Healthy recipe Thursday

My friend Posie asked me for a recipe after I wrote about my lunch a few days ago. The recipes I use now are a bit more basic because, in the last year, my diet has changed quite a bit.

April of last year: diagnosed with cancer
June: cut out dairy and meat (except I ate fish once a week)
July: Started cutting out liquor
September: Liquor/fish were gone
January: cut out flour products (I'll eat them once a week) and eat brown rice, barley, millet, oats, etc..
January: cut out white/brown sugars...started looking up what was in my beloved Starbucks drinks
March: limited fruits to rarely because a banana can have 30g of fructose in it! Began actively eating more broccoli/cauliflower/kale/bok choy.
April: limited caffeine and soy milk (soy in it's purest forms: miso and tofu are still great according to recent medical journals.)

Even though, I have been much less active because I hurt my back, my weight is still as low as ever. Eating like a well-rounded farm animal is totally my secret to weight loss (and Kill looks even better than me)!

Back to the task of recipes, this is a super basic recipe that you can mix with anything.

Brown rice and red lentils

Ingredients: 

1 cup brown rice (sifted, soaked and drained)

1 cup lentils (any colour will do, sifted, rinsed)

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp salt

Water

• Take 1 cup brown rice (I prefer short grain) and put it in a colander or strainer. Rinse it and then pick out any shrivelled or funny coloured grains (I bet you'll find 5 or 6). Soak lentils in 2 cups water for an hour or more. 

• Take 1 cup lentils and do the same as the rice, except that you don't need to soak them. Christina Pirello says that they don't take longer to cook if you don't soak beans and that soaking actually contributes to farting (Cooking the Whole Foods Way, 2007)

• Get rid of the soaking water, put rice and lentils in a rice cooker (I got mine at T&T Asian market for $34.99) with water filled up to the 3 line in your rice cooker.

• Cook for about 50 minutes but your rice cooker should cook uninterrupted until it senses the water is gone. Once it's close to done or after it beeps I put in about a Tbsp of masala mix from Superstore and 1 tsp of extra turmeric for colour, about 1/2 tsp of salt. Stir it in.

• Eat this alone, in a wrap, as a cold rice salad or put it in a squash soup. It's super versatile and if you don't like curry then don't put it in :).

*If you use a pressure cooker or a pot then don't despair! I haven't made it using those methods but I will and then I'll update the recipe or if you make it then please send me the times and liquid amounts.

Tricks of a vegan foodie

I'm posting nice and late today because I spent the day relaxing :). Today, I took my pills and was pleasantly surprised to find so many left-overs in our fridge for lunch.

You may know that Kill and I went vegan about 1 month after I started chemo, although, I still ate fish for months afterward because I'm a tough sell. The best thing about being vegan is that I didn't gain the 20 pounds or get the constipation that comes from chemo (too much information?) Now my weight has stayed down (something, I think, benefits many illnesses) and when I tried on wedding dresses last week I fit into a sample size. Now, I know that I'm gloating but that feeling was brand new for me, seeing as I was always a little fleshy prior to my diagnosis. Not fat, but a consistent size 10/12 and with periodic turkey neck in photos.

So why am I torturing you with this info? There are some tricks I use to eat just enough food to be full. I bought cute salad/dessert plates and we only use those for our meals. We use a full size plate as a platter. I don't warm up extra food anymore because then I feel I should eat it (or it will go bad). I drink water before I eat.... actually, I've started drinking mostly water. I was inspired this Christmas when I was at my grand parents house and the lovely man who runs Mountain Equipment Co-op in Calgary told me that he drinks water and... only water. At the time, I thought he was strange but the idea percolated in my mind for a few months. Water has no negative impact and it helps everything in me work. I still drink herbal tea (my favourite) and the occasional soy/almond beverage but less than before*. We've also started using small spoons to eat with instead of large ones. Every little bit helps right?

Today, I put my delicious lunch: 2 small pickles, 2 carrots, herb salad with balsamic vinegar, brown rice and lentil curry and half of a bean cake in some flat bread on a small plate. Then I took a picture of it next to a big plate, I measured the plates (8 inches and 11 inches), I moved all my food onto the bigger plate, I moved my food back to the small plate, I realized that I'd now dirtied 2 plates and have no dishwasher, I was then tempted to lick the big plate clean and put it back in the cupboard but I decided not to be disgusting so I washed it by hand. What  had I learned? I would have eaten more if I had more space on my plate, a few more carrots, extra rice, etc..

Why does tricking yourself work so well? I don't know, but I do it all the time by smiling, humming and telling myself "good job". I trick myself into feeling good and hell, it's working.

*note: don't take your pills with anything but water, a clever pharmacist taught me that last week. It turns out that some medications can be rendered 50% less effective by doing that!!