The Vegan Cabin, Christmas 2011

Tuesday 12/20/11

Baby, it's cold outside!

Dawn brought a winter wonderland scene of snow-flocked evergreens and a cloudless sky.  Sometime in the night it had actually warmed up to 16 degrees -- a heat wave.  It was clear that at least another inch of snow had fallen during the night, bringing the total  to three or four inches over 24 hours.  There is nothing quite so lovely as a blanket of freshly fallen snow, sparkling in the sun.  It made me think of....waffles!  

Shortly after leaving the cabin in October, I decided, after seeing the results of my dear friend, to try going vegan -- vegetarian but without eating any animal products at all...milk, cheese, or eggs.  It was a bit of a shock to my husband who dearly loves my cooking, but he’s been a terrific sport and is “mostly” vegan, flexing a bit when we go out.  On my new plant-based diet I returned to the cabin 10 weeks later and 10 pounds lighter and with several other physical indicators that this is a very good thing for me.  Still, it gave me pause to think of cooking at the cabin.  Last summer had been so full of bacon and eggs, butter by the pound, bratwursts, mashed potatoes with cream (I took to calling them Crack Potatoes...that’s how addictive they were), and homemade cookies by the score.  But we’d been eating great vegan food in Tucson for over two months, so I provisioned carefully and we’re eating great vegan food here too -- hearty soups, chili, homemade breads, baked stuffed squash, sweet potatoes, and instead of Boston baked beans I’ll use my bean pot for slow-baked white beans with kale that practically caramelizes after hours in a low oven.  

Tofu-veggie scramble (infinitely versatile)
with pumpkin biscuits

But this morning my thoughts turned to waffles.  Waffles with real maple syrup.  I have wisely invested in some great vegan cookbooks, and I turned to my favorite, Veganomicon.  Up here, over an hour from the nearest carton of soy milk (I used to say “gallon of milk”), you need to a) carefully provision, and b) realize that you are not heading into town for fresh blueberries if you find yourself without, especially with nearly a foot of snow drifted over your roller coaster steep driveway, 4-wheel drive or not.  But Veganomicon did not disappoint... there, on page 75, was a recipe for Banana-Nut Waffles.  And yes, I had all the ingredients.  

I love to cook, but I especially love it at the cabin.  I have a smallish but well-equipped kitchen with good counter space, and a gorgeous wrap-around view across the valley and of the surrounding forest.  While mashing the bananas and chopping the walnuts I watched the Mountain Chickadees cavorting in the bare aspens out front, and could see that the roof was starting to drip as the sun hit the snow.  I got out my old Belgian waffle iron and plugged it in to heat and set the oven to low to keep the waffles warm.  I put the maple syrup in a small hand-painted pitcher that was a gift from an Etsy.com shop I’d bought cabin things from (I love Etsy).  We sat down to steaming waffles a few minutes later, spread a bit of Earth Balance across their pocketed surface, poured on the syrup, and took our first bite...oh, heaven!  The absolutely best waffles I’ve ever eaten in my life, like a lighter banana nut bread, crunchy on all the surfaces, and moist and fragrant inside. 

Veganomicon's Banana-Walnut waffles,
quite the breakfast treat!

 Honestly, we eat better (and so much healthier) on this vegan diet than we have ever before, and that’s saying something.  

Still Here (or There); Still Happily Vegan

Somewhere in southern New Mexico, heading north on I-25

We’re on the road, half way to our destination -- our Colorado Rocky Mountain cabin.  We’re overnighting in Albuquerque since I don’t do 14 hour driving days anymore.  We’ll spend Christmas and New Years at the cabin, seeing some friends and family, but mostly happily on our own in front of the fire and hoping for a little bit of a white Christmas.

Vegan udon noodles

I’m just over two months into having adopted a plant-based diet and am loving it.  I’ll go back to the cabin ten pounds lighter than I left it that many weeks ago, so I’m right on the mark of losing a pound a week.  The longer I am doing the vegan thing, the easier and more natural it becomes...the new normal.  

This is our first road trip since becoming vegan, and I was a little bit concerned about finding things I could eat without a lot of time-consuming searching.  I shouldn’t have worried.  From truck-stops to restaurants within a few minutes walk from the hotel, I’ve had great luck.  The Love’s truck-stop we gassed up the SUV at had a Subway inside where I got a Veggie Delight footlong on 9-grain Honey Oat with all the cheese on my husband’s side (he "flex's" once in a great while), a huge pile of veggies with red wine vinaigrette -- quite yummy and pleasantly light for sitting all day long.  We had dinner at an unimposing Mexican restaurant across the street from our hotel -- Little Anita’s.  We sat in a booth by the front window with a view of traffic zipping by, not a fancy place, but they did have a vegetarian section.  I ended up with a really good dinner, New Mexico-style flat enchiladas, three corn tortillas layered with sauteed onions, mushrooms, and zucchinis, smothered in a medium hot green chili sauce, hold the cheese.  The vegetarian refried beans where quite good; the rice okay.  So, so far, so good on the vegan traveling front.

As we all tend to do, you may be thinking about some resolutions for the New Year.  If some of those involve changing your diet, for health or other reasons, consider giving the vegan diet a test drive.  I experienced so many health benefits so quickly that it really was astonishing.  And reliably losing a pound a week without being hungry, feeling deprived, counting points or weighing or measuring food is a terrific benefit.  Health was, and is, my primary reason for leaving meat and fish and animal products behind, but there are many more important benefits, to the animals and to the environment, to be gained by eating a plant-based diet, and they resonate with me along with the improvements to my health.   Dr. Neal Barnard is holding an online 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program starting January 2nd.  It’s free, very informative -- from daily menu plans and recipes to rationale and tips, many of them on video clips -- and could be the start of something great.  You can sign up for this 21 day guided vegan “kickstart” and take it for a spin.  Sign up here:  http://www.21daykickstart.org/

We’ll be back on the road tomorrow, at the cabin by mid-afternoon, and I’ll be making something wonderful, and vegan, for our dinner.  I’m looking forward to putting up the Christmas tree, making vegan gingerbread cookies (I packed my cookie cutters), and taking walks in the ponderosa pine forest, hopefully with a few flakes of snow falling.  It’ll be a great couple of weeks of quiet times, thick soups, and lots of interesting reading, including Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (you can read about it here: http://www.eatinganimals.com/ ).  

Wherever you spend your holidays, I hope they are healthy and happy.  May the New Year bring you all good things.  Maybe even a whole new direction in healthy eating.

Cravings

Chanterelles on Toast (see link to recipe, and notes for "veganizing" below).
Trust me, so much better than a slab-o-turkey, and safe to crave.

In my last post, Thankful, I listed over a dozen health benefits that I'd experienced in just over a month of my new plant-based vegan diet.  The next day I realized I'd left out a huge one, an albatross that has plagued and derailed me most of my life...cravings.  Or more to the point, now the lack thereof.

I've been able to diet in the past successfully, many many times.  It would be horrifying to calculate how many hundreds of pounds -- how many of Me -- I have shed in the last 50 years since I turned from knobby-kneed sprite to a latch-key kid that could only shop from the Chubby Girls section of the Sears catalog.  All those false starts, with a pound or two shed before being seduced back into my comforting ways, to those longer grit-your-teeth periods of unsustainable deprivation and exercise routines that resulted in ephemeral losses of 40 to 90 pounds, all quickly regained.  My life has been monopolized by cravings, and too much of my time and energy have been engaged in either beating them back or succumbing to them, and suffering the life-threatening consequences.  And I won't even get into the ravaging emotional toll of being fat in America.

Simple Provencal Winter Squash Gratin
(see link below),
enjoyed by everyone!

One of the most stunning benefits of adopting a vegan diet has been, for me, the disappearance, almost immediately, of cravings.  It took me, oddly, some time to notice this as I was so enthused about the new food direction and all the fresh opportunities.  But one day upon entering a grocery and marveling that I was breezing right by the meat, cheese, and dairy cases, I realized that I wasn't even thinking about the areas that used to pull at me like an irresistable vortex -- the bakery and ice cream and prepared food sections.  The cravings for carbohydrates, sweet and otherwise, the siren call and my nemesis so recently, were not only silent, but gone!

Imagine telling someone addicted to cigarettes or alcohol or drugs (and the list goes on, and includes food) that all they had to do was switch to a vegan diet and their life-long addictions, the one's that were costing them everything from money and time to relationships and health, would be gone.  That's how it happened for me.  The addiction to certain foods may well be partially psychological, but there are also certainly physically addictive issues.  I don't pretend to understand how adopting a low-fat vegan diet broke that chain for me so completely, and so quickly, but I am extremely grateful that it did.  It seems nothing short of miraculous, but I know that it is not.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding
from my favorite vegan cookbook, Veganomicon

If Thanksgiving didn't test me on my new plant-based diet, I figure nothing will.  On the holiday with the strongest food traditions of the year, I was not at all tempted to eat turkey, and only slightly regretful that all those wonderful sides that others had prepared at events I attended (and that could so easily have been "veganized") were off the menu for me.  I did what all vegans do who want to be well fed and good guests...I made a dish or two I knew I could eat as a contribution to the table.  Trust me, I wasn't the only one with whom those dishes were popular.

I find a lot of wonderful recipes in the Health section of the New York Times online.  Sometimes they're vegan, as was Martha Rose Shulman's Simple Provencal Winter Squash Gratin (click here for recipe).

Sometimes they need a bit of tweaking to move from vegetarian to vegan -- like my vegan adaptation of The New York Times Chanterelles on Toast.  Click on the link for the recipe and substitute Earth Balance for the butter and skip the parmesan.  And prepare to be wowed.  This will be a special event meal for me from now on.

And you just need to go out and buy my favorite cookbook, Veganomicon, for the Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding recipe, a wonderfully satisfying treat that didn't send me into a more-more-more tailspin.

That's Tofurkey Italian sausage on our homemade pizza

My only cravings these days are for deliciously prepared plant-based foods.  Like our homemade pizzas or chili.  Now that my palate has changed, something as simple as chilled grapes can make me swoon.  Roasted sweet potatoes elicit sighs of pleasure.  And a well made salad is an exquisite eating experience.  Far from being a slave to cravings, or having my food world diminished by giving up animal-based foods, my new vegan world is exploding with exciting -- and healthy -- eating opportunities.

You can have this homemade vegan chili on the table in 30 minutes flat.
It gets its deep flavor from cocoa powder as well as chili powder --
find the recipe in The Vegan Diner cookbook.

Thankful

Thanksgiving is fast approaching.  There's no turkey in my fridge, but there are golden chanterelle mushrooms, small heads of tender artisan lettuce, deep green chard with bright red ribs, purple tinged kale, and regal eggplants.  My kitchen countertop platters hold crimson roma tomatoes, beige butternut squash, deep russet sweet potatoes, leathery skinned avocados, orange Clementines, rosy shallots, and papery white bulbs of garlic.  We will feast on all of this and more this week, and somewhere out there there's a turkey that got lucky too.

I've been thinking about all that I am thankful for this fall...my dear friend Joan who suggested and inspired trying a vegan diet, my husband who [after a few hours of worry] has supported me and my vegan kitchen completely, as well as the enthusiastic interest/conversion of friends and family.  I'm thankful for Dr. Neal Barnard whose 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart book guided me through the first three weeks, and guides me still.  I'm thankful for the documentary Forks Over Knives that clarified the scientific rational behind a plant-based diet for us.  I'm thankful for all the great vegan blogs and recipes and cookbooks out there, from the New York Times to my absolute favorite, if-you-could-only-own-one-vegan-cookbook, Veganomicon.  Their recipes make you forget there's anything but vegan.

Manzana Chili Verde from Veganomicon was dinner last night...yum!

I'm very thankful for all the wonderful positive changes a vegan plant-based diet has brought to me so far (I'm less than six weeks into this new journey).  Let me share some of them with you:

• Weight loss -- as promised in Dr. Barnard's 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart book, I am losing a pound a week (or more) almost effortlessly
• Decongested -- the first night after switching to a vegan diet I went to bed and could breathe easily through my nose, with none of the coughing that had plagued me for years
• Snoring -- gone!
• Sleep -- like a baby
• Energy -- my body is humming with it, and I have much more endurance
• Softer skin -- unexpected but wonderful change from chronic cracked dry skin
• Indigestion and heartburn -- I was not often bothered, but now they are gone!
• Peripheral neuropathy -- vastly improved, and this is huge for me as I was sometimes kept up for hours at night in true agony, feeling like someone was tazering my feet...now I barely notice a tingle 
• Mood -- much more even, elevated, and productive
• Mind -- feeling sharp with no muddle-headedness
• Pain -- essentially zero need for any med's for aches or pains
• Foot swelling -- gone, and wow, do I have a load of "new" shoes that I've never been able to wear before!
• GREAT FOOD -- I feel like I've rediscovered cooking (and I'm a cook)...everything is so colorful and appealing and delicious and you feel so terrific and satisfied after you eat it, and kitchen clean-up is a snap without greasy pots and pans and plates
• Saving $$$ -- even focusing on organics, we are saving a lot of money at the grocery check-out 

Gratitude comes easy with great results like these.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Finally. Something to say...

It’s been 20 months since I last posted to this blog.  Since then I turned 60, and then 61.   Lots of good things have happened.  I became a docent at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  My husband and I built a cabin, and when my husband retired in May we spent the summer there high in the Colorado Rockies, a peaceful and cool respite from the desert heat.  And during all of that time I struggled with the conventional diet plan, yo-yo’ing up and down, but mostly up -- no surprise to most who are grappling with serious weight (and health) issues.  I’d realized I had nothing to add to the weight-loss discussion that would be helpful or positive, so I clammed up.

Over our first summer at the cabin, four wonderful months, we worked and played hard.  My husband finally had lots of time to work on clearing our overgrown forest, working with the local Healthy Forest Initiative folks, felling 60 foot trees and hauling the trunks into piles.  We did a lot of hiking, and on our land just hanging out the clothes required a good descent to the clothesline and return ascent to the cabin, at 8,600 feet an aerobic feat in and of itself.  Since it felt like a four month long vacation, we ate like lumberjacks -- bacon and eggs, bratwursts on the grill, mashed potatoes (I took to calling them "crack" potatoes due to their drug-like properties), and lots and LOTS of homemade cookies.  Still, we both lost weight (even me), probably a combo of the physical work and exercise and the speeded up metabolism that is the gift of living at high elevation.  

On the long two day drive home at the end of our summer hiatus I realized that the cabin diet would never fly back in the Sonoran desert.  With two incredible places to live, I wanted to be around for a long time, and able to fully enjoy them.  Besides, I was honestly tired of the greasy meats and too many sweets and we discussed getting back to more salads and fresh veggies and fish when we returned to the land of grocery stores a few minutes away instead of an hour’s drive on mostly dirt roads.  

Shortly after we returned to Tucson one of my best friends (and one of the smartest woman I know) invited me over for coffee and a catch-up.  I hadn’t seen her for over four months, and she looked remarkably well -- trimmer and glowing and full of energy.  Influenced by a suggestion from a good friend of hers, she’d decided to try...wait for it...a VEGAN, plant based, diet.  And it was working!!!  She’d lost weight, but that wasn’t even at the top of her list of all the good things this seemingly radical change in diet had brought her.  She had been guided by a book, Dr. Neal Barnard’s 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart, that explained the Why’s and How’s of this three week trial vegan eating plan.  She strongly encouraged me to borrow the book and read at least the first couple of chapters.  So I did.  And I was sold.  

Dr. Barnard is an MD, clinical researcher, and health advocate.  The book has pages and pages of references and citations from peer-reviewed research.  The material is factual, not wishful thinking.  It explains the scientifically proven links between consuming meat and other animal products, such as dairy and eggs, and disease.  It explains how the damage done can be greatly improved or reversed -- diabetes, cholesterol, heart disease, hypertension, and yes, obesity.  Not a miracle cure, but a scientifically based plan with proven results.  I was ready to give it a try.  Somehow it just seemed easier to completely quit eating some things rather than weigh and measure small amounts and count calories or points and keep food journals.  Besides, I mean, c’mon, what’s three weeks?

Selling this idea to my husband was another matter.  We were looking forward to cooking more together, now that he was retired, so when he suggested something we might make for dinner in a couple of days, I had to tell him we might have to revise that plan to not include meat or any other animal products.  He was less than pleased.  In fact he was concerned that this would impact our relationship.  Cooking for him is something I’ve always done, and he likes what I make him.  He was always ready to eat healthy, but this was a step too far.

A husband-cooked vegan Indian meal;
no deprivation here!

Another suggestion from my friend was to watch the documentary Forks Over Knives (go to their site and watch the trailer by clicking here) which explains why a vegan diet is a much healthier option, again backed up by serious medical studies over many decades.  Luckily it was available in streaming video from Netflix, so we sat down to watch it.  Within the first half hour of jaw-dropping information, my scientist husband had done a 180 and was fully supportive of my “trial” vegan run.  We're now excitedly experimenting with vegan recipes and not only are we cooking together, he's cooking for me!

That was one exciting month ago.  I hit the 21 day mark and never dreamed of going back to a conventional American diet.  I feel too good in so many ways to even consider it, and besides, I have not missed meat or fish or milk or cheese at all (though I'd feared I would) -- there’s so much exciting food out there when you stop focusing on meat-based diets.  Let’s face it, usually veggies are almost an afterthought once you’ve figured out what to do with the pork tenderloin or fish fillets.  I’m a cook, and I feel like I’m discovering food all over again.  My husband hasn’t once complained about the food -- it’s too delicious and gorgeous.  Sometimes I’m so excited about all the things I want to make that I can hardly sleep at night -- except that now I’m sleeping better than I ever remember.  Sleep and so many other wonderful benefits -- and yes, effortlessly losing weight (it’s almost just a wonderful by-product of all the other terrific things that are happening) -- all of which I’ll tell you about in future posts.

Finally, something GOOD to say!  Stay tuned...

Salad Days

Here in the Sonoran desert it's been spring for a month. Temperatures are warming, plants are leafing out, and daytime temps are often in the 70's.  It's easier to be outside just about any time -- we even ate outside last night.

Our week of entertaining a house guest is over and life is settling back into our normal routine that we love so much.  Pre-dawn walks, productive days, sharing those day's events over a simple healthy dinner, and time to relax with a book or a DVD in the evening before an early bedtime.  We're looking forward to a weekend filled with time spent outdoors walking and gardening, and if the predicted rain materializes on Sunday, a quiet day inside with a chicken slathered in fresh herbs roasting in the oven for dinner.

Distractions and simple exhaustion had their consequences for me this week, but none too severe.  A week of a house guest was followed by a very long eight hour day doing my once a week volunteer work as an animal keeper at the Desert Museum, work that I love but that is entirely done on your feet, followed that evening by hosting this month's meeting of our book club, something I also love, but the timing was bad.  Nevertheless, it was fun, and I survived without going completely crazy -- I did join the girls (I won't deny myself an honest to goodness rare treat) for a piece of the Sandtorte pound cake I'd made from scratch with good ingredients, but the remainder was sent to work with my husband for him to share with his co-workers (anyone but me).

It is hard, perhaps more so for a woman who was a single mom for a good chunk of her life, to prioritize myself and my needs.  It's easy to get sidetracked when life throws you out of your routine, be it a for something fun and wonderful or difficult and unpleasant or somewhere in between.  But since there is nothing truly routine about life -- nor should there be -- the skill of keeping your eye on the prize and being true to your quests is worth honing.  Practice, practice, practice.

Goody of the Day:


Salads.

One of my goals is to eat more whole foods in lots of colors; foods that look like they did when they came out of the ground.  Salads are one of the easiest ways to achieve this so long as you stay clear of gloppy dressings.  Choose several from lettuces, baby spinach, chopped veggies, fruits, nuts, herbs, beans, boiled eggs, low fat dairy, and lean meats. Coupled with a drizzle of healthy oil and vinegar, fruit juice or salsa, salads make for a kaleidoscope of flavors and textures for a delicious nutritious lunch or dinner.  Here's what I had for lunch today:

Four cups of mixed baby greens including spinach, two kinds of tomatoes, green onion, half a cup of black beans, four ounces of grilled boneless skinless chicken, a quarter of an avocado (yes!), and a dressing of a heaping tablespoon of salsa, two teaspoons of olive oil, and a splash of cider vinegar.

Gobbling all this goodness took the better part of half an hour (of sheer bliss) -- the cool greens, pop of the cherry tomatoes, earthy black beans, creamy avocado, savory grilled chicken, tangy dressing with just a hint of heat.  Entering all the ingredients and amounts into my Best Life food log showed that this lunch provided 14 grams of fiber (according to Dr. Oz the average woman in this country gets 7 grams a day -- 25 is the minimum recommended), 2.7 grams of saturated fat (of the good kind), 53 grams of protein, 43 grams of carbohydrate, and was under 500 calories.  With the beans and meat and healthy oils it'll have real staying power.  At least enough to see me through to my afternoon snack!

Come up with your own healthy creation, and rejoice in the season of spring, whether it's arrived in your part of the world yet or not.

Incautiously Optimistic

I am quite familiar with the euphoria that accompanies a new diet plan that is working -- and let's face it, most any diet plan will work for a couple of weeks if you stick to it -- so I realize that's where I am at the moment with this Best Life plan.  After a week of re-losing some "throw in the towel" weight last week, I am into new(ish) territory now, making headway again at last, and enjoyed seeing the digital 217 pop up on my scale this morning.  Since I couldn't figure out how to un-burn my weight numbers a couple of weeks ago, I guess I'd better concentrate on not needing to from here on out.  And I am incautiously optimistic that this new plan, geared to those with diabetes or pre-diabetes (and frankly, what significantly overweight person isn't potentially pre-diabetic?), which is working amazingly well on all fronts.  There's plenty of good healthy food with snacks that keep you from ever going without food for more that a three hours during the day, I am not tormented with cravings so I feel sane and in control, and it's working great!  I'm enjoying a huge sense of relief that I've found sound thing that I'm almost certain will work over the long haul for me.  I'm already getting more instinctive about the correct balance of protein, fats, and carbs for me.

We've had a houseguest for the better part of a week, and while we've been doing some fun things, it does affect one's routine.  I allowed my walking to be impacted -- though we did okay a few days I certainly could have excused myself for an hour a day to go for a daily solitary walk -- which would have benefited me in more ways than one.  We've eaten out a few times, but with a little care I managed very well at a Vietnamese restaurant (bun -- rice noodles over shredded salad veggies with a bit of grilled meat) and a taqueria (three small soft tacos with freshly made corn tortillas -- to die for).  Otherwise we cooked healthy foods at home from scratch -- oatmeal with blue berries, sauteed veggies, salads, grilled salmon and chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, brown rice with a measure of guinoa for a delicious nutty flavor, baked apples with pecans.  It's not hard to cook simple things from whole foods.  Everyone benefits, and it's delicious fare to boot.

This afternoon we'll head over to Tohono Chul, a gorgeous desert botanic gardens, and have a nice stroll taking in all the blooms.  Spring has sprung in our desert, a month ago in fact, and there will be many flowering plants to lure us around the next corner of the path.  It's not hard to find a reason to get off your backside and moving in the out of doors.  I'll be concentrating on doing just that this coming week.

Goody of the Day:

Chocolate!!!  On my Best Life eating plan there's a treat built in every day (in addition to the two snacks), best eaten shortly after dinner for those concerned with blood sugar while you have food in your stomach to mediate the effects of the carbs.  It must be no more than 100 calories and no more than 10 grams of carbohydrates, which left out a lot of the foods I used to eat for treats, like Healthy Choice fudgesicles (too many carbs).

But chocolate is allowable if it is at least 70% dark chocolate.  Trader Joe's has these great 100 calorie bars of 70% dark chocolate.  With 7 grams of carbohydrates, they fit the bill.  I am always amazed that after being satisfied all day on this diet with few to no cravings, I get to spend several minutes after dinner letting several bites of this luscious chocolate melt on my tongue, savoring the rich earthy cocoa flavor that last long after the chocolate is gone.  And dark chocolate (in moderation) is good for you -- it's a potent antioxidant and can lower your blood pressure and fight heart disease.  Being decadent is a bonus!