losing weight as a vegan

Purple coneflower or Echinacea Copyright (c) 2000 Wendee Holtcamp

This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24

I had all this stuff to blog about and I literally completely forgot... what can I say?! Generally, things are good, and I've been feeling SO much better, and am very grateful for that. I was going to give an update on my vegan eating, so I'll stick to that for now. Ive lost 5 pounds in like 30 days! Besides just eating vegan (ie no dairy) for a month, the key things I've changed are:

• I greatly reduced sugar consumption - to almost nothing. This means using unsweetened soy or almond milk rather than sweetened, and no processed foods with added sugar. I use Stevia to sweeten my tea. If I'm craving something sweet, I either have a cup of tea or grab a "raw ball" from the freezer (see recipe here). These have maple syrup in them, but maple syrup has a lower glycemic index than sucrose (aka table sugar) or high fructose corn syrup. And the weird thing is I tend to crave savory stuff now more than sweet stuff whereas it used to be the opposite. And I will just eat one raw ball and be totally satisfied, whereas before (Christmas time, pre-vegan) I would eat like 6 at a time! On the healthy living Yahoogroup I started recently, I just posted a link to this New York Times article "Is Sugar Toxic?" that I reread recently - wow - scary stuff!
  
  
• I put lemon juice in my first water of the day - supposed to crank digestion.
  
  
• I try not to eat solid food before noon. This is from Crazy Sexy diet. I drink green juice or tea. Not every day, but almost.
  
  
• I've been drinking green tea rather than coffee. Green tea is supposed to help weight loss and it also has threanine which helps depression! I started the vegan thing the last week in December, and since then I have had coffee maybe 5 or 6 times total, whereas before it was twice a day every day. And most of those coffees were in the past 2 weeks when I was coming out of my stricter cleanse. I'm looking to create a healthy diet/lifestyle rather than being on a "Diet" so need to be able to be flexible without returning to totally bad habits! I adore coffee but now it's really a "sweet treat" to me rather than something I need every day. Oh and when I drink coffee, I drink decaf, though I do still get some caffeine from my green tea.
  
  
• Using apple cider vinegar and lime/lemon juice as salad dressing (before I used a low-fat Newman's own vinaigrette and I used it once or twice since I started). However apple cider vinegar is also supposed to help weight loss!
  
  
• During this time, I've had 2 juice fast days which means green juice, tea, or smoothies all day. I actually consider my fast until the sun goes down. After that, I don't gorge but have had something small to eat that’s solid on both the times. I don’t know why I cant just go all day with no solids, cuz ive done all juice (lemonade) cleanses for up to 15 days, but I'm trying to not be too extreme. (Crazy sexy diet - or at least her 21-day crazy sexy cleanse - encourages it once a week).

Well I have a busy day tomorrow, so I better sign off... more later. Cheerio!

coconut citrus kabocha bisque!

The marvelous kabocha squash! I was happy as pie when I found one in my grocery store, in a big bucket o' squash of different varieties. Images copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp

Let me just start off this post saying posting one recipe a day is out... I am going to try to make one a day but posting them all on my blog is too time consuming right now (on deadline!). But I will finish this one, and do my best to keep you all updated on my faves.

Since Alicia Silverstone so raves about them in her book The Kind Diet, I had been wanting to try it but had been unable to find one anywhere. I used a substitute before, the buttercup squash, which is quite similar in coloration/look but looks sorta like an acorn whereas this one is more pumpkin shaped. The recipe I used buttercup in - a modification of her Black bean Kabocha Squash Stew (I used pinto beans) - I didn't like. I cooked the squash in the oven for that one, which is how (until the other day) I always cook squash, and I think I overcooked because the squash was really soft. That would be fine for some recipes, but I wanted chunks of it like the recipe. And I wasn't crazy about the flavor - I've never been a huge squash fan, so am trying different recipes to find the way I like squash best! I do love me some spaghetti squash.

Here's the recipe which I got from crazysexy.life.com:

-1 tablespoon coconut oil or 1/2 cup veggie broth
-1 medium kabocha squash, seeded and cubed
-pinch sea salt, plus more to taste
-1 orange, zested and juiced
-5 or more cups filtered water or broth
-1 can (13.5 ounces) coconut milk
-pinch white pepper
-fresh herbs, for garnish

Heat oil or broth in medium stockpot. Sauté the kabocha with sea salt for about three minutes, covered, stirring occasionally. Add a little water if the kabocha starts to stick to the pan. Add orange zest and juice. Sauté for two more minutes.

Add water and coconut milk and bring to boil. Simmer until kabocha is very soft (about 20 minutes). Puree with immersion blender right in the pot or in batches in a regular blender (return to pot when finished blending). Add pepper and sea salt to taste. Serve hot garnished with fresh herbs like cilantro or parsley.
The first step is cutting your squash in half, and then taking out the seeds. You need a pretty sharp/big knife to cut through the squash.
The recipe calls for you to put the squash in cubes in a pan, where you saute and then boil it and so, normally I just plop the whole thing in water in the oven but I thought, ok, I'll try to peel and cut it up. Let me just say - total p.i.t.a! So much of a pita that I ...
...only peeled one half for the soup and baked the other half. To bake squash you put it in about an inch of water and then bake at around 350 until soft when pierced with a fork.
I zested an organic orange (I did wash it, even though it was organic) and then juiced it in my juicer. Since some folks may not have the ability to juice, it created exactly 1/2 cup of orange juice so that's what you would use if you just used juice. I sauteed in broth but added a teeny tiny amount of coconut oil also just for flavor. Then of course you also add a whole can of (light in my case) coconut milk later.
Here you can see the chunks of squash boiling in the rest. After they are soft, you puree them together either in a blender or food processor. I added only about 1/2 of the oven-baked squash to the recipe, because I wanted to save some for another purpose, plus all of the half I peeled/cut in chunks of course. I don't have any photos of me pureeing the soup (bisque technically - I almost just wrote techniquelly - lol!)And here is the final product! Here's the scoop: when I first tasted it, fresh out of the pot, I was disappointed. The coconut and citrus flavors were lost and it seemed bland. I added a little bit more salt, and then a dash of shoyu (like soy sauce) and then I decided, since miso is really helpful for digestion and is basically a probiotic, to throw in 2 teaspoons of miso (The Kind Diet raves about miso and puts it in a lot of recipes). That actually helped. However it still wasn't the best thing ever. BUT...

I put the pot in the fridge and had it again last night (I made it 2 days ago) and it was WAY better! The orange flavor came out substantially more. Strangely, the coconut flavor seems lost. If I made again, I'd recommend using coconut oil to saute the chunks in first, which gives a stronger coconut flavor. I love coconut! It wasn't that the soup ever tasted bad, it just didn't live up to what I expected. But I definitely prefer it with the miso and after settling for a day.

Dehydrated kale "chips" recipe

The final product - Krispy Kale Chips! Plus some green juice - for the juice I used 1 head of romaine, 1/2 cup kale plus the kale stems I cut out for the chips, ~3/4 cup carrots, 2 apples, a lemon, 1" ginger and some broccoli stems (never mind the avocado in the background!). Copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp

Hello my vegelicious followers! It's day 4 here of my being vegan, and time for my next day's recipe. I originally planned to make the recipe from my friend Eileen for Kale Cashew Crispy snacks - even had the cashews in my grocery cart today, but then took them back out in an attempt to save money and use the ingredients I had on hand. In fact, I have so much food in my house, and one of my big plans is to use up some of the stuff here in recipes... sometimes that does require getting additional ingredients at the store, but... I do love to grocery shop! It's the only shopping I really allow myself on a regular basis. In fact, one of my plans for the New Year is to make a better grocery budget and stick to it. However, I have to get through this next article... due in less than 2 weeks. Ack. So anyway, I decided to go for the simple version of kale chips... salt, olive oil, and nutritional yeast! Specifically:

• 1 large bunch curly leaf kale
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon cold-pressed olive oil
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

I got this particular recipe from About.com's Raw Food Recipes site. My dehydrator does not have an adjustable temperature, and I do not know what it dehydrates at, and I know for raw food to be "raw" it has to be at less than some temp, which I don't know, but I'm not doing raw food diet so, whatevs. Did I mention that I love that word? ;) This ended up being so super simple, I am going to have these on hand ALL the time! I have a weakness for corn chips, which aren't necessarily unhealthy but they have highish fat and these kale chips are SUPER healthy (kale is a superfood!) and just have 1 Tablespoon oil in the whole batch. And that's not counting what gets evaporated (OK wait - I need a chemistry expert - the liquid component may evaporate, but does any of the fat content or does it just stick to the kale?!) I digress... Onto the pics.
First I soak the kale in my sink with a little veggie wash (or castille soap, depending on my mood). I bought organic, but you still need to wash them! Next I towel dry, and then cut out the central stem, which is tough (I reserve it for green juice though) and then chop. Put the chopped kale in a bowl. Put the olive oil, salt and yeast and then mix it around with your fingers. I think I used too much salt because mine were pretty salty. I like salt, too, but I'd probably reduce it a bit next time or even go without. If you don't ever use nutritional yeast, it makes stuff taste like it has Parmesan cheese on it. It's great on popcorn. My kids don't like it, but I love it. I'm going to test out the kale chips on them and will report back. My dehydrator has four trays and you stack them. One bunch of kale fit on two trays. I didn't know how long it would take to dry, because the About.com recipe says 2 hours, and another site with another recipe said like 10-12 hours! They must have a very low-temp dehydrator, I suspect, because mine were done and crispy crunchy within a couple hours. In fact, some were done within an hour.
They shrink up quite a bit. I am so in love with these!! They are soooo delish!! And so easy to make. Try them sometime! I think I'm going to make people Kale chips as Christmas gifts next year. Back to work for me!

Thai "peanut" sauce with raw veggies

Thai peanut sauce veggies dehydrating. Copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp

So I didn't make any new recipes today (day 3 as a vegan), but I do have a post - as promised - about the third recipe I made last night. This sauce was absolutely divine. Freaking delicious. I got this recipe out of the Crazy Sexy Diet book and she credits the recipe to Chad Sarno of The Raw Chef. The ingredients are:

1/2 cup almond butter (technically you are supposed to use "raw" almond butter but I didn't)
1 Tbsp ginger, chopped
1+1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp dates, raisins or prunes (I used dates)
2-3 cloves garlic
1+ 1/2 Tbsp sea salt
1 tsp serrano pepper (optional - I did use this, and it made it great - I can't imagine it without some spice to it)
1/2 cup water
2 zucchini, sliced in half moons
2 carrots, julienned
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup snow peas

Veggies and some of the ingredients. You can substitute soy sauce, tamari, or Bragg's amino acid for shoyu. Shoyu is just high quality soy sauce.
Blend almond butter, ginger, lemon juice, date/raisin/prune, garlic, salt, pepper and water till smooth - I did this in my Cuisinart food processor rather than a blender. OK yea it looks kinda grody like this but it's really.... ...so delicious! (and no comments on how THIS one looks - it's peanut sauce for criminy sake. Well, almond technically but whatevs). Toss sauce with veggies. Then dehydrate on Teflex sheets at 105 degrees for 2-3 hours to soften.

OK I have to confess: I have no clue what a Teflex sheet is (though Google does come in handy for such mysteries). I just placed the stuff directly on the trays in my dehydrator. This is my first use of it - a gift I got for my birthday in July - and I have to say, some sort of sheet would have come in handy because the sauce did drip down all over the place. I will also say that I ended up a bit disappointed by the dehydration process. Here's why: I LOVED the raw veggies in the sauce. It was scrump-deli-icious! I could have eaten the whole bowl. (OK not the BOWL but the stuff IN the bowl). When stuff is dehydrated at low temp, it's still considered raw, but I don't know, for some reason I just preferred it really full-on raw rather than even slightly dehydrated (You don't totally dehydrate for this recipe to where it's crunchy or totally dry - just a tiny bit of time to 'soften'). I think maybe I didn't like it as much because it also dehydrated the sauce. I loved the sauce. I was dipping and drenching the broccoli (my fave of the different veggies here) in the sauce. And when dehydrated, it took a bit of the oomph out of the sauce, since well it was less... saucy.

I actually stuck the veggies on the dehydrator for a very short time - like an hour? They were barely dehydrated, and I did this on purpose because I liked the veggies + sauce raw so much. But even after just an hour, the sauce was already drying up/off. So I put the veggies in the fridge, cleaned my dehydrator, and today I decided I'd dehydrate more and see what happened. All it did was shrink the veggies more and I still prefer it totally raw. I really just like the sauce saucy!

So there ya go. I think I will try some other dehydration recipes, but this one I will definitely make again but next time will reserve more of the sauce just to use with the dehydrated veggies, and/or just not dehydrate them. Tomorrow I think I'll try Kale chips - I've been super excited about that recipe for months, ever since Eileen held a raw food picnic at her house!

Though I've been vegan for 3 days now, I'm still in the pre-cleanse part because I'm imbibing large quantities of coffee (I have a lot of work to do, what can I say), and I'm snacking on raw balls from the freezer whenever I'm craving something sweet (these are vegan, so it's ok, but I'm also planning on trying to cut down on sweets). I think the trick for me will be to have a lot of ready-made snacks around the house that I can have when I'm having a weak moment.

Today this is what I ate. Breakfast - had an organic apple, and some coffee with soy creamer (mmmmm my staple). Then around lunchtime I had a grapefruit, then about 30 minutes later I had some of my leftover toasted quinoa with a couple tablespoons of hummus, and a big salad from my "bowl of health" mixed with the remainder of the Mediterranean salad. Then I had a couple raw balls. Um maybe four. Yes I know that is more than a couple! For dinner I had the leftover mustard greens I sauteed the other day with leftover rosemary red potatoes (a recipe my aunt made at Christmas and it was soooo good but mine turned out very dry - not sure what I did wrong). Then I had like, um, three or four more raw balls... and a Jamba juice bar (not good when I start the actual cleanse but it is vegan and only 70 calories!). For snacks here and there, I had some plantain chips and hummus, plus a piece of rosemary toast with hummus (I rarely eat bread, but this was the last piece, and it's not something I can have on the cleanse so I was indulging...). Did you notice a theme here - hummus, hummus and more hummus! And raw balls. Wonder if I should try them together? Ha.

Night!

My 30 days of vegan living

Ingredients for Thai "peanut" sauce vegetables from Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr. Yum! Copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp

One of the gifts I'm giving to myself in 2012 is starting it off with a vegan cleanse. In other words, I'm going vegan for at least 30 days, and (though this isn't tied into veganism, per se). I'm also giving up refined sugars, processed foods and all meat, milk and animal products. I actually started two days ago in a pre-cleanse phase, where I'm still drinking coffee and soy creamer (which has sugar and is processed) but I have not totally decided whether I can handle giving coffee up altogether or not... I am a total addict. Which is, of course, all the more reason to give it up but you know, what can I say.

I often start a new year doing the Master Cleanse (the lemonade thing - I blogged in 2010: foodie blog one, in 2008: I give up, in 2006: weirdest place to put cayenne pepper, and visions of hamburgers dance in my head and sisterhood of the lemonheads) and I may well add a week of doing the master cleanse here at some point. But I found when doing it that I would lose some weight and then gain it right back. I don't want this to be about weight per se, but about a commitment to healthier eating. Don' get me wrong, I eat generally fairly healthy but I also have a major sweet tooth and I use food as comfort when I am upset, as a lot of people do - and the food I gravitate to when upset includes... ice cream, queso dip, chocolate, and other sweet stuff. I want to see how my body responds to really cutting out the dairy, and cutting way back on sweets (especially with sugar and corn syrup - apparently brown rice syrup and other more natural sugar sources affect our body differently). I also already use Stevia, which is an all-natural plant-based sweetener with no calories. I use it in coffee and when I drink tea, tea, but never in cooking.

I started a healthy eating/vegan cleanse email list of friends for support and recipe sharing (if you want to join, let me know) and plan to blog a recipe a day, maybe including my meal plan in case others want an idea of what to do. There are two main books that will be my staples to follow: Crazy Sexy Diet by the inspiring 30-something cancer-survivor Kris Carr (who has incurable liver cancer but was able to stop its growth by changing her diet), and The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone who is a vegan and also includes some macrobiotic/vegan recipes which she calls Superhero recipes. Crazy Sexy Diet actually has a 21-day follow-along guide, that includes not only meal and recipe ideas, but inspiring messages and things to do that day, which I may actually try to do. I tried to do this once before but never completed it. She also has a whole website dedicated to this - Crazy Sexy Life - including a forum of people who want to interact, share recipe and health tips. I may explore that - better than time-wasting on Huffington Post or Facebook!

I'll share tidbits of wisdom from the two books or other info I gather over the next few weeks. One thing that Kris says is that she covers like 2/3 of her plate with vegetables (rather than beans or grains), and I think she tends to eat that much raw. I am really trying to eat more raw, but I'm not going overboard with the raw recipes. I'm just trying to eat more greens... Alicia, on the other hand, is all about macrobiotic which is grains and beans and of course veggies. So I'll have a sort of mix of those two. I tend to love salad but be too lazy to make it, so inspired by my triathlete warrior woman friend Jen (who I saw in Miami recently but didn't include a pic, and in 2007, after my Galapagos trip), I made what she and her family call "a bowl of health" - just a giant salad with whatever they feel like tossing in - greens, of course, and then nuts, raisins, olives - whatever. Then it's already pre-made and you can just eat every day until it's gone. It probably helps if others in your household will eat it, but my kids hate a lot of the veggies I put in things (in fact, they call most of my food "unidentifiable vegetable mush"), so... I will have to ingest it all myself! This is the Bowl of Health I made yesterday:In it, I put spinach, romaine lettuce, chopped leek greens, pumpkin seeds, Kalamata olives, tomato, cucumber, green onions, capers, carrots, snow peas, and black & tan Gomasio (black and tan sesame seeds with sea salt). Oh that reminds me, I have some celery in the fridge I need to use. I'll have to add that in too. This doesn't have any salad dressing, so you just add that onto each bowl. I will probably be mostly using some vinegar and oil combo or homemade dressings to keep it vegan/healthy/natural, but do whatever you like!

I was on a kick last night, and also made Simple Mediterranean Salad with capers from the Crazy Sexy Diet book - and combining that with the 'bowl of health' - ZOMG - yum! The mix of apple cider vinegar, olive oil & I added a dash of lemon juice - was just scrump-deli-icious. The image is before I mixed it all up - not that pretty but soooo tasty!

Simple Mediterranean Salad with Caper Berries (serves 2)

1 cucumber, sliced in thin rounds (peel if not organic)
3 roma tomatoes, sliced thin (or any kind, really...)
1/4 cup red onion, julienned/sliced thin
1/4 cup caper berries
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp fresh basil, chiffonade (OK I didn't know what this meant, so looked it up - it means cut into thin strips - you learn something new every day!)
1/2 tsp sea salt

I halved the recipe, basically, because I only had one (really a half!) tomato because I'd used the rest in my bowl of health. REALLY good! Oh I added a splash of lemon juice, also. I'll be making more of this fo' sho!

And though I teased you all with the totally amazing Thai peanut sauce veggie recipe experiment photo at the top of the post - you will have to come back tomorrow for that one! It even involves my first use of my dehydrator, which I got for my birthday this year.