Eat Simply, Eat Well

Healthy recipes & tips to help you live the good life. by Ann Plough

Why Meatless Monday Matters & Stuffed Roasted Red Peppers

April 27, 2015 by aplough

Stuffed & Roasted Red Peppers

Stuffed & Roasted Red Peppers

More and more every day: I believe food matters. I believe food is medicine. As Hippocrates said so many years ago: “let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.”

The wisdom of this short instruction rings truer than ever, now.

I have found that as I have shifted my own diet to shun junk food and processed food and “food-like substances” (a Michael Pollan phrase) and moved down a path toward cooking with and eating whole foods and real foods, something very interesting has happened.  I don’t crave candy, at all.  I find myself reducing the quantity of sugar called for in recipes because overly sweet stuff simply doesn’t taste good anymore. As I incorporate more and more plant-based recipes in my diet, too much meat makes me feel full and sluggish. I crave vegetables. A morning that doesn’t start with a big green smoothie (or a smoothie containing a lot of vegetables + some fruit, but not green) is a morning that feels a bit off.  My body is more in tune than ever with what good food is, and I’ve never felt better in my life. I indulge sometimes: dark chocolate, cookies and cakes that use healthy ingredient alternatives are still part of my diet, and I’m happy to keep it that way…

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Filed Under: Main Course, Meatless Monday Tagged With: meatless, Red Peppers, vegetarian

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad in a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

April 24, 2015 by aplough

I love Spring for many reasons, but top of the list is that fact that all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, my local grocery starts offering produce that looks good, tastes great, and has a good chance of having been grown this year.  After the citrus and pomegranates fade away, there is this dead zone that is filled only by the piles of red and green cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and all the root vegetables you can think of from carrots & onion to by-now-very-tired-looking kohlrabi. Now I love all of those vegetables and have happily been eating them all winter long. But at this point, it feels like I have been eating them all. winter. long.

But Spring is here again, and now I’m picking up spring onions and radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes.  I know that here in Finland, most of the stuff is imported from our friendly neighbors in the south (Thank you Italy and Spain) and those which aren’t are green-house grown this time of year. But I’ll take it. And I’ll chop it.  And layer it right into the salads my body seems to be craving.

Tomatoes in particular have been catching my eye, which is funny, because I steered completely clear of this during my entire childhood, unless they were cooked into a sauce of sorts. Seems those watered down, somewhat mealy, tasteless beefsteak tomatoes of my childhood were not really representative of what a tomato could be, and now their place in my faded memory has been usurped by a smaller, flavorful red orb that is the cherry tomato and occasionally by tomatoes of different colors: orange, yellow, purple, black.  I remember seeing a cover photo on a Martha Stewart Living magazine, where a giant baguette had been cut in half and made into a giant bruschetta topped with a rainbow of tomato slices. It was so beautiful. And so far from the types of tomatoes I’d seen.

I then tried to grow tomatoes here in Finland.  I bought 6 packs of seeds with different, colorful varieties. I started them indoors and nursed them through the chilly months of late winter and early spring; repotted them as the weather got warmer, and planted them with high hopes in my garden.  Oh, I got tomatoes, but none that ripened on the vine. And while the virtues of green tomatoes have been touted over and over again, I’d rather have mine turn the color advertised on the seed pack.

Now I buy them, though I still have dreams of succeeding at growing my own, much as my sister-in-law S- did last summer: she planted them against her garage wall where the sun beat down all day in an unusually hot Finnish summer, and we ate them all Summer long and into Fall when she finally had to harvest what was left as the cold rains began.

I picked up a huge pile of tomatoes in the grocery store, and have been snacking on them and popping them into salads all week long. Pablo Neruda would understand. In his Ode to Tomatoes the Chilean poet and ambassador closes the poem this way:

….

it’s time!

let’s go!

and upon

the table,

belted by summer,

tomatoes,

stars of the earth,

stars multiplied

and fertile

show off

their convolutions,

canals

and plenitudes

and the abundance

boneless,

without husk,

or scale or thorn,

grant us

the festival

of ardent colour

and all-embracing freshness.

excerpt from Pablo Neruda Selected Poems, edited by Nathanial Tarn, (c) 1970

And so the tomato season begins.  Here’s a salad to help you celebrate.

Tomato, Avocado & Cucumber Salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomato, Avocado & Cucumber Salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad with a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

2 avocados, peeled and cubed

2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and cut in half

1 large English cucumber, rinsed and cut into large dice

2 spring onions, sliced thinly

2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Combine the vegetables in a mixing bowl.  In a small bowl or cup, whisk together the vinegar, honey, salt and pepper until the honey dissolves.  Add the olive oil and whisk vigorously to create an emulsion.  Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss well.  Allow the salad to sit for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors meld.

Serves 4 as a side dish

Did you like this recipe?  Please let me know in the comments below – I’d love to hear from you!

 

Filed Under: Salad Tagged With: leafy greens, vegetarian

3-Ingredient Ice Cream (non-dairy)

April 23, 2015 by aplough

3-ingredient-ice-cream

Can you feel the summer coming on in?  Can you? Oh yes. The weather is heating up, even way up here in the cold, dark north, where it isn’t really so dark anymore at all.  Nowadays the sun rises just before I do, 5:37, and sets just before 9:00 PM.  There are a lot of productive daylight hours available, plus a few extra for the slacking (ahem) research I do on social media.  And the temperatures are rising, too: a balmy 11°C today!  Things are definitely improving.

I was working from my living room today, with the sun beaming in through the windows making it feel like a summer day in July. I happily went to change into something lightweight with short sleeves. I realized that now is the perfect time to share with you the simplest frozen treat you’ll ever be happy get your spoon into:  3-ingredient, non-dairy ice cream.

A couple of years ago, frozen banana ice cream hit the blogosphere and food story headlines as the best thing since, well, ice cream itself.  It’s comprised of one ingredient: frozen bananas.  The bananas are blended up directly from their frozen state into a unbelievably sweet, creamy and delicious snack. You won’t believe there’s no added sugar, dairy, or anything dodgy.

This 3-ingredient ice cream takes that concept one step further by allowing you to create different flavors using banana as your base.  Feel free to play with this, but do get those bananas in your freezer right away so you can start by tonight, at least.

I suggest slicing the bananas before you freeze them as it makes blending them much easier.  In fact, if you have room in your freezer, spreading the slices out on a pan or plate not only makes them freeze faster, it also makes it faster to grab a handful, pop them in the blender, and get on with making this fabulous anytime treat.

Did I mention that this is a healthy indulgence?  You’ll get only natural sugars and good quality coconut fat as you consume one spoonful after the other, along with a good dose of potassium from the bananas and antioxidants and fiber from the berries (or other fruit you choose).  Sounds like the perfect post-workout snack to me!

3-Ingredient Non-dairy Ice Cream

2 frozen bananas (sliced before freezing)

2 cups of your favorite frozen berry or fruit (I used raspberry)

1 can organic coconut milk, 400 ml

Place all of the ingredients into a blender.  This works best if you have a powerful blender that can easily process frozen ingredients, but if you don’t, just stop the blender several times through the blending process, use a spatula to loosen and frozen chunks stuck near the blade, and blend again, until thick and smooth.

Now if you’re desperate for a cold treat, feel free to serve immediately and dig in.  It will be super soft but hard-to-resist-delicious. If you can stand to wait, though, you’ll get something even better, verging on sorbet.  It’s well worth the 3 or so hours it will take in your freezer to get there.

Serves 4.

Did you like this recipe? Let me know in the comments below and share with your friends!

Filed Under: Dessert, Snack Tagged With: non-dairy, vegan

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