gluten-free

80/10/10 Recipe: Purple People Eater Green Smoothie with Chard and Blackberries

June 19, 2012 by Veronica Grace 9 Comments

So maybe this smoothie is not a “people eater” per se, but it is purple and it is delicious so I think you need to make this green (err purple) smoothie recipe so you can become a purple smoothie eater! “Purple People Eater” is just a silly song from the late 1950’s about a monster that comes to earth because he wants to be in a rock band. He happens to have only one eye and one horn as and he apparently only eats purple people, so most of us should be ok… I said should… if you drink a lot of this smoothie there’s no guarantee that might not turn purple! Just sayin. I warned ya…

I like to keep my green smoothie recipes fairly simple, so bananas are a very common choice as a base flavour and natural sweetener for my green smoothies. Next I like to throw in some ripe mangoes if I have it (or frozen if I don’t). Make sure your mangoes are soft to the touch like a ripe avocado and the skin will be slightly wrinkled. Ripe mangoes should smell fragrant and have a dark yellow or yellow/orange flesh on the inside. If your mango is still firm, not very fragrant and pale yellow and too tart when you cut it open, it’s not ripe enough yet. It’s not a bad mango, you just didn’t let it ripen and let those enzymes do their job and create the natural sugars that make fruit sweet when ripe.

Baby spinach is a really easy addition to any green smoothie recipe, and if you don’t have any other greens to work with I suggest to start with that or even some leaf lettuce. Swiss chard is a great green to use in smoothies as it’s generally fairly available at the grocery store or farmers markets. If not you can easily grow it at home. It comes in green, red and rainbow coloured stems, any kind will do for a green smoothie. You can either just use the green portion or blend the stalk and the green. The stalks are actually really tasty steamed if you want to save them as well or add them to a fresh stir fry.

One of the best parts about a purple green smoothie is that it looks fairly similar to store made smoothies and no one will know you put some greens in there. So it’s good to give to children or your spouse and they won’t be as likely to turn their nose up to it on account of it being green and looking like a swap smoothie. But you never know, green smoothies are fairly popular, even trendy nowadays and many people who aren’t even into raw or vegan foods are making green smoothies and throwing things like green vegetables into their blenders assuming that will do the trick…

By the way I don’t recommend you throw anything like a bunch of broccoli or really strong cruciferous vegetables (Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower etc) into your green (fruit) smoothie either. They contain sulfur and can be pretty strong and untasty in combination with sweet fruits. Save those veggies for blended soups or raw vegan blended salads or savory smoothies and mask the taste of them with a combo of tomatoes, cucumbers and mangoes (or dates) and this will mellow out the flavour.

Greens like Swiss chard and kale can still get by in smoothies without being too overpowering or strong if you use them in moderation. I would start with 1 leaf (stalk removed) if you’re new to green smoothies and blend it with the rest of the fruit and taste test it before deciding to experiment with more. Even myself I don’t really like more than 2 large leaves of chard or kale in my smoothies as they can add a stronger flavour and some grittiness to it. Baby spinach can always be added as it barely affects the taste of a green smoothie, so that’s why I’m throwing it into the mix as well.

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Purple People Eater Green Smoothie

Serves 1-2

Ingredients:

2 ripe spotted bananas
1 ripe mango (flesh only) (about 1 cup)
1 handful of baby spinach
1-2 leaves of Swiss chard (stalks optional)
3/4 cup fresh or frozen blackberries
1/2 cup of water (or more to blend as desired)

Directions:

Place ingredients into Vitamix or blender in order above using the tamper if necessary and blend. If you have a low powered blender you may want to blend the bananas and water first, then add the mango and blend, then add the spinach and blend and so on so that each item is incorporated in the smoothie. Add more water if necessary for your type of blender.

Additional Tips:

To make this smoothie nice and cool you can use frozen blackberries and frozen mango or substitute one fresh banana for a ripe frozen one.

Have you ever used Swiss chard in a smoothie? What combination did you use?

Fat Free Vegan Summer Harvest Soup With Butternut Squash, Sweet Corn and White Beans

June 12, 2012 by Veronica Grace 15 Comments

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Ah summer… I think it’s everyone’s favourite month. (At least mine as it’s the sunniest/warmest time in Canada.) I was looking around the freezer the other day and wanted to make up something quick and healthy and I saw I had some bags of frozen butternut squash and some fresh corn. I decided to put it together with onions and broth and make a soup out of it, but it wasn’t thick enough so I thought, hey why don’t I try some white beans to add some bulk and cream it up? It turned out to be a great idea and a totally delicious combination. This soup doesn’t need any butter or cream to make it creamy and delicious, the white beans work perfectly. It also needs very little seasoning since it’s so sweet naturally from the sweet corn.

In fact you could even eat this soup without any of the seasonings at all, it would be a great soup for fussy children, or even a good choice for toddlers. Everyone knows children enjoy soft naturally sweet foods and butternut squash and corn is a favourite.

I decided to kick things up a bit with some smoked paprika which added a delicious smokey flavour to the soup. Smoked paprika isn’t of the spicy variety, but sweet so it adds some nice flavour without being spicy.

Summer sweet corn goes really well in almost any dish. It’s a great topping for salads, adds natural sweetness to soups and is great on it’s own, no seasonings required.

Give this soup a try! It’s super easy (especially if you have frozen squash already, available at most health food stores.)

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Fat Free Vegan Summer Harvest Soup (Butternut Squash Sweet Corn and White Bean Soup)

Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

4 cups/1 qt./946 mL vegetable broth (homemade or low sodium)
1 large sweet onion, diced (such as Vidalia or Walla Walla)
5 cloves of garlic, minced
6 cups/25 oz./1.5 lbs butternut squash, peeled and cubed (fresh or frozen)
2 1/2 cups sweet corn (fresh, frozen or canned – no sodium)
16 oz./453 g can white beans or chickpeas, drained
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (or any other seasoning of choice)
3/4 tsp Herbamare or salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

Directions:

Saute onions and garlic in a large pot over medium heat in 1/2 cup of vegetable broth until soft 5-6 minutes.
Add squash, corn and beans and remaining broth and cover. Cook until squash is tender.
Carefully spoon mixture into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
Pour mixture back into pot, add seasonings and mix thoroughly. Taste test and adjust seasonings if desired.

What do you think of this summer soup? Have you ever tried smoked paprika before?

Fat Free Vegan Indian Tarka Chana Dal (An Easy Oil-Free Curry Recipe)

June 4, 2012 by Veronica Grace 23 Comments

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Tarka Dal is also known as Dal Tarka or Tadka depending where you are in India. Like many Indian foods the names of dishes are phonetic so often you will see similar spellings of dal such as dhal or dahl. There is no right or wrong way to spell these dishes, I just use the most common spellings for ease of use.

Dal is a dish that is made with any variety of lentils including but not limited to split red lentils (most common in thin dal soups), black urad dal (used in creamy Dal Makhani), split urad dal (ground with rice to create Dosas which are Indian crepes) toor/tuvar dal which looks just like chana dal and yellow split peas but is smaller, and moong dal a small yellow split lentil that cooks faster than chana or yellow split peas also used in soups.

Cook’s Thesaurus has excellent descriptions and pictures of various lentils and how to tell them apart. This may sound quite confusing at first, but it’s unlikely that you will fully immerse yourself into using every type of lentil in Indian cuisine, so don’t worry. The most important thing is just to make sure you’re buying the right lentil and label what you buy if it’s coming from bulk bins. As they are all different sizes and thicknesses they can take different amounts of time to cook.

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chana dal (skinless split chickpeas)

You can almost see that they look like little chickpeas/garbanzos split in half and are not fully rounded like yellow split peas. Toor/tuvar dal is also yellow and similar in size, but it is not the same.

Chana dal is used in East India and is widely available at Indian markets, bulk dry good sections at the health food store or ethnic market and online. Tarka is a method where spices are cooked/tempered in hot oil and added to the beginning or end of a dish being cooked. Since we’re going for oil free methods of cooking however, all of the ingredients are combined and cooked together in water instead. Tarka dal is usually cooked in 4 steps and can be quite complicated so I simplified the method. For this reason we have slightly increased some of the spices as the flavours will be subdued through cooking. Whole spices are best as they will retain more flavour, if you substitute all the whole spices with powdered spices you may have to reseason it to taste when it’s done cooking and it may not be as flavourful.

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(Oil-Free) Simplified Indian Tarka Chana Dal

Serves 6-8 as a side

Ingredients:

2 cups chana dal (skinless split dried chickpeas, also spelled channa dal, dahl, or dhal)
1 large onion, diced finely
8-10 cloves of garlic, minced
2 inches of ginger, minced (or 1 tsp ginger powder)
1 14.5 oz/411 g can fire roasted crushed tomatoes (I use Muir Glen Organics)
7-8 cups/1.6-1.9 L of water (depending on how thick or thin you want it)
2 tsp turmeric
1 small cinnamon stick
3 black cardamom pods (or green)
8 whole cloves
4 bay leaves
3 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp black mustard seeds
1-2 tsp red chili powder (or more to taste) I used Frontier Organic Chili powder blend
1 1/2 – 2 tsp salt
Fresh ground pepper to taste
handful of chopped fresh cilantro/coriander (to garnish)

Pressure Cooker Directions:

Combine ingredients (except salt, pepper and cilantro), into a heavy bottomed pressure cooker, mix well, cover and heat over high heat (on gas stove) until a steady stream of steam escapes the pressure valve. Turn the heat down to medium high and cook for 20 minutes or until the dal is just tender (not mushy.)
Season to taste with salt and pepper. Taste test and add additional chili powder if desired. (I added a 1/2 tsp of roasted cumin powder as it’s one of my favourite spices.)
Garnish with fresh cilantro and serve with basmati rice or brown rice if desired.

Slow Cooker Directions:

Alternatively you can try cooking this in a slow cooker on high. Check on it between 4 and 5 hours. When chana is soft, season to taste with salt, pepper and additional spices such as chili powder if desired.

You can also probably cook this over the stove, but you will require more water as it will dissipate. I would guess this would take between 60-90 minutes of cooking time on a stove depending whether it was electric/gas and what temperature it’s cooked at. Make sure you stir it and check on the water level so it does not burn to the bottom of the pot.

Additional Tips:

If serving this to guests unfamiliar with Indian curries, you may want to take out all of the pieces of cinnamon stick, bay leaves, cardamom pods and cloves before serving. Be careful, the dal is hot! Generally we just pick these pieces out while we’re eating. But just make sure to warn people as a mouthful of clove or cardamom can be a little unpleasant!

If you like your dal thick as pictured above you can use the lower amount of water. If you find your dal is a little too runny you can add some corn starch slurry to it to thicken it up. Use 1 tsp mixed in a 2 tablespoons of water at a time and heat through until you get the desired consistency.

You may want to serve this as a side dish, or even as a main meal with rice or Indian flat bread. For a main meal this will make enough to serve 4-6 people.

Refrigerate or freeze any leftovers for a quick healthy meal later on in the week.

Don’t use regular yellow split peas for this recipe. They take a really long time to cook and won’t be the same, despite looking almost like chana dal.

Have you ever had Tarka Dal before? Have you ever tried chana dal?

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Today I have a really healthy and easy recipe for you, especially if you’re interested in losing some weight, feeling better and eating more home cooked food. It’s a delicious spin on cabbage soup. No this is not the recipe from the Cabbage Soup Diet (which after looking at makes me think it kinda sucks…) Mine features whole homemade ingredients without any packages of soup seasoning, V8 or chemical flavour enhancers.

The point of the cabbage soup in the cabbage soup diet is to fill you up on broth and vegetables in place of one meal a day so that you can lose weight fairly easily without crash dieting or being hungry.

A Healthier Alternative To The Cabbage Soup Diet

If you wanted a healthy guideline to lose some weight a safe and manageable way it would be to just eat fruits, lots of vegetables (even baked potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash are ok) and homemade vegetable soup (should be oil/cream free). You want to fill up on lower calorie high fibre nutrient dense foods. You could also have some beans or homemade hummus to go with your meals if desired as well. People gain weight because they eat too many rich foods like fried foods, meat, cheese, cream, butter, pastries, and bread products with oil in/on them. Even eating a diet of just potatoes wouldn’t cause you to gain weight, but if you slathered every potato in butter, sour cream and bacon it would become far too rich to achieve weight loss.

Actually I put a friend of mine on a fat free (and also no bread or flour products) diet back in September and she’s lost 50 lbs already just by eating more homemade meals and making sure they were based on foods like potatoes, vegetables and even rice instead of meat, bread, pastries and dairy products. She’s doing great and still enjoys eating this way every day.

One thing people think when it comes to alternative “healthier” lifestyles it that they will always hate it, never be able to do it or even starve to death (maybe even get bored to death too!). Let me tell you that is not the case. I started eating more raw and vegan for health reasons, not because I didn’t like how steak or chicken tasted. (Hey I’m being honest!) But now I’ve been eating vegetable based dishes for so long that I actually don’t miss or crave any animal foods at all. I really couldn’t imagine eating them again. I actually enjoy the food I eat now even more than the food I used to eat. (Whatever you do most often now, you tend to like even more than what you used to do back then. It’s just the way the brain perceives things. Recent events tend to be better than past events a lot of the time because their more clear in our minds.) I like vegetables so much that if I go to a regular restaurant and get a pasta dish or soup that has hardly any vegetables in it, I get sad and want more vegetables! I could never just eat a big plate of plain spaghetti and sauce anymore, I love putting vegetables or lentils in it to give it more flavour.

People may think all vegans eat are carrots, broccoli and celery, but that is simply not true. In fact I eat a much wider variety of ALL plant foods now than I ever did before. I can’t even say I have a favourite fruit or vegetable. I love many of them like cherries, mangoes, watermelon, white peaches, Hawaiian papayas, pineapple, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, eggplant, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, Thai pumpkin, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms and more. I wouldn’t be able to choose any of those as my favourite. I eat an even bigger variety than these, but these are some foods I really enjoy eating regularly and never get sick of eating. (This doesn’t even includes all the beans, legumes and whole grains I enjoy as well!)

I made 2 batches of vegetable broth and 2 batches of this cabbage soup last week, it was that good. One day I had 3 bowls of it for dinner! At 108 calories a bowl there’s really nothing to worry because you couldn’t possibly gain weight by eating this soup.

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Fat Free Vegan Cabbage Soup Recipe

Serves 8

Ingredients:

2 medium sweet onions, diced (like Vidalia, Walla Walla etc. They have light coloured skin and a slightly flattened top and bottom)
5 cloves of garlic, minced
10 oz./283 g package of mushrooms, sliced
2 tsp fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried)
6 large stalks of celery, leaves removed and sliced
4 large carrots, peeled and sliced
1 lb/454 g (1/2 head) of green cabbage, shredded or cut with mandolin
28 oz/793 g (or 2 16oz cans) fire roasted diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen Organics)
10 cups/2.5 qtss/2.3 L fresh vegetable broth (my recipes are here) or low sodium packaged vegetable broth
Herbamare/Sea salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Saute onions, garlic and mushrooms in 2-3 cups of vegetable broth for 5-6 minutes until the onions are tender. (Mushrooms take longer to cook than the rest of the veggies, so we’re cooking them first.)
Add the rest of the vegetables, the thyme, the canned tomatoes, and the vegetable broth.
Cook the vegetables over medium heat for 30-40 minutes or low heat for 1.5-2 hours until the vegetables are tender.
Season to taste with Herbamare or salt and pepper. Add a little cayenne or chili pepper if you like the soup spicy. If you like your soup a little thinner you can add a little more vegetable broth or water if desired. But don’t add too much or you will dilute the flavour.
Serve!

Additional Tips:

This soup is almost like a cabbage stew because it’s so full of vegetables. I prefer to have lots of veggies in my soup and a little less broth. You can add a little more broth if you like really watery soups. (But this is already so low calorie you don’t really need to water it down if you’re looking for a diet-friendly meal.)

I found I didn’t need to add much salt to my soup as I made homemade broth that was naturally sweet from the sweet onions, carrots and thyme and the fire roasted tomatoes have enough salt in them already.

This is a great recipe that you can use for a soup base and just change out some of the veggies for different ones for variety. You can also experiment with different salt free seasoning blends. Just make sure you always add a little, let it cook for a few minutes and taste test before adding more, so you don’t end up with an over seasoned soup!

If you use a bowl or two of this soup with some fruit or a salad every day instead of your normal meal it will help you lose weight just like any other meal replacement plan. But this is much more nutritious because it’s homemade and packed full of vitamins and minerals from the veggies. Even more so if you make your own vegetable broth. There is no comparison for me between store bought and homemade broth, so give it a try sometime and you will enjoy homemade soups even more!

Even if you changed a few of the vegetables in this soup it would be around the same calories. Overall it’s a very low calorie nutrient dense soup.

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Nutrition Facts
Servings Per Recipe: 8
Serving Size: 1 serving
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Amount Per Serving
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Calories		104.0
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Total Fat		0.4 g
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	Saturated Fat	0.1 g
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	Polyunsaturated Fat	0.2 g
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	Monounsaturated Fat	0.0 g
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Cholesterol		0.0 mg
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Sodium		254.9 mg
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Potassium		562.3 mg
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Total Carbohydrate		17.8 g
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	Dietary Fiber	6.3 g
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	Sugars	7.8 g
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Protein		3.8 g
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Vitamin A	97.3 %
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Vitamin B-12	0.0 %
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Vitamin B-6	9.9 %
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Vitamin C	69.2 %
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Vitamin D	6.7 %
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Vitamin E	2.0 %
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Calcium	10.3 %
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Copper	9.9 %
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Folate	12.6 %
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Iron	10.5 %
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Magnesium	5.5 %
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Manganese	9.9 %
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Niacin	10.4 %
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Pantothenic Acid	7.9 %
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Phosphorus	7.1 %
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Riboflavin	11.7 %
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Selenium	6.2 %
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Thiamin	6.6 %
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Zinc	3.3 %