that I will follow their vegan routine at home and slip in the dairy, chicken and fish when we go out to eat. I had shrimp tempura at the Japanese restaurant the other day, and I bought a vegetarian green chili tamale at the Prescott Farmer’s market because the vegan black bean tamale Megan bought had cilantro in it. I think she does resent it when I “doctor” some of the vegan dishes, especially when I tell her how delicious something is while I’m doing the doctoring. Minor tinkering I call it.  A friend brought me a deli container of olives with a little mozzarella mixed in, so I sliced just a tad of the mozzarella and the olives onto the pizza. Megan hates olives. I hate cilantro. We make our accommodations.

The current food plan also eliminates most fats. I cut way back on the oil and haven’t put butter on anything for a while. Although… we have two ears of corn waiting for dinner tonight, and I just can’t imagine corn on the cob without a slice of butter on it. Corn and butter, they just go together. Hot, fresh cornbread with butter, or corn tortillas, or…hot buttered popcorn.

I have even adjusted my palate regarding popcorn, which is probably in the top 5 list of foods I could eat every day along with shrimp, asparagus, and onion soup. Not a bad combination for a semi-balanced non-vegan menu. In college when the dorm dining-room was closed on Sunday evenings, my roommate and I often would have chicken noodle soup, apples and popcorn for dinner. Great combo.  Since then I have owned a whole variety of popcorn poppers, including one that fit inside the microwave oven and didn’t require oil. Now, I’m lazy and just buy the bags.

Last Friday morning was a popcorn challenge. We went to the 9:30 am showing of the final Harry Potter movie.  My brain argued that 9:30 am is too early for popcorn (who makes those rules?).  However, Harry Potter movies are meant to be viewed with a big bag of popcorn, so my mouth overtook my brain and I bought a bag. But… I bought a medium instead of a large without butter. I was absolutely determined to make that bag last the whole movie, so I resorted to one of the great pleasures of my youth, rationing the popcorn by eating one at a time. Also, by nibbling off the small parts that stick out from the main body of the kernel.  Popcorn connoisseurs call those kernels “butterflies” and the less tender round kernels “mushrooms.” I also timed myself by not eating during quiet moments. Who likes the rustling of the popcorn bag or the crunch of a half-popped kernel during the sad scenes?

There you have it. I was able to enjoy one of my greatest eating pleasures at the wrong time of the day, without butter, and it lasted until the final 10 minutes of a very long movie. Okay, so I miss the butter.

Megan:

The Pleasures of Eating Well

Note the symmetrical arrangement of the fruit. I did that for you.

I’ve been planning for this topic all weekend by taking pictures of everything I ate.  But, before I get to that, I want to mention one thing. In 2004, when I was studying in England for the second time, my parents and brother came over for Christmas and together we went to Spain. It was a really great trip, except for one thing which maybe only I remember. I flat-out refused to eat in any restaurants that had menus with pictures of the food hanging in the windows.  Because the sun-faded photos made the food look gross.

There are some cooking blogs that do a good job with lighting and presentation that can make a plate of food look attractive and delicious. I have a friend who regularly posts pictures of her cooking on Facebook, but she’s got a nice camera and has had some training. I do not have a nice camera; I have a nice cell phone. So, I’m just warning you that I’m going to put up all these pictures, but the food may not look particularly appetizing.

Ok, then. Since I started this plant-based nutrition/vegan way of eating, people have been mostly supportive. The same friends who saw my teen-age vegetarianism as weird and rebellious now commend me for trying to make healthy choices. But the question I keep getting is, "But what do you eat? Salad? Broccoli?" And the answer is, yes. And lots of other things too.

On Saturday, I made hash browns for breakfast. Without using any oil, I combined frozen Ore-Ida Southern Style Hash Browns, onions and orange bell-peppers.  I also added some cajun seasoning for flavor. Despite the lack of oil, the potatoes still managed to crisp up nicely, and it was a tasty, filling meal.

When I make this again, I'll probably add some green and red peppers as well because I really like peppers and it will look more colorful and interesting. I've learned in my class that (naturally) colorful food has more nutrients.

Although the hash browns were very good, they take more time and effort than I'm willing to expend early in the morning. After walking 3 miles with the dogs, I'm usually pretty hungry when we get home, so I like to make a smoothie. It's quick and still very filling.

Smoothies been a breakfast favorite for as long as I can remember, and it was very easy to amend the recipe to exclude animal products. Up the left you can see the ingredients I used this morning -- frozen strawberries, a banana and a cup of no-sugar-added apple juice. I usually use orange juice, but we ran out. 

This recipe used to include a cup of yogurt (or, if my father was making it, a scoop of ice cream) but tastes just as good without the dairy. I prefer to use frozen fruit (except for the banana) because because it gives the drink a frosty, daiquiri-esque texture that is very refreshing as the day starts to heat up.

This morning, I added a piece of whole wheat toast with fresh almond butter for protein and some additional fiber. 

We usually get our fruits and vegetables from Bountiful Baskets -- which is a food co-op that purchases the produce whole sale. I order the basket on Monday, and collect it the following Saturday from a local park. For $15 dollars, we get a large laundry basket full of fresh produce. The entire project is run by volunteers, and we've been quite pleased with the result. The pears and plums in the top picture are what's left of last week's basket (pears and plums being our least favorite of the selection). 

I didn't order one for this weekend because my father is out of town, and Mom and I decided to try out the local farmer's market. For a small city, I was pretty pleased with the selection but we spent  almost $10 for two zucchini and three potatoes, so we'll be sticking with the baskets. Aside from the costly produce, the market did yield some great (also expensive) finds, including fresh pasta and home-made tamales. I got some vegan black bean tamales, and I paired them with three-bean brown rice dish I made up, with corn, kale, peppers and tofutti sour cream. This was definitely the best meal of the weekend.

Last night I made a curry I'd seen in a video I watched in the class. The recipe called for basmati rice, which used to be my favorite, but despite following the directions exactly, I totally overcooked it. The curry itself is made up of cauliflower, zucchini, potatoes, garbanzo beans, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger. I put in about twice as many vegetables as were mentioned in the video, but did not increase the curry seasoning so it was not as spicy as it could have been. There's enough left over to feed an army, and I'll probably eat it with brown rice the rest of the week. I'm going to use the leftover basmati to make a pudding. 

I added Daiya "cheese", made from tapioca. It melts like real cheese.

So, all those meals look good (well, they don't look good, but they taste good), but what happens when I get a craving for one of the old favorites? Pizza is what I crave most often and what I knew I would miss the most once I changed my eating habits. Since moving back to Prescott, I've discovered Papa Murphy's -- a "take & bake" place where they make the pizza in front of you, and then you cook it at home. All the ingredients are fresh, and the crust is thin which is how my mom prefers it, and we used to get one almost every week. So, imagine my surprise when in class, the instructor passed out 50% off coupons to Papa Murphy's. Apparently she knows the owners and was telling them about the class and they offered to start making vegan pizzas, and gave her the coupons to advertise in class. Prescott is not Portland -- there isn't a lot of choice for vegetarians in this town, let alone vegans, so this is pretty cool. As soon as I got the coupon, I headed right over.

So, there you have it. A sampling of a weekend's worth of vegan meals. I've been doing this for 3 weeks now and have lost 12 pounds (despite having M&M's twice at the movies). I think the reason I've been able to stick to it so far is because, although trying new foods is interesting, I have been able to "veganize" food I already loved -- like tamales and pizza. And ice cream.

Although, just because it's vegan doesn't make it healthy.