Alvrez Alicia - Plant powered cooking: 52 inspired Ideas for growing and cooking yummy good food

Copyright 2017 Alicia Alvrez
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

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Cover + Layout Design : Elina Diaz

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Plant Powered Cooking: 52 Inspired Ideas for Growing and Cooking Yummy Good Food

ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-654-8, (ebook) 978-1-63353-530-5

Library of Congress Control Number:

BISAC - CKB086000 COOKING / Vegetarian

Printed in the United States of America

Animals are my friendsand I dont eat my friends.

George Bernard Shaw

Contents

Joy and Health

What is pure and natural food? The answer can be somewhat subjective, but it should be food grown without chemicals and not adulterated beyond whats possible in an average home kitchen. Labels on prepackaged foods are not reliable guides for healthy choices, making it tricky to navigate the grocery aisles. My best advice is to eat a wide variety of naturally grown, unprocessed foods, and pay attention to how your brain and body feel. The word organic is widely touted but I strongly suggest you trust but verify. Buy ingredients that you recognize from nature and cook your meals from scratch as often as possible. Make an effort to avoid highly process-altered, refined ingredients. Be moderate, balanced, and flexible. Trust your intuition and maintain a healthy curiosity about what you find. The best of all possible options is to grow your own in an organic garden out back. It will bring both joy and health.

If youre like most of us, you are aware that your energy levels and health could be improved by eating more vegetables. This book will help you learn to enjoy plant-based foodswhether you choose to eat this way all the time or just want to fill the rest of your menu with delicious and nutritious vegan foods. These recipes make up my suggested basic plant-powered repertoire, and can support a plant-based diet, but theyre also easily adaptable for omnivores and lacto-ovo vegetarians to serve with meat or dairy products. Avoid simulated meats or cheeses, though, since these products are frequently made of fatty and unhealthy ingredients and are often disappointing and leave you wanting to eat the meat to get the taste you were craving!

If youre watching your health and trying to prevent or reverse high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or looking for weight reduction, do your best to eliminate processed foods and focus on lots of leafy green vegetables and nutrient-dense whole foods. Digestive health is also very important so your system can absorb and use those nutrients. Fermentation improves the digestibility of many foods such as soybeans (miso, tempeh), milk (yogurt) and vegetables (sauerkraut). Fermented foods also provide probiotics, which help digest and utilize the other foods we eat and strengthen our immune system to fight disease. Living a plant-based lifestyle will definitely strengthen your immunity!

Another option to consider adding to your diet to amp up your plant-power quotient is raw and fresh juices. Fresh vegetable juice is an excellent way to consume a high dose of nutrients in one serving. Celery, cucumber, parsley, and dark, leafy greens are great choices. Limit higher-sugar vegetables like carrots and beets to add a dash of a flavor, rather than as a base. Ginger, apple, and lemon are great flavors too and enliven any smoothie or juice. Smoothies are a popular way to make a meal in a glass, but do note that most commercial protein powders contain unnatural ingredients. Stay organic with plenty of hemp seeds, nut butters, and spirulina to make high-protein smoothies.

Who knew good health could taste so good?

Once you convert to plant-power, you will become more aware of the seasons of the year. You will be shopping based on what is just harvested and also growing your own veggies will ensure you are living in tune with the natural world. A major cornerstone of a healthy diet is diversity. As much as possible, eat with the seasons, as Mother Nature intended. This adds a wider variety of nutrients from multiple sources, increasing your chances of getting everything you need. Fruits, nuts and vegetables that are in season are more delectable. Is there anything better than a fresh-off-the-vine heirloom tomato? How about a sun-ripened peach, dripping delicious juice all over your face as your eat it? Try to shop at farmers markets or join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, a local farm box subscription model), and try new greens, roots, squash, and other vegetables when you see them at the market. This is more complicated during the winter months for folks who live in cold climates, so we can only do our best. Consider canning or putting up some foods in late summer or early fall to get through winter (Winter is coming!) and just be reasonably mindful of the distance your food had to travel to get to your shopping cart. Fruit flown in from Australia in December might be something to pass up, but lettuce from the county next door is certainly something to be grateful for in the dead of winter. Some common weeds are actually highly nutritious herbs including dandelion, nettles, oat straw, red clover, and comfrey. All of these are also easily found at the nearby herb shops and are worth the effort of tracking down. The incredible wise woman Susun Weed offers easy instructions for brewing infusions on her website:
www.nourishingherbalinfusions.com .

If you restrict your diet, it is especially important to give special attention to particular elements that could go missing. For instance, vitamin B12 has no reliable plant sources. Strict vegans must supplement this necessary vitamin, preferably taken sublingually and alone (as opposed to part of a multivitamin). Methylcobalamin is the most absorbable form of B12. It may also be important to supplement vitamin D on a vegan diet. If inadequate iron is a concern, vegetable sources include beets, pumpkin seeds, legumes, sea vegetables, and dark, leafy greens. Eat these with vitamin C-rich food to increase iron absorption. Wholesome fats are very important to good health. They help you absorb certain fat-soluble vitamins and maintain healthy hormone levels, nerve function and brain development, among other purposes. Vegetable sources include avocados and unrefined coconut, olive, flax, hemp, and chia seeds, but it may be important to supplement DHA omega-3 fatty acids on a vegan diet. Quality vegan DHA supplements made from algae are available online, but some nutritionists do say that they must come from an animal protein such as fish to be useful to the body and nervous system.