TUSCAN CANNELLINI AND KALE SOUP

This soup is so fast and easy, you'll be eating with your family within half an hour of starting it.  Vegan and healthful, this soup provides protein from the beans, vitamins and anti-cancer agents from the kale, beta-carotene from the peppers.  You can make this dish even healthier by using homemade vegetable stock and real tomatoes.  But, if you're pinched for time, a carton of vegetable broth, a bag of already washed and cut kale, and a can of diced tomatoes can be used to cut time drastically.  Serve with some warm crusty bread.

* 2 tablespoons olive oil

* 1 medium onion, diced

* 8 oz. from bag of cut and cleaned kale

* 1 yellow or orange bell pepper (optional, but I like the color in the soup)

* 1 quart (carton) organic vegetarian broth (like Pacific brand)

* 1 can of organic diced tomatoes

* 2 cans of cannellini bean (or Great Northern beans), drained and rinsed

* salt and pepper to taste

Optional:  You can slice and saute vegetarian sausages in a fry pan, then throw it in the soup with the beans.

Heat oil in dutch oven or pot on medium heat.  Saute onion until just translucent, about 3 - 5 minutes.  Add kale and bell pepper and saute until just wilted, about 5 minutes.  Add quart of broth, tomatoes and beans.  Turn up heat to bring to a boil.  Once the soup is boiling, turn down heat and simmer to blend the flavors, about 5 minutes.  Serve.

Buon appetito!

Moderation vs. Forgiveness

Moderation vs. Forgiveness

I always hear that you can eat anything in moderation.  Coffee is good in moderation.  Chocolate is good in moderation.  And I do believe that this is true.  One can eat anything in moderation so long as it's real food.  However, one should never eat hormones or chemicals in moderation.  When it comes to substances full of chemicals, additives, hormones, processed sugars, high levels of salt, blah, blah, blah that companies try to pass as food, there is no such thing as in moderation.  You should never ingest those substances.  

I've heard people say that eating at McDonald's is okay in moderation.  I have to vehemently disagree.  Have you seen what chicken mcnuggets look like before they bread it (with more chemicals) and deep-fry it?  Have a gander at this!  That, my friends, is absolutely not real food.  And we haven't even discussed the burgers.  And when we let our children eat at these fast food places (I will NOT use the word "restaurant"), we are creating a fast-food client for life.  They develop the taste for those fast-food substances, and McDonald's has a lifelong customer.  Why do you think Happy Meals have toys and are so cheap?  Yep.  Lifelong customer.  It's even worse when we make McDonald's a treat once in a while.  Treats are supposed to be good, right?  Arguments about moderation remind me of my friend who is an alcoholic.  He told me once that he now only drank half the bottle of vodka a night instead of the entire bottle because he was going to start drinking in moderation.

I could write a tome about what's wrong with McDonald's (and BK and Wendy's, etc), but that's not the point of this post.  This post is about forgiveness.

So you've taken your kids to McDonald's.  Heck, you've eaten at McDonald's more than a few times and enjoyed it.  But please don't give yourself a break by saying that it's okay to eat fast-food substances in moderation.  Because when you do that, you allow yourself to go there over and over again, albeit in moderation.  Eating chemicals, hormones, processed food in moderation?  That's one big lie. 

Instead, call it for what it is.  A mistake.  Something you should regret.  (In his TED talk, Jamie Oliver calls it something quite more than a mistake, which you can view here.)

Then forgive yourself.  

That's right.  Forgive yourself, but don't allow yourself to think that it's anything but wrong. 

And you know what?  Tomorrow's another day.  Commit yourself to cooking something easy and healthful for dinner.  And to try not to go to the drive-thru again.   

BANH MI FOR YOU AND ME!

Banh Mi for You and Me!

I've told my two older children that they will have to start making an entire meal once a week.  I've been threatening this for months, but now that we are looking at colleges for Daughter One, she really needs to learn to cook healthful food before she leaves.  What's a better gift (except education and good orthodontia) to give your kids than the love of cooking good food?  And while she's learning, why not use the rest of the family as tasting guinea pigs?  This week, Daughters One and Two made avocado Banh Mi.  Banh Mi is a Vietnamese sandwich, made on a French baguette, but with mostly Vietnamese fillings (probably the only good thing that came of the French occupation of Vietnam).  My kids' Banh Mi was amazing.  The pickled vegetables had me believing they were born in Hanoi instead of Seattle.

Avocado Banh Mi (recipe adopted from Chef Dale Talde in Health.com)

*1 cup rice wine vinegar
*1/2 cup sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon salt

Combine above ingredients in saucepan and bring to boil over medium-high heat.  Stir to dissolve sugar (1 minute); let stand to cool (about 20 minutes).  Then add the following to the cooled vinegar mixture:

* 1/2 cup shredded carrots
* 1/2 cup julienned daikon or red radish

Soak for at least 15 minutes.  Strain and discard liquid.

In a bowl, mix

* 2 teaspoons Sriracha (or to taste)
* 3 tablespoons mayonnaise

* 1 baguette, sliced in half to make one big sandwich.

*1 avocado, half in slices, other half smeared unto one side of the of baguette.

Spread mayo mixture on other half of baguette.  Fill baguette with remaining avocado, pickled vegetables and

* 1 jalapeno, sliced
* 1 cup cilantro, chopped coarsely.

Cut baguette into 3 pieces.   Ăn ngon miệng!

Easy Tomato and Goat Cheese Pasta

EASY TOMATO AND GOAT CHEESE PASTA

This recipe is great for tomato season.  Instead of buying spaghetti sauce, why not make your sauce from whole tomatoes?  I promise you, this recipe is really easy, but you do need about an hour for the tomatoes and garlic to roast in the oven.  You can also use cherry or grape tomatoes instead and adjust time to about 45 minutes.  If your tomatoes aren't the best or aren't quite ripe, you may want to sprinkle a little (organic) sugar on the tomatoes to cut the acidity.

Adjust rack to middle and set oven at 375 degrees.
Put about 5 or 6 whole tomatoes (or 3 cups cherry/grape tomatoes) in a casserole dish.
Drizzle with 3 tablespoons olive oil and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Chop off about 1/2 inch of the pointy part of a whole head of garlic.  Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil on cut end of head and put in a ramekin (or other small oven-proof bowl).  Cover ramekin with foil.


Place both the garlic and the tomatoes in the oven and bake for 55 minutes (45 minutes or less for cherry/grape tomatoes, but leave garlic in for the entire 55 minutes).

After the tomatoes and garlic are roasted, cook  10 ounces of whole wheat pasta of your choice (I like bite-sized pasta for this dish, like rotini) and cook per directions on package.  Meanwhile, after garlic is cooled enough to handle, squeeze garlic into casserole dish with tomatoes.


Smash garlic and tomatoes together with potato masher until well mixed.

After pasta is cooked and drained, combine pasta with tomato mixture.  Dot with 4 - 6 ounces of goat cheese (or to taste - we like more).  Chiffonade about 5 basil leaves to put on top of the pasta.

The great thing about this dish is that as the goat cheese melts, your sauce becomes this beautiful creamy mixture that sticks nicely to the pasta.  Goes well with a nice crisp salad and a dry wine.  Buon appetito!

Tofu Peanut Sauce Wraps

TOFU PEANUT SAUCE WRAPS 

Homemade peanut sauce is so delicious and pretty easy to make.  You can use any peanut butter you want, including crunchy, but I beg of you to puh-leeze buy organic.  No Jiffy - that stuff is mostly sugar that you and your kids do not need.  Check the ingredients on peanut butter.  There should be no more than 3 ingredients and not one of them should be sugar.

Homemade peanut sauce:

* 1 Tablespoon vegetable or olive oil

* 2 garlic clove minced

* 3/4 cup organic peanut butter

* 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

* 1/4 cup vegetable stock or water

* 1 Tablespoon sugar

* 3 Tablespoons soy sauce

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat.  Add garlic until aromatic, around 30 seconds.  Whisk in all remaining ingredients and turn heat to medium.  Once the ingredients are combined, let the sauce simmer until sauce is thick but still pourable, about 5 minutes.  This sauce can be stored for 2 days in the refrigerator.

Tofu Wraps:

* 2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil

* 1 container of organic extra-firm tofu (14 oz.), tofu cut into strips (about 1"x1"x3")

* 2 cups chopped Napa cabbage

* 1 cup baby spinach

* 1/2 cup shredded carrots

* 3 radishes, julienned

* 3 tablespoons rice vinegar

* 1 tablespoons soy sauce 

* 1 tablespoon canola oil

* Sriracha or other spicy sauce to taste (optional)

1 package of wraps, burrito-sized (about 10-inch).  Use whatever wraps you want, but again, I'm going to suggest whole wheat.  Look at the ingredient list!

Saute tofu in heated oil until brown on both sides, about 10 minutes.

Mix cabbage, spinach, carrot and radishes in a medium bowl.

Whisk together rice vinegar, soy sauce and canola oil in a small bowl.  Pour over the cabbage mixture and let stand for 5 minutes.

For each wrap, spread about a tablespoon of peanut sauce.  Lay about 1/2 cup of the cabbage mixture and 2 - 4 tofu strips on top of the peanut sauce.  Fold the edges and wrap.  You can also warm the wrap with peanut sauce in the microwave before laying the cabbage and tofu.  Serve with a side of peanut sauce for dipping.

Where's the real food?

I am almost disheartened to see what people in America eat.  Fast food reigns as the go-to food for our children.  Most of us don't even look at the ingredients of packaged foods.  Additives and chemicals in foods have become the norm, while fruit and vegetables have been changed so much that they have an extra long shelf life, but have lost their flavor (when was the last time you ate an orange from the supermarket that tasted, well, like an orange?).  And don't even get me started on public school lunches (that's for another blog post).

But I figured instead of being disheartened, why don't I just put up recipes that are easy to follow and healthful instead of continuing to complain?  (Well, I will be doing some complaining interspersed between the recipes).  Complaining is much easier, but I also have four children who need to learn healthful cooking to last them a lifetime.  And I just learned to cook a few years ago, and only because I was so disgusted with what was being sold and offered in supermarkets.  So if I can learn to cook, you can too.  It's worth just the little extra time to make a home-cooked meal than it is to get yet another drive-thru burger.

And, don’t worry.  I won’t get too crazy.  No need to churn your own butter.  You can use canned tomatoes or pre-made pie crusts.  I will always try to give you shortcuts, because in this day and age, we’re all busy.  But every dish you decide to make from real ingredients and from scratch will make the meal much healthier.

This is a blog to help you try to make more homemade meals.  And make better food choices.

And also a place where you can forgive yourself for making bad choices.  Then to pick yourself up, dust yourself off,  and try again.