vegetarian
Sweet tastes good. End of story. I’m reminded of this each day when Danny accepts his spinach or his beef but really lunges for his sweet potato. It’s a built-in craving.
Ok, so on that note I was in Target yesterday and decided we probably needed some cookies (oh geez, here we go Michelle). Since I wasn’t going to make it to Whole Foods, I figured I’d see what Target had. Like, a bag of good ol’ Fig Newtons must be fairly natural? Not too many weird ingredients, right?
Wrong! Fig Newtons are made with high fructose corn syrup, as are just about every other cookie on the shelf. Including the homemade-looking Archer brand I almost got fooled into buying. Only Kashi cookies were made with regular sugar.
(Which, of course, does not make them healthy by any stretch of the imagination. But I still bought them. I’m human.)
Anyway, the reason I’m talking about sugar and corn syrup is because we are all human, and we love our sweets. This is a recipe you will therefore love. All 3 of us did!
Cranberry Citrus Quinoa
For quinoa:
1 cup uncooked quinoa
1 cup orange juice
1 cup water
big pinch of salt
2 Tbl. olive oil
1/2 onion, minced
1 cup butternut squash, diced
1 pear, diced
5 oz. fresh cranberries, chopped (although I suppose you could use dried)
1 cup walnuts, chopped and toasted
1 handful fresh mint, chopped
1 handful fresh basil, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
Big pinch cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
First, rinse and drain quinoa. Then combine with OJ and water in a pot, bring to a boil and simmer until water is absorbed.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a big pan and add onion. Add a bit of salt and pepper. Cook until translucent. Add squash and pear. Mix and cover until they are soft (about 5 min). Mix in quinoa, then add herbs, lemon, and more salt and pepper.
*At this point, take out a portion for baby and set aside. At least, that’s what I did. Though in retrospect I think he’d have liked the cranberries if they were chopped smaller.*
For the adults, add cranberries, walnuts and cayenne. Mix well.
Serve over cooked or raw greens.
For the record, here are other things that Danny likes to try and eat:
Deodorant, christmas tree ornaments, my leg, the couch, his coat, my nose, the cat’s tail.
You’d think natural selection would have knocked out this dangerous need to eat everything by now! Or else natural selection is what gave mothers eyes in the back of our heads. Sometimes.
January 16th, 2012 | baby, recipe, Sugar, vegan, vegetarian, winter | 5 Comments »
There are small moments of the day that are quiet. In that stillness, you can choose to let your mind run at top speed. Or, you can choose to relax and breathe into the space. Notice it. Take it in. Be present. Let it expand until it fills the room, fills your heart.
It’s how I bend time.
Kooky, huh? But it works. My days are “full” of lovely moments: nursing my sleepy son, sitting with my eyes shut and sun shining on my face, sipping hot tea, listening to the birds outside.
In reality, it probably adds up to all of 10 minutes, tops. But nevermind. They are exquisite. The rest of the day, I let all the annoying, stressful nonsense fly by.
Yes, I’m learning to appreciate the simple things.
Like a simple dish of beans, cabbage and potatoes.
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January 8th, 2012 | beans, happiness, recipe, self care, stress relief, vegetarian | 6 Comments »
I’ve been reminding and reminding my clients to take time for themselves over the holidays. To not overdo it. To step away from work. To keep it simple.
There’s a saying, “We teach what we need to learn.” It’s so unbelievably true.
In honor of my own restful holidays, this post has been magically pre-programmed to shoot out to the Universe while I am hopefully relaxing with my family and eating something nourishing and simple, like this:
Sweet Potato, Beans & Apples
2 cups uncooked mung beans or lentils
2-3 sweet potatoes, washed and diced (skin left on)
2 peeled and diced carrots
1 onion
1 cup vegetable broth, divided into 2 half cups
2 apples, washed and sliced (skin left on)
1 tsp. dried thyme
approx. 1/2 tsp. salt & 1/4 tsp. pepper
Cook mung beans or lentils by bringing them to a boil with 4 cups of water. Reduce heat and simmer until tender.
Meanwhile, sauté in a pan drizzled with a couple tablespoons of oil over med-high heat: the chopped onion, diced sweet potatoes & diced carrots with salt, pepper & thyme. Cook about 8 minutes. Add 1/2 cup vegetable broth, cover. Reduce to medium heat and cover. Cook about 5 minutes or until carrots and sweet potatoes are tender.
Add mung beans or lentils to sweet potato mixture with the remaining 1/2 cup broth and cover. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Spoon into center of a plate and place fresh cut apple slices around edge of plate.
This dish is high in protein from the beans or lentils – there is no need to add meat. You can add a green salad as a side and this is a complete, satisfying meal. This makes at least 4 generous servings.
Thank you to Joni at Healthybodypeacefulsoul.com for the recipe.
December 27th, 2011 | beans, happiness, recipe, vegan, vegetarian, winter | 2 Comments »
Sometimes your day (and by “your day” I mean “my day”) consists of a little boy repeatedly unrolling the toilet paper, pulling stuff out the recycling bin, and methodically removing books from the shelves.
Or maybe you spend too much time on Facebook, too little time doing your hair, too much money on the heating bill and not enough on pedicures.
Perhaps you look in your pantry and see nothing except a bag of lentils.
Then you turn around and the little boy has a piece of kitty litter in his mouth. Again. Meanwhile, the kitty ate some kale out of your shopping bag and proceeded to throw it up all over the white carpet. Also the repair guy never came by like he was supposed to.
Well, shit. You’re not feeling very fancy today, are you?
It’s ok. Fancy is moments away.
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December 18th, 2011 | baby, fat, recipe, vegetarian | 4 Comments »
It’s funny – people always expect me to be a vegetarian. Well, I’m not. However, I’ve noticed that lately I am leaning towards a blend of 2 main dietary theories:
Veganism and Weston A. Price
There couldn’t be two more opposite approaches to “healthy” eating. In fact, they downright contradict each other, with vegans staunchly opposing the use of animal products in their food and WAP followers adamantly demanding traditionally prepared meals with grass fed beef and raw milk.
Um. What gives, Michelle? You are a seriously messed up diet flip-flopper!
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October 24th, 2011 | pregnancy, recipe, sea vegetables, vegan, vegetarian, Weston A. Price | 9 Comments »
We live smack dab in the middle of a cute, touristy area. Seriously, if you ever move to a new place where you don’t know a soul, live near the fun section of town. There are a million shops and restaurants within a few blocks of our house. We’ve tried most of them by now, and the best thing I’ve had by far is a beet salad.
A beet salad? Yeah, well the asian fusion menus and cobb salads and overpriced pizzas are nice, but finally this was something unexpected. Something *gasp* healthy. For some reason there is not one restaurant near us that serves food with a focus on health. Not even a ridiculously expensive smoothie shack with wheatgrass shots. Nope. Nothing like that.
Beets are it, folks. And they were gooood. Do you dig beets? If you’re not sure, it’s worth a shot. They are so much yummier roasted at home than those weird canned beets you may have run into at the salad bar. (Side benefit: you can test your digestive system and make sure your plumbing is working well. Within 24 hours of eating ‘em…you should be seeing a lovely shade of pink in your, um, bathroom time.)
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October 4th, 2011 | recipe, vegan, vegetarian | 9 Comments »
Remember the days when a bowl of cereal with fruit was a healthy choice? Or crackers with jelly?
Wait, please tell me you know that cereal with fruit or crackers with jelly is just a boatload of sugar ready to hit your bloodstream.
Protein. It’s all about more protein, less sugar. I feel this especially as I’m nursing my son and want to be sure my body is stocked and loaded with the building blocks his cells need. Amino acids, yes. Sugar, no.
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September 20th, 2011 | recipe, vegan, vegetarian | 11 Comments »
Ok, I forgot something. In my last post about banishing sugar addiction, I outlined the major steps required to accomplish such a task. But there’s something I left out, a fairly interesting tidbit.
You know how cookies are sweet. Duh. You know how cake is sweet. Of course.
But think about this: vegetables are sometimes sweet too. Yup. Sweet potatoes. Butternut squash. Corn. Carrots. Right? No, they’re not over-the-top white sugary sweet. But they are subtle-y sweet. Caramelized onions, for instance. Mmmmm.
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September 16th, 2011 | recipe, Sugar, vegan, vegetarian | 7 Comments »
This past weekend we ate out a lot. There’s a feeling of victory if we successfully get to a restaurant – almost as if doing so automatically equals fun and relaxation. It says, “We might be new parents but, see, we still live in the real world!”
Funny thing is we probably eat out more now than we ever did, pre-baby. Friday was sushi for lunch and happy hour chicken fingers. Saturday was over-the-counter empanadas for lunch and full on Mexican dinner. Sunday was crepes for brunch. Oy.
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August 23rd, 2011 | beans, happiness, quick and easy, recipe, vegan, vegetarian | 4 Comments »
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About 3 years ago I tried an all raw food diet, earning me weird looks from co-workers and a completely tuned-up, revamped digestive system. I had lots of energy and thought it was super cool to sprout, chop and dehydrate living foods into delicious meals. (Feel free to go back and browse some of the raw food posts that came out of that time, like this recipe.)
But ever since that raw food experiment, my husband has refused to eat zucchini or yellow squash. Chalk it up to a much too garlicky raw “fettucine alfredo” that used vegetable peeler strips of squash as noodles. He hated it. I didn’t love that particular dish either. But the man refuses to eat zucchini or yellow squash to this day.
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August 9th, 2011 | quick and easy, raw foods, recipe, summer, vegan, vegetarian | 9 Comments »
