Chickpea Tuesday

I had a lot of bad feelings about chick pea, previously. I love falafel, I love hummus, I love the taste, the texture, so I obviously thought, this must be a "no-way-to-eat.it" food. It was just too good to be true. You know the saying, everything that is good in life is either fattening or obscene. I thought it to be soo good, that it must be fattening.

Up until recently, I did not know that I can actually eat it.With no guilt, whatsoever. Moreover, I can eat it with no real portion control.
This is amazingly good news for me, and yesterday I enjoyed preparing chick peas to the fullest.

I had a huge bowl of dry chick peas soaked overnight, so it was the perfect way to start it.

I prepared two thing - pretty obvious - huh?
Hummus and falafel balls.

I skimmed through a lot of hummus recipes, and falafel recipes on the internet, then I somehow just mixed and matched them, until I made my own eyeball-portion version of it, to make a low sodium, oil free version of both, and the results were just amazing.

Hummus

250 g dry chick peas (soaked overnight, cooked to tender)
3-4 cloves of garlic
80g of tahini
juice of 1 lime
half a bunch of cilantro - chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
some of the cooking water, to thin

Preparation: put all ingredients to the blender, starting with the chick peas, blending them, until creamy, then add the lime juice, tahini, garlic, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper. Thin it until it's supercreamy and yummy.
Then just adjust tastes to your liking, I prefer it with a lots of lime, but the rest of the family wants it sweeter, so I make compromises... We have eaten it with steamed broccoli and cucumber slices, but carrots, whole wheat tortilla chips or any other snacks would just go with it finely.

Falafel

250g dry chick peas, (soaked overnight, cooked to tender)
1 onion, grated
2-3 cloves of garlic, garted
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1 tablespoon of cumin seeds
half cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 ts salt
1/4 ts black pepper
1 ts juice of lemon

Preparation: put the chick peas into the blender / food processor and process it until it is coarsely chopped. Add the grated onion and garlic. On medium heat start to toast the coriander and cumin seeds until it is fragrant, than take out quickly, so it should not burn. Crush it and add to the chick peas. Add the cilantro, salt, pepper and lemon juice and form walnut size balls of it.
In the non oil-free version I would fry them in super-hot oil, but to have it oil-free, I have put them on lightly oil sprinkled baking sheet and baked for 30 min on medium-high heat.

We put it into a whole wheat tortilla with hummus, lots of salad and it disappears just immediately.

Any other cool tips on how to make hummus or falafel?

Skinny Bitch eats to live

I have been around blogs and reads for this past weekend, finding long time sought pleasure in cookbooks and recipes and I stumbled upon Skinny Bitch somewhere. I immediately bought the kindle version of it and read it once.

I have to admit, that it really blew my mind. It was so funny and no-bullshit, I enjoyed every word. When I read the part how farm animals are treated to get meat and dairies, I swore I am never ever putting a bite of those in my mouth ever again. It really shocked me, even though I live in a different country (Hungary) and it's not the US. To a certain scale we have similarities, but I doubt it would be exactly the same. Or at least I try to hope that. No matter what, the whole story shocked me and now I think of chicken, cow and fish as animals, not as source of meat or dairy.

I am not saying, that it was something unexpected for me, but it just really rang a bell and I need to reconsider.

Anyway, Skinny Bitch was a shocking but smart and nice read, I missed a bit the details on how to live a lifetime of becoming and being a Skinny Bitch, but as it is really similar to Eat to Live, Engine 2, the McDougall Plan etc, I have no real further doubts that it is the way to go.

I can't believe I'm cooking

Like a usually rather fat person, with highs and lows, better and worse periods, I tried to restrict my being in or around the kitchen, as much as I could. In fact, even when I was not at all fat, not even near, I restricted and distanced myself completely. Not because I do not like food, or I do not enjoy cooking, not even because I cannot and I am climsy or so.
The main reason for this was fear. I constantly related food and eating with something bad, that will eventually make me fat and miserable. I plunged into making salads only, up to a point where no one ever wanted to share it with me. I could eat salad for 30 days in a row... Nobody ever could get it...
Now I am rediscovering what is it to cook. To enjoy it, to experiment, to like it, and not to relate it with anything bad. I am using healthy ingreadients,I am using mainly plant-based food, cook oil, salt and sugarfree for myself and do minor changes to ease up the kids' meals. And I am reading. A lot. I took Wendy's advice and I read a lot. I try to get all kind of information, that is around being plant strong, living a healthy, happy life.
And I experiment with a whole lot of stuff. On one night alone, I was preparing 5 differrent meals and I loved every bit of it. Some of it still lies in the fridge, waiting to be consumed, but others disappeared magically. I made a superbe Miso soup with mushrooms, adapting a few different recipes, which we ate for 2 days, not getting tired of it at all. I also made a huge bowl of lentils with mild curry and onions, I still have leftovers. I prepared a bowl of homemade hummus with no oil or salt, but it still felt saly because of the tahini, which gave a nice texture... No leftovers :)
I also prepared my favourite soup, the cilantro-lime zucchini cream soup. The recipe is oh-so-easy and it vanishes from the bowls immediately.

Cilantro-lime zucchini cream soup
Makes 4 servings


3 smaller zucchinis
1 onion
6dl vegetable broth
2 cups of water
1 bunch of cilantro
Juice of 1 lime


Water saute the onions and when ready, add the chopped zucchinis.
Steam them with the onions and add some water or broth, so they should not burn. They won't, as they will let out a lot of juice too, but just in case.
When already close to tender, add the broth and let it simmer for a few minutes.
Put it all to a blender and blend it until smooth.
When creamy, put back to simmer a bit more, add water to the desired thickness. I like it creamy and thick, so sometimes I do not add water.
Just before it is ready to be served, add the chopped cilantro and squeeze in thejuice of the lime. Half a tablespoon of salt and some coarsely ground pepper can add to the flavour, those I usually add when serving.

If I make this for the kids, I also add some creme fraiche to the soup, it brings out the flavours, and they love the taste of creme fraiche. This is not vegan then, but I guess, soy yoghurt would serve this purpose too.

If i make another bunch, i will also post a picture of it. It is really tasty and refreshing.

First lunchbox in months

I haven't eaten for 60 days and my mind is pretty much going around food all the time. I hardly can wait to have my first lunch, which I have packed for myself... It seems it was thousands of years ago, since I last ate...

But now, here is my "oh so yummy" lunch.





What's in the box?
A huge salad with romaine, lettuce, endives, tomatoes, cucumber and red bell pepper.
I also made a delicious dressing - of course oil and salt free.

Guacamole dressing:
1 avocado, pitted
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
juice of 1 lime
few drops of tabasco
1 tbs capers
1 handful of babyspinach
few slices of cucumber
half tbs honey
some water to thin it
--- I put them all in a blender and blended until smooth ---

And I also steamed some broccoli florets, that I sprinkled with coarsely ground pepper.
No oil, no salt, every bit of it will be healthy.


The pineapple pieces will serve as a treat.

Last day of juicing

I started a new life - on the 1st of January. As a New Year's resolution I decided to reboot my life, and started a 60 day juicing journey. This is the first resolution I actually kept for this long.
All during the 60 days I have been living on juices, freshly juiced vegetables and fruit.
A great thing to do - I have to tell. I have lost 33 lbs (15kgs) and I feel a lot better.

This is my last day not eating, but juicing only. I have to admit, I have some fear of restarting eating but also, I am so much looking forward to it. I was browsing recipes and tips for weeks now and I can’t wait to try them. In fact I would like to try them all at once, just to know how are they, how do they taste.

And I am very much looking forward to start to eat healthy and try to be plant-strong.

I have read Eat to live by Dr Fuhrman, seen the movie Forks over Knives, try to get ahold of the Engine2 diet book and read a huge amount of blogs on the fat free, vegan and plant strong topic.I get a lot of inspiration from Pinterest, and from the blogs I read.

I have no intention to be plant perfect at first, but the long term plan would be that.

For the moment, I will try to be “just” plant strong, following the guidelines for at least the first few weeks.

But I do have the intention to get healthier, skinnier and fitter, and finally start to live my life happy. Plant happy...

I started this by stocking up.
I ran into a healthy-asian-whole food story this morning and spent huge amounts of money on stocking up with food I am planning to eat further on. I have bought a lot of sauces and beans, all ingredients to make a miso soup, what I love, spices and vermicelli etc.
I still need to buy some (a lot) of vegetables and make up my mind what to cook. It is all so exciting, I just can't wait!

I could hardly get the bags inside... so big and heavy...

And when I unpacked them.


As tomorrow I will start to cook, I am going to share my experimenting in that too, with recipes and pictures.