October 3 Food

Lunch
Again, no breakfast.  If I felt truly hungry at breakfast, I would eat breakfast - but I don't.  Is Lunch looking familiar yet?

I started with a large bowl of mixed salad greens and spinach.






A scoop of brown rice on top.





Topped with last nights roasted squash dish.





Then added some mixed fruit/berries and a few walnuts, crushed.
Simple, quick, and effective.






Dinner

Dinner was fast and simple.  Brown rice with a steamed veggies and beans.  The veggies were carrots, green beans and yellow bell peppers.  As usual, these were placed on top of a large amount of chopped greens (salad greens and spinach)  On top were a few crushed walnuts.  I was hungry and ate quite a bit.

The steamer is a real time saver.  I wrote a review which you can find in this blog.  I also need to write a rice cooker review.  My conclusion - if you can afford it, get an induction model Tiger rice cooker.  If you can't afford it, get something like the Sanyo regular heating model.  It is important to have cookers with timers and a way to keep the food warm.

When I returned from orchestra rehearsal I was still hungry.  The rice was gone, so I warmed a sweet potato and had it with the left over veggies/beans, again with some walnuts on top.

Roasted Banana Squash and Beans

I know Bob gave you a teaser about tonight's dinner.  I invented this a few weeks ago when Bob wanted more beans in his meals.  I had never tasted banana squash until about a year ago and ever since then I've been a big fan of it.  This is my favorite way to enjoy it.  The aroma of the herbs (it's cooking right now...heavenly aroma from the kitchen) will keep you drooling while it cooks for 1 1/2 hours.  I use wine to roast it in rather than of course oil.  The wine caramelizes the vegetables giving them a delicious texture. This recipe is about as "gourmet" as I get.

One note about the squash, most of the time I can only get it already cut into quarters (banana squash is huge) with the seeds cleaned out, which is just fine by me.  (My idea of fast food)  I've bought it whole and it's a chore to clean, much like a pumpkin.  But when you can get it whole, it will last in the fridge for a good week if you have cut into it.  Uncut it lasts for several weeks.

Roasted Banana Squash, Beans and Veggies

Ingredients:
All vegetables to be chopped bite size
1/4 banana squash, washed, peeled and seeded
8 oz Portobello Mushrooms
3 large to medium heirloom tomatoes...but any kind of tomato works
1 large orange or yellow bell pepper
1 14 oz can of No Salt Red Kidney Beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup of red wine (Zin or Cab, but an oil and salt free veggie broth works also, though different flavor)
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme

Toss it all together in a large bowl then pour into a large roasting dish.  It will mound up pretty high, but as it cooks it will shrink some.

Bake/roast at 375 for 1 1/2 hours.


We'll serve this over a pile of fresh raw greens, usually spinach and steamed rice.  The heat of the veggies wilts the spinach just right.

Just before going into the oven.

A cleaned quarter of banana squash.

Squash chopped to bite sized.

Just out of the oven.  The beans are crunchy-chewy and everything else just melts in your mouth.

Bob's bowl with the steamed asparagus added and his walnuts.

You have got to try this.  It was fantastic if I do say so myself!

Bob says:
I have to take a demerit for the wine, even if cooked off.  But it's worth it.  This is a delicious dish, and would easily satisfy and impress guests.  I had mine over a large bed of greens, a scoop of brown rice, topped with fresh steamed asparagus and a few crushed walnuts on top.  With food like this, there is just no excuse to remain sick and fat on a SAD or VAD diet.

October 2 Food

Lunch

I wasn't truly hungry for breakfast, so skipped it.  A nice thing about 2 meals per day is it allows for more time for other activities.  There is little doubt my mind that I was used to eating in response to toxic hunger, which occurred when my stomach emptied and had an uncomfortable hollow feeling which would go away with more food.  The word "toxic" does not mean that anything dangerous was happening.  "Toxic Hunger" is a bit of a problematic term for me, although I now understand what Dr. Fuhrman was talking about.  You could probably think of a dozen other things to call it, but by whatever name, I am learning to distinguish it from true hunger, and it is an important concept to understand.  It just makes sense that it will be hard to lose weight if you never give the digestive system a break.

I do want to lose weight.  I will get some updated "before and after" pics up here, but when I was diagnosed with heart disease, I believe that I was pushing 260 pounds at times.  By doing the McDougall/ Esselstyn program, I got down to 190, and then settled around 195.  At 6'0" I felt much better and looked ok.  But my blood sugars are still too high, and Dr. Fuhrman makes a persuasive argument that, within reason, the slimmer the better.  I interpret Jeff to be saying the same thing when he talks about calorie restriction and the relevance of BMI.  I notice that I started last years October challenge at 198.  I am now 187 and have seen 186, so that has been a positive change.  I am hoping to take it further and will be interested to see how I do this month.  I really did not anticipate that I could get below 190, but with some of these new concepts, I have.

Today's lunch started with a large mixture of greens - iceberg lettuce and spinach.  Here is a picture on the chopping block.

Farley made another mostly raw salad.  In it red kidney beans, radishes, zucchini, yellow bell peppers,  celery, and cherry tomatoes.  Very similar to yesterday's lunch.

I top the greens with the salad and add a Japanese sweet potato.  Here is what ours look like.  They are baked in the mid 300's for about an hour and 20 minutes.  They are really delicious, and in effect serve as a salad dressing for me.  A bite of these sweetens up a lot of more bitter greens for a nice taste.  I only had one of the potatoes, LOL.  When there was room in the bowl, I also added a scoop of brown rice.

I also added about half of this fruit mixture - strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.  The whole thing was topped with about a tablespoon of ground flax seed and maybe 1/2 oz. of walnuts.  A delicious lunch.










For dinner, you and I will be in for a treat.  Farley is making a squash based dish inspired by a meal we ate with our friends f1Jim and wife.  It is nutritious, but a real treat, and more of a "recipe" dish that what I have posted so far.  It is a dish we serve when company comes, and it is very popular, yet completely low calorie density and whole plant food.  I really recommend that you give it a try.

October 1 Food

Lunch - October 1

Farley made a wonderful lunch today.  It was a variation on a theme of what has become my standard lunch - a large salad.  It starts with a very large serving of mixed greens - today consisting of salad greens and chopped spinach.


The greens were put into a large bowl, and had to be crunched to fit.






On top of that was a great veggie salad mix that Farley worked hard on for our first day of the challenge.  It seemed like there was some of everything in there.  Orange cherry tomatoes, zucchini, black beans, cauliflower, radish, celery, carrot, & yellow bell pepper.  Lots of chopping - thanks sweetheart.




Here is what one oz. of walnuts look like.  These were added to the mix.






On top  of all this was added a baked Japanese sweet potato.  These are delicious.  No dressing was necessary.  The bites of sweet potato and walnuts provided lots of wonderful taste.






Dinner Oct. 1
Not much to write here.  Went out for a 1 hour kayak paddle on the local lake.  Then I ate the same thing as lunch.  There was just enough and it tasted just as great.  No beverages today but water (that goes without saying in the future.  I'll list anything I drink other than water.)

October Unprocessed Food Challenge

With Farley's help, I intend to blog for a complete month everything I eat.  Pictures and recipes will be posted as well where necessary.  I will strive to make my diet really excellent, and in compliance with the teachings of my heroes - Drs. John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, and Jeff Novick.  Dr. McDougall is a legend.  Jeff Novick is/was my personal coach, and directly responsible for my health recovery.  Dr. Fuhrman is a brilliant physician whose ideas have recently helped me greatly.  I will try this month to eat a diet that would adhere to the teachings of all these great men.  Although each has slightly different ideas, there is a large area of common ground, and that is where I will try to stay.

In addition to posting each day's meals with pictures and recipes, I want to challenge myself (and you if you wish to join) to try some new things.  The main challenge is eat nothing but unprocessed and unrefined whole plant food.  This should be a revelation to anybody who has never tried it.  An additional challenge is to write down each day whatever refined or processed foods that you do eat.  This too could be a revelation.

I also will periodically address some concepts that have made a difference for me in my diet. Today's concept is what Dr. Fuhrman call "Toxic Hunger."  It is an important concept for me because, despite my excellent diet over the last 3+ years, my weight was still a bit higher than I wanted.  (194 pounds at 6'0").  My wife got to a very trim weight eating a more liberal diet then I did - but we both noted that I ate a tremendous quantity of food.  In part, I thought that this was a residual from converting to a McDougall/Esselstyn diet.  It was so important that I adhered completely that I made sure that I was never hungry so that I would not be tempted to stray.  I got used to eating a lot of whole plant food.

In his excellent book, "Eat to Live" (revised edition) Dr. Fuhrman distinguishes between Toxic Hunger and True Hunger.  Toxic hunger is felt mostly in the stomach often as an unpleasant sensation of emptiness, and can be accompanied by a feeling of shakiness or belief that blood sugar is crashing (which it is not).  However, this is not true hunger.  It is just the body shifting gears once the stomach is empty.

When the stomach empties, your body stops digesting food and does a number of other important tasks, such as detoxification.  During this time, you are operating on the food stores that you accumulated during the digestive cycle.  This is when you really burn fat and repair your body.

Many people, such as me, consider this empty feeling to be hunger, and indeed, eating dispels the unpleasant sensations.  I was in a cycle where I was constantly digesting food, because I always ate at the first sign of what I thought was hunger.

If you challenge yourself to skip a meal or two, you will notice that the unpleasant toxic hunger sensation subsides, and you can go for hours until you experience a different type of hunger, which is felt more in the throat.  It is not such an unpleasant sensation, but you are definitely interested in food.

For the last few weeks, I have been eating only when truly hungry.  My weight has dropped from 194 to 187 and I feel fine.  I no longer eat breakfast since I am not truly hungry when I awake.  Therefore, there is not breakfast listing for today.  For those who need breakfast, a great choice is oatmeal with some fruit mixed in (no soy milk or rice milk - that would be processed).

The revised edition of "Eat to Live" is such an excellent book that I would recommend everybody get a copy.  I really can't praise this book enough, and I will be discussing it more as the month goes on.  So that is this morning's entry.  For those who do not participate in the McDougall forum, I recently posted some before and after pictures of my wife Farley, which shows what this diet can do.  The before picture is over 8 years earlier than the after picture, and this is the sort of change you should expect if you are unhealthy and overweight.

Curried Chickpeas

It's nearly summer but you would never know by our recent weather.  It's been raining, hailing, thunderstorming and today we had funnel clouds, one touching down a ways north of us.  I wanted something hot, filling, satisfying and of course spicy.  Beans are always the first thing I think of.   Wanting curry flavor, it just took on a life of it's own.  Here is what I ended up with...

Ingredients:

1/2 onion diced
1 orange bell pepper diced
1 15 oz can of salt free garbanzo beans drained and rinsed
1 8oz package of green beans...I like the "haricort vert", the skinny French ones, chopped into bite size pieces
1 24 oz can of Trader Joe's whole Roma Tomatoes with juice.  Chop or cut into more manageable bite size chunks
1 heaping TBS Curry Powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/8 - 1/4 red cayenne pepper
Red wine for sauteeing  Cab or Zin

In a large pan sautee in 1/4 - 1/2 cup of red wine the onion and bell pepper until thoroughly cooked, about 10 minutes stirring occasionally.  Add chopped green beans and garbanzos.  Cook about 10 minutes more stirring.  Now add all the spices and heat through for about 1 minute stirring. Now add the tomatoes and juice.  If getting too dry at any time add more wine to the pan and if you like to your glass:)  This is best if you let it simmer for about 2 hours for the spices to blend and lose that rawness.  Stir about every 15 minutes.

I served this over brown rice with steamed spinach.   We also had little baked Sierra Red potatoes with it.  This was a hit with Bob too.

Potato Spinach Pleaser recipe

This is one of those accidental recipes of mine.  I had a hankering for steamed spinach the other night.  I also had a few heirloom tomatoes and Bob had just baked a few small potatoes.  Well that was a no brainer.  I steamed the spinach and chopped tomatoes in my wonderful West Bend Steamer for 12 minutes.  Layered brown basmati rice, cubed baked potato and the spinach and tomatoes.  It was so good Bob told me to write this down for the blog.  I seasoned mine with Tobasco Sauce as usual.  Balsamic vinegar would be great also.  Bob just likes his as is.  The flavor of the tomato made Bob feel like he was enjoying a very healthy pizza!  Give it a try.