Chicken Poop Soup

Read the full article from Kathy Freston, here

And the Top Reason to Be (Mostly) Vegan...

...is your mouth can't be inseminated by animals you don't eat!

Apparently some woman in South Korea got a mouthful of zombie squid sperm when she bit into a half-cooked squid with killer survival instincts. From ABC News:

Here's one not for the squeamish, from South Korea: A semi-cooked squid inseminated a woman's mouth, according to a paper published in the Journal of Parasitology. After experiencing "severe pain in her oral cavity" when she bit into her seafood, the woman spit out her meal but continued to feel a lingering "pricking" sensation.

Doctors found that the 63-year-old woman had "small, white spindle-shaped bug-like organisms" lodged in the mucous membrane of her tongue, cheek and gums.

Despite having been boiled, the dead squid's live spermatophores, or sperm sacks, were alive and penetrated the woman's mouth. The sacks, which contain ejaculatory devices, forcefully release sperm and a "cement" that attaches the sperm to a wall.

Not to worry, calamari lovers. Most Western-world squid preparation removes the squid's internal organs, leaving only its muscle for eaters to enjoy, according to Danna Staaf, who writes the blogSquid a Day, published on Science 2.0.

Seafood, anyone? (Full story is here)

Darwin would be so proud.

Friday Night Blues

Friday night's commute is always the time I use to process the week.  It's a chance to digest what I just went through to allow myself to relax over the weekend before getting back in the trenches on Monday.  Two trains and a bus give me plenty of opportunity (hopefully) to separate work from life and be in good spirits as I walk through the door at home.

After a particularly draining week, I found myself succumbing to a strong malaise, the looming start of a new week overshadowing the brief respite of the weekend.  On the bus for the last leg of the commute, I tried to pull the mental health Hail Mary of convincing myself that I was tired and everything would be looking up after a good night's sleep.  That train of thought failed, as such desperate attempts often do.

As I stepped off the bus, I was in close proximity to Winthrop House of Pizza.  Wouldn't a buffalo chicken sandwich make you feel better? a voice whispered in my head, one I'm all too familiar with.  I could just walk across the street and chat with Jimmie, the amicable owner of WHoP, shooting the shit about what video games we were playing as the chicken deep-fried.  I could taste all the nuances of the sandwich as I thought about it, everything from the tang of the hot sauce to the oh-so-slightly burned edges of the roll.  There would of course be a cold Coke to wash it down.  Wouldn't I feel better if I just let myself enjoy that?

For a brief moment, it seemed like the best fucking idea in the world, perhaps the best idea I ever had.  I was an addict having an addict's moment, believing that continued self-destruction is somehow the solution to all the other problems in life. As if, after the last bite and last sip, everything that was bothering me would be forgotten.

I'd like to pretend that I found some noble reserve of self control at that moment. In truth, I was overcome by such self-loathing at the notion of once again becoming a victim of destructive impulses and short-term relief that some instinctive drive below my cognitive process slammed down on the desire like a sprung trap. I would walk home and put together a healthy vegan meal from the leftovers in the fridge.

Frankly, I was surprised. I had no answer for the impulse, no reasoning to curtail it.  There was just something deep within me that was just so fucking sick of the same rituals of self-destruction, of living by impulse instead of purpose, that I had no choice but to do the right thing.

A buffalo chicken sandwich is not damnation, nor is a veggie burger salvation.  But the summation of our actions, and whether they're guided by impulse or purpose, will define our fates.  I want to start to control mine instead of being the victim of the seductive whispers of malaise.  Bad days do not have to become bad lives.

Now, time to enjoy that veggie burger.

Back from the Meatapocalypse

Just back from a business trip to Dallas.  I knew BBQ options would proliferate the menus that would be available.  First place we stopped was a Mexican restaurant at the hotel, and while I could have strung together a skimpy vegetarian meal, I gave up and gave in to the meatapocalypse.  The low point was going to a BBQ joint and getting a Fred-Flinstone-sized rack of ribs.  I felt like Homer Simpson as he ate Pinchy.

Now I'm  finally back home, and have a couple extra pounds to show for my excesses.  I had no idea how I'd feel the first morning, but then it came time to eat I reached for the pinto beans my loving wife had left for me as she went on her own trip, dousing then with delicious salsa.  Now I'm soaking some chickpeas so I can make veggie burgers for my lunches this week.  It looks like the meatapocalypse has caused no irreparable damage.

This experience has reinforced the feasibility of the "flexigan" approach Cathy and I have decided to take: keep a vegan home, but go omnivore when eating out.  This will reduce our meat consumption by a huge amount, but also prevent backsliding from trying to be 100% vegan all the time, fighting the tendency of animal products to creep into so many menu items. It's a lot easier to have an occasional piece of meat to help fight urges as part of a plan than to avoid every giving into a single piece of meat that could be the beginning of another meatapocalypse.

So any vegans or vegetarians who are frothing at the mouth at "flex" terminology, remember that that qualifier implies less than veganism, and if someone starts thinking that you eat meat because of hearing that nomenclature, that says more about them than the term (and it's also a lot easier for me to say flexigan than, "I'm an omnivore that keeps a vegan home," which I'd gladly say except that I'm lazy and everyone is impatient).  The thing to celebrate is that a flexigan is someone who is actively trying to use fewer animal products, and needs support to keep improving on that goal.  Perhaps a day will come when I can resist BBQ in Texas (the holy grail of being vegan), but until that day comes, I'm very proud to be back on the horse (instead of wanting to eat it) now that I'm home.

Menu Mondays: Stockpiled Tofu

You asked us how we cooked tofu (well, one of you did, anyway) and we're going to deliver because it gives us a chance to talk about the most important tool in a veggie friendly kitchen's arsenal: stockpiling the building blocks of easy veggie-based meals. 

We alluded to this last week in the Harvest Quinoa recipe when we talked about having diced onions in your fridge ready to be grabbed and tossed into the skillet. It's not that we're that organized--we're just that lazy. Mrs. Married With Veggies has a funky work schedule that regularly plants the dinner hour between 9 and 10 p.m., and nothing's a bigger drag than coming home and getting your choppy choppy on. Except maybe coming home and finding dog puke. 

Hungry? 

Us, too! So the tofu: We make a big batch of the stuff, put it in the fridge, and use it throughout the week (same for the onions and beans for that matter). And it couldn't be easier...

Team Stockpiled Tofu is a simple (yet dynamic!) duo.

 

 

 

 

 

Slice the packages and drain. Remove the tofu and put them on a paper towel on a cutting board. Yes, paper towels, Lay off me. I don't have any towels that haven't been used for cleaning yet.

Press the tofu with six simple (but powerful!) layers: 1) cutting board 2) paper towels 3) tofu 4) paper towels 5) cutting board part II 6) weight (yeah, yeah, yeah, a big pot would do, but where's the fun in that?)

Let gravity do its thing for 30 minutes, then remove the icky, sopping towels.

Cut each block-o-tofu into 8 even(ish) slices

Mr. Married With Veggies insists on 0.5 tBsp of olive oil per block-o-tofu, but I think you could get away with less. He rubbed each slice in the heated oil as he placed them in the pan.

Cooky cooky for 7 minutes

Flippy flippy and 7 more minutes.

Enjoy your tub-o-ready-to-go tofu all week long!

Mr. Married with Veggies says it's a waste of time to cut each slice into 8 triangles, but they make me ridiculously happy.

They also make modern art. I call this one sunburst with seagull over the sea.

And this one, I call lightning fast lunch (wheat pita with hummus, tofu, tomato, and spinach).

So here's the straight "recipe."

Ingredients:

• 1 package extra firm tofu
• 0.05 tBsp olive oil

Step 1. Drain tofu and put on a cutting board lined with paper towels. Cover with paper towels, a second cutting board, and a weight. Leave for 30 minutes. (Do NOT try to speed things up by pressing down on the top--this is a passive process!)

Step 2. Cut the tofu into 8 slices.

Step 3. Heat olive oil in a skillet and place tofu slices in two rows. Cook for 7 minutes each side.

Step 4. Use for sandwiches, stir frys, and just plain munching all week long!

Step 5. OK, you caught us. The recipe is for one batch, but the pictures show us making two. When we finished one batch we immediately started a second, but you should try it with one block of tofu. This week we just know we have a few recipes that will call for tofu so we did a double batch.

Vegan Is Easy, Healthy Is Hard

When Cathy and I started this program, we made two immense changes: going vegan and eating healthy.  In my mind, I had initially lumped them together, but they are distinct choices, one of which is immensely harder than the other.

If some all-powerful being told me that I'd stay in wonderful shape if I chose one of two options: be vegan but eat anything I wanted that fell into that category or be an omnivore but have to eat only  healthy options, I would have made the decision in a heartbeat. Pasta sandwiches dripping with oil, here I come! And why not wash that down with a pan of apple crisp (with vegan butter of course)? Simply put, it's easy to cut things out of your diet when plenty of bad things are left in.  

As the program has progressed, I've found that I rarely have urges for things that aren't vegan, but I often wish for less healthy versions of what is in front of me.  As I eat my daily salad, I don't wish there was a pile of steak tips on top, but instead that I had a nice, fatty dressing instead of the fat-free low-cal balsamic. While this can sometimes be a struggle, the important lesson I've learned is that you can live without the things that aren't in front of you, but as soon as something is, there's a desire to make less healthy choices.

This is particularly important for me to realize with a business trip on the horizon where food and beer will flow freely.  Staring at the buffet lunches of meats and carbs and fats and sugars, the temptation to go with the lesser evil will be a horrific challenge.  And when it comes to free beer, well... next topic.

So I have two weeks to steel myself to the temptations of bounteous badness.  My secret weapon: remembering what the scale said after living vegan and healthy for several weeks.  I hope that's enough.

So that's hunger....

I made two strange food related discoveries this week. The first is that the string of chemicals in vegan sour cream, cream cheese, and cheese cheese mean that these substances are not health foods. Other tip offs were the weird headache and general fog-head that came on after eating any of them (it took me two times to make the connection and a third to confirm it).

The second is that something about eating a mostly plant-based diet has killed my desire for most of the foods that used to sing sweet siren songs to my belly and tongue and convince me a taste and another and one more couldn't possibly hurt anybody.

This afternoon I thought I was coming down with a flu. I felt logy and tired, I had a low-grade headache, and I could hardly focus on the work task at hand (though to be fair, said task is the kind of deadly dull stupidness that inspires lesser mortals to pluck themselves bald). I was ready to admit defeat and go lie down a while, when my stomach grumbled loudly enough for me to stop typing and look down at the peanut gallery below, and peanuts, I thought. Peanuts would be really good right now. Why is my mouth watering? And there goes the beast in my belly again, which is when it dawned on me: I had forgotten to eat lunch.

I forgot (!) to eat lunch.

I never forget to eat lunch. Certainly not when I'm working on a yawner of a project that would inspire lesser mortals to pluck themselves bald.

So I put some hummus and tomato on a pita and, well, do you have houseplants you neglect like I neglect my houseplants? And by neglect I mean forget you have them for weeks and then praise Jeebus when you see them acting all droopy that you were self aware enough to only take on succulents that don't need you very often anyway? When you water a plant that's been neglected like I neglect them, two things happen. First, the dirt slurps the wet right up and second the plant perks up. Immediately. Kind of like I did after I ate my hummus-and-tomato pita.

I don't advocate skipping meals to the point that you feel sick, I really don't. But forgetting to eat when you've had food issues as long as your memory of the taste of chocolate? That's something special, that is.

Perhaps I'll show my plantly gratitude by buying my much neglected succulents a drink.

Menu Monday: Harvest Quinoa (Keen-wa)

Quinoa sure looks an awful lot like dirt sprinkled on your
plate when you're as shitty a food photographer as I am! 

This recipe could also be called The-Quinoa-recipe-I-submitted-to-the-Trader-Joe's-quintessential-quinoa-recipe-contest-that-doesn't-have-a-snowball's-chance-in-hell-of-winning. But we at Married with Veggies think "Harvest Quinoa" is less of a mouthful.

The trouble with the recipe isn't the lack of beauty in this garden rainbow of a meal (trust me, the camera isn't doing it justice) or an issue with the harvesty yum  of the taste (though Mr. Married With Veggies insists black beans would be a better choice in the dish). 

No. 

The real problem was I decided to include onions under the "binders" category that the contest defines as "salt, pepper, butter, cooking oil, etc," because, really, what  vegan/vegetarian/flexitarian worth her salt doesn't have diced onions in her fridge to throw into the pot at a moment's notice, right? 

I know. I know. I could have dropped the spinach at the end, but I…just…couldn’t…do it. The spinach, she is too much a part of the pretty-pretty of the plate at the end! 

So pull the onions, you say? You can't mean you really want me to sacrifice taste, can you?! 

What about losing the bell peppers or the corn? Yeah, but what part of rainbow are you not getting? 

"Surely, the broccoli could go," you say. "It's green, afterall, and the spinach has that color covered, right?" You know what? It's like you don't even know me anymore! (Insert slammed door sound effect here, please).  

So, yeah. I'm very likely totally disqualified, but you know what? I made up a recipe, like all on my own (insert the sound of a film projector with a little kid quipping "I made this!" here, please). Which means I should probably warn you that there's the ever so slightest possibility that I've worded something ambiguously enough to result in a cooking snafu that could end in anything from a forgotten and very overcooked something or other on the minor end all the way to a burned-out kitchen on the disaster end. I take no responsibility for either, but hey, let the adventure begin!  

  

Team Harvest Quinoa reporting for duty, sir! 

TEAM HARVEST QUINOA 

• 1 cup Trader Joe's Organic Tricolor Quinoa (you can use any brand--even plain--but TJ's tricolor looks like pebble soup while it cooks and that makes me irrationally happy, though if you want to rob yourself of joy, have at it!) 
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup diced onions
• 2 TBSP Earth Balance
• 0.25 cups water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups cooked chick peas (or 1 14-oz can, though this was NOT part of our testing)
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• 1 cup red bell pepper
• 1.25 cups frozen corn
• 1 cup baby spinach (packed tightly)

STEP 1. Put the quinoa and veggie broth in a saucepot at high and bring to a boil. The instructions on the back of the package indicate that it's possible to make the quinoa in four minutes in a microwave. Lies! Vicious, vicious LIES! Cook the quinoa on your stove and keep an eye on it if you're a quinoa newbie (when I was a quinoa newbie, I, too thought it was pronounced Quinn-oh-a). Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Seriously, keep an eye on it. I suggest stirring at the 10- and 15-minute marks because your quinoa may well need a little less time or a little more time to soak up the water depending on how high octane the heat on your burner is.

STEP 2. While the quinoa cooks, chop the onions and get them into a frying pan with the butter, stirring to coat, then let them brown (about 5 minutes) while you get the rest of the veggies ready. Cook them longer if you prefer your onions browner; less if you like them on the icky raw side, not that I'm judging you for liking something that will make leave your breath smelling like old socks or anything. There's room in this world for every kind of tastebud and blah, blah, blah. 

STEP 3. Add the chick peas, broccoli, corn, red pepper, and water to the frying pan. It's starting to look kind of pretty already, no? Stir, then cover and cook for 5 minutes. 

Just after the dump.....

STEP 4.  Remove the frying pan from the heat, dump the quinoa  and the baby spinach on top in a mound (truly, it’s impressive-looking) and slowly (I’m serious about the slow bit—be patient or you’ll be cleaning little quinoa bits from your burner for longer than it takes to wolf this thing down) fold everything together until the quinoa and vegetables are mixed in well. The spinach will wilt perfectly from the heat of the food. 

....and just after the very, very patient "fold."

STEP 5.  Divide the Harvest Quinoa into four bowls and allow those eating to salt and pepper to suit their own tastes.

Per serving: 448 calories; 10g fat; 17g protein, 14g fiber (per sparkpeople.com)

Vegan Dog Caught in the Act!

"Mmmmm," Bo says. "Grasses is very very nom, nom, crunch, crunch, nom!" 

Let me be clear: We do NOT have Bo on a vegetarian diet. Just sometimes--mostly when he's sick to his tummy--the world becomes a giant salad bar to him. He favors bright green blades of grass to the exclusion of just about every thing else. And normally I yank him away--I have it on good authority that the green doesn't feel so good (in other words I've seen the greens coming out of either end), but I had my phone in my hand, and it cracked me up as an if-it's-good-for-mommy-moment from the Bo-Bo. That is all.

Menu Mondays: Coconut Chickpea Soup*

The cream from the coconut milk and the kick with the curry will make your belly warm and happy. Plus, this has to be the tastiest soup you'll ever whip up with less than 5 minutes prep time that  doesn't involve pouring said soup from a can.

See Mrs. Married With Veggies Go All Artsy with the Spinach.

Minutes before full fat coconut milk got cut from Team Coconut Chickpea Soup.  

THE TEAM:  

• 3 cups cooked chickpeas (or 2 15-oz canned chick peas)
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cups baby spinach (The recipe actually called for roughly-torn kale leaves with the rough stems removed, but kale doesn't play as nicely with the blender as spinach does, so I swapped it .) 
• 2 cloves garlic (optional)
• 15-oz low-fat coconut milk (Low fat is totally key because low fat is a liquid and regular has the consistency of shortening. Interesting note: Shortening doesn't play nice with the blender, either.)
• 1 tBsp curry powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp apricot fruit spread (Yeah, it's weird. But it was the best sub I could think of for honey, which is not technically vegan.)
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 0.25 tsp fresh ground black pepper 

 GAME PLAN:

Action shot! 

STEP 1. In a blender, combine chickpeas, broth, spinach, garlic, coconut milk, curry powder, cumin, apricot spread, salt, and pepper. 

Alien slime! 

STEP 2. Puree until completely smooth, about 30 seconds. Thirty seconds, my ass. I don't know what size blender you have, but one more measly chick pea would have sent food stuffs steaming down the outside of mine. I started at blend, worked my way up to liquify, and then I let that puppy whirrr until the spinach polka dots disappeared into the muck. 

Well, this looks like paste...

STEP 3. Transfer to a medium pot and heat on medium-high. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Divide among 4 serving bowls,  waste several minutes trying to get cute with a not-so-artful arrangement of spinach leaves, and serve with a side salad. 

317 calories, 14 grams fat, 47 mg sodium, 9 grams fiber, 13 grams protein (per sparkpeople.com)

*Adapted from a recipe in Clean Eating Magazine

Let There Be Salt!

Of all the things we've cut out on this program (which is practically everything), I miss sodium the most. I've long been a serial salt abuser, so I never realized just how bland everything is without it. Sure, I knew that I used so much salt because it made things taste better, but little did I realize what would happen in its absence. Basically, food without sodium no longer tastes like food.

Try this experiment: At your next meal, put away the salt and soy sauce. Use ingredients with little or no sodium. Then take a big bite. What do you taste? That's right: not food. The problem is especially  bad with soup because soup without sodium is just stuff floating in hot water.

This lead me to do some research, and it seems that sodium isn't as bad as it has been made out to be:

"If you are under age 50, your blood pressure is in a healthy range, and your health is good, you probably have little reason to worry about salt intake. A lower-sodium diet is good for people who are older, who are of African American descent, or who have high blood pressure or diabetes"(from http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/daily-sodium-intake)

So my conclusion: I'm going to let a little salt back into my diet so food can taste like food again. Hallelujah!

Accidental Cannibal?

So if a trace amount of anchovies in my Worchestshire sauce makes for a non-vegan dish, does swallowing the food in my mouth after I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood make me a cannibal?

What?!

This is the question plaguing me today!  

Menu Mondays: Baker's Dozen Salad

Fear not! This salad's phenomenal taste is
indirectly proportional to the blandness of its photo. 

BAKER'S DOZEN SALAD (aka that grilled veggie salad thing)--In the book Eat to Live, author Joel Fuhrman, M.D. advises his patient to stick a sign to the refrigerator that says, "THE SALAD IS THE MAIN DISH," and Married With Veggies took that advice as a challenge! The Baker's Dozen Salad whips 12 vegetables into a delicious frenzy (13 if you think corn counts as a vegetable the way Mr. Married With Veggies does). Even better than packing a shit ton of veggies into one meal? The recipe provides opportunities for iterations limited only by the produce in your refrigerator. And best yet, the theory of the salad (as much as a salad can have a theory, anyway) is simply* this:

-- whip together a traditional salad two to three times the size of a garden salad in a restaurant;
-- toss your favorite cooked veggies and  beans into a skillet with water or your favorite oil;
-- dump the hot stuff on top of the cold stuff;
-- dress with diced avocado, seeds, and your favorite dressing, and dig into a green meal that will leave you feeling satisfied for hours and hours and hours.  

But maybe you need a hit of the baker's dozen goodness as is in a recipe before you see how this concept can be the basis of many of your best stand-at-the-fridge-and-choose-ingredients-to-improvise-a-meal dinners. So here's a recipe that incorporates what I think to be the ideal base. Try it, love it, then improvise away!

How worried should I be that my warring veggie factions seem to have adopted gang colors? 

THE TEAM: We tried to get a nice family photo of Team Baker's Dozen Salad--we really did. But a rift has developed between the cold team and the hot team. The cold team can understand how the beans, the frozen corn, and the mushrooms might prefer to be cooked (though the cold team points out that mushrooms are a fungus and not truly a vegetable), but they see the defection of the asparagus, zucchini, and green peppers as a betrayal of the highest order. Personally, I think the raw veggies have a collective inferiority complex because the American diet pretty much ignores them, but whatever.  As a direct result of my failure to mediate the vexed veggies, I have been directed to list the teams separately.

The traitorous three ringing the sunflower seeds

THE HOT TEAM

• 1 tbsp Earth Balance whipped buttery spread (use an oil if you like, but I think there's nothing like a mushroom with a  buttery taste soaked in)
• 5 spears of asparagus snapped into roughly 1-inch pieces
• 0.5 cup frozen yellow sweet corn
• 0.5 cup diced zucchini
• 1 cup diced  green bell pepper
• 1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (for the love of all that is holy about your time, buy them pre-washed and sliced!) 
• .25 cup water
• 1 cup pre-cooked black beans (you could use any beans you have on hand--cooked chick peas are phenomenal, too, but I thought black beans would show up better in photographs)
• 0.5 oz raw sunflower seeds (roughly 2.5 tBsp)
• 0.25 cup diced raw onions 

Mediation between factions was going GREAT until...

...the carrots decided to get together to flip off the hot team *sigh*

THE COLD TEAM

Diced avocado

• 3 cups baby spinach (3 cups of any green leafs, really, but spinach is delicious and ridiculously nutritious. Technically, I use 2 cups of spinach and a cup of baby arugula blend because I like the mingling of flavors, but the choice is yours.)
• 0.5 cup chopped broccoli 
• 0.5 cup baby carrots
• 0.5 cup diced celery 
• 1 cucumber, peeled and cut into half moons (The half moon shape is not strictly necessary, but it makes me happy.)
• 1 tomato, diced 
• 0.5 cup diced red peppers
• 2 tBsp lemon juice (roughly the juice from half a lemon)
• 1 tBsp balsamic vinegar 
• Half an avocado, diced and set aside

GAME PLAN

The dump! 

STEP 1. Heat the Earth Balance in a skillet on high until it starts to sizzle, then dump the hot ingredients into the pan.  And, yes, I really mean dump it all in a big mountain of hot team goodness. If you really need direction, then start with the onions, but seriously, throw it all in there. Stir until most of the hot ingredients are shiny with Earth Balance, then let the lot cook at high until the pan starts wafting out a  buttery mushroom flavor. And if you've gone and left out the mushrooms (Why would you do such a thing?! Did I not explicitly mention the joys of their buttery GOODNESS??!!)and are worrying about how the heck you'll know  it's time to move on if you don't have your Pavlov mushroom smell to motivate you, then fine--let the lot cook at high for about a minute and then turn the pan down to a more respectable medium  temperature.  Add the water to the skillet now. 


STEP 2.While the hot ingredients cook down, separate the spinach between two big salad bowls. Split the broccoli, carrots, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, and red pepper between the two bowls. Give the hot mixture a quick stir. Water should be boiling off while you're working. 

See? Impossible to miss!

STEP 3. Squeeze about 2 tablespoons of juice from half a lemon, and combine with 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Tip: Because squeezing a lemon can be a pain in the ass, do it over a large measuring cup so that you don't have to add aiming to your troubles. Also, if you want to get one of those plastic lemons from your produce aisle and skip the whole fresh squeezed routine, I'm totally down with that. But holy mother of god are you totally neglecting team hot right now??? For the love of all that is holy, give team hot a ride on the wooden spoon, stat! 

STEP 4. Remove the hot vegetables from the heat and spoon the contents onto the top of the two bowls filled with raw salad components. The vegetables will look a wee bit tired--the corn may have even browned--but while this might be overcooked as a stand-alone side dish, the slightly overdone consistency means these veggies  have definitely released all inner sweetness (hello carmelized onions!). Top with half the dressing each, mix, and  eat it all, and I'm totally serious about that: eat it ALL!

Don't throw away my favorite part of the salad, dude! 

STEP 5. Dude, I totally told you to eat it all. That stuff at the bottom that looks like litter? That's a flavor bomb of beans and avocado and sweet, sweet corn that's been basically steeping in the lemony goodness the whole time you've been munch, munch, munching your way down to it--it's it's pretty much the best part, so if you're really going to insist on tossing it, can I eat it?

445 calories, 17 grams fat, 161 mg sodium, 21 grams fiber, 18 grams protein (per calculator on sparkpeople.com)**

Happy Menu Monday from Married With Veggies! 


* I have OFFICIALLY turned into my mother. She's no vegan, but ask her for one of her recipes, and she'll slap her hand on her knee and, in a faded (but still adorable) French-Canadian accent, kickstart an on-the-spot recitation of the what-for with the following three words: "It's very easy!"


** The fat is coming from the avocado, the sunflower seeds and the Earth Balance. Change your mix and shave fat and calories, though remember--the avocado and the sunflower seeds are the good guys in this three-fat fight . ****


***I'm putting this in as a guideline, but I'm not 100 percent sure this is accurate. 


**** I am not a nutritionist. I don't even play one on TV!

Leftovers are tasty

On Monday we introduced the world to Menu Mondays with our recipe for Smashed Peppers. I'm not sure what possessed me to dump the leftovers onto a salad, but my tastebuds were all like, "what is this taco salady goodness?" so I'm glad I did. Best part was the juices from the smashed peppers mingled with the raw veggies in a seriously drool-inducing way. Yum!

Fairies Taste Like Walnuts

The fairy beast hiding out among the walnuts in my lunch.

I still remember the way my heart broke when the adults in my life told me the fairies I was deadly sure lived in the swamp down the road were fantasy creatures that never existed--not even during the time of the dinosaurs. Though I wasn't allowed to go into the swampy areas of the neighborhood, I searched those swamps for proof until the day I slipped off a log and got my jeans totally algae covered and panicked--no hiding where I'd been now. So as an adult in Ireland four years ago, the kid in me that still wants to believe perked up when our tour guide pointed out fairy rings in the middle of actively farmed fields--apparently farmers won't tear down trees in a ring or stones in a circle for fear of angering the fairies.

"What do you mean, angering the fairies?" I asked him, thinking vindictiveness didn't fit the two images of fairies I'd flitted between as a kid. "Aren't fairies either fireflies on steroids or pint-sized Gilda*-the-good-witches-from-Oz?" 

Not so, I learned.

Some fairies are kind, but far too many of them are mischievous little beasties who steal--STEAL!--the very kids who defend their honor. The jerks. Is it any wonder they don't show their faces very often?

But today at lunch I made a discovery that adds a new chapter to existing fairy lore: The fairies are not hiding out in the round groves of Irish farms or the the swamps of my youth--fairy folk are hiding out in plain sight ingeniously disguised as raw walnuts.

And boy are they delicious.

*Of course I meant Glinda--thanks AGAIN to Noah Tobin for his eagle eye editing skill. Wanna copyedit my novel? 

Menu Mondays: Smashed Peppers

We here at Married with Veggies are launching our first weekly feature: Menu Mondays.

What's Menu Mondays, you say?

It's a menu idea. On a Monday. Try to keep up!

We're starting with (drum roll, please!) SMASHED PEPPERS!

Yeah, well, insert hilarious quip about yo mama's face here.

For all of you who took one look at the food photo at the left and made that I-just-pictured-Cathy-and-Mike-eating-cat-puke face of yours (you didn't know we could see you, did you?), I have three  things to say: 

First, screw you!

Second, dammit reader, I'm a writer, not a food photographer!

Third, we're not cooks, but we promise to make things at least twice before sharing them with you, but then again, Mike thinks the smoothies I wake up craving taste like tree bark, and I think the fresh green beans he's started eating like potato chips taste like dirt. In other words, we make no promises that your tongue will think these here smashed peppers are good news should you whip them up. But we like them enough to give them the green (ha!) light. And with all that out of the way, let's go smash some peppers!

SMASHED PEPPERS--Think of this recipe like a deconstructed stuffed pepper without the beef or the rice or the, oh screw it. The cumin and the peppers make this mess in a bowl taste like a deconstructed stuffed pepper to me, but the writer in me wants something a little sexier than deconstructed anything in a title, so sue me. Or don't. This is the part where I tell our readership of three that this recipe started its life as on the pages of the March, 2012 Clean Eating magazine. But that recipe had meat and dairy and salt in it. My version has none of those things, and a f'awesome name.

Team Smashed Peppers reporting for duty!

I'm no cook, so this is what dicing looks like to me. Make it so.

Shut up. It will look less nauseatingly bland in a moment.

THE TEAM: 

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 8-oz package organic tempeh, cubed
• 3 diced tomatoes 
• 1 diced green bell pepper
• 1.5 cups frozen corn
• 1.5 tbsp VEGAN worchestshire sauce*
• .25 cup water
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar

 GAME PLAN:**

STEP 1. In a sauce pot, heat olive oil on, well, hmm. The recipe always says medium or medium-high, but who has that kind of time? Turn your stove to high and let that oil get hot and drop that tempeh right in there and, shit--OK, maybe medium. Because when you drop that tempeh right into hot oil, funny thing about that (heh, heh) is that it splatters. So medium and bombs away or high and gently lower your tempeh onto the cooking surface. 

Crumble = nom!

STEP 2.Cook for four minutes, using a wooden spoon to break up about six cubes worth of the tempeh into crumbles. Is crumbles the technical term for it? Money's on no, but the point is you want some crumbly goodness is the end so you have to start the process now. You'll thank me later.

These colors put the pretty in pretty easy!

STEP 3. Add bell peppers, tomatoes, corn, water, and Worcestshire sauce, and stir to combine. Take a moment to admire the colors in your pot. Drooling is optional, though I suggest not drooling directly into the pot because we want to keep this Vegan and I'm pretty sure your spit counts as an animal product--just saying. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.

STEP 4. Remove from heat and stir in cumin and vinegar. Will the cumin look alarmingly like you've sprinkled your dinner with dirt? At first, a little, yeah. Mix well.

STEP 5. Split into four servings.Cute owl bowl is totally optional, but choosing to add whimsy where you can is a no-brainer because, like, it just is. Serve with a side salad (this is how we roll) or scoop it up with corn chips. I imagine it would be a killer vegan taco filler with the cumin and all, but I haven't tried that. OK. I'm drooling and it's kind of making a mess of my keyboard, so I'm signing off.

230 calories, 8.8 grams fat, 23.6 mg sodium, 3.9 grams fiber, 14.5 grams protein (per calculator on sparkpeople.com)

Happy Menu Monday from Married With Veggies! 



LEFTOVER UPDATE: Dump a leftover portion onto a salad for a scrumptious taco-salad-esque bowl of delicious.

 

*Guess who learned that "normal" Worchestshire sauce has anchovies in it this week? 

** I have no idea why I've adopted a running sports theme. 

Feeling Good

When I read the Eat to Live book, it promised a vegan diet would make me "feel good."  This sentiment was echoed by many people that I talked to about the plan. "It's going to be hard, but you're going to feel so good!" The problem with such a high level assessment is it falls under the psychological phenomenon discovered in a study of manufacturing process almost 100 year ago: When people are asked about how well something works, they will always say there's an improvement because the process of asking affects their assessment.  So now that I'm asking myself everyday if I feel better, I'm psychologically inclined to say yes.

So what metric can I use that 's more accurate than "feeling good"?  I'm tempted to use energy level, which has indeed improved. For a long while, my night of sleep would begin on the couch after conking out while watching TV or reading a book.  This hasn't happened since the diet change.  However, there are too many factors to simply declare this is because of what I'm eating

Even if I discount energy level, there are several tangible changes I've noticed over the last week:

1. All my life, I've had dry scalp problems (that's a coded way of saying dandruff, since no one wants to admit they have dandruff).  It was severe at times and the only relief was through the regimented use of medicated shampoos.  Within a week of my improved diet, my dry scalp is gone.
2. I also had severely chapped lips.  While this hasn't gone away, it has greatly improved in the last week.
3. Cathy informs me that my skin is much healthier now.  I have to take her word on that one, since I don't look at my ugly mug in the mirror often, and when I do all I see is an ugly mug.
4. Here's the big one.  Whenever we'd go out for a big meal, especially a dinner after a good size lunch, I would have cramping that would result in running to a bathroom and [gory details omitted].  This was particularly annoying when the cramping and need to go would kick in soon after we left the restaurant and we had a long drive home.  Yesterday, after our second enormous vegan restaurant meal of the day (I swear the burrito I had for supper was the size of my head), I realized hours later that there had been no bowel issues.  This was the first time in memory that I'd eaten two large meals in one day and not had problems.

I need to point out that I'm not connecting these improvements with any single change in my diet.  For example, I'm not concluding that not eating meat or dairy is what cured my dandruff dry scalp.  The more likely cure was removing caffeine and minimizing salt, but I don't even know that for sure.  While I can't say with any certainty what part of my dietary changes solved these problems, I can say that the sum of the changes did solve them.

Looking at those four changes, I can say that I'm feeling pretty good right now.  While I could focus on the removal of meat and dairy as the reason, the frightening thing I've noticed is how much crap is in all the processed foods we eat. I've always had an unhealthy love affair with salt, and would douse dishes with generous dashes before even tasting them (to Cathy's dismay).  I stopped doing that for this program,  but immediately noticed that almost everything you get out of a can or box or bottle has a ton of sodium in it, as well as an array of chemicals that I'd need a PhD in chemistry to comprehend.  As I said previously, I'm applying common sense to my dietary choices, and the less my food resembles a chemistry experiment, the better it is for me, in my opinion.  The huge companies that dumped all that shit into our food didn't do it because they were worrying about our health. Now that I'm avoiding these processed foods, it seems likely that their absence contributes to the changes I've seen.

Even if you don't feel the same way, I encourage you to read labels. Perhaps the tenth chemical on the list will cause a change of heart (and if not, those chemicals may literally change your heart).  Thanks to lobbyists and our government, you might also be getting additives like pink slime that aren't mentioned on the label, so don't believe everything you read. A little more food for thought: When you eat at a restaurant, they don't tell you what they put in the food.  If that doesn't scare you, I'm not sure what will.

P.S. Whenever I read about pink slime, the theme song from the movie Green Slime pops into my head.