Tag: whole food

Simple Weekday Meals

Chef Kim1 Comment on Simple Weekday Meals

These are a few of the meals I made this week that I had not planned out. It was a couple days where I was busy or outside planting  and when dinner rolled around I had to decide what I could make with what was on hand. These were pulled together in under thirty minutes each. I also made them on separate days. (I’m actually more comfortable making up meals with what I have than planning out a shopping list for specific recipes.) So I had a variety of fruits and vegetables and greens, a bag of kelp noodles, a can each of fire roasted tomatoes, artichokes and chickpeas, and some Sami’s Bakery Lavash which is like flatbread, but GF.

This is what I ate:

  • Veggie Roasted Flatbread – lavash topped with pesto, onion, mushroom, peppers, artichokes and spinach – Roasted for 10 minutes (not pictured)
  • Large mixed green salad with pineapple, orange, almonds and pumpkin seeds
  • Orange, pineapple, banana, mixed greens and protein smoothie with granola and seeds on top (not pictured)
  • Cold tomato soup with zucchini noodles & Hummus lettuce boats on the side
  • Asian Peanut Kelp Noodles (Raw Pad Thai)
  • You wont believe it – Ice “cream”

Tomato Soup with Zucchini Noodles

  • 1/2 large zucchini, spiralized or sliced lengthwise and then cut into noodles
  • I can fire roasted tomatoes
  • 1 1/2 cups of vegetable broth or water
  • 1 tablespoon of tamari or Braggs Aminos
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon of honey

Blend everything except zucchini in a blender and pour into serving bowls. Top with zucchini noodles.

Hummus

  • 1 can chickpeas, pour the chickpea water into a bowl and save for “ice cream”
  • 3 tablespoons of tahini
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon of cumin
  • 1/2 tablespoon of coriander
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons water

Combine everything in a blender or food processor and mix until a smooth paste is formed. Scoop onto a plate and drizzle with a little more olive oil and grind some black pepper over the top. Serve with lettuce leaves. (you could add assorted vegetables and chips to the plate for dipping.)

Asian Peanut Kelp Noodles

  • Use a variety of vegetables and slice thin. I used, zucchini, mushrooms, peppers, jicama, spinach and broccoli stems.
  • 1 bag kelp noodles

For the peanut sauce, combine the following in a bowl and stir well or blend together and pour over veggies and noodles:

  • 1/2 cup organic peanut butter, I had crunchy (sub in almond or tahini)
  • 1 tablespoon tamari
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1/2 clove garlic
  • 1 inch ginger, peeled and minced
  • 1/4 cup water, maybe more
  • 1 teaspoon honey (optional)

You Won’t Believe It – Ice “Cream”  – This is pretty amazing and delicious, but hard to wrap your head around. The base of this dessert is chickpea water! also known now as Aquafaba, (water of the bean)

I made a large batch with about 2 cups of the chickpea water, but if you just have the water from one can these amounts should work.

  • 1/2 -3/4 cup chickpea water
  • 3 tablspoons xylitol or raw sugar, ground fine
  • 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar or guar gum
  • 5 drops of vanilla stevia, optional
  • Flavoring: freeze dried strawberries, crushed and chopped dark chocolate  (add in your own favorite flavors – water content of fruit may cause crystals to form and stiffen up the texture. May be better to add fruit after base is frozen)

The chickpea water needs to be placed in a med to large mixing bowl. Using a hand or stand mixer, mix/whip the water until it becomes creamy white like whipped egg whites. The volume will about double. Add in your fine ground sugar/xylitol and guar gum and continue to whip until you reach a shiny white merengue with soft peaks. At this point, I stirred in my crushed strawberry powder and chocolate, and then poured it into a tight sealing container and put it in the freezer for at least four hours. OMGoodness! It is the lightest, creamiest ice cream ever and plant-based without nuts!

Spring Cleaning on the Inside

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Today was a wonderful spring day, warm and sunny!  An absolutely beautiful Resurrection Day. As we enter this time of year and see the new growth as flowers start to pop up and the grass turn green, we are usually so ready and eager to open the windows and start the Spring Cleaning ritual. We often take better care of our homes and cars than we do our body’s. So I want to encourage you to think about giving your body a good Spring cleaning on the inside!  You can get rid of the built up toxins and toxic emotions that are either stored away in fat cells or that consume our thoughts and energy like un-forgiveness and bitterness.  Overtime these toxins become like the dust that accumulates inside our homes and covers the beauty that is really there. You can get your lymphatic system moving in order to clear out the stagnation in your system that has been accumulating over the long winter. There are some pretty complex and expensive cleanse packages that you can purchase and join, but you may want to try a food cleanse first. Sometimes this is all you need to reset your body chemistry, but this outline is not all encompassing for what a cleanse can include. For a simple, yet effective, cleanse there are just a few recommendations to get you started. First, mentally prepare yourself to feel better. Get excited about how you will feel after a week: you will have more energy, spring in your step, better focus, less anxiety, less weight, cravings gone, better digestion, freedom from emotional holds, and you will notice the little things that seemed ‘normal’ will go away and you will feel great! So mentally, get psyched!  The next important step is to confront the stuffed emotions that you have not been willing to deal with and look to the resurrected Christ Jesus, for forgiveness and the ability to forgive others. There are documented studies that show how emotional barriers, unresolved issues and unrepentant sin can manifest as physical illness and disease. God wants you to be well.  Then take time to add in some deep breathing time during your day, and extra movement. Whether it is going up and down the stairs rather than using the elevator or taking a walk over lunch break, get out into the fresh air to stimulate your lymph by moving around and get oxygen into your lungs and into your cells for energy and renewal by doing some deep abdominal breathing. Our cells need oxygen more than they need food, so this is an important step to include for cleansing and overall better health. (You can live for 40 days without food, but only about 5 minutes without oxygen). To cleanse, you need water, so begin substituting pure water for your other drinks during the day. In order to get toxins out of the body, you need pure water to dilute and flush them from the body. Water is so important that many of the symptoms we attribute to illness are really our body’s cry for pure water. Try to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water. (i.e. if you weigh 150 lb. then drink 75 oz. of water).  Make food choices that will significantly decrease the energy demand on your digestive system. There are foods that are heavy and require a lot of energy in order to digest them; those are primarily meats and dairy products. There are foods that are very easily and quickly digested; those are fruits and vegetables. Nuts and seeds are important for their protein and whole food fats, but during cleansing, should be eaten in small amounts. Also adding smoothies and juices during this time will greatly increase your nutritional intake and ease digestion, which are both important factors that allow your body to release stored toxins. Also consider eating more of your food in the uncooked/raw state for the enzymatic action that provides, which helps the digestive process and decreases the energy required. The digestive process is helped immensely by taking a multi-strain blend of probiotics to increase the beneficial micro-flora of the gut, which is essential for nutritional absorption and immune function. Eating fermented foods is a means of getting this beneficial bacteria. Finally, rest is very important during cleansing and for overall greater health because of the repair and renewal of cells and tissues during our sleeping state. Rest is also a major influence on the hormonal balance and proper function in the body. All of these help the body to rid itself of unwanted and stored toxins, both physical and emotional.

Take action:

  1. Mentally get ready to feel great.
  2. Emotional release and forgiveness
  3. Breath deep and move
  4. Drink pure water
  5. Choose foods that facilitate cleansing and probiotics
  6. Rest well

Ideally you will see great results if you eliminate sugar, dairy, caffeine, alcohol, soy, meat, and gluten for a period of one to two weeks, while incorporating fresh smoothies with fruit and greens, big vegetable salads, soups and steamed/roasted/grilled vegetables. And you can eat as much of these as you wish. No counting calories is necessary. *Real whole food does not come in a box, so these chemical non-foods contribute to the toxic load on our systems, so cleansing foods do not include boxed ‘food’.

If you have any questions, ask away! If you decide to Spring Clean your Insides, drop me a comment and let me know how it goes.