MOTIVATION FROM THE UNEXPECTED

Well, today my mother-inlaw was to undergo her second heart surgery after a heart attack last year. As they prepared for the surgery they injected dye into her artieries to plan their intervention. Upon reviewing this, they decided that she had a much better flow than they had originally anticipated. As a result, no surgery. However, the doctors did notice that in comparison of her records she showed drastic improvement in her cholesterol levels when she was staying with me and I was cooking for her. She has not been here since last November and her numbers are once again out of control. Diet and exercise is a key factor! When she was here I cooked from the "heart book" - 6 weeks to reverse and prevent heart disease. Apparently, that worked, however just as quitting exercise for a sedentary life style packs on the pounds - one can reverse the reversal if they quit following the life plan or as I am coming to regard it, a plan to live. Now, this is real life motivation to press forward in changing our diets for the better, as it does make a difference. Hopefully, my mother-inlaw will revisit the cookbooks I gave her and make yet another reversal, back to the better numbers!

I SANK IN THE ROUGH WATER!!!

My last post was rough waters ahead and well, I thought I could make it through the rapids, but alas I did not resist temptation.

I had a plan and I did my best to stay with it, but where my parental unit is there is wine. The Catholics drink wine right? It's vegan....isn't it?? Excuses.....excuses.

So the first day of the visit we ate oil and drank raspberry lemon drops. Then I stuck with my food menu very well.....then I fell back off when the chocolate cake came.....need I say more? No not really. It's my shame, and my confession.

However, back on track today. I quit my job last Thursday so I will have time a plenty to cook and plan. Today I ate soft tacos with beans and mexican coleslaw. Tomorrow is a stir-no-fry, then soup and salad, and then...... I will have to consult my menu.

You are not alone in your sins...........

Lent Week 3

Lent Week 3: FAIL!
Of course, I want to blame it on others, but that’s never the really the truth is it? Especially since I’m reading Wayne Dyer’s book Excuses Begone! I know better. It was my fault. I gave in. I drank wine. And beer. As my only excuse, it was good wine, and there are far worse things to do than share a beer with your dad after skiing on a beautiful spring day. But I ate french fries, and please don’t anyone tell me what was actually in that wrap. Confession done, that was the bad news, now for the good news:

Menu Plan:
Mon.
Crockpot Chili and baked potatoes

Tues.
Veggie Dal with brown rice

Wed.
Split pea soup, baked potato and salad
Thurs.
Stir fry broccoli, mushroom and red bell pepper

Fri.
Various leftovers

Good workouts this week:
Two swim sessions
One hard tempo run
Two good bike rides (road)
One maintenance session in the gym.

Next challenge?
Easter at the Boucher’s!
There will be lots of good, tempting stuff, so wish me luck!

Rough Waters Ahead!!!

OK- so here it is...........test week. Mom is coming for a visit and this is always when I fall prey to every temptation of the culinary kind. Oil, alcohol, cheese, eggs, whatever it is I am trying to avoid seems to crash down on me. So, at least this week I am thinking ahead. I have a menu plan already in motion with tomorrows dinner (potato and leek soup with fennel and carrots) premade and chilling in the fridge. Lettuce for salad is washed and ready to make a salad with, so I shouldn't slip tomorrow. Then I have a day off of work so I will make dinner ahead of time that morning and warm it up in the evening..... no giving in due to laziness. I will allow one meal out in liew of my Sunday off but stick to my plan the other days. I feel strong, dedicated, and goal oriented!!! Onward!

Nightmare!

So I am reminded of a Neal Barnard lecture a while back where he describes the various "food seductions". These are dangerous foods that have particularly strong drug effects on the brain for susceptible people. Cheese is one of the big ones, and I am susceptible. Barnard found that the casomorphins are so strong that cheese was the number one thing patients/research subjects missed when switching to a vegan diet. I sympathize, I literally woke up last night dreaming of pizza. Mostly I was fantasizing about the melting cheese. What was worse, is that unlike most nightmares, when I woke up, the feeling didn't go away! I've thought about it all day! I WAS excited about my first asparagus dish of the season, but its luster faded a little because of my cheese craving.

EPILOGUE:
I did the asparagus proud by sauteeing it with grape tomatoes, red bell pepper, and chimichurri sauce, which is a balsamic and spice blend originally used as a steak sauce. Highly recommended. As our former commander in chief was fond of saying, "stay the course".

New Dinner Recipe - Need Comfort Casserole Now

I decided that I want a casserole meal toady. It is cold and gray and I need comfort. But how? Casseroles are so full of cream of this or cream of that and sour cream or butter, or cheese.....ahh!!!!!

So I came up with a great sauce that I am using and while it does not meet the MWL criteria due to some rice milk and whole wheat flour, it tastes awesome and is great on top of my veggies.

Here it is: Adapted from vegweb

1/4 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dried mustard powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp curry powder
black pepper
lemon zest 1 tsp
1 Tablespoon of chunky salsa
1 Cup of rice milk or water

Whisk all dry ingredients together then whisk in rice milk or water until no lumps remain. Place in a sauce pan and heat until it thickens to a condensed cream of something soup consistency. Add in zest and salsa and stir to combine.

Pour over steamed veggies and bake or you can add in cooked brown rice to the veggies and pour over and bake for a vegie rice casserole, or pour over a baked potato, or use as the sauce to make scalloped potatoes or do whatever. This sauce reminds me of the old days of cream of chicken soup based casseroles, yet there is no animal ingredients. It has a mellow yet distinct flavor and works well as a sauce for casseroles.

Yum!

SWOT ANALYSIS ON VEGIESIS

So, at first I was really down on myself for the many mishaps of last week. Then, I realized that I need to think of them not as failures, but as weaknesses that can be made strong. For the past ten years I have been teaching business students how to do a SWOT analysis on an organization. A SWOT analysis is the idtification of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to an organization's success. Why not apply this to myself and my lenting?

So, last week identified not too many strengths in the face of change. When my environment is stable I am strong, but a single shock to that reality and I lose my strength. Weakness then becomes evident. I am weak at planning when company comes so instead I derail. Opportunities? I have an opporutnity to develop these weaknesses into strengths by planning meals out in advance when I know company is coming. Perhaps I should have a few homemade frozen meals on hand as well so that I can be caught off guard but not become weak from it. The threat?? Chaos. I seem to abandon in the face of chaos or a shock to my "norm". Social settings are a threat for me, dining out is a threat. So, I should be certain to plan for these events and if I am going to someone's house I can bring a dish that works for me or if going out I can prepare a list of what is acceptable in my mind so that I am less likely to panic and take the wrong path. Perhaps I can never give up my raspberry lemondrops but at least I can cut down on the oil consumption that seems to go along with them.

WELL......MAYBE NOT SO GOOD.....

OK- so this past week I obliterated all success. Mom and Dad came to visit and we ended up drinking raspberry lemon-drops and eating oily food. Yah well. I guess I am repenting. Then Dad and I went for coffee because that is our private bonding time so I partook in this too. Luckily, I grabbed a rescue rope and cooked dinner on Friday night so as not to ruin all my work. I went to the veg cafe and bought lardless tamales, then I served them with black beans, and mexican coleslaw. It was good and it saved me from another slip-up. I worked all weekend so I have no plans for this week's meals and nothing prepared....this will be a tough one, but with Tuesday off I can make it through one day and then plan..........right?

Week 2 Wrap Up and Week 3 Plan

Week 2 Wrap:
All right, pass or fail? Pass! Again! Well, mostly. Although in full disclosure last week’s wrap was posted before going to dinner at my godparents’ house. And you just don’t mess around with my godfather’s cellar, so that was another sugar Fail. But since then, I’ve improved, only one off plan day, as originally scheduled. Remember, Sundays don’t count in traditional Lent, so I decided Friday or Saturday did not count for me. And that was it, one day, Friday. Now I’m back on plan, eating simple, great food. I trained Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I ran twice, biked twice, and did some strength training. I decided to weigh myself, as I often do after training in the afternoon for the first time in a while. I do not want to make this a goal oriented endeavor, so I have avoided the scale. But it showed me that I am back where I was before the holidays, maybe even a little lighter, so this McDougall MWL really works, if you execute it properly. At this rate I should hit race weight by spring break, which is perfect timing for my A races. Of course, they say the final few pounds are always the hardest, but I’m not worried.

Week 3 Plan:
School will be a little hectic this week, so once again I’m trying to to front load the cooking so I don’t have to work too hard. So on Saturday I cooked BBQ Heirloom beans, very good! Instead of canned I cooked up a pound of Rancho Gordo Pinquitos. Especially good on baked potatoes. Today I have a navy bean soup going in the crockpot, and tonight I will cook a simple yellow split pea soup (curried variation) extra thick so it can be a spread. Tomorrow night I will cook a New Orleans style red bean dish. A big pot of rice and some baked potatoes and I’m basically done for lunches and dinners. This week I’m going to experiment with simpler “steam fry” dishes to add some more green vegetables to my diet. If my main starches are already cooked, then all I need to do is steam some veggies as an accompaniment. I am going to simplify my stir fry with fewer veggies, and try to do it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. I usually get carried away, but I will limit myself to three veggies each time, to make things easier. Teamed up with rice and bean soup, I think I’m rockin’!

So here’s how it looks:
Mon: New Orleans Red Bean Gumbo
Tues: Stir Fry Broccoli, shroom, and red bell pepper
Wed: Stir Fry Asparagus and red bell pepper
Thurs: Stir Fry Bok Choy, carrot and shroom
Fri & Sat: Danger Zone! I’ll be at the parents’ house, where temptations lurk around every corner!

Variety is Overrated

So, over the weekend I tried what many McDougallers do: simplify to an extreme. I was struck by what Jeff Novick has mentioned several times, namely simplicity in food choices works just fine. I was struck by the ideal of simplicity of Lent, and thought that choosing fewer dishes and flavors I could focus on eating to satisfy true hunger, and not mental “appetites”. We are often exhorted to eat a “wide variety” of foods so that all our nutrient needs will be met. But if you look at traditional cultures throughout history, you’ll se that most subsisted on relatively few foods that were well suited to the local climate. A couple of starchy staples seasoned with local spices and whatever fresh fruits and veggies were in season have held body and soul together for thousands of years. Without modern storage and distribution, choice was limited. And you know what? They did just fine, as long as food was plentiful. I think the modern nutritionista mandate to maximize variety is to simply get away from the main sources of SAD calories: meat, dairy, flour, sugar and oil, all of which are nutrient deficient. To the SAD, ANY whole, unrefined plant food is “variety”! In short, if we eliminate the above mentioned foods and stick to whole, unrefined starches, fruits, veggies, grains and legumes, we’ll be fine. We can eat very few different foods and do well. It’s not as hard as we make it out to be.

So my experiment was to simplify my menu so I used essentially all Latin flavors. I made a skillet bean and zucchini dish, crock pot chili, drunken beans, and tried a veg posole recipe. All dishes used essentially the same ingredients and flavorings. I decided that I would eat as much as I possibly could of these dishes before moving on. So that is all I ate, with a couple of exceptions, which were oatmeal or fresh fruit for breakfast and a green salad with split pea soup. I even had chili for breakfast once, it was great! Otherwise it was beans, corn, rice, tomatoes, peppers, squash, hominy, chili powder, potatoes, salsa and hot sauce. It tasted great.

Everything is just snappy!

I was reflecting on myself today and I realized how "instant" our society is and what it does to us. We microwave and get food in 3 minutes, we have instant oatmeal, drive-thrus, and speedy everything. This created a desire for me to feel great from focusing on my diet and food choices instantly. Of course, this didn't happen...... until this week. Having patience is perhaps a virtue because I have toughed it out and while I didn't feel anything at first, I now feel great. Mentally I feel postive and alert, physically I am full of energy (at the right times of the day) and I am falling asleep quickly and staying asleep soundly. I crave a snap pea snack for a crisp and refreshing tide-me-over or late night snack and coconut water makes me happy in the afternoon. Mostly, I am addicted to the snap peas. They make me happy as they snap when I bite them and VegiNoodle loves them too. We have after school snap pea snack contests to see who can crunch the loudest when we bite in. Fresh is awesome and being snappy is great!

A DISCOVERY.....

So, I can't access placing up links, but I found a new site for recipes last night while surfing around the Internet. Maybe you have been there already, but here it is, www.vegweb.com I found all kinds of yummy recipes some are even oil free and McDougall friendly!!! I am always excited to find recipe archives and especially ones that I don't have to modify much. Bon Appetite Mon Frer!