Luscious Tomatoes

and other veggies too. While I certainly try, I cannot possibly eat all of these tomatoes. Even after multiple pasta sauces, roasted vegetable ratatouille, minestrone soup, fresh tomato and cucumber salad, and fresh tomato slices on ... everything. I am thinking of a roasted tomato garlic purée ...











Recipe: Roasted Tomato Garlic Soup

1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled

8 (approx.) medium tomatoes, preferably home grown

5 cups water or stock, divided

1 Ω teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

4 medium onions, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley, for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.


2. Quarter the tomatoes and place them in a shallow roasting pan. Add the peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle with approximately 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add 3 cups of the water/stock. Sprinkle with the thyme, pepper, and salt.


3. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 60 minutes, stirring once during the baking.


4. Remove the foil, stir again, and bake for another 30 minutes.


5. While the tomatoes and garlic are baking, heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a soup pot. Add the sliced onions, cover and cook over medium heat until tender and lightly colored, about 15 minutes.


6. Add the remaining 2 cups of water/stock to the onions and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes.


7. When the tomatoes and garlic have finished baking, transfer them to the soup pot. Using a stick blender, purÈe the soup until smooth.


8. Adjust the seasonings, ladle into soup bowls and sprinkle each bowl with fresh parsley.
   

6-8 servings.

Sassy Sorrel

I confess that I had never heard of sorrel until I picked up a couple plants at my local nursery to add to my nascent vegetable garden. Sorrel has a lemony tartness that startled me and I started searching for interesting recipes. I currently have two favorites: Sorrel Soup and Sorrel Salsa, both from Rosso and Lukins New Basics Cookbook. I modified the Sorrel Soup to make it vegan (substitute olive oil for butter and use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock), but the salsa recipe is already vegan-friendly. The soup includes onions, garlic, sorrel leaves (of course), stock, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. It’s a purée and can be served hot or cold (I prefer hot). The salsa is great for a party appetizer (serve it with crackers) or to accompany fish (uh, sometimes I eat fish). It is simply made with sorrel leaves, chopped tomatoes, red onion, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

And for a literary reference, in Émile Zola’s Germinal: ‘Oh, the soup!’ said Maheude wearily, ‘that means picking sorrel and pulling some leeks . . .’ (’Tis incubating in the Book Club Possibility Bin.)
Recipe: Sorrel Soup

Load Up Yer Plates: Update on the China Study

It’s been since September 6th since I embraced a plant-based diet, avoiding meat, dairy, eggs, and cheese. In general, I love it. I feel great. Eating vegan definitely gives you more energy. (This isn’t strictly a vegan diet, but it’s close. Vegan allows sugar and flour, whereas The China Study diet restricts grains and flour to whole grains and says to minimize sugar.) I like eating all that fruit and vegetables. I’ve discovered some great new recipes (here’s one for Mexican Squash Stew that’s wonderful) and I’m more apt to buy vegetables that I don’t typically eat (Swiss chard, different kinds of squash—including butternut squash).

Breakfast had the most changes for me, since my usual meal included cereal and milk and coffee with cream. I fix myself oatmeal most mornings. (I still drink coffee, but now I drink it black and only drink one cup, since I don’t like the taste as much as coffee with half and half.)

What do I miss? I don’t miss any one thing terribly. But I love to cook and some of my most favorite dishes are on the avoid list: lasagna, mashed potatoes, oven roasted whole chicken, a dessert or two (homemade pies, breads).

So, I think I’ll still fix these wonderful dishes every once in a while. I figure if I eat vegan most of the time, that a slip into the world of the forbidden is still a significant improvement over how I was eating before.

I’ve been spreading this resource—The China Study—and am getting feedback from friends of friends and relatives of relatives (and friends of relatives and relatives of friends) that this is definitely an embraceable life style. People feel empowered when they can ignore TV ads that make up diseases and symptoms just to sell you a drug that will make you take yet another drug to counteract side effects.

Thanksgiving is coming up and I plan on serving turkey. But hey, cranberries, squash, fresh green beans are all doable within the framework of the China Study guidelines.
Recipe: Mexican Squash Stew

Eating Right: Why We Should Care

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health. Benbella Books, Dallas, Texas, 2005.

It’s difficult to summarize in a blog entry the scientific base, the global implications for health, and the exciting conclusions of this absorbing text. So, I’ll truncate the premise (most Americans are subject to diseases of affluence, including high blood cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, stroke, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s) and the conclusions (avoid these diseases and even reverse them by changing your diet to be plant-based and whole grain) and leave it to any interested reader to take the next step: Check out the reviews on Amazon for this book. You’ll read how other people have read this book and embraced its findings. People are excited that their lives have improved in just a short time.

If that gets you interested at all, then buy the book so you can explain your new dietary decisions to skeptical friends and family, or perhaps gain support from these newly indoctrinated allies. And, if you feel like you have “bad genes”—that you’re doomed to get breast cancer or a heart attack—this book will take weight off your shoulders (and other places) and help you confront your family history by trumping any genetic predisposition to these diseases with diet.

Chapter 12 culminates the pages and pages of study data and analysis and simply tells you how to eat. Good bye cheese, eggs, milk (all dairy) and meat. Hello all fruits and vegetables and whole grain foods. The challenge here is to find new recipes so that your eating is varied and satisfying. For people who have suffered through counting calories or weighing food portions, there’s none of that. Eat all you want of the plant-based foods. There’s no “empty calories” here. You’ll be satisfied and you’ll undoubtedly lose weight. But, this isn’t about losing weight. This is about feeling good, increasing blood flow, lowering cholesterol, and avoiding all the diseases mentioned above.

I’ve taken the plunge myself and embraced this way to eat. I’ll repost in a month (I’ve never made a promise in my blog before) to report on how I’m doing and feeling. I’ll leave you with a delicious recipe for Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup that uses the ingredients shown in the photo above.
Recipe: Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup