Navigating in a New Direction

Quote du Jour
               Always take a good look at what you're about to eat.
               It's not so important to know what it is,
               but it's critical to know what it was.
                                                              ~ Texas Bix Bender
                                                                 A Cowboy's Guide to Life

Cholesterol: It has a face 
Mark's amazing health improvement inspired us to revise our diet and rework our favorite recipes to eliminate cholesterol. 

Cholesterol is only in animal-products. At a McDougall Seminar, we learned an easy way to think about what ingredients to eliminate: If an ingredient has a face - fish, cow, chicken, alligator, you name it - it contains cholesterol.

If it has roots - plants, trees, apples to zucchini - it does not contain cholesterol!

Goal: Eliminate Ingredients with a Face from my 40+ years of Family Recipes
I wanted my husband to be able to eat everything served at our table. The goal, to eliminate cholesterol from my cooking by not using any product with a "face," set me on a new path, and has made a wonderful difference in our lives! It's been educational, provided lots of "food for thought," we've met interesting and fun people, and golly gee, I'm feeling great.

*Because changing any habit necessitates developing thoughtful strategies and support structures to succeed, we found cooking tools and appliances the do most of the work for us. We took field trips to non-chain restaurants to sample plant-based/vegan meals prepared by trained professional chefs, collected new recipes, purchased new herbs and spices, then finally applied our new knowledge to revising old family favorites. The result? Now our family's favorite recipes won't clog our arteries, and our food tastes even better!

We've changed what's served at our table, and now we're bound to living this plant-based life where ever we go. Hence this blog...stay tuned!

*This paragraph is from Our Daily Bread, Our Recipe Repertoire Revised with Strategies for Daily Plant-based Home Cooking, Hilma and Mark Jones, 2013, page 10.

Recipe du Jour
My daughter-in-law, an excellent and adventuresome cook, sends this link for
Potato Latkes along with these notes:

 

"potato latkes - ended up being more like hash browns for us - but we were able to use leftover cilantro (and even preserved them by drying cilantro in the oven) - gave a great texture"

Link: Cooking with Siri: Vegan Potato Latkes

 

Vegan Potato Latkes (Potato Pancakes)

Makes around 10 small pancakes

Adapted from Vegnews

Ingredients

2 big potatoes (~ 500 gms)
1 small onion, grated
1/4 cup all purpose flour
few tablespoons of chopped coriander/cilantro
salt - to taste
(Optional spices) - 1 tsp cumin powder, 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp coriander powder
few Tbsp of oil, for shallow frying

Preparation

1. Peel and grate the potatoes. Squeeze out excess liquid from the potatoes. Place the grated potatoes in a bowl and add grated onion, flour, cilantro, salt, cumin powder, chili powder and coriander powder. Mix well. Don't add any water.

2. In a skillet, add a Tbsp of oil. Take a heaping tablespoon of batter and flatten it before gently placing it in hot oil. Make three or four more potato pancakes and add to skillet without crowding pan. Cook on low-medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

3. Repeat with remaining potato mixture, adding more oil as necessary. Remove cooked potato pancakes to paper towels to drain excess oil. Transfer to an ovenproof platter (if serving a little later) and keep warm in oven until all pancakes are cooked. Serve.