Vegan and healthy

Long time no see again.
I guess i'm just not cut up for blogging.
However, i did want to share with you the fact that my health has changed for the better. Not that i was sick or anything, but even small changes are noticeable  My eczema has gone away, i rarely get a cold and if i do, it is extremely mild. And my husband tells me the same things - no heartburn, no sicknesses,
and a general better health. Hooray for us!
I also love to cook vegan. The satisfaction i get from cooking healthy and not incorporating any dead animals or animal parts is very rewarding! you should try it!
So, besides the fact that i don't have a real job, i hardly do yoga anymore (time+money limitations) and that i terribly miss my Israeli roots and home, life is great! haha :(

Leaving you with this super easy salad from a great blog called straightupfood.com. A very simple, no bullshit vegan blogger, who uses no sugar, oil or processed shit.
Here is the link to the recipe: http://www.straightupfood.com/blog/2010/08/31/blended-green-salad/
ENJOY!

Walnut salad dressing

This will be short. As my search for alternatives to processed oils continues, i came up with this great walnut dressing for our daily green salad.

1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp soy sauce or Braggs amino acid if you are in the US (less sodium)
1 tbsp mustard
1 small garlic clove

Mix everything in a blender for a minute or two.

Pour over your salad or steamed vegetables.

Getting plant-strong

I know this blog was supposed to be about food, but a lot has happened since the last time i posted some recipes, so i had to gather my thoughts on the subject. It all began when i watched the movie Forks vs. knives on netflix (there ARE a few advantages to living in America, you know). It is basically the journey of two doctors, Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn to the realisation that we should avoid eating animal-based and processed foods. What can i tell you, this movie opened my eyes! not because i was not aware of the benefits of a vegan diet, but because it made me realise that i can be vegan and not think all the time about the suffering of animals, but of my improving health! it freed me of the chains to which i was tied the last time i tried to go vegan (~12 years ago), and eventually stopped because i couldn;t stand to think about the animals anymore. I was literally sleepless for a long time because of that. Do you get my drift?

That movie led me to watch the next one, which you can learn about here  http://engine2diet.com/forksoverknives, by the son of Dr. Esselestyn, Rip Esselstyn, who started a small revolution by himself, and he calls his method the Engine2 diet, which is what i am doing now. He says he prefers to call it plant strong and not vegan because of the ideology that is associated with the latter definition.

This diet is so easy, you just take out of your cupboard anything process or animal based, create sauces not based on oils and there you go!

I admit that i am doing a little more meal-planing than i did before, because i now integrate into my menu more beans and homemade plant based burgers, but i don't care. Something changed in me, from "i live to eat" to "i eat to live".

Two easy recipes that i did remember to document are here below. I will try to add more as i go along.

This is a simple and basic red bean salad

The recipe:

Red beans, cooked

cup of corn

1 tomato

1/4 white onion, minced

a few slices of avocado

Cilantro, as much as you like, minced

sauce:

1 lemon/lime

2 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

MIX and EAT.

The second recipe is not mine, took it from Allrecipes.com, but these corn muffins are great! no oil, eggs or refined sugar...

And for those of you who wondered what the whiskey bottle is doing there in the back, wonder no more! i will never give up alcohol!

CHEERS!!!

Tu Bishvat Waldorf style

Greetings!
Hope y'all are having a relaxing weekend.
We had a very nice Tu Bishvat experience (not to mention Ariel's birthday celebration) at Ariel's kindergarten. Miss Pat, Ariel's teacher, aka "Haganenet" wrote an email to all the parents' asking them to bring a plant, and they did! all of them! All the little ducklings went after Miss Pat and Yariv, holding a a plant, and Yariv dug and dug and then the plants were planted in an orderly manner.

I just love my husband!
It turned out that many of the kids were experts at planting, whether by knowledge from their parents or from Miss Pat, and many gave planting advice to Yariv (did you know that when you take a plant from the plastic pot, you have to loosen the roots a little bit, to allow them to attach better to the ground later? i didn't.
It was cold and windy but i am happy to say the mission was completed with success and the kids were real pros! And of course, the story would not be complete without one or two critters. All the digging made way for the discovery of a number of worms, and waldorf being a waldorf, the tradition is to put your treasures in little buckets and show all the other kids. Ewwwww!!!!!!!



Don't know how familiar you are with the waldorf K environment, but it is immensely serene and they have a nature table, depicting the major characteristics of each season. this is their winter scene. Miss Pat is a genious!

Ariel was very happy with both the planting and being a birthday girl. I guess that that was the best we could do given the circumstances (being abroad away fro family, friends, etc). 

Re'em always enjoys a good palntin' and diggin'! A la prochaine mes amis!

Sunday lunch

While everybody else here will be busy watching the superbowl, we will have a very quiet, threesome (well, technically foursome, but Re'em will not be enjoying it yet) lunch.
I already showed you the boiling chickpeas, well, now you can see the end result.

Yariv cooked the chickpeas with baking soda for about an hour, let them rest in the pot, and then removed their thin shells. After that, it's just magic. You combine the chickpeas with tahini, garlic, lemon  juice, cumin powder and some of the chickpea cooking water. The amounts are individual, meaning that one person would prefer a lot of lemon juice, while another will prefer a little, and the same goes for the rest of the ingredients.

The kale salad looks terrific, and i thought that indeed the best kale would be the Lacinato kale as the recipe from the suggested, so i went to whole foods and got a bunch.

I also cooked Kamut berries, for the first time i might add. I cooked them as i would rice, only with one extra cup of water, because they are some sort of ancient wheat and it looked like needed extra TLC. Added 1 tbsp of soy sauce and salt.
Here are some pics from lunch:

                                                                      The Kale salad

                                                               The kamut berries

                                                                        Ariel's salad

                                                       and the glorious hummus

I feel lately that i want to try more vegan recipes, and try exchanging milk and eggs with vegan ingredients, such as homemade almond milk, flaxseeds and others. It actually feels great - to eat without eating animal products. I feel more healthy and more clean somehow, like my footprint on animal suffering has decreased.

Blog update/new direction

Wow, this Austin experience is starting to feel like toooo much. Father dying, our pets giving in to old age, Africa's death, what more could a pessimist like me ask for? Well, at least my second baby was born October 26th, so not all bad, right?
So, my resolution from all these deaths, especially in the face of my eldest saying to us: "you did a bad bad thing! you should have let Africa (our cat) die on his own time!", is to start afresh - turning this blog around and writing about food, the food i cook, the food my lover bakes, and probably other people's food.
So, today, there a few things planned for our meals.
Kale Cesar salad like here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Tuscan-Kale-Caesar-Slaw-366450

Hummus that is already cooking

and bread. Photos will follow.

אבא שלי

אבא שלי

אבא שלי היה איש של הפכים

ישר כסרגל ועם זאת מלא חידות 

מאופק ועם זאת מלא רגש, כחבית נפץ שלעולם לא תתפוצץ

רך ומלטף ועם זאת חזק כסלע

מלא ידע ועם זאת תמה כילד 

אבל לדבר אחד לא היה אצלו היפך

הוא היה איש של אישה אחת. בלבד. לנצח

והוא היה ויהיה תמיד תמיד אבא שלי. שלנו. במלוא עוצמתו, חיוכו, מוסריותו והטוב הבלתי נדלה שלו 

לנצח אוהב אותך מתי פינקלר. אבא שלי