Tag: Plant based recipes

Cookbook Recommendations

“I cannot stress a greater importance than to teach the young generation about the risks of unhealthy eating. A great way to pique their interest in nutrition is to involve them more in the cooking process. They not only will learn to cook for themselves, but also develop a lifetime of healthy habits.” – Marcus Samuelsson

I have found that the best way for me to take control of my health has been to cook my own meals. I know it sounds like a huge undertaking, but it is so worth the investment of your time. How better to control what we are putting into our bodies, than to be the person selecting the ingredients used?

There are many ways to make cooking work with our busy schedules and I too have struggled with that. The easiest way to make things work, is to keep things simple. You do not have to spend hours in the kitchen. If you are not sure where to start, I will share some of the cookbooks I use on a daily basis. They are my go to for easy meals, with minimum ingredients and time needed. These recipes are simple, yet delicious. Sometimes, less is more.

Cookbook Recommendations

PlantYou: Scrappy Cooking – The newest cookbook from highly popular author Carleigh Bodrug is packed with over 150+ whole-food, plant-based recipes that show the reader how to make the most of the food they have in their fridge and pantry with easy and approachable vegan recipes anyone can make. It is my newest addition and I am loving her fresh ideas and that it helps me avoid wasting food. Truly worth exploring, especially if you are new to plant based cooking.

Plant You – Also, by Carleigh Bodrug, this book is a ridiculously easy plant-based, oil-free cookbook with over 140+ healthy vegan recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, cheese sauces, salad dressings, dessert and more! It’s actually so good, I accidentally bought it twice! Very accessible to use and recipes are simple, yet delicious!

Joyfull – This newly released cookbook by Radhi Delvukia-Shetty, soared to the top of the NY Times booklist in it’s first weeks. The book includes, more than 125 plant-based recipes and a practical approach to making deeply flavorful food for feeling your best. I absolutely love this book. The recipes have a few more steps thank the Plant You series, but they are worth the time. Perhaps use this for weekend meals, or nights where you have a bit more time.

Big Vegan Flavor – This book, by Nisha Vora, will be released on September 3, but I have already preordered it. I love ever recipe Nisha shares and am anxiously awaiting this book. The benefit of preorder is that I am guaranteed a copy on the first release. Trust me this will sell out as Nisha is wildly popular on social media, under the name Rainbow Plant Life. These recipes provide us with restaurant quality meals that I use often. Highly recommend, especially if you love to cook like I do.

Those are the books I use daily and recommend you have in your collection. I am aware you can get many recipes online, but as a home cook, I have grown tired of the computer constantly going to sleep in the middle of preparation. I find it so much easier to have my cookbook out and open. If you’d like a cookbook stand on the counter that can hold your book, or ipad, this is a nice option.

I hope you get excited about cooking through these books. Please let me know if you try one. Even if you are not vegan, adding in plant based meals to your weekly rotation can help improve your health. Many of you actually do Meatless Mondays, so these books can give you some new ideas. Please share photos of anything you cook on Instagram and tag me @ReclaimingHealthBlog.

*As an Amazon Associate, I may receive compensation on any links provided. This helps support the running of this website and I thank you for your support.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

This week I finished Day 80 of my 80 day functional strength training program.  Over the course of 80 days, I completed some pretty tough workouts.  As I went through the three phases, I could feel my strength improving.  One thing I did not do, was follow the nutritional component that came with the program.  Unfortunately, I found it complicated and totally unrealistic.  Seriously, if you make it too complicated, nobody will stick to it.  That’s one of the main reasons people grab fast food, to keep it simple.  While I lost 10 pounds during this 80 day program, I know I still need to work on my nutrition as I plan to start running soon.  I’m slated to begin my running training on May 2nd, but don’t intend to do so until I lose a few more pounds.  There is no way I am going to stress my hip again and suffer another fracture.

Enter the online nutrition class I signed up for.  As part of this program, I receive lessons each week to read and listen to with suggested changes I can try.  I’ve learned a lot about macronutrients and how my body responds to different types of foods.  This current cycle’s focus is on intuitive eating with mostly plant based meals.  I’ve reduced my intake of animal protein during this phase to no more than 1 serving a day.  I actually do think I have been sleeping slightly better and I seriously have no cravings for sweet or salty foods.  I honestly have not even been craving a glass of wine when I cook.

It hasn’t been easy making all these changes.  The first phase was easy as I was really just tracking and observing how I felt.  Week two of plant based eating was more challenging for me than week one.  It’s not that I’m missing any specific food, it’s that I’m missing the variety of cooking options.  Currently, I don’t have an arsenal of plant based recipes in my cooking toolkit.  In the past, I would have already been reaching for pasta dishes and calling them plant based, but I know better than that now.  I also am not a huge fan of beans other than lentils which limits my choices as well.

One way I made my life easier this week was by purchasing pre-chopped salad.  This is something I never do, but if has offered me the opportunity to try out many different vegetable based salads without investing in large amounts of vegetables.  Sometimes, when I purchase fresh vegetables for recipes, I end up wasting them.  Either I can’t keep up with weeknight cooking, or they go bad.  These pre-chopped, bagged salads allowed me to try out different mixtures of raw vegetables to see which ones I prefer.  Now, I’ll be able to purchase ingredients for future meals without waste.

Trader Joe’s has some really nice versions of bagged, complete salad kits.  I don’t use the dressing included, but everything else included is good to go into my salad.  I’ve truly enjoyed the broccoli and kale slaw and the cruciferous salad kits.  They are perfect stand alone meals, or on days I’m adding in animal proteins make great sides.  This week, I even ate them for breakfast along with my eggs.  I added roasted sweet potato, mini cucumbers  and pomegranate seeds. This is something I never would have considered eating for breakfast in the past and it truly was delicious.68676FF0-D266-429D-A286-E9CBFAB1352A.jpeg

Dinner has been a bit harder to come up with ideas for protein sources without some form of animal protein, so I’ve got some work to do.  I am not a fan of legumes, so I’ve been adding nuts.  Tonight’s salad had pistachios and I added some chia seeds.  I’m continuing to search for interesting plant recipes to make for dinner.  Two that I enjoyed this week were Black Bean Burgers and Cream of Broccoli Soup.  Both were super easy to make and ready within 30 minutes, including prep.  This made them a great choices for after work cooking.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 small yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 tsp of red pepper flakes
  • 1 small head broccoli, chopped, stems removed
  • 1 can full fat coconut milk
  • 1 cup bone broth
  • ⅓ cup raw cashews
  • 1 cup spinach
  • 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
  • Sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions:

  1. In a large pot, heat the oil and toss in the onion and red pepper flakes. Sauté for 4 minutes, then add in the garlic for 1 minute.
  2. Add the broccoli and stir for 2 minutes. Add the coconut milk and broth and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes.
  3. Add the cashews and simmer for 5 minutes. Cashews will be nicely softened and make for a creamy soup once blended.
  4. Carefully pour into a large blender, or Vitamix. Add the spinach, nutritional yeast, garlic powder and salt and pepper. Be sure to hold the cover or it will explode when you turn it on.  Blend until smooth. (If you have immersion blender use that.)
  5. If you need a bit more protein, consider topping your soup with an additional tablespoon of nutritional yeast and a sprinkle of hemp seeds.608A3A92-CA94-4DE6-8BA4-7C743431494D

*This recipe was shared by Chalene Johnson, 131

This soup was so delicious and creamy.  The coconut milk added a boost of healthy fats and flavor.  I added red pepper flakes to give it a nice bit of heat as well.  I planned to sip this soup at work all week, but it was so good there was nothing leftover.  Next time I’ll have to make a larger pot!  It was a lovely shade of green, which my phone just doesn’t capture well.

What are your favorite plant based sites and recipes?  Please do share below as I am on the lookout for new ideas.