Category Archives: diary-free food

Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes that are dairy-free

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…)

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

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

Fourth of July Leftovers

fritters'
We ended up with a lot of extra food after the Fourth.  That is extra corn and potato salad.

I used the potato salad in a mock-nicoise salad. Made a big green salad – lettuce, green onion, celery and tomatoes. Next I added garbanzo beans (chick peas) instead of the tuna and a scoop of the left over potato salad instead of the traditional eggs and potatoes. I prefer asparagus to green beans, but either one works well. As for anchovies? Forget about it!

The corn was another matter. I used to make corn fritters. When we gave up eggs and cheese during our vegan year, they just disappeared from our diet. And evidently from my collection of recipes. Since we are eating a few eggs a week, I decided to try to approximate what I used to make. (more…)

Posted in diary-free food, Eggs, entrée, fresh veggies, vegetarian, 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…)

Posted in additive-free food, diary-free food, garden, gluten-free food, Italian, plant based diet, vegan, vegetarian, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Plant-Based Diets and Iron

As a young woman my pulse was alarmingly high. I was a swimmer, got plenty of exercise and should have had a nice low resting pulse rate. My Doctor at the time was alarmed enough by my pulse rate to order a blood test that measured my hemoglobin.

The results showed that my hemoglobin was very, very low. The doctor concluded that I wasn’t getting enough iron in my diet.  He explained that the lack of iron meant that my body could not make enough of the protein, hemoglobin. And since hemoglobin carries oxygen to the cells my body was chronically short on cellular oxygen. He mentioned the word “anemic” and suggested that since I was a vegetarian it was unlikely I could get enough iron in my food. He got out his pad and prescribed iron pills.

He described the problems that came from chronic anemia – fatigue, brain fog, leg cramps, shortness of breath and on and on.  He scared me into taking the iron.

The iron pills made me miserable – I will spare you details. Just leave it that it took about a week for me to toss the iron pills in the trash and to start looking for iron-rich foods. This is my first memory of using nutrition as a “medicine” and the start of a life long practice of looking at food instead of medicine. (more…)

Posted in B12, diary-free food, plant based diet, vegan, vegetarian, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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…)

Posted in additive-free food, diary-free food, entrée, gluten-free food, Italian, Mexican, plant based diet, vegan, vegetarian, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Gluten Free, Sugar Free Vegan (or not) Coffee Cake

coffee cakeI have been on a breakfast kick and trying new things. I have this little piece of me that every now and then craves have something sweet and a little gooey.

Here is my coffee cake cheat. . . I’m not sure it is exactly healthy but it tastes great and using nuts and chia seeds adds some food value in the way of protein. Eggs work best for this, but as noted you can use applesauce for a real vegan treat. (more…)

Posted in Breakfast, diary-free food, gluten-free food, sugar-free food, vegan, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Vegan French Toast

french toastFrench toast has always been a favorite breakfast food, but the eggs more or less made it a non-starter. Lately we have been testing alternatives and here is my current favorite.

The best thing about this particular recipe is that it slightly sweet and toasts up to a wonderful golden brown. I promise you won’t miss the eggs at all! (more…)

Posted in Breakfast, diary-free food, gluten-free food, plant based diet, sugar-free food, vegan, vegetarian, Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment