Category Archives: additive-free food

Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes with no additives

Carrot Soup–Delicious Hot or Cold

This week I gave myself a huge canker sore – bit the inside of my check hard! Once the damage was done, every time I ate something I somehow managed to bite the same spot.  Very annoying. After a couple of days of this I decided that the only cure was to not chew. (more…)

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Bean Salad

beansSummer! Who wants to cook? Not me!

Much of our summer food is cold – salads, chilled soups and sandwiches. Mostly I prepare the the salads and soups early in the morning and put it in the refrigerator to chill for four our five hours. Not only are they cold, but the flavors have had time to meld. (more…)

Posted in additive-free food, diary-free food, gluten-free food, plant based diet, Protein, salad, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Leave a comment

Eat Local

nola eat local
Every June, here in New Orleans, we have the Eat Local Challenge. Participants agree to eat food that grown or caught within a 200 mile radius of New Orleans. This year we decided to give it a try.

For people who eat very few packaged foods this would seem like an easy task. I went into it confident that it would not be a problem. On day three we ran out of coffee. . .oops! It was either cheat or go without coffee. . .any guesses on what happened here? A couple of days later I was in Costco and headed for the produce section intent on getting avocados and onions. I got them in the cart and then remembered the challenge. . . (more…)

Posted in additive-free food, Farmers Market, fresh veggies, New Orleans, processed food, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Leave a comment

Mexican Rice

rice and beans
Most Mexican restaurant entree’s include rice and beans. The rice is a quintessential side dish which uses tomatoes and various herbs (garlic, cumin, cilantro) to lightly season the rice. Sometime, however, the rice includes jalapeno and can be quite spicy.

In our house Mexican rice is a more robust dish. We use herbs and spices liberally and it is much more than a side dish. We use it for breakfast rice and eggs, we add black or pinto beans and use it as an entree, we stuff it into green peppers and have been known to just sit down and eat it all by its self.

My grandkids asked me for my recipe recently and I realized I had never written down. I promised to do it. So Lauren and Kaitlyn, this is for you! (more…)

Posted in additive-free food, diary-free food, gluten-free food, Mexican, plant based diet, rice, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Leave a comment

Stir Fry with Ginger Sauce

Stir_frySummer is here and the garden is starting to produce veggies. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what to do with them.

A favorite simple solution is stir fry.  Stir fry uses most available vegetables. In fact I use almost anything except tomatoes and beets in it. Just add protein with tofu or nuts and to punch up the flavor use very simple ginger sauce. (more…)

Posted in additive-free food, Asian, diary-free food, fresh veggies, plant based diet, vegan, vegetarian, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Leave a comment

Vanishing Pesto

basilLast week the weather was alternatively sunny and humid or rainy and even more humid. The herbs really love it and the basil has grown like mad. By Saturday it was starting to bolt and take over the garden.

I was down to use it or lose it time. I waded through the mud, out to the garden and started cutting. Brought in all the cuttings, stripped the leaves and the bolted flowers. Ended up with 8 cups of washed and tightly packed leaves and bolted flowers. (more…)

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Amy’s Kitchen – Healthy Prepared Vegan and Gluten Free Food

We are packing away. It is amazing how much junk you can accumulate in a couple of years. The hardest part is making decisions – what to do about those little but useful items. For example all the special use kitchen items, the myriad little items hidden away in cabinets and drawers or the box of hooks, picture hangers and rug grippers. None of them are particularly expensive or irreplaceable. It just cost money and time to replace them. To keep or not to keep? My rule of thumb is that if I haven’t used it since we moved here 2 years ago, out it goes either for a yard sale or donation. But there are still a lot of “iffy” items. This part drives me nuts!! Which means all I want to do is eat! amy tamaleThat is the long way of saying that we are either too busy or too tired to think much about cooking. Terrible, when you a chronically hungry (something called stress eating). Interestingly, this time out, I am finding it important to not eat junk. So, last Thursday we took a little trip to the local health food store to see if we could find something prepared that would work. (more…)

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Flavored Milk; Petition to Amend the Standard of Identity for Milk and 17 Additional Dairy Products

Every now and then there is something in the news that really gets me going! Right now it is chocolate milk.

Why?

Because the dairy lobby is pushing the FDA to approve the use of the artificial sweetener aspartame in chocolate milk. Sugar isn’t bad enough now they want to add excitotoxins to dairy products on the down low.

Terrific idea – take milk which has many harmful side-effects and up the ante by adding excitotoxins! And this is how my tax dollars are being spent. . .

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The Cooking Blues

overwhelmed

It’s official – I am going through the cooking blues. There is nothing that I want to cook, nothing sounds good and my creativity is evidently on strike.

I had planned to post a recipe this morning.  But as I started sorting through what we have eaten in the last two weeks I came to the realization that I have not been really been cooking. We have been eating whatever was quick and handy. Good food, but nothing new, interesting, creative or worth sharing. (more…)

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Coconut Brown Rice

SNAGHTML5e0edc19We all have specific comfort foods. Usually sweets like chocolate or starchy foods like bread, potatoes, rice, pasta.

Sugary foods taste great but they don’t seem to fill me up or leave me feeling full. It doesn’t take long for me to start craving more.  For me, starches are the ticket. They taste good! And as an added benefit they actually make me feel full after I eat them. And as my Mom would say they “stick to my ribs.” (more…)

Posted in additive-free food, Asian, diary-free food, plant based diet, rice, sugar-free food, vegan, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment