#whygooil-free

Re-aligning with Dr. Esselstyn's diet...

We have been revisiting documentaries and the research just to refresh our memories and to make sure we understand why we are doing what we do...really focusing on the importance of staying oil-free.  When home, I focus on preparing meals without oil, even though many vegan recipes contain oil.

Why is it, then, that John needs to avoid oil?



I found this video, Making heart attacks history: Caldwell Esselstyn at TEDxCambridge 2011:

So..... plant-based diet...and no oil...

I love to bake, and we enjoy stir fry, but no oil? Certainly a little oil would be OK, wouldn't it?

Well, this IS the same source, so, maybe it's just him......Here is Michael Klaper, MD on olive oil:

The more I look into this, the more I see split findings: some findings show oils create heart disease, other research says the health benefits outweigh any negatives. I wonder who funds the studies saying oils are good for us...........

We were at WalMart looking at shampoo and decided to do our own investigation  by looking at labels.  

To the right is the label from 100% Organic, Extra Virgin, Unrefined, First Cold-Pressed Olive Oil:  Notice...1 tablespoon = 120 calories  with every single calorie coming from fat.

Wow! Talk about empty calories. 

No more than seven percent of our total daily calories should come from saturated fats, according to the American Heart Association. If we consume approximately 2,000 calories per day, that means our saturated fat limit is 16 grams or 140 calories from saturated fat.

Or, in this case...1 tablespoon of olive oil per day. ..if we follow  AHA instead of a heart-disease reversal diet. I would bet that most Americans consume far more than 1 Tablespoon of oil a day.

What about coconut oil?   We hear a lot about the benefits of coconut oil.   I'm sure that has to be better for us, right? Check out this one from Trader Joe's..... 

1 tablespoon = 120 calories  with every single calories coming from fat.



Hmmm... Safflower or Sunflower oil?  It;s all the same! All calories in oil are derived from fat. Pouring oil on a salad or a veggie is like adding liquid fat. Neither of us need that! John has lost 20 pounds since going plant-based, and I have lost 15.  Neither of us need to pour fat on our foods.... We are happy to have shed some poundage!

Oil-free it is!

Now, I do have olive oil and safflower oil and will continue to buy them.   But we don't ingest them. I use them on my dry skin.  I also use them to remove makeup.   I even use them as a hot oil treatment for my scalp. but, I will not use them in cooking ever again!

I am even feeling a little guilty that I was using them in cooking before when I would brush oil on a chicken breast before roasting, toss veggies with oil before cooking...even using it in baking... I used to take a teaspoon of coconut oil every morning..... 

Never again.

Now, how does that impact my cooking?

Recipes

I love to bake......and baking to me used to mean eggs, milk, and butter.  Vegan baking meant flaxseed-and-water "eggs," almond milk, and some kind of oil.  Don't get me wrong, This is still vegan...it's just not as heart healthy as I want us to be.


We have some very good friends, Joe and Ellie, with whom we like to go out to dinner, then enjoy dessert back at their place after dinner. I used to bring cookies or cake or pie, but since John's heart attack, I have felt limited in my dessert offerings.   I have made pumpkin spice bread, but I wanted to try something different and found Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies from Isa Does it by Isa Moskowitz.  These cookies are good alone or even dipped in coffee....  I tweaked this recipe to use applesauce instead of oil. Instead of rolling the dough into a ball and flattening it as the recipe suggests, I found I had to make these a drop cookie and bake them on parchment paper...but they are delish!  We shop at Aldi's when possible, and I prefer their unsweetened applesauce as the container is easier for me to pour.  I use a 1:1 ratio of Aldi's unsweetened applesauce to oil.   No sticking, just wonderfully moist heart-healthy cookies.

Here is her recipe as originally written:

Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

1/2 cup canola oil                                                1/3 cup cocoa powder

3/4 cup granulated sugar                                    1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup light molasses                                         1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup non-dairy milk                                          1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract                                      1 Tablespoon ground ginger

1 tsp chocolate extract                                         1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour                                   3/4 cup white chocolate pieces

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium owl, use a fork to vigorously mix together oil, sugar, molasses, and milk. Mix for 1 minute until it resembles dark caramel. Then mix in vanilla and chocolate extracts.

Sift in 1 cup of the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, ginger, and cloves. Stir until well-combined. Add the white chocolate chips and the remaining 2/3 cup flour and stir  briefly.  Finish mixing with your hands.

XLLS​​

 Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and flatten into roughly 2 inc disks. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until the bottoms appear a few shades darker.

Let cool on the sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cool rack.

 

I also have played around with a chai-spice snickerdoodles recipe,  making it oil-free. These cookies are wonderful dunking cookies for coffee or tea and are addictive eaten from the plate. Again, I substituted unsweetened applesauce and turned them into drop rather than "roll and flatten cookies," but they baked beautifully!

These are not my only experiments in oil-free cooking over the last few weeks.  A few days ago we made buckwheat pancakes - again adding applesauce in lieu of oil. We cook on a seasoned cast iron skillet and had no trouble turning these beauties.  We did have trouble, however, in stopping eating them, as they were just so good.  We will make them again next week, and I will share the recipe and pix then.

I am also experimenting with vegan brownies. I tweaked one recipe and while the outcome tasted great, the brownie was more like a one-layer cake rather than a fudge brownie. Not at all bad, but just not a brownie.   I am sill playing with recipes there and will share once I have a good fit.

Meanwhile, we are re-invested in this new way of life  and have been vegan for 73 days! Still not missing the meat.....and now, we are working toward being even healthier for this new year......

We can do this!

Adjusting

Medical update

John's FBS is still below 100 unless we have baked sweet potatoes at dinner, or if he eats dates before bed.  He is now on a 3 week break from testing for the blood thinner, so that is good.

Yes!

Eating out while plant-based

I am used to navigating around allergies when eating out, and I thought that was difficult to do.   I really thought that eating plant-based in Asheville, NC - a real foodie place - would be a snap.  Perhaps it is, but we are still tying to chart our course through the menus.

We have twice tried a local burger place that also has veggie burgers.  They were OK, but they bothered our stomachs later. I suppose we need to remember that we were, after all, at a burger place. FAIL.

One evening I worked late, so John joined me, and we decided to go out to eat on the way home. Mistake!  We now know we need to plan where to go in advance, that we can no longer just stop anywhere.  One restaurant that we knew had a vegetable bar was closed, so we stopped at a Greek and Italian restaurant thinking we could find something there. John told the server we were vegan and asked for suggestions.  Her response: "Vegan...that means no meat, no sugar, no nothing, right?"  She was serious.  I then asked her what they had on draft.  Asheville has 20+ craft breweries, and all restaurants serve local beer. Her response: "Do you mean beer that doesn't come in a bottle?   I can bring you a glass with any beer."  And it went downhill from there... FAIL.

Next we had an office Christmas party.  Several attendees were vegetarian and some were vegan, so I knew we would be all right food-wise, particularly as it was catered.  We had a wonderful salad, a vegan bean soup with kale....and then the desserts....No vegan dessert, but that was fine....we had apple pumpkin spice bread waiting for us at home. WIN.

Just the other night we were invited out to dinner with friends and tied the local restaurant Soba.  I am in love! I had the Glass noodle Soup and Mei Fan with bean sprouts, carrots, onions, and cabbage stir fried with rice noodles.   Yum!   I even brought some home.   John had stir-fried mixed veggies. Now I just need to learn how to eat with chopsticks. WIN!

Mei Fan *gf Beansprouts, carrots, onions & napa cabbage stir-fried with vermicelli rice noodles - See more at: http://www.sobaweaverville.com/menu.php#sthash.9WhjjHKB.dpuf

 

Me enjoying shakeology on the way to the office

Cooking at Home

We are still struggling with eating all of the necessary veggies, but we are doing better.  We now have a VitaMix, and, while we have not really made vegetable juice in it, we have used it for our shakes, adding extra spinach to the vegan chocolate shakeology, along with frozen fruit and flax seeds.  Flax seeds give shakes a nice nutty flavor!

I am still struggling with figuring out the Beachbody containers for portion control.  It was much easier when protein fit into one container, veggies into another. Now I often mix proteins and veggies and grains together...and since most plants have protein, the containers elude me....But I keep trying.

We have actually experimented quite a bit in the last few weeks.  We now have a Crispy Belgian Waffle recipe that freezes well and is yummy!  We also experimented with pumpkin pancakes and a few dinners, too!

CRISPY Vegan Chocolate Chip Belgian Waffles

Notice the title ...CRISPY..   If you want light and fluffy waffles, this is not the recipe for you. these are nicely crisp!

3/4 cup all-purpose flour                                       1/3 cup vegan chocolate chips
3/4 cup whole wheat flour                                     2 T ground flax seed
1 T. baking powder                                                5 T water
1/2 tsp salt                                                              2 tsp vanilla extract
3 T white granulated sugar                                    1 1/2 cups almond milk
5 T safflower oil                                                    1 T apple cider vinegar

1. Preheat the waffle iron.
2. Combine the flax seed and water in a small bowl and set aside.  Approximately 5 minutes is best...
3. Combine the almond milk and the apple cider vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside.
4. Add the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and vegan chocolate chips to a medium bowl and whisk to combine. .
5. Add the safflower oil to the almond milk and vinegar, and whisk. Next add the flax seed mixture and vanilla.....and whisk some more.... I actually keep all of my we ingredients in a 4 cup measure....
6. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well until few lumps remain.
7. Pour into your waffle maker,following manufacturer's instructions.  In our case we get 9 waffles, and they cook for 15 minutes.

One of our neighbors gave us an early Christmas gift, Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet.  This is a wonderful resource for those new to plant-base eating and contains a variety of protein basics, including a recipe for making seitan from scratch, next on my "must try" list. For those of you who do not know this, seitan is a wheat protein that can be fried, made into a loaf, cubed....a very versatile protein source.

Of course we had to try a few recipes from this new resource...  One morning we made pumpkin pancakes.   That same evening we tried the black bean  and sweet potato enchiladas........

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

1 1/2 cups unbleached whole purpose flour            1/2 teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons raw sugar                                         1 1/4 cups nondairy milk

1 Tablespoon baking powder                                  1/3 cup solid packed pumpkin

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice                                 1 tablespoon oil (applesauce for us)

XLLM​​

In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder,pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Set aside.

In a food processor or blender, combine the nondairy milk, pumpkin puree, and oil/applesauce and process until well-blended. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.

Cook as you would any pancake - be it on a griddle or in a cast-iron pan.

And, yes, non-vegans love these....and if you add a few handfuls of vegan chocolate chips...oh my.....

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced          3 Tablespoons chili powder

1/4 cup water                                                  salt and pepper

3 garlic cloves, minced                                     2 cups tomato salsa

1 small, fresh, hot chili                                     8 large flour tortillas

1 1/2 cooked lack beans or 1 15 oz can            1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

     of beans rinsed and drained

1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, drained

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Lightly oil a baking sheet (or line a baking sheet with parchment paper and omit oil). Arrange the sweet potatoes in a single layer on the baking sheet and roast until tender, turning once, about 20 minutes.Remove from oven and set aside.  Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Heat the water in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and chili and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the beans, tomatoes, chili powder, and salt and pepper to taste Stir in the sweet potatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Set aside.

Lightly oil a 9 x 13 baking dish.  Spread a thin layer of salsa  over the bottom of the dish and set aside.

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Place a tortilla on a flat work surface. spoon a portion of the sweet potato mixture down the center of the tortilla and roll it up.  Place the filled tortilla in the baking dish, seam side down, and repeat with the remaining tortillas and the filling mixture.  spoon any remaining mixture over the top of the enchiladas, top with remaining salsa, and sprinkle with the copped onion. cover and bake until hot and bubbly, about 20 minutes. Serve hot.

I bet you noticed the acorn squash...that recipe came from elsewhere and was a quinoa cranberry - stuffed acorn squash.  I had to improvise though, and used leftover wild rice and dried cherries.  Still yummy....

My next food experiments will include soups and desserts...

The more comfortable we become with this life choice, the easier it becomes...

We can do this!