Thursday, November 18, 2010

Two Wobblies and a Winner

The other day I tried a couple of recipes from my new Moosewood Lowfat Favorites book, and I'm sorry to say they're not that great, though I will make use of the leftovers of one when I'm hungry and need to fill up with "beans and greens," and the other was definitely better the next day.  I tend to find that with some of these nutritarian recipes--I don't enjoy them a lot the first day, but the leftovers are fine.  Maybe it's overexposure to all the ingredients while preparing the food, maybe it's a need for the flavors to meld . . .

Black-Eyed Peas 'N' Greens <--The discussion on the page where this recipe is linked pretty much explain the problem--dry and kind of bland.  Scallions on top and the malt vinegar I tried help somewhat.  But I think the real thing to do with the leftovers is to make this:  Black-Eyed Peas and Greens Soup.  In a nutshell, add water, tomatoes, and oregano and see where to go from there.

Baked Sweet Potato Salad  except that I used butternut squash, which has half the calories and none of the fiber of sweet potatoes--so pick your poison/magic. :-)  This is a beautiful salad and definitely better the next day, and the book suggests either the dressing on this link or a curried mango yogurt dressing, which would be sweeter but I'm not sure better.  It was just not too inspiring. The Cilantro Lime Yogurt Dressing is very promising for other purposes, too--I look forward to using it later.

But here's a real winner, thanks to my friend Marci:

McDougall's Curried Swiss Chard Soup
This quick soup of leek (or onion), broth, tomatoes, white beans, fresh ginger and curry powder (I used McCormick's red), and fresh Swiss chard (I used red) is really wonderful. Half the recipe is a BIG bowlful for a nutritarian lunch, including two cups of chard and 3/4 cup beans. EXCELLENT.

Dr. McDougall has a lot of the same approach as Dr. Fuhrman, except McDougall emphasizes using grains central to the diet and eliminating nuts and not allowing any animal products, if I've got that straight (and am not mixed up with Esselstyn) . So stricter in some ways, easier in some ways, but with a lot of overlap, so the recipes work well both ways.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review.I have the Moosewood book but haven't used it yet. I will try the chard soup first.

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  2. Thanks for giving me a shout-out for the Curried Chard Soup. I am actually making this for dinner tonight, but not sure how it will go over with other family members. I think you are right about the flavors needing to meld together when having leftovers the next day. I liked the chard soup better each day it had sat in the fridge.

    And she is right about the Sweet Potato Salad being beautiful. I saw it with my own two eyes and it had a wonderful combinations of deep colors. And tasted good too.

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I'd love to know what you think of these or if you have suggestions for improvements!