Great Flick!

So I just watched Forks Over Knives

A researcher who has nothing to gain from this outcome, estimates that we could cut 70% of our healthcare costs by eating healthy as a nation. It makes me wonder what it would take to convince people to do that. I'm not eating healthy right now (by my own standards and admission). I'm eating too much prepared food, too much restaurant food, too much candy. Time to go back to mostly whole veggies that I prepare at home. Not as much fun at the food someone else cooks without messing up my kitchen, but I think I'd better.

I know this stuff. But the movie is a good refresher. The filmmakers took a few "normal" Americans...you know: overweight, on diabetes meds, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc...and put them on Dr. Esselstyn's diet. One of the filmmakers decided to go on the diet too. In 12-22 weeks, people reverse most or all of their issues. I need to look up the two main Doctors but they seem pretty honest about presenting their conclusions. One lost money and prestige at his research university by changing his position on the consumption of animal products. I don't think he'd have done that if he didn't think he'd done good research.

Perhaps the bit that will be most controversial is that we're eating too much protein and that leads to cancer, especially liver cancers. And even more especially, liver cancers in kids. Yikes! I've been eating more meat products and eggs. Apparently it doesn't help if the meat/eggs/dairy/fish/etc is organic (though the toxins in industrial versions also cause other problems). Too much animal protein is just a problem no matter what.

Or perhaps the most controversial bit will be that there is no one issue or nutrient or magic bullet. It's a whole system. If you want to lower your cancer risk, then eat a whole food plant based diet. Don't expect tomatoes to be "the answer." Or spinach to be "the answer." The answer is to eat a variety of whole foods...plants. Sort of a no brainer but not a "standard American diet."

I'm better off than many Americans because I don't do dairy. Small favors.

An interesting point was made about the marketing of dairy as a source of calcium. If that worked, there would be no osteoporosis in the U.S. As a nation, we consume enormous amounts of dairy as milk, cheese, yogurt, etc. And yet, osteoporosis is on the rise. My gyno is always telling me to eat dairy. I've given up explaining why I don't and just say "uh huh." It looks like we can get plenty from a veggie based diet and if we get a bit of sun and the vitamins that help us absorb and use the calcium, we don't need the massive doses of dairy or supplements. So there.

As usual, some of the best info is in the extras. The US has (or has had) contracts with fast food establishments like Wendy's and Subway to market cheese! Jesus...or "Cheezuz"! My tax dollars went to subsidize the marketing of the double cheddar bacon burger. I'm not making that up. It also went to put cheese on the two Subway sandwiches that used to come without cheese as a standard ingredient. My taxes also went to making sure that "cheeseburger" is the default burger! I suspect this happened about 2-3 years ago. That was when I started having more trouble with the accidental cheese when I'd ordered a burger. I wonder if this is why there is default cheese on salads now. It used to be that only speciality salads like caesar and chef's that had cheese. Now even when I order a salad with no cheese listed on the menu, it shows up with feta or parmesan on it. I've been thinking the lesson was to specify "no cheese" but perhaps the better lesson is to prepare my own food.

The movie is a tad preachy. That isn't a surprise, but it isn't as entertaining as Supersize Me. It is however more encouraging than that movie. Eating a healthy diet, even after years of a bad diet, can cure diseases and the something-thelial cells in our blood vessels can actually recover pretty quickly IF we stick to a whole foods plant based diet.

Again, this isn't new. As Michael Pollan said, "Eat food, mostly plants." This movie just clarifies that it should be whole foods, not processed foods like veggie burgers or almond-cheese or soy-milk. Eat the veggies, the almonds and the soybeans.

It's thrifty too. It can be flat out cheaper at the grocery store partly because 500 calories of plants will make you feel so full you feel bloated, while 500 calories of fatty food will leave you hungry and you'll eat more. You have to buy that "more" that you are eating. Also because you aren't paying for the processing and often aren't paying for the packaging. That's good.

One participant in the film who was on 9 meds a day, pointed out that he saved 150-200$/month by going off his meds. That's pure profit. You can buy a lot of veggies for that much money.

It was pointed out that poor folks often don't have access to whole foods so the movie is also encouraging for those of us trying to get fresh, whole, fruit and veg into food deserts.

Here's a scary bit from the flick. In WWII Germans occupied Norway and confiscated all livestock and farm animals to feed German troops. From 1939 (when the Germans got there) to 1945, the Norwegian cardiovascular death rate drops 20%. As soon as the war is over, it's right back up again to pre-war rates. Bizarre.

I was ready to revamp my diet anyway. I found that when I eat 2lbs of greens a day, 1lb raw and 1lb cooked, I feel better. Not the first few days because there is quite a colon cleanse at the start, but after that, I feel much better. So I bought lots of greens and veggies at the co-op today. I had bruschetta for supper...a bit heavy on the bread but at least it was fresh baked rustic bread with local wheat flour, salt, yeast and water as the only ingredients. I'm expecting a final CSA delivery this week too. That will be more veg to eat. Now if my officemate would just stop with the chocolate in the office! It is so delicious....and as they explained in the movie, many of us have a low-grade addiction to foods especially sugary-fatty-foods. It's the same brain receptors as opiates. Damn it. Oh well. Avoiding eating too much chocolate is a pretty bourgeois problem.

I'm not sure whether a whole foods plant based diet would cure the world's problems, but I'm positive that if everyone had the option of a healthy diet that was built on whole foods grown in sustainable ways, we'd be way better off than we are now. And I wouldn't have to buy bigger pants.

Enough With the Preaching

So, that's about enough of the preachy crap for now.
How about a recipe?

Here is the recipe for Black Bean Sweet Potato Chili that I made the other night.
It is from one of my favorite websites, vegweb.com.

They have vegan recipes for everything. This is handy for those of us who do not do the dairy. I put the chicken and eggs back in (and sometimes I add buffalo meat where they have TVP (textured vegetable protein)) which is probably sacreligious to the vegan crowd, but good for those looking for non-dairy recipes that aren't total crap. Am I saying "crap" too much in this entry? Well, crap!

Anyway, here it is:

Black Bean Sweet Potato Chili

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

2 onions, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
2-3 tablespoon olive oil (more if onions start to burn)
2 cans (4 oz) diced green chiles
2 tablespoon spices (cumin, chile powder, cinnamon, cocoa powder to taste)
1 large lime (or 2 small), zest and juice
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 cubes
28 oz can whole tomatoes, chopped
4 cans (15 oz) black beans, rinsed
2 chipotle chiles (canned chipotle in adobo sauce), chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped leaves
1/2 - 1 cup water as needed
Buy organic when possible!

Directions:

Saute garlic and onions in olive oil on low-medium heat till limp. Add lime zest, squash, 1/2 lime juice, and spices and cook covered for 15 min (add a little water or olive oil if the mixture starts to stick to the bottom). Add tomatoes, black beans, chipotle chiles, cilantro and cook until sweet potatoes are tender. Add remaining lime juice and more spices to taste if necessary, and simmer covered for 10 min, adding more water if needed.

Serve with brown basmati rice and vegan sour cream!!!

Serves: 8

Preparation time: 1hr

VEGETARIANS STOP READING NOW (This means you, Laurie):
I think this recipe would be fantastic made with buffalo, elk, deer, or moose in place of some of the black beans.

VEGETARIANS CAN START READING AGAIN
I've been putting it over brown rice in "tupperware" (used margarine tubs a friend gives me) for lunch at work. Since I started with dry beans, used a fajita spice packet I had left over from christmas, and most of the other ingredients are fresh or almost-always-on-sale-canned, it's a pretty frugal dish. And what's simpler than beans and rice? (which is also a complete protein)

And yes, Pamela, I like this recipe because there is no juice to the chili. I find that juice in chili, stew, or soup is really just wasted space. I know others think it is "broth" or "sauce" or whatever. I don't care for it. I prefer my chili/stew/soup to be more like a stove top casserole.

Last night I served this over oven fries (made from organic purple potatoes) with cheese on top...the hippie version of chili cheese fries. El Kid loved it. Mine was good even with almond cheese. Wish I had taken a photo...oh well.

Anyway, I think this chili would be fantastic camping food! You could leave it simmering on the wood stove all day and eat and eat and eat. Then, fart all night providing your own heat when the stank hits a candle and the whole place blows up!

The Accidental Vegan

So you know how I was going to try to be vegan a couple of days a week?
Well, I was.

Anyway, today I was accidentally vegan! I had eaten my lunch sandwich (organic fresh ground peanut butter with homemade strawberry-huckleberry-blueberry jam on 9 grain bread) by 10am (due to only having a 1/2 sandwich...same type...for breakfast) and went to the store in Plummer Idaho to get something decadent for lunch...like a turkey sandwich or a chicken strip sandwich (yes, deep fried chickenstrips on white bread bun with mayo and a slab of plasti-cheese (those pre-wrapped singles. I pick the plasticheese off). BUT I ran into El Kid there and had to set a good example so I bought organic oat bran pretzels and an apple.
This was good because it is too freaking hot to eat much.

When we got home El Kid said he'd had a hankering for a pb&j sandwich so we had more sandwiches for supper with a side of watermelon.

I was accidentally vegan. Cool. I'm still fat because I ate the WHOLE BAG of pretzels, but it's a healthy fat.

The End of the Vegan Affair

So, sorry I didn't post much last week. I was staying at my Plummer, Idaho, estate...mansion...house...apartment....OK!!! It's a TRAILER.

Anyway, I got rid of my dialup service there and just didn't feel like going back into work to post blogs. Instead I watched movies, read 2 whole books (one of them is Valerie Bertinelli's memoir so not much of a book but it turns out Eddie Van Halen is a drug addict. WHO KNEW??), cooked, and talked on the phone.

In the midst of it all I tried veganism.
Not bad. I had one inadvertent dairy mishap. I thought I was eating a tiny bearclaw type pastry. But it turned out it was a tiny cream cheese strudel type pastry.
And one vertent dairy mishap. I had a peanut butter cups event on Friday. I love them. They were there. I ate some.
All in all, not bad for my first attempt at veganism.

I tried some vegan "field roast" italian "sausage." It was surprisingly edible. Especially over wholewheat pasta with some of my dehydrated tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Angela: I rehydrated them before eating.
The fake sausage is too expensive for daily consumption, but would spice up a meatless diet.

I thought I would have trouble at a meeting I went to, but the facilitator always brings fresh fruit and nuts for snacks so I would have been fine if it had not been for someone else bringing the tiny cheese strudels. I brought my own lunch of course, but wouldn't we all rather eat the free food someone else brought? Hence the joy of the potluck.

I do hope you are all following the flood blog my sister and I are keeping for the folks. My sister just found out that if you google "wagner flood" our blog is the first thing that pops up. We feel famous and stupid for wasting our fame. We should have done a sex tape or two like Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson-n-Tommy Lee, Vern "Mini-Me" Trotyer, and all the other true celebrities.

Anyway, as a closing thought, I want to re-recommend that you all go view the movie Escanaba in Da Moonlight. It is hysterical. Especially if anyone in your family ever hunted deer. Laurie: they never show a deer get hurt and the fake dead deer is SO BAD that I don't think it will be offensive. Certainly not compared to the room-o-gore you were given at the Gulick household lo those many years ago.

The Vegan Monologues

I see it's been 3 days since my last post. Apologies. I have a life sometimes.
Also I'm staying in the house that has no interweb services.

Anyway, since I have a week without the complication of feeding a teen...I'm trying a week of veganism to see if vegetarianism is an option for me. I'm trying vegan since I barely eat dairy anyway and have no eggs in the house to cook with.

So far so good. It's been 2 days vegan.

I tried some "Field Roast" italian style fake sausages with pasta last night. Not bad. Then I had another over lunch with left over pasta. That seemed to be a bit much. I am belching fake sausage. It tasted OK and the texture is not appalling so I may try it again but not two meals in a row.

I also down loaded the recipe for tofu fake fudgsicles. I'll let you know soon if those work out. If they do it will be cool. You can have dessert and count it as a protein.

Supper today will probably be something featuring collard greens because they are about to go bad and I gotta eat'em up. I have some potatoes, a tomato, and an onion so I could go with a collard stirfy/hash thingy that I know is quite nice. OR if you take the stems off kale and put the coarsely chopped leaves in a medium oven you make kale chips. I might try that with the collards because it is a nice way to eat greens.

Breakfast today was almonds, craisins, and coffee. And jam on left over french bread. That was yummy. It's sad that sugar is vegan. I would probably gain weight if I decided to go vegan fulltime. It won't be soon though.

And thanks to Heather for this link to a cool slide show telling you why it is HORRIBLE to use plastic bags:
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/MULTIMEDIA02/80505016

I'll post more about my grocery bag adventures one of these days. Once again I had a grocery clerk try to bag my groceries in evil plastic bags THEN put them in my handy basket. I made her take them out of the bags and then put then directly in the basket. She was mortified by the naked onion just touching the bananas like the onion-slut it was. Wierd. A clerk at the food co-op (where they are used to people just letting food touch) dug through my bag to find one of my reusable produce bags to isolate an onion from touching anything else. Whatever. Though that seemed MORE odd when he let the soggy collard greens touch the paper bag of cocoa powder. I hate it when they put wet stuff next to powders in paperbags. I'm going to end up bagging it myself (and not in a naughty way).

One down! One to go.

OK, I managed to eat vegetarian all day! Fruit and oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. PB&J with veg and fruit for lunch, another snack of ...you guessed it...fruit. Supper was beans-n-rice with some veg. Not bad. Oh, and one giant candy bar mid day because I am weak. But candy bars are vegetarian, right?

Tomorrow I'll be out and about so probably won't maintain the strict vegetarian diet, but Thursday might be a good day to try it again.

A friend, Laurie, recommended I do the "mostly vegetarian" as an option if I don't go full vegetarian. I'm trying! But cutting back and cutting back, I'll get there. Right now I'm feeding a second person who is not up for the vegetarian lifestyle and frankly has enough other things he's working on that I'm not willing to push vegetarianism on him right now. So mostly veg will be easier than always cooking 2 separate suppers.

Laurie also recommended another website for good veggie recipes:
www.christinacooks.com. The recipes look good AND doable.
I've been a longtime fan of www.vegweb.com. The recipes there are vegan so get around the dairy issue I have with so many many vegetarian cookbooks and websites. Of course, I'm sure the people at vegweb would be appalled that I sometimes put the chicken or eggs back in the foods they'd so carefully veganized.

The thing that surprises me is that I'm rarely hungry when I've eaten a decent vegetarian meal. I've always thought that without some meat, I'd never feel full. And yet, a few cups of beans and rice really stick to the ribs. Yesterday's teriyaki tofu with steamed veg and rice lasted pretty well too. I think it will be easier to cut back on meat than I thought.

Of course by my family's standards, I'm practically vegetarian already. These are people who served 3 meats for a holiday meal and at least one at every other meal. My uncle, a former army cook then short order cook then farmer and now retiree, used to make us breakfasts of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and milk from the bulk tank (you know, with the cream still in it) and a side of heavily buttered toast. It was an all you can eat affair. The last time I was home for thanksgiving we had turkey and pheasant and duck. I've been to holiday do's at an aunts house where once the deepfryer got going, anything in the freezer that used to move of its own accord was fair game (some of it was actual game meat). I must say, deep fried walleye chunks in cajun seasoning IS delicious.

Compared to the meat-fest of my youth, I eat very little meat now. Sometimes not even once a day. Compared to most of the people on the planet, I eat massive amounts of meat (and everything else for that matter!). I'll be shooting for somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward the lower consumption folks.

No Meat and Two Veg

I read somewhere, probably on a blog so you know it is true, accurate and well researched like wikipedia, that eating a vegetarian diet would decrease my carbon footprint more than getting a hybrid car. Since I'm not getting a hybrid car and have increased my daily total commute from 0 to 93 miles, I'm trying to eat less and less meat, especially beef and pork.

The decrease in meat started a while ago and was helped along by a bad gall bladder. The gall bladder recently came out and the world of fatty meaty foods including fatty meats re-opened to me. And yet, even without the threat of extreme pain and the potential of pooping my pants, I still don't want to return to the days of my youth when redmeat was a large part of my diet. I just don't see the need.

Meat takes up too many resources that could be better spent. Industrially produced meat with the hormones and antibiotics and inhumane (imbovine? imporcine?) treatment of the animals appalls me anyway. For years my meat consumption has been largely free-range, antibiotic free, hormone free etc. This includes wild game and wild fish. There has been the occasional fish from a stocked pond or the regretful farm raised salmon. But for the most part I've applied pretty strong ethics to my meat consumption.

Keeping it going should not be too challenging. I've found a source for local free range buffalo who are given meds only when they are actually ill and the farmer can't remember when the last time that happened. When I called to ask if they were free range, his wife answered the question with "well, the field IS fenced." That's OK. It's not like they are stuck in a barn and artificially inseminated, spending years standing in their own poo on a hard surface without sun. The meat is not too expensive and is very good, stores well, cooks well. I need to order another 40pounds. That is the downside...it comes in large quantities. I haven't found a good source for local free range chicken or turkey so am still buying a bit of that from the Moscow Food Co-op in Moscow, Idaho. It's spendy, but with the reduced consumption, it can be done.

To keep the meat consumption low, I'm trying to start with 2 totally vegan days per week. No dairy (not a problem as it gives me sinus infections), no eggs, no nothing. I think I did it yesterday with a tofu salad sandwich for lunch and a collard-potato-tomato saute for supper. I forget what breakfast was but I'm sure it was fine .... OOPS! It was a chocolate croissant made with butter. So much for the vegan. I guess I need to try again. I already had tuna for lunch so today is out. Must remember to bring beans and rice for lunch tomorrow.

Anyway, the lower meat consumption also means more fruit and veg. I used to rot those in the veggie draw then throw it out. I no longer use veggie drawers for anything other than my vermicompost (and that's not in the refrigerator). I know this is obvious, but I also discovered that if I prep the more labor intensive fruit in a big batch, I eat more of it. When the neighbor gave me the pounds of fruit last week, I made melon salad with orange juice and a bit of sugar. I ate about 8 cups in 2 days because it was easy. I made some more last night when I got home from groceries and have already eaten 4 cups. When I get strawberries I cut them up and freeze individual servings for smoothies. Those get eaten more and with less sugar than previously.

Any fruit that doesn't need processing stays on the counter in plain sight. If I'm staring at it, I'm more likely to eat it.

So far this is working.

I've been using vegweb.com for recipes and nutritiondata.com to make sure I'm getting my nutrients and not eating to many calories per day.