It All Starts With Diet (which is just Die with a T)

Me with my homemade sushi!

Welcome back!

I have so much to tell you about this lifestyle that I feel like I’m going to explode. But I’ll pick one area at a time and tell about that.

So I will start with diet.

Becoming vegan/vegetarian wasn’t as hard as I first thought. (And even though we are technically “vegetarian,” we are not strictly vegetarian.) We went to Sam’s Club for our usual grocery shopping and instead of buying chicken and beef, we bought more vegetables. It wasn’t that hard.

Then we got home and had to find recipes to make all this food. So I got on Pinterest and looked up vegan recipes. Wow! Lots of stuff there!

One of the first things we tried was black bean burgers. We bought some already made at Sam’s Club because I figured we ought to see how they were suppose to taste before we made our own. If you remember that they are NOT hamburger, they taste pretty good. If you are expecting an almost exact replica of burger, you won’t eat it. But these ones are flavored with jalapeños and corn and other spices so they are pretty good!

We have had a lot of salad, too. I make a pink vinaigrette that Lee loves. It doesn’t have any dairy so it fits his mostly-non-dairy diet. Here’s the recipe:

Pink Vinaigrette

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt and pepper

1/2 red onion

2 tsp mustard

1 cup olive oil

Mix all ingredients except oil in a blender.

Add oil and blend until smooth.

(You can also find this recipe on my recipe blog: chefmamanise.blogspot.com)

We also discovered that there are some restaurants that serve vegetarian choices and some that have naturally vegetarian menu items. For instance, one of our local Mexican food restaurants serves vegetarian burritos, enchiladas, tacos and chimis. They use bell peppers, onions, potatoes and corn, served with rice and refried beans. And we got side salads and lemon water. And we really didn't miss the meat! (I think that surprised us, since we both really like chicken and beef.)

Besides a lot of vegetables, we have been eating more rice. And I’ve even tried to change our rice up a bit so it’s healthier. We normally just use white rice but we’ve been adding/changing to brown rice and jasmine rice, depending on what we are eating. We love to make stir fry, so that’s not much of a change.

The other night we made portabello burgers. I found a recipe on the Internet to make stuffed portabello mushrooms and we did that then put them on homemade biscuits. Mmmm, they were good! We dressed them up with sautéed onions and lettuce like a real burger and I have to admit - they were better than the black bean burgers. (Here’s the site where I got the recipe for the stuffed mushrooms: Easy Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms) I will have my version of this recipe on my recipe blog soon...

For Lee’s vegan days, I started finding substitutes for dairy products so I could make his favorites without the milk or egg. One of his favorite things to eat for breakfast is Brown Sugar Muffins. It’s actually a favorite of the entire family. Here’s the recipe (which is also on my recipe site) and the substitutions:

Brown Sugar Muffins (substitutions in parentheses)

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg   (1/3 cup applesauce)

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (may use wheat flour or gluten-free substitute)

3/4 cup ground oats

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk  (1 cup rice or almond milk)

2 tsp vanilla

Cream together shortening, brown sugar, and egg. (May also add 1/2 cup white bean puree to make it healthier.)

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Add to creamed mixture.

Add milk and vanilla, stirring until mixed well.

Pour into greased muffin tins. (You can use papers, but this will peel off a lot of the muffin when you take off the paper.)

Bake at 400°F for 18 to 20 minutes. High altitude, about 22 to 24 minutes.

Makes about 12 regular size muffins, 6 large.

Also, I found a few sites through Pinterest that list egg substitutes. Here’s my favorite ones:

For each egg, sub:

1: 1/3 cup applesauce

2: 1/4 cup applesauce + 1 tsp baking powder

3: 1/2 pureed banana (1/4 cup)

4: 3 Tbl pureed fruit

5: 1 Tbl gelatin + 3 Tbl warm water

6: 1 Tbl white vinegar + 1 Tbl warm water

7: 2 heaped Tbl potato starch

8: 1 Tbl corn starch +2 Tbl water

9: 1/4 cup vegetable oil

10: 1/3 cup cooked pumpkin

For cakes, use #1-7.

For cookies, use #8 or 9.

For muffins, use #1, 3 or 10.

Mixes you can also use:

2 Tbl flour + 1/2 tsp oil + 1/2 tsp baking powder + 2 Tbl liquid (water, juice, milk, etc)

or

2 Tbl water + 1 Tbl oil + 1/2 tsp baking powder.

I will post more recipes as I go. These are just a few to get you started. My recipe blog has a bunch of great recipes but some of them are not vegetarian so pick which ones you want.

Hugs and cheers!

Denise