Living Whole Food, Plant Based!
Does this sound familiar? You are out with the family and everyone is hungry (and getting hangry). No one else has adopted this way of eating and their choices for restaurants proves they are not interested in helping you maintain this Whole Food, Plant Based …
Farro, which is also known as emmer in some parts of the world, is an ancient wheat grain that has been eaten for thousands of years around the world. Farro is commonly found in Middle East, Ethiopian, and Mediterranean dishes. I have no problems finding …
So many people confuse a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) lifestyle with eating bland and boring foods. Essentially, a diet lacking in flavor or substance. Nothing could be further from the truth! Food does not have to be bland, especially when you learn to incorporate spices into your meals.
In my opinion, spices and herbs are the key to successfully transitioning into this lifestyle. Spices and herbs are your friends. Don’t be scared or intimidated by them. Experiment. Discover the uniqueness of the taste and aroma of each. Play around with how much (or little) you use to match your tastes. As these herbs and spices become more of a part of your every day cooking, you’ll become much more comfortable using them.
For me, I was never afraid of trying new things. But I will be honest, Indian food intimidated me.
I was intimidated ordering Indian food at restaurants, often playing it safe. But then I met my wife. Born in India, she introduced me to a whole new world. She safely guided me through the confusion and helped me discover Indian dishes that I liked and those I steer clear of.
While I was courting my wife, she would make Indian dishes for me. Watching her, I noticed that there was not an exact science to each dish. She would pull down her spices, most of which were contained in a shiny steel container, separated by small steel bowls, with an odd-looking spoon. But it seemed this shiny steel container was where the magic really happened. I would watch her, trying to learn from every spoonful of spice she would add to a dish. With time, I was no longer intimidated by the Indian spices. It was now my turn to do the Indian cooking in our house.
Many Indian dishes contain dairy or oils. Ghee, which is clarified butter, is often used, as is cream or paneer (Indian cheese). To make these WFPB-compliant, I substitute vegetable broth for ghee or oil, raw cashews or nut milk for cream, and tofu for paneer. Once you understand these simple substitutions, almost any Indian dish can be modified to fit our whole food, plant-based lifestyle.
The Indian style Potatoes with Green Beans and Mushrooms is really a combination of two Indian dishes, potatoes with green beans and green beans with mushrooms. My wife initially thought it was odd to combine all three of these components together, but after tasting the final product, she agreed…it tastes great! I can’t be the first to combine these two dishes, but if I am…well, you be the judge!
The ingredients are as follows:
About 20 to 24 baby potatoes, steamed and cut in half
About 3 cups of mushrooms (white or baby portobello), cleaned and quartered
About 2 to 3 cups of green beans (frozen or fresh)
14 oz canned diced tomatoes
1 ½ tablespoons of ginger and garlic paste
2 teaspoons of cumin seeds
2 teaspoons of cumin powder
2 teaspoons of coriander powder
2 teaspoons of turmeric powder
2 teaspoons of chili powder
1 teaspoon of Garam Masala
Sea salt (to taste)
Cilantro, red onion, and jalapeno chopped (for garnish)
Directions:
In a sauce pan or wok (I prefer using a wok, but it really doesn’t matter), heat the pan on high heat. Add the cumin seeds, cumin powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, and chili powder. Toast the spices for roughly 90 seconds.
Add the ginger and garlic paste and mix the ingredients together for about 30 seconds.
Add the can of diced tomatoes and mix with the spices and ginger and garlic paste. Be careful as the hot pan may splatter when the tomato juices hit the hot spices. Mix the ingredients together and let them incorporate for roughly 4 minutes. If the diced tomatoes are too chucky, mash the tomatoes with a potato masher.
Add the mushrooms and stir. Mushrooms contain a lot of moisture, so let them cook down for about five minutes, stirring occasionally.
After the mushrooms have cooked down a bit (reduced in size until they are about ¾ of the raw mushrooms), add the green beans and stir. Let the green beans cook in the mixture for about 2 minutes.
The pre-cooked potatoes are added next with the Garam Masala. Stir the potatoes into the mixture and continue to cook on high. At this point, I like to taste a mushroom or green bean to judge how much salt needs to be added. Remember, you can add salt later, but you can never take it out. Start slow and add to your taste.
The key now is to cook the moisture out, constantly stirring. You will find that the tomato will break down and evenly coat the potatoes, green beans, and mushrooms.
Once the moisture is cooked out, the dish is ready to be moved to a serving bowl. Top with the chopped cilantro, diced red onion, and jalapeno slices.
This makes a great side dish or as an entrée. If there is any left over, reheat in the morning for breakfast. It is a nice break from oatmeal.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Wishing you the best of health!
Stephen
On your whole food plant-based (WFPB) journey, you are going to experience many traps and pitfalls. Almost all of these will take place when you have a moment of weakness, when convenience trumps all else. If you are like me, the day begins rushed. The …
There are a ton of meal subscription services out there. Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and Plated are among the many that popped up when I did a quick Google search. But looking at the options, most of the known names didn’t have a true vegan …
One comment I hear repeatedly when I talk about living a whole food plant based (WFPB) life is “I could never do that, it would be too hard.”
I typically respond with “Why do you think that?”
Then I will get a litany of responses like, “I need protein”, “I could never get my family to do it”, or “We like to go out to dinner.” But my favorite reason is, “It would cost too much.”
I could go on and on with the responses, but in reality, it is likely that the timing isn’t right for them to adopt the lifestyle. Like anything in life, you can accomplish anything you decide to do (within physical possibilities…I will never be an NBA center no matter how hard I try). For some people, that day may never come. For others, it may be a health scare. For me, it is a desire to better my wellbeing and longevity (quality as well as quantity of my years).
Note, I am not referring to the responses as excuses. Excuses is overly strong, judgmental, and not what I believe is going on here. I think the responses are a process of gathering information, processing and filtering the information, and then filing this for future reference.
So, let me debunk some of the responses I receive.
I will leave you with this…
Going all the way back to the time I attended Weight Watchers while in elementary school, I have tracked or been concerned about calories. Other diets had me tracking the macros…protein, carbs, and fats. Whether measured in grams or percentages, I spent my life trying to follow a lifestyle that required a lot of work. A lot of conscious effort to record and track everything I put in my mouth. The guilt and shame that followed if I had too much carbs or not enough protein or too many or too few calories. It was INSANE!
My life today? I don’t track calories, fat, carbs, protein, or anything else! As long as I do not eat any animal products or heavily processed foods, I eat as much as I want, when I want. If I am hungry, I eat. I am putting good stuff into my body until I am full and my body is rewarding me.
I promise you, anyone can live this lifestyle. It is simple and easy to follow. Yes, it takes a degree of discipline at the beginning, but you can do it.
I would love to read about your experiences adopting this lifestyle.
Best of health to you!
Stephen
I have found that simple recipes that are easy to prepare are necessary to maintain and sustain the Whole Food Plant Based lifestyle. If you need to spend your days meal prepping for hours, you’ll quickly lose focus and reach for something that is processed, …
A pine cone? What? No, this isn’t what you eat on a whole food plant based (WFPB) diet. Rather it is symbolic. You need to start somewhere and somehow. You need to plant that seed to allow you to grow into this lifestyle. I was …
Who am I and how did I get here?
Let’s see, where do I begin? It was Christmas 2017 and my Christmas gifts were all Keto related cookbooks. I was convinced Keto was my passage to a healthy life and washboard abs. It was the craze and may still be. But then a friend of mine expressed his concern.
This friend is very well read on diet, nutrition, and exercise. He warned me about the impact of Keto on my heart health. I was 52 with total cholesterol of 290 and blood pressure of 146/110. He asked me if I fully researched the impact of Keto on my heart health. Honestly, it was something I paid attention to, but when you are wanting to do something, you search for anything that supports what you want to hear.
The common theme I heard was that cholesterol numbers were misleading. Studies seemed to support that in defense of Keto. This was contrary to everything I had heard for years.
He suggested I watch Forks over Knives and What the Health on Netflix. Two documentaries that challenged the Standard American Diet (SAD) and offered a solution to obesity and chronic diseases. It was not pills and medication. It was not fat and protein from animals. It was a Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB) diet.
Vegan? Me? My skirt steak was legendary. My brisket had smoke rings that would remind you of counting the life of a freshly cut tree, not to mention the burnt ends. My Korean Spare Ribs could not be more tender. I was probably the last person you would expect to adopt a WFPB life.
But my friend’s concern and what I watched in the documentaries made more sense to me than the “science” behind Keto. I looked at it this way…this lifestyle would not hurt me and can only help. Before doing Keto, I decided to give this WFPB thing a try.
I had one last hoorah! Dinner at Texas de Brazil where the leg of lamb and garlic sirloin was consumed in quantities that should have caused a heart attack! I finished that meal and went cold turkey. This was February 19, 2018. I adopted a Whole Food Plant Based lifestyle.
My weight at that time was nearing 200 pounds. In fact, when the scale hit 200 I jumped off. So I will admit to 199 lbs. but not an ounce more.
I had a physical exam with my doctor in mid-March. He has tried to prescribe Crestor or some other cholesterol lowering medication for the last six years. I refused to fill the prescriptions that he called in to the pharmacist, convinced I could do it on my own with diet and exercise. My weight had dropped to about 188 at the time of the physical. But what shocked me after four weeks on the WFPB lifestyle were my cholesterol number (it had dropped to 211) and my blood pressure (118/80). Could this be a fluke?
Well my doctor feared it may have been a fluke and asked me to return in sixty days for another blood test. So, at the end of June I returned. After ninety days of a Whole Food Plant Based life, my cholesterol number was 171 and my blood pressure was 110/70. I was elated and felt so empowered and in control of my life and my health. As I neared my 53rd birthday, I was 162 pounds (a loss of at least 37 lbs.), felt much younger than I had in years, and told anybody who would listen to me that I found the Fountain of Youth! And I went on to live happily ever-after…
Ok, it didn’t quite work out that way.
My wife and I went to an all-inclusive in Mexico at the end of July and I indulged in what I paid for. All you can eat and drink…and if filet mignon was on the menu, I ordered it. Oxtail, seafood, eggs, bacon, steak, steak, and more steak. I’m not even mentioning the alcohol that was flowing (into my mouth).
Shortly after was a cruise with my step-kids. Eight days of excess. A cruise is essentially an excuse to eat yourself silly and I was delirious!
Returning home to college football season had me outside grilling skirt steak, ribs, and wings.
I had fallen back into my old routine. My weight crept up again, reaching 190 during the Christmas holiday. My skin was inflamed and my joints hurt. The energy levels I enjoyed for the five months while adhering to the WFPB lifestyle was gone, replaced with a lethargic and flabby being. I was embarrassed and ashamed of my lack of control and discipline. My health was taking a turn for the worse and I needed to take control and own my destiny.
I wanted to be the husband and father my wife, kids, and step-kids deserved. Healthy, vibrant, and not a burden physically or mentally. Plus, I had another very important reason. I will be a grandfather in 2019. I want to be out there throwing or kicking the ball with my grandchild(ren). I want to be rough-horsing with them in the ocean. I want to exemplify health and vibrance that defies my age.
On January 1, 2019 I rededicated and recommitted myself to the Whole Food Plant Based lifestyle. I have seen what it offers to my overall health and I want that for myself. And what better way to lead by example and hold myself accountable than starting a blog on the subject. Put myself out there for the world to see.
So here we are at the beginning of the new year. Two weeks in and so far, so good. Down 6 pounds, but weight isn’t everything. I’m sleeping better, feel my skin looks better, and my energy level is improving.
But I know every day presents new challenges. I will discuss my trials and tribulations, offer tips, share recipes, review products, and just be real with you. I’ll be honest and open with you. That is my promise to my community. At the end of the day, this blog is about you. You stay and read my posts not because of me, but because I am serving you by providing information and hope that will help you and your quest.
My commitment is to post twice a week, scheduled for Wednesday and Sunday. If there is a subject you would like me to address, please comment below. I will make every effort to respond to each comment and where I can, incorporate your questions into my blog.
I invite you to join me on this journey.
Wishing you the best of health!
Stephen