Vegan Diet Guy

Whoever said that making sourdough is like raising a child wasn’t kidding.

I’ve been eternally time-starved since discovering Bryanna’s recipe for sourdough starter, always looking for novel ways to use my growing treasure.

I confess that until making sourdough culture or “wild yeast” myself, I didn’t understand the difference between it and conventional baking yeast, other than the taste, which many people prefer. It turns out sourdough has all kinds of health benefits, too, including ease of digestion, greater nutrition, regulating blood sugar, and longer shelf-life.

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Here’s an idea for those who love matcha but don’t find hot drinks quite so inviting in the summer.

While there are countless non-dairy ice cream recipes, few are matcha-flavored, and on the healthy side, too. I found one that used soy milk as a base, but wanted to experiment with some raw cashews I had on hand. I was so pleased with the results I wanted to share them with anyone else craving a mid-summer matcha fix. (more…)

Although you wouldn’t know it from the dictionary, there are millions of things to cook on the barbeque besides meat, chicken, and fish.  And I don’t just mean fresh vegetables, although lovingly barbequed vegetables can be a gourmet meal unto themselves.

A gas grill may not have the same charm as charcoal or wood barbeques, but there’s still something magical about cooking and eating outdoors, especially at night under a starry sky. No complaints about easy clean up, afterward, too.

So, with a let up in the rainy season, and a fresh tank of gas in the grill, I decided it was time to grill my first pizza.

I just threw my pizza stones on the gas grill, and turned it to the highest heat for about a half-hour. While waiting, I rolled out the dough and cut up all the veggie toppings, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, capers, bell peppers, as well as grated cheddar and mozzarella-style Teese.

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Natto is an acquired taste for anyone. Even in Japan, aversion to the smelly, sticky fermented soybeans is so strong that foreign residents who like natto are often said to be “more Japanese than Japanese”.

Although relatively unknown outside Japan, for those on a vegan diet natto is a taste worth acquiring, because it’s really healthy: a probiotic rich in vitamins, especially B-12–which vegans often require dietary supplements in order to ensure they’re getting an ample supply.

Long before becoming vegan, I was eating natto stuffed into sushi hand-rolls, called “natto temaki” in Japanese. Wrapped in a sheet of nori, topped with a mound of sliced green onions and doused in wasabi soy-sauce, the aroma and texture of the natto is barely discernible (for a neophyte natto-eater, this is a blessing). You may even be able to find natto rolls in N. American sushi bars.

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I had been overbuying bananas on sale lately and realized there’s no way we were going to eat them all, unless I got busy baking.

Problem is, since watching Robert Lustig’s video “The Bitter Truth” calling sugar a poison, I can hardly bring myself to use sugar, even when baking sweets. The other day, I prepared my favorite (PPK’s) banana bread recipe minus sugar for the first time, and honestly thought it could have done with a few chocolate chips. So, when a recipe calls for chocolate chips–even semi-sweet ones–like this one for banana blondies, it wasn’t a difficult choice to leave the sugar out of the blondie dough.

Until recently, I had routinely cut the amount of sugar in recipes by half, or even two-thirds, in addition to reducing processed fat like oil and margarine to a minimum. As time went on, I found the taste was often still too sweet, but I didn’t reduce sugar further for fear of ruining the original recipe or winding up with something friends or house guests would find inedible! (more…)

While many of us took our own mother’s cooking for granted while growing up, eating over a friend’s house provided our first taste of exotic foods, even those from just across state lines.

My best friend’s mother from West Virginia served navy bean soup on top of a piece of buttermilk cornbread topped by a pat of butter. Thirty years passed before it occurred to me to bake cornbread instead of having my usual whole wheat pasta or brown rice with soup. And who needs buttermilk when you can make a vegan buttermilk using soymilk and vinegar or lemon juice?

After trying several recipes, Post Punk Kitchen’s still reigns as my favorite, although I replace white flour with whole wheat pastry flour and reduce oil and sweetener, too.  This time, I ran short of whole wheat flour and partially substituted with Bob’s Gluten Free all-purpose baking flour. Though a little chewier than usual, it came nice and crispy, especially after cooling and re-toasting. (more…)

I was about to make our favorite pasta puttanesca the other night when it occurred to me that capers and olives aren’t exactly what you call fresh vegetables. I found string beans and celery in the refrigerator, made a quick trip to the store for bell peppers, eggplant, and zucchini. And–in no time–my quicky puttanesca pasta had morphed into ciambotta (Italian vegetable stew) pasta.

Many people use potatoes as starch in their ciambotta recipe, but I prefer mine over pasta, and I found a perfect match waiting in the pantry: whole wheat organic chioccole (large curvy tube pasta with ridges). Next, an online search proved I’m certainly not the first one to use capers and olives in their ciambotta.  OK, I’m not original, but there’s safety in numbers!

As great as this dish was the first time, the following day I mixed the leftovers with Teese mozzarella (photo) and baked in a casserole pan for  a bubbly-crispy and totally comforting late winter lunch. (more…)

I had been saving FatFreeVegan’s “Impossible Vegan Pumpkin Pie” recipe to make for over a year, but always seem to find other more pressing uses for the Japanese squash (kabocha) I buy. Pumpkins are so versatile, able to be used in anything from soup or curry to baked items and pasta dough or even ravioli filling.

The best thing about this pie is that you don’t need to prepare any crust, which of course saves both time and calories. In fact, I just learned the reason it’s called “Impossible” is because you can grab a piece of pie in your hands without making a mess. And here I thought it was enough of a feat to make the pie vegan and crust-free, but it’s also gluten-free and fat-free!

The only place I deviated from FFV’s recipe was to reduce the sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/4 cup. It still tastes plenty sweet to me, but you may want to go with the original amount if you prefer it that way. You could also add additional sweetness with a dab of non-dairy whipped topping.

No need to wait for Thanksgiving with such an easy and delicious recipe!

I always try to keep a batch of these protein bars in the freezer to give me a little boost following my workouts. They remind me of Clark Bars, although the last time I had one of those was decades ago. I suspect if I tasted a Clark Bar now, I’d prefer these. Without a doubt, they’re much more nutritious, too!

The recipe is from Bob’s Red Mill, and uses Bob’s 5-Grain cereal. While Bob’s doesn’t call these vegan (unfortunately, many of their recipes aren’t), they can easily be veganized by replacing honey with maple syrup. They take less than 30 minutes to make, and are really handy for eating after a workout or for a convenient and nutritious low-calorie snack. (more…)

Everyone (at least everyone who’s seen a tub of Quaker Oats) knows oatmeal is good for your heart. Now, if only everyone understood the most effective way to reduce cholesterol and dramatically improve your health is–plain and simple–by eliminating animal products from your diet.

In Honolulu airport recently, I glimpsed a large sign outside Starbucks with a photo of a bowl of oatmeal. Later, an article in January’s Entrepreneur Magazine confirmed the trend: While Starbucks in U.S. has offered oatmeal since 2008, more quick-serve restaurants–including, of all places, McDonalds–plan to offer healthier options, such as fiber rich and whole-grain oatmeal, to meet calorie and labeling requirements of federal healthcare reform.

Although eating oatmeal for breakfast is a far cry from everyone adopting a vegan diet, influential restaurant chains offering oatmeal (hopefully not laden with dairy products, sugar or chemical preservatives) can only help to make people more aware of health benefits of plant-based foods. (more…)