some things I made this week

Here are two of my favorite recipes from the week. As expected I did eat some delicious food on my day off with Rubin, but mostly I did stick to my Eat More Plants plan.

Sweet Potato Shephards Pie
The crust: 1 sweet potato, steamed, peeled and mashed

The filing: Corn, black beans, fire roasted tomatoes, one zucchini, cup of  plain yogurt

I put sautéed the filing in a cast iron pan and when cool, added the plain yogurt and spread the potato over the whole thing. I made this the night before; come dinner time, I cooked it uncovered at 350 until heated through.

It was good hot topped with grated cheese, and good cold the next day for lunch. I just took some out of the freezer for Monday's lunch, and I'm excited about it.

Frijole Mole
I got some less than perfect green beans from my co-op's kitchen basket. I adapted this dish --and borrowed the clever name-- from a Barbra Kingsolver recipe. If you haven't yet read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  you should.

So I steamed a handful of the green beans and threw them in the food processor with one green onion, some cilantro, garlic powder, lime juice and salt. Avery helped and really went crazy with the lime juice, and it was delicious. I served it with pretzels because it was a Friday and my cabinets were looking a little sad.

Health Kick

So I've been aggressively trying to eat better. I ate pretty healthy to begin with, but I can always do better. I'm not going anything: gluten free, or raw, or vegan, or all organic. Just trying to eat more fruits and veggies, and eat less empty calories, less sugar, less carbs, and less meat. I am, however, not giving up my morning coffee. No way.

I felt the best way to do this was somewhat drastically to detox and reset my batteries.  On Thursday I ate six apples and a spinach/carrot/cabbage salad. On Friday, I ate four apples, more salad, fajita veggies and some chili beans. I passed up cheese, brownies, and ice cream. This is serious.

Since then, I've been pretty good. I did have some dry cereal in a homemade snack mix, half a veggie hoagie, and a bit of chocolate pudding (on apples slices!) this weekend, but other than that it's been fruits, veggies, a few legumes, seeds, and plain yogurt, and lots and lots of water.

This new "health kick" as my mother would call it has required me to get more creative with my snack making. I busted out the dehydrator and have been running it at a good clip. I've made a lot of dried fruit, various flavors of fruit leather (mmmm sweet potato apple), dried peppers for seasonings, and kale chips.

My hand down favorite has been zucchini chips. I've had to exercise serious restraint on the second batch after I consumed the first batch (with a little help from Avery) in one sitting.

I sliced a few zucchini  into 1/4 inch rounds and piled in a bowl. I'm sure they would be fantastic spritzed with some olive oil and salted, but I mixed some nutritional yeast with salt and chili powder. Squirted in some line juice then added water to make a paste. That got poured over the zucchini. I had read they are best dehydrated at 115 for 30 hours, but I wanted them by the morning, so I did 135 over night and they were OMG good.

I'm not being super strict or self judging over this. Rubin and I are playing hooky tomorrow to have a grown up day, and I'm planning on eating something delicious as well drinking a cocktail or two. The rest of the weekly meal plan, however, is comprised of mostly things that very recently used to be a plant.