On the last day of our 30 day challenge, I wanted to put together a specacular meal for the guys. Two of the cookbooks I have been loving, Tal Ronnen's "The Conscious Cook" and Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet" both had some truly inspirational ideas, as well as great recipes. Both had a caesar salad that sounded creamy, and satisfying. When made from my own mix of olive oil, garlic, lemon, capers, dijon and Vegenaise (as well as the addition of my new "nutritional yeast" which smells like the bottom of a hamster cage, but tasted great)we were blown away. With some toasted croutons, it was absolutely delicious.
We also tried a delicious Rice parmesan cheese, which I was initially impressed with, but since its main ingredient is CASEIN (the offending dairy protein linked to cancer) it won't be invited back. I can't believe I missed that in the grocery store - usually I read the ingredients pretty well.
Dinner was a feast for the eyes too, with steamed purple asparagus, bright green steamed broccolini, and a rich mushroom gravy over top of a caulifower "steak". Cauliflower, when sliced from the top down, and right through the stem, holds onto the florets, creating a hefty steak. Brushed with some olive oil and steak spice on both sides and dipped in panko, it was a crispy crunchy delicious centrepiece on the plate, reminiscent of a fried chicken!
Harrison artfully put together the dessert plate, with berries, rice ice cream, and pecans, with a raspberry sauce from the summer's jams. Yum.
Do you remember the cute little chihuahua from that disney cartoon about the dogs and cats in the 20's where he exclaims in his Mexican accent after being "captured" and then finding out he's in the lap of luxury, "if this is torture, chain me to the wall!"
Its kind of true in our case. We embarked on this challenge towards a healthy way of eating almost as a joke. Bill liked the health aspects, I loved the cooking challenge and we both liked the idea of cutting out fattier things on our plates and replacing them with vegetables. Neither of us had any idea how GOOD eating like this would make us feel, and retrospectively, how good it was for our health to learn to do so. I love the budget aspect to plant-based eating, I LOVE that the food safety concerns (again, spiders notwithstanding) are so minimal, and I especially love the slimming effect it has had on all of us.
People often heard of our challenge, and with a sympathetic look on their faces asked with great concern "How is Harrison handling it?". Ask him. He didn't miss a beat, loved many of the items on his plate (evidenced by his full consumption of them, and often seconds) and even learned a bit.
His school project came home yesterday, where the students had to write a menu for a restaurant of their own. His was called "Healthy Harrison's" and had a full breakfast menu of pancakes "wisked together", breakfast smoothies "strawbearrys and rasberrys bleanded into a creamy smoothie", and a fruit platter that even contained zucchini(!) "cut up in rows and served on a plater". His restaurant's motto was "its good and nutricios and also delicios".
Kids will eat healthily if we give them the chance to. So will adults. Perhaps most startling throughout the challenge is how toxic our food environment is in North America. How surrounded we are as busy people with horribly bad "food-like" food that does nothing but provide a short-term fat-sugar rush, and make us sick. Yes, meat is delicious, but even the low fat stuff (especially since we are now eating MORE of it) still clogs our arteries, slows our digestion, and the significant body of evidence shows that it can accellerate a trip to heart disease (and its precursors of obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol), cancers especially of the breast and prostate, auto-immune diseases like diabetes, and general ill health.
When I was a kid, my dad was forced to quit smoking. I had learned that smoking was bad, and would often go on a hunt to find the packs, and flush them down the toilet. Dad often had to hide out, and sneak them. As he tells the story, one day he was quietly smoking in a locked bathroom, realized he was "hiding out from a 5 year old" and decided it was time to quit. He quit, but his dad (my Jaju)didn't - although his smokes offen suffered the same floaty fate if I could find them. When he died of lung cancer in 1989, I was impossibly saddened. Even a 79 year old wants more time, and more QUALITY time at that. We don't want to spend our lives, especially any part of the end our lives, sick, medicated and yucky.
Let me leave off my preachyness with one last analogy... If before every meal, someone routinely sprayed your meals with a spritz of something known to increase disease in people, but assured you that nothing would really happen right now, and the bad effects would just be some undetermined "LATER" would you keep letting them? Wouldn't you say "no, wait a second, I don't want that!"?
Hold in mind that the messages you receive about your health, and often what we THINK we know about nutrition, IS ACTUALLY A COMMERCIAL! A marketing message from the seller!
Hold in mind WHO is marketing the 3 servings of dairy a day message.
Hold in mind WHO is marketing the salmon / chicken / pork / beef messages.
Hold in mind WHO is marketing the get cracking messages.
Don't take my word for it. Do yourself and your kids a favour and do some reading. We loved "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. I loved Dean Ornish's book 15 years ago on learning of my father-in-law's problems with heart disease (Ornish's theory of reversing it by eating a plant-based diet was quickly dismissed by that side of the family).
My friend Chris says that he gets the vegan thing, but that it's probably just too hard for most people. I think he's right. My friend Cathy echoed the thought, but was intrigued enough to say that she would be motivated to try if she just had a few recipes to work from. My friend Barb didn't miss a beat when at our most recent lunch our pizza came without the cheese. Angela and Carissa both tried the vegan mozzarella, declaring it "good". Greg and Scott (avid meat lovers) ate the tofu chicken strips without complaint. Mom has agreed to skip the cheese when we all make perogies on Saturday for Christmas.... Even my dad has been persuaded to utter "OK - I'LL EAT MORE VEGETABLES if you'll just leave me alone!" when prompted...
So. Enough lectures from me.
Blog, going forward will go back to its original intended purpose....efficient and healthy ideas about food!
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