Susan Palmieri, Ph.D.
© drsusanpalmieri.com
Photos © Susan Palmieri
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Photos and food styling: Susan Palmieri and Freepik
I am an expert on heart disease because I had it. I had been overweight /obese since the birth of my children 40 years ago. If I knew my health was declining to a point where I was at high risk for a stroke or heart attack sooner, I would have gone on this diet immediately.
I have a lifelong interest in health and nutrition and a Ph.D. in traditional medicine. I lived a healthy lifestyle that included regular and strenuous exercise. I had been a vegetarian, for the most part, for 50-plus years. My diet sometimes included wild-caught fish and I rarely ate red meat. I got protein from beans, grains, nuts, seeds, cheese, and eggs. For over 40 years, I counseled people with life-threatening and chronic diseases, using diet, lifestyle changes, meditation and yoga, and natural medicines as a supplement to their conventional doctor’s recommendations.
I was an advanced yoga practitioner and loved to dance. I hiked 5 miles every morning to train for a cross-country hike across northern Spain, which totaled 279 miles in 22 days, at 64 years old. My life plan included more crosscountry hikes, locally and internationally.
On the surface, I seemed like an ideal patient - I was active, meditated regularly, had a happy social life, and was (mostly) vegetarian for my entire adult life. I had annual blood tests to check on my general health. I saw conventional doctors regularly and did not take any pharmaceuticals.
My cholesterol was high, but my doctors never recommended any medication or therapy, and not once in my 40 years of increasing weight, did my doctors suggest I lose weight.
I found out that my cholesterol numbers were frighteningly high after being in an almost-fatal car accident, at age 68. My health was impaired on many levels; my organs took a beating, and my energy and mobility were not improving as fast as I wanted. My vibrant, healthy life was being challenged. In wondering why I was so tired, we ran many tests.
And there were the warning signs: high LDL and triglycerides, low HDL, large VLDL and HDL particle sizes of cholesterol, and a “non-alcohol induced fatty liver” - 30-60% covered in wax-like cholesterol. I’ll tell you more about these test types later.
By the way, many of these “markers” were not checked in routine blood tests or annual wellness exams. I asked my doctors to order more comprehensive tests, and I’ll suggest those solutions for you, too.
My angiograms and stress test showed that I was at high risk for a heart attack or stroke, and my cardiologist recommended a cardiac catheterization, with a balloon angioplasty (as long as they were in there.) I believe these procedures had a very low success rate in the long term, causing more problems than solutions. I wanted alternatives. I wanted cures. I wanted to reverse my disease.
There was a blockage in my left artery, a cardiologist wouldn’t say how much, just said he did not recommend any alternatives. As a doctor of traditional medicine, I had been working with the Life Extension Foundation for 40 years with access to a wellness team of experts in every field of medicine that could tell what natural remedies to try, with or without using pharmaceuticals, and the benefits of losing weight, exercise, and stress management.
If you search “Can you reverse heart disease?” or “How do you lower cholesterol naturally?” you will find thousands of scientific studies from all over the world. There are champions in this field who have shown proof that diet can reverse heart disease and remove arterial plaque.
That’s how this book and program came about. I struggled for the last 40 years with obesity, brought on by emotional eating, poor choices, and lack of consistency. Combined with a few life-threatening challenges to my overall activity level and stress, my health took a turn for the worse.
I started to write A Very Strict Diet to document what changes would be measurable on a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet with SOS (no sugar, salt, or added oil) every 90 days. Then, several stressful episodes happened. I decided to care for my mother in her final 6 months of life, and although I thought it would be wonderful for us, it was much harder than I thought. As her health declined, her constant care required most of my time and energy. I began to have anxiety and panic attacks and feared that while I was working to correct my blood pressure and high cholesterol, and not finished with the book, I would have some kind of health crisis.
I did.
Energized and motivated by the positive results after ninety days on the diet, I went on a family trip to the Great Smoky Mountains, and the combination of strenuous exercise, high altitude, and a long car ride without stretching could have contributed to my atrial flutter.
One morning, I saw my resting heart rate was 125; my normal rate was 52. I knew that 125 beats per minute was way too high, but I did not feel out of sorts.
I checked into a walk-in clinic, and they took me by ambulance to the nearest hospital. I was admitted for what turned out to be atrial flutter. They put me on a blood thinner and gave me an aspirin. They also wanted to keep me overnight.
In the morning, I was up at 6 am and checked my emails and texts. At 7 am, food service was available, so I called. When the operator said, “What can I get you?” the sounds that came out of my mouth were, “Ab blob blah blah..” and I thought, “Oh, God, I’m having a stroke.”
Interestingly, my inner mind was OK, as my thoughts and inner speech were normal, but I could not control what came out. I called the nurses’ station, and when they replied, “How can I help,” I blubbered for a few seconds and then struggled to say, “I…….think……I’m……having……..a….stroke.”
They rushed in and at that point, in under a minute from my first call to food service, I was able to speak. They did a CT scan and MRI and found no evidence of a blood clot or stroke, but called it a TIA - a transient ischemic attack. This happens when blow flow is interrupted to the brain, either by a clot or debris, and causes a temporary lack of oxygen.
After that, for the next 5 weeks, I had one episode per week of tachycardia - rapid heartbeat and very high blood pressure. Test after test once again found nothing, and it was all chalked up to a combination of “sometimes people just have high blood pressure,” and, “stress.” I was prescribed a blood thinner, aspirin, a beta blocker, and a statin. And so it happened, an advocate for natural therapy and disease prevention, and wellness author - got caught in the net.
And the net was cast wide. Doctors found a calcified brain tumor while looking for any evidence of stroke (no blood vessel damage found) and an area of narrowed ventricle in the heart that caused concern. I was seen by a carousel of specialists: I saw a neurologist because of the brain tumor; a cardiologist because of the narrowed blood vessel; a pulmonary specialist to determine if I had sleep apnea; a visit to the Sleep Center to test for apnea; an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) specialist because I did have mild apnea, but also a deviated septum; another cardiologist (because I didn’t like the first one, who wanted to do very invasive testing and procedures based on an echocardiogram that was blurry); an endocrinologist (that was at my request as I wondered if the stress was a causal factor) and every doctor wanted a 6 month follow up, which meant not only was I spending $50 co-pay for each visit, but at this rate, I would be spending the $125-250 co-pay for the scans they all wanted to see. I had 2 CTs, 2 MRIs, several ECGs, a stress test, and gave enough blood to serve the wounded. I spent my $5,000 deductible at the end of 2023 on tests and more tests.
This was not the way I wanted my life to go, but I experienced the American medical system in its glory. Yes, I am grateful that these intelligent men and women joined the ranks of medical doctors, but I ended up feeling like a textbook character and not a whole person.
I did follow their recommendations to take statins and blood thinners, but also checked in with my Life Extension Wellness Team and supplemented with life-saving food-based nutraceuticals. Some drugs use up vital nutrients and cause other problems, so I was diligent in giving my body the best nutrition and medicine for the time being.
In my first 3 months of A Very Strict Diet, my cholesterol was reduced by half - a huge drop - and I knew from the research that the rest of the benefits of reversing arterial plaque and staying healthy were achievable, in time. I chose to continue A Very Strict Diet in 3-month intervals, with the intention of getting back to a joyful, vital life.
After 9 months, my total cholesterol had dropped 128 points, and my blood pressure was 30 points lower! There were other markers measured on my cholesterol test - the size of the cholesterol particles, which would tell you how easily they can enter the blood vessels, and, the particle numbers. I’ll explain more about these in the Resources section, but to give you an example of the benefits of a Very Strict Diet, my LDL particle number was >2500 (normal is <1135) and in 9 months, was reduced by 1191 points. At the time of this writing, it is still 174 points too high.
I was able to stop taking a calcium channel blocker, and reduce my other medications by half; my goal is to eliminate them altogether. I have also had my cardiologist take off “Cardiovascular Disease” on my patient chart list of problems. I had to prove over a nine-month period, wearing monitors and having regular EKGs, that I did not have an arrhythmia. Without any evidence of heart problems, my TIA could have been caused by high altitude and strenuous hiking.
Since the start of a Very Strict Diet journey, my energy level has doubled. Along with a loss of an additional 18 pounds, I believe I reduced the body burden that was keeping me tired and at risk for stroke or another event.
I learned to ask my physicians for more comprehensive lab tests and exams that would show me how my pancreas, liver, and heart were functioning. Many times, I had to cite research that supported my desire to dig deeper or have referred them to the wellness experts, the associates who helped me over the thirty-plus years of my private practice in traditional medicine.
I will include a section on what tests to “order” if you would like specific health education for disease prevention. I will include who to call, free of charge, for information on your specific challenges.
Here are a few “Must-Reads” if you should choose to dig deeper into the research:
• The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness, by Douglas J. Lisle, Ph.D., and Alan Goldhamer, D.C.
• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure, by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.
• Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery, Dean Ornish, M.D.
• How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease, by Michael Gregor, M.D., FACLM
• The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health, by Thomas Campbell and T. Colin Campbell
There are also many documentaries that might change your mind about what you are eating:
• Eating You Alive: People Aren’t Living Longer, They’re Dying Slower, by EatingYouAlive.org
• Forks Over Knives, produced by Brian Wendel and Brian L. Wendel
• The Game Changers, produced by Netflix and directed by Louise Psihoyos
• What The Health, by A.U.M. Films, produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn
Good health makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t make a lot of dollars. Heart disease and cancer are the top two killers in the US, annually. Additionally, each year, 39,000 people die due to unnecessary surgery and other errors in hospitals.
A staggering 106,000 people die from adverse drug reactions. So, here’s the math (data is from 2022) Heart disease kills 652,486; cancer kills 553,888; and, modern medicine kills 225,000, for a total of 14 million, 31 thousand, three hundred and seventy-four people, every year.
A Very Strict Diet is a real commitment to using optimal nutrition to reverse and prevent health challenges. The basis for this diet is not to lose weight but to correct the imbalances that challenge our very life. And every person in the world, every mother, every doctor, every patient, every culture, every language, and every country in the world knows that “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.”
You might not like what you read. You may have more questions than answers, at first. You may want to read and study more, and you will argue with some of the guidelines. You might spend nights researching for yourself many of the “rules” this diet will advocate. But if you search deep down in your gut, you will hear your own soft voice saying (well, maybe some of your inner voices are screaming it) “The food I am eating now is not healthy for me.”
A Very Strict Diet was my first attempt to write a diet program, a requirement of my doctoral studies in nutrition and integrative medicine. In 2000, I wrote a plan that consisted of what most diets ask: restrict calories, eat less processed foods, eliminate sugar, and white flour, and exercise more.
I got credit for the coursework, but I’m glad I didn’t send the manuscript to a publisher. It wasn’t strict enough. My lab tests continued to show imbalances. As strict as this diet is now, the results are worth the sacrifices. You see, a vegetarian diet does not guarantee it’s healthy - I ate cheese and eggs - and that cholesterol contributed to one of my health challenges.
Doctors who have used this diet and kept records and lab results over a twenty-five-year period can prove that if you eat to save your heart, you save yourself from other diseases of nutritional imbalance - from strokes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, adult-onset diabetes, and mental impairment.
You get protection from a host of ailments that can be prevented and treated with food as medicine, including impotence, and cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, rectum, uterus, and ovaries. And if you eat for good health in this way, here’s the best side effect:
for the rest of your life, you’ll never have to count calories or worry about your weight.
A Very Strict Diet will ask you to eliminate processed foods, going on a vegan, plant-based, whole-food diet. It will recommend some version of regular fasting. It asks that you include exercise and stress management in your daily life. Let’s agree that food matters, and that we want to change our health for the better by savoring fresh, life-giving foods. Keep in mind, that you will choose to follow a Very Strict Diet for 90-day periods, and then recheck your cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure. The improvements you find will, hopefully, encourage you to continue for another 90-day period, and beyond.
We all know that preserved, fast foods are high in fat, sugars, salts, and rancid oils that contribute to disease. If you were disease-free, it would be easy to start fresh, choosing only organic or locally grown produce, eating grass-fed meat and wild-caught fish, and enjoying freshly pressed, high-quality olive oils, nuts, and seeds.
Ideally, we would learn to make desserts sweetened with raw honey or dates or use apples, sweet potatoes, and beets as part of our cake and cookie mixes. In our perfect world, we would not consume anything artificial, packaged, or expired.
But we are not disease-free, most likely, reading this has brought you to the table with some nagging health challenges. These are manageable, reversible, and preventable with diet.
The most common health complaint in America now is low energy. Whether you are a single mom, working two jobs and holding down a household, or a second shift dad, keeping a safe environment for his family and affording the luxuries of good education and travel, you are tired.
Perhaps you are in your 40s and 50s and just not feeling you have the same levels of super energy that you have been running on for decades. I am in my 70’s and still working to create a joyful, meaningful, and healthy life, filled with vital energy.
Low energy is a result of low immunity, lowered hormone levels, toxic cells, and tissue, and these diseases are accelerated by our lifestyle. Contributing to the problem is our air and water have been polluted, and our food supply has been treated with poisons and grown in soil that lacks nutrition.
Let’s look at some of the native cultures that live to 100 plus years of age, and what their elders are doing. How is their lifestyle so different from yours? These people instinctively know that when they are sick, they will not eat any food. They will fast on water only - not chicken soup, not white rice, not bananas. Just water. All animals do this.
These native people also eat fresh food and have times when they eat quite a little, and then, quite a lot. They are physically active all day and night. They sleep well; stress managed. They do not follow the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” plan, or “three meals a day” plan, because they are not asked to show up at the “work factory” at 8, stop at noon for lunch and leave at 5 to be home for dinner with the family. This is the American Diet, which many people call SAD - Standard American Diet.
Other cultures plant and eat foods that are native to their lands, grown in mineral-rich soils, replenished with organic material, and grown with seeds that have been used for centuries, which we now call “heirloom.” The seeds are so hardy that they contain alkaloids that deter pests, and some have saponins that also make it hard to digest if any animals or birds should try.
Native people know how to companion plant, that is, which plants, when grown together, strengthen each other, and which plants deter pests. Some flowers attract insects and they are used as pollinators; some plants smell so bad that bugs won’t spend any time munching the leaves or depleting the plant’s resources.
I remember walking across northern Spain and seeing a villager drying corn on the back porch of his home. This corn was so rich in antioxidant beta-carotene, that it was a deep golden orange.
This was a much smaller cob with dense kernels, definitely not GMO corn, and held its genetic properties of corn, Zea mays, as a whole grain, not as a starchy, carbohydrate vegetable, as it is prepared in America. We also have genetically altered corn to become a fuel source, distilled for ethanol or grain alcohol. If you grind this corn and add an acid, out falls the Vitamin C and what is left is a type of sugar, we call high fructose corn syrup. We also value corn as a feed crop for livestock over human consumption.
All of the major health organizations in America have advice to give on how to live longer with cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. The American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association will even suggest menus and food plans to consume after you are diagnosed. They are all asking you to cut down on your consumption of fatty meats, dairy, eggs, and poultry, but not to eliminate them.
They are trying to help you live longer with your disease, not prevent or reverse it.
However, if you take a world view, and disregard the American companies who profit so vastly from agriculture and pharmaceuticals, and listen to the World Health Organization, you might be shocked to hear that in 2015, after studying 800 published medical studies, from ten different countries, they determined that,
“ … processed
meats
including
ham, bacon, salami, and frankfurters
are a Group 1 carcinogen (known to cause cancer) and eating processed meat increases your risk of bowel and stomach cancer,” and, red meat is “probably carcinogenic.”
Just one serving of deli meat daily increases your risk of colon cancer by 18%. What we eat directly affects cancer cell growth, or whether our blood vessels can safely circulate blood cells without plaque obstruction, or whether or not insulin can be transported into the muscles for energy (glucose fuels muscles; extra fat stops that process).
Many of these studies on the effects of meat and dairy on heart health and other chronic diseases have been around for 50 years or more, but the American medical system does not respect research done in Europe, Asia, or other countries. The data is crystal clear: with plant-based diets, you can reverse heart disease, removing the arteryclogging plaque that threatens your life.
When you eat foods like fish, steak, eggs, cheese, chicken, hot dogs, or processed deli meats, you’re not just getting the plaque-forming saturated fats that contain cholesterol, you are eating other toxins, including heme iron, TMAOs (Trimethylamine N-Oxide), carcinogens, and processing chemicals, which make most Paleo or keto diets somewhat dangerous. TMAOs are responsible for driving cholesterol into the arteries and narrowing the vessels.
Many times we hear, “cut down on your consumption of red meat,” or, “use moderation,” or “eat more chicken or fish.” With fish, we have four deadly sins - mercury PCBs, saturated fat, and cholesterol. With chicken, we have saltinjected and bacteria-filled meats and high cholesterol, which leads to high blood pressure, blocked arteries, and other digestive problems.
Foods that are “less toxic” than other foods, or eating less of these unhealthy meats is not a real solution. Are you drinking a glass half-full of toxins or a glass half-empty?
All of the environmental toxins from the feed given to animals accumulate in their tissues and are released into our bodies when we eat it, and if pregnant or breastfeeding, we pass that along to our infant. This includes antibiotics, hormones, and steroids that are used in animal feed. Commercial animals are largely fed GMO corn and soy which are laden with pesticides. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are over 200 different chemicals that were banned in 1979 but still persist in the soil, homes, and many products in landfills. When they degrade, these chemicals enter into the water supply and continue to pollute and endanger all life on the planet.
All of these chemicals cause hormonal, reproductive, and developmental damage to all living things.
If you have extra weight, you have been storing all of these toxins in your body fat. As you start to lose weight, these toxins circulate in your system and may cause headaches or stomachaches. Fortunately, the high water content and high fiber in plant foods will soak that up and transport it out of your body quickly.
Although we’ll focus here on preventing and reversing heart disease, it is important to note that a whole food plantbased diet is key to healing diabetes, cancer, and other diseases of dietary excess. Published medical research shows that just one serving of processed meat per day increases diabetes risk by 51%. The link between eating meat and developing life-threatening diseases becomes undeniable.
When we study medical research on a whole food plant-based diet vs. an animal-based diet, we can see that its contribution to heart disease is huge. All the expensive tests, imaging, procedures, by-passes, and medication have nothing to do with preventing a future heart episode.
This is like having lung cancer and after your doctor removed a piece of your lung, they didn’t tell you to quit smoking. When we continue to eat dead meat bacteria, within minutes, we get a huge burst of inflammation in our body. We don’t have to wait another five years or longer to see if the next event will happen, it’s happening as soon as you consume it.
Published clinical studies of patients who adopted a whole food plant-based diet show that 99.4% were able to avoid major cardiac events, reducing their risk of hypertension, high cholesterol, strokes, and heart attacks.
The effects are immediate - your cholesterol drops dramatically in two weeks, your blood pressure improves, your weight drops, and your energy increases. So, what’s left to eat?
In the best of times, your food is traveling between 1500-2000 miles before it reaches your supermarket. If you shop in a large city supermarket, your food has been processed and sprayed with chemicals, and because the nutrients are deteriorated or decayed, sometimes colorfully dyed to resemble fresh products.
When you start shopping for whole foods, you are better off buying organic, fresh, local ingredients, and only buying the amounts you need, unless you take the time to pickle and can and freeze portions for the next season.
Unless you buy only organic foods, your produce, grains, and beans have been sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and have been genetically modified to allow it to be picked and packed for the long journey so it doesn’t rot before delivery.
Have you noticed the taste difference between a freshly picked, vine-ripened tomato and one from the supermarket? Those fruits have been genetically modified to stop spoilage so they can survive the long journey from farm to table. They have not ripened to their glorious juiciness.
Tomatoes that are genetically engineered to delay ripening can be left longer on the plant to mature, will have a longer shelf-life in shipping, and may last longer for consumers. Some tomatoes have been genetically engineered to alter one particular gene that slows down softening. In the long run, the benefits of eating fresh produce become lost to the economic value of supermarket “farming.” We sacrifice flavor, mouth feel, and nutrients to this type of agriculture.
People seem to forget that organic foods, besides being free of chemical toxins, are grown in extremely nutrient-rich soil. In non-organically grown produce, the soil is used over and over until there are no more minerals for healthy plant growth. It is fertilized with a trio of minerals: - nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The problem is that the soil requires approximately 52 minerals for nutritional growth. So where is the iron, calcium, manganese, zinc, calcium, copper, boron, and so on?
When the plants are deficient in these minerals, their health is in jeopardy and the plant’s immune system becomes weak. They are attacked by pests and fungi, and so begins the widespread application of antibiotics, toxins, and growth stimulants to allow the plant at least a healthy-looking lifespan. Today, the antibiotics most commonly used on plants are oxytetracycline and streptomycin. Is there a correlation between the food we eat that has been treated with antibiotics, and the fact that we have resistant diseases that are a serious threat to humans?
According to a National Institute of Health article, published by the Journal of Food and Science Technology, “ …It is believed that consumption of these genetically engineered foods can cause the development of diseases which are immune to antibiotics.”
Organic soil is the end result of animal manure, composted food scraps, and plant decay that transform the soil into dirt full of minerals and microorganisms. This turns organic matter into nutrient-rich and mineral-rich elements that produce healthier plant cells that better resist disease.
It’s true - we shouldn’t pay more for produce that does not contain sprays and chemicals and has 40-60% more mineral content than the rest. But we do benefit so much from the added bounty of minerals, vitamins, fiber, and wonderful flavors; believe me, it’s worth the price.
On A Very Strict Diet, we have to choose between toxic, diseased, mineral-deficient foods or mineral-rich, cleaner foods. You’ll hopefully start hearing WFPB (Whole Food Plant-based) more and more to remind you that many Americans are getting on board with optimal health at any age.
It’s also a lesson in learning how to correct the imbalances that have started your health on a downturn. It’s worth the price, and why, once invested in your vital life, you will favor home cooking, fresh and organic cooperative stores, and local farms, and start to grow and sprout your own.
I can’t tell you how many people think that buying organic produce is a waste of money. I taught nutrition in a high school science class teaching about the dangers of pesticides and herbicides, and ended the class by offering a big salad. Then I took a can of hair spray and sprayed it over the top.
Everyone yelled, “What are you doing?” I said, “I am trying to show you that if your produce is not organic it has been sprayed with not just one toxic substance, but many. And if it survives that, it was grown in poor soil and has been treated with chemicals to help it look healthy.
The term “organic” refers to how certain foods are produced. Organic foods have been grown or farmed without the use of: artificial chemicals, hormones, antibiotics genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
In order to be labelled organic, a food product must be free of artificial food additives. This includes artificial sweeteners, preservatives, coloring, flavoring, and monosodium glutamate. Organically grown crops use natural fertilizers like manure to improve plant growth.
After we looked at what residues were found on lettuces (residues of cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, difenoconazole, or/ and λ-cyhalothrin were detected in 50% of the lettuce samples. In 20% of the lettuce samples, the measurements were above the maximum residue limits, and 2 or 3 pesticides were identified simultaneously). We also looked up what was in the hair spray so we wouldn’t waste the food.
Turns out that hair spray is minimally toxic, not recommended for consumption, but seems to have less damaging chemicals than what was used in farming. We didn’t eat that salad but ate another. I heard the students say, “What a waste of money.”
“Exactly,” I replied. And then, we talked about glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a laboratory-made chemical that is prohibited in organic production in every country in the world. It is the main ingredient in the popular herbicide RoundUp and is used on grain and bean crops to speed up maturation.
Glyphosate has been linked to human health concerns such as cancer, celiac disease, and Parkinson's disease.
A product with the USDA Certified Organic seal must be grown or produced with no synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers—and that means no RoundUp and no glyphosate.
But organic is more than that. Organic not only bans synthetic herbicides like RoundUp—it prohibits the use of hundreds of chemical additives, preservatives, colorings, and more.
Garbanzo beans, and hummus, can be contaminated with glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical that has been linked to cancer when inhaled. Glyphosate is often sprayed on chickpeas to dry them out before harvest, and if the crop is wet when sprayed, the beans can absorb the residue. Another reason to buy USDA Certified Organic.
Glyphosate is sometimes sprayed on beans and legumes before harvest, which may be harmful to health. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), glyphosate was found in 60% of conventional bean and lentil samples tested in 2020, and in 100% of dried pinto bean samples tested in 2019.
Believe me, I’m not happy to learn this, but I want my own health, and my family’s health to be protected from unnecessary poisoning.
Let me introduce you to a Very Strict Diet (VSD). This is a plan for overweight or obese people, and those wanting to reverse or prevent serious health challenges. This information is based on clinical, and medical research, and has been used by physicians and clinics all across the world, with safety, and excellent results.
It would be wise to speak to your physician and get blood tests for lipids, glucose tolerance, electrolytes, and anything particular to your medical condition before you start. Following this diet can be dangerous for children and adolescents, people who are breastfeeding, and people with a history of eating disorders. Those who have diabetes, and people taking certain medications need to be monitored by their physicians as their dosage may be reduced or eliminated.
This helps stabilize the pancreas and blood sugar levels while burning fat and maintaining muscle and other lean tissue. It is a plan that has been clinically researched to show the reversal of high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and remarkable weight loss. It has been shown to assist in diabetes management and prevention.
It has been shown to reverse atherosclerosis, the build-up of cholesterol on the endothelial walls of the four major arteries.
The natural result is a body with enough high-quality nutrients but no excessive fat, no matter what your age.
I am happy to say that in the first 90 days, my cholesterol values dropped by half, and even still though not perfect scores, they showed me that A Very Strict Diet can reverse and prevent life-threatening heart disease.
What makes this diet Very Strict is that most Americans are used to eating high-fat, highly salted, processed, or preserved foods, and sweet desserts rich in dairy, sugars, and fats. Some people have eliminated specific foods and reversed obesity, diabetes, and heart disease - avoiding chest pains, impotence, angina, angioplasty, stents, heart attacks, open heart surgery, strokes, and symptoms of low energy and excess fatigue.
This is written for you, and your family and loved ones who have been living a lifestyle with little attention to good nutrition, hoping you’ll find it’s not too late to change habits and restore good health. Take the time to take a closer look at your own health challenges and decide what changes you can start to make right away.
Welcome to the adventure! Let’s jump right in.
This plan was originally developed to retrain adults to lose weight and regulate insulin, blood pressure, and lipid levels. The protein and carbohydrate sources used in many diets, including the Paleo and Keto Diets, might help you lose weight but do not address the prevention or management of heart disease, diabetes, and neurological conditions. They contain too many fats and simple sugars. They contain table salts, seasoning salts, and preserved sodium chloride, which is detrimental to health in the long run.
This is A Very Strict Diet that every physician should have recommended twenty years ago when the evidence came in to prove that heart disease and diabetes can be prevented and reversed.
Two decades of research show that one year of strict lifestyle changes brought about the reversal of even severe coronary atherosclerosis, without the use of lipid-lowering drugs.
The solution to lowering blood pressure, reducing excessive weight, and reversing cardiovascular and neurological conditions, is not to learn how to eat less, but rather to eat in a way that is appropriate for you. This means a diet of natural foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. It also includes regular exercise, relaxation, and strength training.
On A Very Strict Diet, the average overweight person eating to fullness and satisfaction with natural foods will lose between five to ten pounds per month. They will keep it off, too, as long as they continue whole food plant-based
A Very Strict Diet means:
(Mostly) vegan diet is required, for a minimum of 90 days
No added salt, oil or sugar (SOS)
Some form of food elimination and fasting is necessary; A commitment to walking, yoga, dance, swimming, or serious housekeeping, 30 minutes a day; Two relaxation and stress management sessions daily.
You are giving up all animal products, including butter, eggs, and dairy, for now. Give this diet a 90-day trial, and make sure you have medical lab tests beforehand to show how your weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose are moving toward normal levels.
There is no compromise in the first 90 days. You must choose a vegan diet, and not add any oils, fats, salt, or sugar. You cannot cook with oils, nor drizzle a bit of olive oil on your steamed veggies. You cannot add salt to any foods, including while cooking rice or pasta. Compare your heart health to a house fire. You have been storing highly flammable fats for many years and now you have a small fire in your living room. Instead of avoiding the fats and foods that fuel the disease, you choose to have some in “moderation” and just squeeze a cup of gasoline on the fire every night.
This fire won’t go out unless you eliminate additional dietary fats. It will burn out when it has consumed your stored fats, and hopefully will not burn down your whole house in the process. But you can imagine the damage even a small fire can do to your overall health. Don’t wait until you have a life-threatening event to learn more.
I say, “mostly” vegan because I do advocate taking collagen as a supplement. Research suggests that collagen not only improves cholesterol balance but also decreases total cholesterol, lowers triglycerides (fats linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease), and prevents and treats the buildup of plaque on artery walls. It also builds joint cartilage and reduces inflammation. Collagen is not a fat; it is an amino acid structured protein derived from animals.
I also believe in the benefits of taking spirulina, chlorella, and blue-green algae as excellent supplements, they are living organisms, not plants, and a pure perfect source of protein.
A diet that includes too much animal fat and protein leads to the build-up of plaque within the cardiovascular system, also known as atherosclerosis. These plaques are a chief cause of high blood pressure and related conditions, including stroke, heart attack, and congestive heart failure.
Medication management of high blood pressure does little to halt or reverse the build-up of atherosclerotic plaques. There is medical research that shows the drug treatment for hypertension did lower blood pressure but did not reduce the rate of death. Another study found that 99% of patients on high blood pressure drugs suffered significant side effects, namely, impotence, fatigue, nausea, headaches, depression, chronic cough, and gastric irritation.
Considering your blood sugar, you can enjoy most fruits and vegetables. Avoid coconut, and limit your avocado to one-half, occasionally. Do not use coconut or avocado oils, as no oils are allowed. Do not drink fruit juice, but rather eat fruit alone or in salads. Whole fruit purees make a great flavoring for dressings and sauces.
SOS-free dieting means cooking without using refined salt, oil, or sugar, and not eating anything that contains them. This includes refined carbs, such as chips, pasta, breads, and crackers. Anything that is pre-packaged, basically, has added salts sugars, and oils to preserve them.
When we consume salt, the sodium level in the bloodstream rises, and the kidneys are not able to get rid of it fast enough. This causes the heart to pump harder, and the body to retain water, and causes an increase in blood pressure. A salt-free diet significantly decreases systolic and diastolic BP and so it should be advised to every hypertensive patient.
On a Very Strict Diet, you will avoid any foods that contain added salt, or sugar or are preserved with sodium chloride. You will do best if you slowly reduce your salt intake, and then completely eliminate it. Limit sodium to less than 2,000 mg per day - that’s about one teaspoon per day! There is enough sodium in natural foods.
Whether it’s pink salt, or white iodized, or sea salt, if you measure one teaspoon a day, that’s not even enough to complain about. Use spices and herbs for flavor. You can use natural products, some with natural sodium, such as nutritional yeast, tamari, low-sodium miso, or Bragg’s aminos. These will give you more “umami” for far less sodium. You will start to notice the flavor of freshly chopped parsley, or the natural saltiness of celery once your taste buds are reactivated from their salt “coma.”
Do you notice that when you “cheat” on a diet, or splurge on a holiday meal, that your scale shows an increase of 3-5 pounds the next day? You did not consume 10,500 - 17,500 calories in one night, so that is not the reason you are heavier. Your body is holding on to water weight.
Salt is also a stimulant to your appetite. Imagine you have two bowls of plain white rice. One has salt; one has no salt. You will eat less of the rice that is not salted. In this way, you are already managing your weight by calorie restriction, but the reduction in sodium means your heart has much less work to do to pump blood throughout your body.
Your taste buds will change if you eliminate salt from your foods. Replace salt with spices and herbs for flavor. It may take a week or so before the bland taste of no salt kicks in, and you will start tasting the true flavors of foods.
Our recipes section will suggest salt-free, super flavorful spice, and herb mixes you can purchase or blend yourself. I notice that I use way more herbs and spices now than when I used salt or salt/herb blends.
Sodium also makes your arteries and vessels harden. A high level of salt intake increases the amount of calcium that is excreted in the urine, which, over the years, contributes to osteoporosis and increased risk of fracture.
Our bodies are designed for a high-potassium diet; fruits and vegetables are high in potassium and low in sodium. Food processing destroys potassium, and of course, the added preservatives are salt-based chemical additives. When dining out, tell your server to tell the kitchen not to add salt to the dish and to braise or steam the vegetables in stock or water.
Sugar is a drug, just like cocaine.
Most sweeteners, including sugars, honey, maple syrup, and agave, stimulate the body’s insulin reaction and offer zero nutritive value. This causes blood sugar levels to rise, resulting in mood swings, tiredness, overeating, and diseases of excess. This is measured by the Glycemic Index (GI). The GI ranks foods according to how much they raise blood glucose (sugar) levels. Refined sugar has the highest GI score. Natural sugars, like fruit sugars, have a lower GI score.
When we eat foods containing carbohydrates, our bodies break them down into glucosethat is also our body’s main energy source. Foods rich in fast-release carbs or sugar cause your blood glucose (sugar) to rise quickly. These are considered “high GI” foods. On the other hand, foods that cause a low and slow rise in blood sugar are considered “low GI” foods. These foods are better for someone with diabetes or prediabetes who is concerned about their blood sugar levels.
Some sweeteners, including sugar alcohols like xylitol, have little or no effect on blood glucose levels. The only natural sweeteners with zero calories and a zero on the glycemic index are stevia and monk fruit.
Dietary fats are healthy for us; processed oils and fats and excess body fat are toxic. Put those facts on a scale - if you have stored body fat, the toxic waste stored within will counter any positive effect of the health benefits of dietary fat.
How many pounds of excess body weight do you have? That is fat that you have stored for use during a special time. Adding olive oil now will just add more unused calories to your stockpile, and not give you the heart-healthy effects that you desire.
A diet high in refined oils increases the risk of atherosclerosis and diabetes. As mentioned earlier, high animal fat diets increase cholesterol levels. But the key to understanding why we don’t add oils on A Very Strict Diet is twofold: once you remove the fat from the whole food, as we do in olive oil extraction, we lose the fiber and many nutrients. We say, just eat olives. The second reason is that fats are calorie-dense
Calorie density means we count the calories in a pound of food and compare what is best (and the least dense) to eat to save our health. For example, that drizzle of olive oil that chefs pour over a vegetable or pasta salad can be at least 4 tablespoons. That would be about 476 calories.
On this diet, we want to eat whole food plant-based meals, or, you could have the Greek salad in the photo. The entire salad. It is dressed with vinegar, lemon juice, and honey mustard dressing. No added oil.
I’ve spent hours arguing about the “health benefits of olive oil,” which, for many years, I also believed in. However, we are learning that eating whole foods, that is, olives, is more beneficial than using the extracted oil.
When we extract the oil, we are splitting the whole food into fractions. The oil is then exposed to oxidation and decay, which often happens on the store shelf, or in heated transit from mill to store shelves.
TV show chefs drizzle tablespoons of olive oil over foods, cook with it, and some doctors even advocate drinking a shot of olive oil every day. Every tablespoon of olive oil adds 120 calories to the meal. The way everyone cooks and drizzles with it, morning, noon, and night, you could be adding 500 calories daily, easily.
The only oils we can consume on a Very Strict Diet are those available from whole foods. In the first few months of A Very Strict Diet, we limit dietary fats; you can eat 1/2 avocado daily, and one ounce of almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, chia seeds.
If you are dealing with obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease, you have enough stored fats to survive the next few months.
We have access to food so easily that it is no longer necessary to heavily salt everything we consume. Once you eliminate salt, and attend a friendly dinner invite or restaurant meal, your tongue will almost burn from the amount of salt present in your food. Why do we say eliminate salt?
Processed, prepared foods have five times the daily amount of sodium that our kidneys can easily eliminate. That’s five hundred percent more salt that we need to survive, in every day we live! Excess salt creates higher blood pressure, which can lead to stroke, chronic heart disease, kidney disease, and heart failure.
Our taste buds have been overloaded with salt to the point where food tastes bland and boring. Give your buds a break. For the first few days, you will not like the taste of food; it will be bland. In a few days, your taste buds will be able to detect flavors of fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, the way nature intended. It is transformational to experience the difference, several days later, in how good food tastes.
All hope for umami and sweetness is not lost. In the recipe sections, you will learn that eating whole foods means eating dates instead of date syrup, so you will still be able to make sweet treats. Snack on or bake with dates, not date sugar, because once you take out the fiber, you basically have pure sugar. Eating olives instead of olive oil adds a rich taste to foods. Give yourself time to adapt to whole foods, and vegetable broths seasoned with celery, onions, garlic, onion, carrots, ginger, and lemon. Think WFPB - whole foods, plant-based.
As I travel and teach about WFPB SOS diets and promote my book, many people ask, “Can I go back to eating meat, eggs, and cheese once my medical condition returns to normal?
I won’t. I might have a cupcake frosted with buttercream at a party, or sneak a bite of lasagna, but NO, I won’t go back to being an ovo-lacto vegetarian. That didn’t work for me, and, after 50 years - plaque blocked my arteries, my cholesterol skyrocketed, and my weight never came off.
And, I have proof. Six months after I started A Very Strict Diet, my mother came to live with me. She stayed for the last 6 months of her life, and I “cheated” quite a bit. I ate cheese and eggs and the occasional buttery dessert, and my cholesterol numbers went back up!
In the movie, “Forks Over Knives,” you’ll meet researchers who are at the top of their fields and patients who talk about their chronic and life-threatening diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, and how they turned their health around through a WFPB SOS diet.
This documentary talks about dairy, eggs, animal meats, and fast foods. One of the most striking examples of clinical evidence was in Norway, during WWII. The German armies occupied Norway and confiscated all the livestock and farm animals to feed their soldiers, forcing the natives to eat only plant foods.
Next, the documentary showed that looking at the deaths from heart attack and stroke before the occupation, there was an increase in mortality. The death rate from heart disease and strokes was on an upward trajectory. Then, after being forced to eat plants and grains, from 1940-1945, the death rate plummeted in a straight line. We don’t have successful data that comes close when comparing statins, surgeries, or stents.
Sadly, after the war, the data shows the rise of heart attacks and strokes upwards again after meat, dairy, and eggs return to their diet.
If you plan to sacrifice a Very Strict Diet for a while because your health conditions are threatening your life, get “cured” and then go right back to unhealthy eating habits that made you sick in the first place, you will find your symptoms return.
What you can do is learn how to prepare or purchase delicious, satisfying meals and snacks, including desserts that will keep you on the right track.
If you are interested in making a change, do so with 100% of your effort. If you start only “halfway” you will soon feel deprived of certain foods, or you will allow extra salt, fat, and oil to each meal.
If you plan for a vegan lifestyle, even if you are willing to try for 3 months, you will almost certainly feel you are eating more food, losing weight, and reducing your risk for heart disease. We have to make a clear break from old habits and learn to say, “No salt or butter on my popcorn - I’m on A Very Strict Diet.”
Every month, my yoga class has an “after-party” with coffee and treats, and the buffet is filled with yogurt and fruitstuffed crepes, or lemon cakes, candies, and pies that all have butter and eggs. I still compliment the beautiful treat, ask everyone for the recipe, and then pass on taking a serving. I bring fresh, organic blueberries, or a trail mix. I can join the fun, and skip the animal fats.
The greater your commitment to whole foods plant-based eating, the greater the likelihood that your behavior and eating habits will become permanent and that you will be able to achieve the longer goal of reclaiming vibrant health.
You have to make these big changes to lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, and unblock your arteries. Believe me, it gets easier.
After 6 months, I continued to watch documentaries about veganism, and one that changed my mind about eating cheese is called “What the Health.” The narrator was talking about how the standard stockyards raising beef have such eroded conditions that many cows get sick. They are given antibiotics, as you know. But when these cows are processed, they have abscesses, filled with pus, that end up in the meat and milk. Once he started to talk about cheese as “coagulated cow pus,” my love affair ended. Federal laws regulate how much pus milk and cheese can contain and still be sold (750,000 pus cells per cc - that is a very small line on a syringe.)
These facts and stories help me stay on course. The doctors and their patients who talk about their before-and-after health conditions help me to stay strong in my faith and courage to find great recipes, eat a Very Strict Diet, wait and see the positive effects on my health conditions, and enjoy my energy coming back.
Cholesterol is only found in animal foods. The number one source of saturated fat and cholesterol is dairy. How naive I was as a vegetarian for 50 years, thinking this was a preferred way to stay healthy. And it took me a while to wake up to the fact that being a vegetarian did not take the weight off. It did not contribute to more energy or a healthy level of lipids. It did not help keep my blood pressure normal or keep my arteries clear.
We don’t have to believe that just because we are getting older we need to “look forward” to heart attacks and stroke, diabetes, and cancer. Please keep studying the books and documentaries suggested. It’s time to change your mind.
Think of your favorite foods. Now, Google that meal with the word “vegan” in front. Plenty of yummy recipes that will satisfy your health and happiness. Try some new cooking ingredients and techniques. I’ve included dozens of my favorite recipes, and you can also subscribe to vegan food delivery services.
Eating before bed trains your metabolism to slow down, as it cannot digest anything properly, and also adjusts your insulin sensitivity. A normal metabolism is more sensitive in the morning on purpose, to get us up and moving, and get us through the day. So, you may find on mornings where you have eaten a lot before bed, that you are tired and it’s harder to get up and going.
Keeping your body as healthy as possible means giving your body at least three hours to digest your last meal before retiring to bed. This gives you enough time to plan a meal early enough so your sleep circadian rhythms are not disrupted, and you won’t go to bed feeling hungry. If you are more of a night owl, then adjust your last meal to 9 pm, but keep to the three-hour window.
Fasting and resting are important strategies for healing. Depending on your medical lab tests, you may decide to do the strictest type of fasting - water only - with your doctor’s supervision. It may be safe for you to try a one-day wateronly fast. The health benefits are remarkable - lowering and balancing blood pressure is the most immediate result. There are clinics where you can water fast under supervision for days and weeks. It sounds incredible and difficult, but the results can save you from heart attack and stroke, now.
Fasting is important because it unlocks biological resources in your body. Your body will only store food as fat when there are more calories consumed in a day than are expended. Fasting means to “go without.” The reality is that you can go 60 days without food before you die, but our human habits tell us that if we don’t have breakfast before noon, we will die.
Exercising while fasting increases your body’s ability to use fat as fuel.
Based on the existing evidence, a reasonable recommendation is to eat as soon as it is feasible after exercise. Consuming plant protein can help repair your muscles and other tissues, while carbs can help restore your glycogen stores. Keep in mind, that plant protein may be better for digestibility, net protein utilization, and biological value.
There are several types of fasting: intermittent, water-only, and calorie restriction. If you are a woman, check fasting schedules on thenutritionclinic.com. Fasting for more than 12-14 hours can disrupt the production of estrogen in your cycles. The week before your menstrual cycle is the time you need to make the hormone progesterone, so you'd want to focus on eating hormone-building foods and avoiding ketosis.
For everyone else, cholesterol is produced at night in healthy individuals, and that tends to increase cholesterol levels. Eating more calories, especially fat calories, later in the day, when the body's production of cholesterol from fat is most efficient, tends to increase a person's total cholesterol level.
No-food fasting and water-only fasting for more than a few days must be supervised, and is not recommended if you are diabetic, or have insulin management challenges. Fasting beyond a day or two and taking insulin can be a deadly combination, as one lowers your insulin and the medication could also lower your insulin. It won’t hurt you to read on and see what other areas might benefit you besides fasting.
Some of these may be new terms, but hopefully, you will listen for them in the news, or as you read more about good nutrition.
Autophagy - (aw-TAW-fa-gee) is when your body consumes diseased and dead cells, creating new stem cells. Autophagy can help decrease inflammation; improve the transmission of nerve signals in the brain, and keep the immune system functioning normally.
Intermittent fasting is also called time-restricted eating, and can be done in several ways:
Time-restricted eating involves fasting every day for 12 hours or longer and eating in the remaining hours. A popular example is the 16/8 method. It features a daily 16-hour fast and an 8-hour eating window wherein you can fit in 2, 3, or more meals. You would stop eating at 7 pm, for example, and not have any food until 11 am. For me, I choose to start at noon and end at 8 pm.
This may sound simple, but many people eat and snack after 7 pm. Also, many people still believe “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” and start eating at 8 am. The concept of “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” and, “three meals a day for healthy living,” is founded in our industrial society.
People get up early, go to work, and return around 5 or 6 pm. Industries like to have everyone in, and everyone off, at the same time. The lunch bell rings at noon, and you have a half hour, at least, to eat. Everyone does, and this becomes a habit. We return home at 5 pm and eat our dinner, just like everyone else. Ring the bell. Eat the food. Sound familiar?
We are violating our body’s natural laws by eating fats and sugars first thing in the morning. We are feeding ourselves highly salted, chemically seasoned foods at lunch and dinner, and not giving ourselves the highly nutritious foods our brains, muscles, cells, tissues, and all other organs need. Processed foods trick you into thinking you are getting specific nutrients, but your cells are not getting the enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
Intermittent fasting allows the body the chance to consume the fat we have stored and raise the metabolism for the next meals to be used.
Intermittent fasting has a load of benefits, including controlling blood sugar, reducing the body’s resistance to insulin, reducing brain fog by giving the brain energy from stored fat, improving blood pressure, and lowering weight.
The 5:2 fast involves eating as you normally do 5 days of the week and restricting your calorie intake to 500–600 on the remaining 2 days. It is important to consume whole food and plant-based proteins.
A water fast is when a person does not eat and drinks nothing but water. There is no set time that water fasting should last, but medical advice generally suggests anywhere from 24 hours to 3 days as the maximum time to go without food. There are clinics that will supervise a longer period of water-only fasting. The only one I recommend at this point is True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California. Word is out that they are opening “pods” across the country to make supervised water fasting available to more of us.
Water fasting is a healthy habit that provides oxygen to every organ, reduces blood pressure, and improves insulin sensitivity. Water fasting decreases inflammatory molecules in circulation, reducing pain and improving mood. Shortterm water fasting also improves LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and reduces the risk of coronary artery disease.
On a strict water-only fast, participants lost weight and showed reductions in blood pressure, low-density cholesterol, triglycerides, and aging markers. Another study found that this method of long-term water fasting reduced fat mass and preserved more lean mass compared to continuous calorie restriction.
After a supervised water-only fast period of ten days, followed by a week on a vegan diet, 174 patients experienced a reduction in blood pressure of 37/13. This is three times more effective than any published pharmaceutical intervention. By the end of these supervised studies, patients no longer needed blood pressure medications.
Water-only fasting results in the removal of atherosclerotic plaques eliminates further incoming dietary fats and proteins, and eliminates sodium chloride, as well. The previously overburdened body jumps at the chance to restore order and does so with astonishing efficiency.
I plan on visiting TrueNorth before the year is out. Keep an open mind. Water-only fasting won’t kill you. You are giving your body a chance to cleanse and detoxify. As you start eating more raw foods, and fresh vegetables, you will start to feel more energetic.
When doctors supervise people who are fasting longer than 3 days, they ask people to stop taking medications. That is because the water is fast and the drugs are doing the same thing. The heart rate comes down, the blood pressure comes down, and your medication might send blood pressure or glucose too low.
A supervised ten-day water-only fast can help you shed pounds fast, eliminate your medications, and improve your health quickly. This is the most powerful strategy and the fastest way to recover your health.
Get a consultation from TrueNorth Health Center, in Santa Rosa, California, the only American clinic that supervises water-only fasting. After fasting, they recommend vegan SOS dieting.
Eat Stop Eat involves a 24-hour water-only fast once or twice per week. Again, it focuses on whole food and plantbased meals. If you follow a plant-based nutrition program to reduce your total cholesterol level to below 150mg/dL and then your LDL level to less than 80mg/dL, you no longer deposit fat and cholesterol into your arteries. Period.
Endothelial dysfunction is caused by many factors such as low oxygen, inflammation, infections, and cardiac conditions like high blood pressure. Cardiovascular diseases, infections, inflammation, plaque deposition from excessive fat intake, and turbulent and resistant blood flow damage the vessel lining.
How many years of excessive fat consumption and low activity does it take to clog the vessels to the point where blood cannot flow?
It can take decades for the blockage to occur, and all without symptoms. Most people don’t notice until severe complications, like chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, dizziness, or weakness. There could also be a few other symptoms, depending on the location of the blockage.
Until the clog blocks at least 70% of the artery, there aren’t any symptoms. At that point, many people suffer a stroke or heart attack.
A Very Strict Diet is designed to help reduce your risk of plaque formation and repair the damage. There are Harvard studies that say you cannot reduce plaque once it is formed, and there are published studies by Dr. Dean Ornish, for example, that show the reversal of plaque is measured in two ways. Studies showed both visible plaque regression at one year and more at 5 years, and increased blood flow of 300 - 400%.
We have all read or heard that some scientific studies say one thing and other studies say the opposite. We must look at two things: who championed the study and was it, for example, a drug trial to approve a pharmaceutical, or perhaps, a study looking at preventive and curative measures for a specific disease.
It is not news that American medicine has been led by profits before people, and many traditional therapies used in other countries have been considered quackery or mocked because they use natural remedies.
A Very Strict Diet combines good medicine with scientific studies. While other diets may restrict fats, we say “no fats” because our goal is to reverse or prevent atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and assist with managing other diseases, such as diabetes and obesity.
My clinical practice started after my studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda led me to learn various therapies used worldwide, in cancer management. As an intern at a medical center, the hospital offered patient education in many areas - I was fortunate to offer two classes, “Alternatives in Cancer Management Using Chinese Traditional Medicine,” and, “Natural Hormone Therapies Using Ayurveda.”
My classes were packed to the corners, many times with standing room only. As I collected emails from my students and listened to their requests for private consultations, I realized that most of them were doctors and nurses who worked in the hospitals.
Although they could not recommend diet, lifestyle, and adjunctive supplements, as I did, they certainly wanted them. This was 1985. At the time, I started my class with, “The American Cancer Society says that, ‘once you are diagnosed with cancer, there is nothing you can do, except chemotherapy, surgery or radiation’”. I handed out a list of 100 things you could do when diagnosed with cancer, and even then, thanks to the efforts of the Life Extension Foundation, had been clinically proven to reverse the disease and save lives.
We would tell patients that cancer fed on acidic foods, sugar, and high-salted foods and that all chemically preserved foods and household products needed to be eliminated, and that was just for starters. It created pandemonium. In those days, people were not willing to give up pasta and white bread. They wanted their alcohol, sugared coffees, pastries, burgers and bacon. I felt like I was on the front line of a civil war.
But as I practiced using these techniques on my patients, I could see the vast improvements in staging, seeing people go from stage 4 to 3, to 2, to all clear. Yes, it was not overnight. I continued making house calls for my first patient for 5 years, who had metastatic liver cancer and had originally been given 6 months to live. After 16 months, there were just small spots on his liver; the cancer had regressed from Stage 4 to 2.
I went on to practice alternative oncology for thirty-plus years, never having to advertise my services, as one doctor’s family members’ referrals led to another success and another referral.
Now, forty years later, we have heard these stories over and over, and there is so much clinical evidence that this is true that once again, A Very Strict Diet is taking its place in the life-saving therapy column. Time to get on board? Time to read those books and watch all of those documentaries listed on page 8?
The truth is that there is nothing strict about this diet. In 75% of the world, people eat mostly homegrown or local plant foods, and any animal products are wild-caught or free-range and grass-fed. When olive oil is included in the diet, it has been cold-pressed within the year and is high in polyphenols.
A Very Strict Diet does not allow for extra virgin olive oil because anything we buy on American supermarket shelves has already deteriorated into a pro-oxidant, not an anti-oxidant, and does more harm than good. Check your expiration date and processing dates. Most oils on supermarket shelves are many years old. When we choose A Very Strict Diet, no fats are added to give the pancreas a break, allow for the use of stored fat, and reduce cholesterol.
Cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease simply do not exist for millions of people on the planet. If you look at a map of the world, the western countries show the highest incidence of coronary heart disease, including the Mediterranean countries, but low incidence in Africa and Asia.
Animal fat has cholesterol, which can create plaque, some of which may contain scar tissue and calcium, and prevent the heart muscle from getting an adequate blood supply. Heart muscle that is deprived of a normal blood supply causes angina or chest pain. Another problem is that if the arterial wall ruptures, our blood will clot to repair the injury. It is possible that the clot will cover the entire opening and prevent the heart from getting any blood at all. This causes a part of the heart muscle to die.
If a person survives this, this portion of the heart muscle remains scarred and useless. Multiple attacks like this cause widespread scarring, and a condition called congestive heart failure.
Atherosclerosis is entirely preventable and completely reversible, and the risk of heart disease and stroke is eliminated.
Eat only whole-grain products. This means no white flour or semolina. Stick with whole wheat or whole grain products, like oats or brown rice. Foods that say, “made with whole grains” might have some whole wheat in them, but also contain salt, sugar, and oils.
Whole grains and grasses, such as whole wheat, brown rice, buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, teff, farro, bulgur, and corn meal will be an important part of your meal plans.
You can eat all legumes in abundance, including adzuki, black, java, lima, kidney, mung, pinto, green, red and yellow split peas, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, lentils, soybeans, and green beans, and you will learn to add cooked legumes and grains into veggie burgers, neatballs (not meat-balls) even desserts.
There is a worldwide variety of fresh greens, roots, and vegetables, to name a few, kale, collard, mustard, spinach, lettuces, arugula, chards, bok choy, and cabbages - all kinds of potatoes, onions, leeks, carrots, radishes, beets, garlic, ginger, turnips, daikon - and squash, celery, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, mushrooms, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and sea vegetables. With so many colors and flavors adding to your incredible buffet of choices, you’ll find that you can certainly eat a lot more than before.
Add your herbs and spices, parsley, cilantro, chives, dill, lemon thyme, basil, black cumin seed, garam masala, coriander, sweet, mild, and hot dried peppers, dried onions, and garlic, not only add flavor but all have medicinal value to contribute to your well being.
Limit your intake of fruit juices, as commercial products contain added sugars and preservatives, but enjoy all fresh or frozen whole fruits, such as apricots, apples, bananas, berries, cherries, melons, mangoes, papayas, pineapple, grapes, kiwi, plums, dried fruits, and all the exotic fruits in season.
On A Very Strict Diet, we limit nuts and seeds to flaxseed and chia seed, which can be added to almost every meal, and an occasional half avocado. You can sparingly eat unsalted sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds. You can have a handful of walnuts, or up to 23 almonds, rarely. Use a teaspoon of 100% "no-salt, no-sugar no-hydrogenated oils” peanut butter in sauces, occasionally. We want to keep the natural fats to 15-18% of the total calories to keep the body burning stored fat.
Evidence tells us nuts are healthy, for example, that avocados and seeds have many valuable nutrients. People who are used to eating rich, heavy meals who suddenly avoid added fats, cheeses, and thick cuts of meat may put a handful of cashews in every meal, or a ½ of an avocado on everything, are not following the “Very Strict” part. And guess what? They won’t get maximum benefit. They may not even lose any weight at all.
The secret to happiness on a Very Strict Diet is using spices and herbs in quantities that may be double or more your usual amount. Find several recipes that you love and eat them often.
We are bombarded with information on nutrition that is not quite as accurate as it should be. Your dietary choices should begin with your health needs and not be based on an agenda to sell protein meal plans, health products, supplements, or pharmaceuticals.
In order to have a healthy, functioning body, free of disease, you must eat fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, minimally processed foods, whole grains, and limited animal products.
Let’s look at one way we are deceived into thinking processed “natural foods” are “heart healthy” or a good way to “lose weight.”
When researchers look at oats as a way to reduce cholesterol and improve heart health, are they using refined oat flour, processed Cheerios, or Quaker Instant Oats with added sugar, fat, salt, and artificial flavors?
No, obviously. What does processing do to the original whole grain?
Steel-cut oats are most closely related to the original, unprocessed oat groat. They have a coarser, chewier texture and nuttier flavor than rolled or quick oats. They also take longer to prepare, with average cooking times ranging from 15–30 minutes.
Rolled oats, or old-fashioned oats, are oat groats that have gone through a steaming and flattening process. They have a milder flavor and softer texture and take much less time to make than steel-cut oats, as they have been partially cooked.
Instant oats or quick-cooking oats are rolled oats that go through further processing to decrease cooking time. They’re further cooked by steaming and then rolled even thinner than old-fashioned oats. Then, they are dehydrated for safe packaging. They cook within a few minutes and have a mild flavor and soft, mushy texture.
Besides vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber, oats have beta-glucans, the component that is effective at lowering both LDL (bad) and total cholesterol, which may help keep your heart healthy.
When processing the groat down to a rolled or instant oat, the high temperatures and high heat drying times reduce the soluble beta-glucans. Steel-cut and rolled oats have a lower glycemic index than quick oats and do not spike blood sugar.
That is the whole point of recommending oats as heart-healthy. Steel-cut oats are minimally processed, and contain more beta-glucans, fiber, and density than their counterparts. If you add fresh fruit, a little monk fruit, or stevia as an extra sweetener, steel-cut or rolled oats are some of the healthiest grains you can eat. You can prepare a large batch and rewarm it with added fruits, nuts, seeds, spices, and healthy sweeteners.
Fill your blender or food processor up to halfway with steel-cut oats. Keep in mind that one cup of old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats yields about one cup of flour, whereas one cup of steel-cut oats yields about two cups of flour Blend until the oats have turned into a fine flour, about 20 seconds to 1 minute. Use the flour to bake yummy cookies, pancakes, or breads. When making recipes that require baking powder, add 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of oat flour.
Although dieters are warned that the first three days of the salt, sugar, and oil withdrawals can be quite tough, the small percentage that experience problems almost always hang in there for amazing results starting on Day Four. Most commonly, dieters say:
They have improved energy and reduced cravings, usually on the fourth or fifth day; dramatically improved blood sugar, often within the first week; elated joy and pride early in the process; attainment of their goal weight; and, maintaining their goal weight, even after extended vacations from the diet.
I learned, from watching the documentary “Game Changers” that in recent studies, doctors gave athletes a breakfast of either a meat or bean burrito and measured their blood. It was evident in the plasma that the fat in meats created a cloudy, not clear, plasma, which the doctor explained narrowed the endothelium lining.
The endothelium is impaired for 6-7 hours after a meal of animal-based protein, where WFPB meal plasma is unaffected, even after eating avocado or walnuts. So, if you are eating eggs and bacon for breakfast, a hamburger for lunch, and fried chicken for dinner, this impairment is going on all day long. You are also at risk for the accumulation of cholesterols, and other toxins that create inflammation.
As a carnivore, your ability to operate at your best is always impaired. WFPB diets- and especially beet juice - before a workout allows for better performance where one single animal-based meal can impair the vessels. One single animal-based meal can reduce endothelial function, and research shows that WFPB diets can improve it. Many vegan athletes use “beet juice doping” before heavy training - a natural assist in improving performance.
You can reduce inflammation in the body in just 3 weeks of a WFPB diet, by 29%. Those benefits increase as you continue to repair the damage that eating animal products has caused.
That’s for the dieters who stick with the program. Beginners to WFPB diets may experience cleansing and detoxifying symptoms. If your diet is high in processed sugars, fats, and salt, then you will have to go through a detoxification process.
Let’s first look at the end goal, the results we intend to achieve, and the bright side, and determine if your current health warrants a lifestyle change.
Remember the endothelium? The endothelium is a network of cells that create a lining in the blood vessels and arteries. It can dilate or constrict the vessels, depending on your diet. Caffeine, salty foods, and meat all constrict blood vessels, reducing the amount of blood flow.
Cinnamon, garlic, ginger, sunflower seeds, berries, and beets, to name a few, all dilate blood vessels. Beets contain nitrates, which the body converts to nitric oxide, which relaxes and widens arteries. Nitric oxide is important for blood vessel health, and can help lower blood pressure by allowing more blood to flow through.
If you eat to save your life, you would choose more foods that improve endothelial function.
A Very Strict Diet is nothing like the typical diet that offers packaged vegan foods. Protein shakes and powders are NOT the common meal replacements that contain a “balance” of carbohydrates, fats, and protein. Eating processed carbohydrates promotes insulin production thereby promoting fat storage. Eating any prepared or packaged vegan foods contains preservatives, especially salts, and that will delay your progress. Vegan packaged foods are also high in saturated fats - coconut oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter, and shea butter. You will have to prepare all your meals for best results.
For a balanced diet, consuming fats is very important, but remember, for FAT LOSS, one must eliminate fat from the diet. One of the goals of A Very Strict Diet is to cause the body to delve into its energy reserves—into stored fat—for its energy, thereby facilitating FAT LOSS.
On A Very Strict Diet, your body will get rid of excess LDL cholesterol, in case your lipid numbers are high. It will also help the liver to release HDL, the good cholesterol - two ways to fight atherosclerosis. This is an excellent, nonpharmaceutical way to lower your serum cholesterol.
If you are overweight or have any one of the diseases listed in the introduction, then your diet has not been “balanced” anyway. Additionally, by virtually eliminating all highly refined sugars, starches, and fat from your diet, the pancreas is afforded a rest since there is no need for it to produce much insulin, which happens to be its main function.
Your digestive system can finish the work of emptying the foods stored there, especially if you like to “graze,” eating smaller amounts of food throughout the day. The many pounds of undigested waste in your colon will be released, giving your body a chance to absorb nutrients from your whole foods for optimal health and energy.
Your body will “consume” the old, diseased cells, and get you ready to build new stem cells.
Trans fats are a particularly dangerous type of fat that preserves the shelf life of processed foods but are terrible for your cardiovascular health. Most of the trans fat in the foods we eat is formed through a manufacturing process that adds hydrogen to vegetable oil, whips it together, and converts the liquid into solid fat at room temperature. This process is called hydrogenation.
Sadly, though, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still hasn’t forced manufacturers to remove these dangerous artificial fats from our food. Labeling guidelines make it easy to hide small amounts of trans fat in foods some of us consider healthy, like vegetable oils.
There is a mountain of evidence demonstrating how cutting out trans fats can massively reduce your risk of a heart attack, stroke, or other potentially fatal health issues. So, let’s look at how to avoid eating trans fats and why their replacements might not be as healthy as you’d like.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for the elimination of industrially produced trans fats from the global food supply by 2023, warning that trans fats kill up to half a million people globally each year. So, why aren’t trans fats banned in the US?
Back in 2006, the FDA brought in rules about labeling, and in 2018 they passed regulations to stop manufacturers from adding trans fats to food. Food manufacturers appealed that decision and the FDA extended that deadline to January 1, 2020, for foods already on the market.
This was to allow those foods manufactured before the 2018 deadline to work through the food distribution system. The trans fats made the food items so well preserved that they can stay on shelves, even five years later. Think about how healthy that is for your body.
As of January 2020, the FDA will have effectively banned artificial trans fats in foods. However, food manufacturers can still seek FDA permission to use partially hydrogenated oils (PHO) in foods if they cannot find a way to reformulate products.
And, of course, there may still be some foods hanging around that were manufactured before 2018 and have not been taken off shelves just yet. Wherever you’re getting your food, it’s good practice to check nutrition and ingredients panels.
It’s also essential to know how to check nutrition labels properly. Unfortunately, this isn’t as simple as just looking for a “zero” next to trans fats on the nutrition label.
Labeling guidelines allow manufacturers to put a ‘0’ in the column next to trans fats if a food contains less than 0.5 grams per serving. It’s easy to see how, then, the average American still consumes 1.3 grams of artificial trans fats every day, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The labeling guidelines rules allow vegetable and seed oil manufacturers to claim their products are free of trans fats, when in fact they often contain small amounts.
In addition to the lies we are told about the amounts of trans fats in our processed foods, we also are sold lies when encouraged to buy “healthy products.” Take canola, soybean, and corn oil, for example.
These cooking oils proudly proclaim “contain zero grams of trans-fat.” Read the fine print that states zero grams of trans-fat per serving, which is only one tablespoon, or about 14 grams of oil. The FDA allows any component that is less than 0.5 grams per serving to be listed as zero grams! Despite this claim, all vegetable oils sold in the supermarket contain small amounts (less than 5%) of trans fat.
Without even knowing it, you could easily consume 1.3 grams of trans fats in just three servings of foods that have a ‘0’ for trans fats on the label but that contain almost half a gram of trans fats per serving.
Ever wonder who decides a “serving size?” These are chosen to keep portions small enough to fly under the FDA radar of “less than 0.5 grams per serving.” Factor in how most serving sizes are actually far below what the average person eats and you’ve got a whole lot of potential for high intakes of trans fats.
Your best bet to avoid trans fats altogether is to check both the nutrition label and the ingredients panel. If there are any trans fats listed on the nutrition label, skip that food. If there aren’t, make sure that there are no partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients list. You might also see this listed as vegetable shortening.
Why does research show that olive oil is good for heart health?
We hear cardiologists recommending high-phenolic olive oil as good for heart health. High phenolic, extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is made from the first pressing of early-harvest green olives. This is also called “cold-pressing” - no additives, no heat, no added cheaper oils to the leftover mash to get more product.
The type of olives used, when they were harvested, and how long they are stored - all make a difference. The standard variety of EVOO at the supermarket is not the same product from research.
We will see new labeling on premium olive oils that are the new high phenolic variety coming out of Europe and the Middle East. Many olive oil companies will continue to use the research to sell their product, but it may not contain the amounts of polyphenols tested. When we say olive oil is good for heart health, we mean it is fresh-pressed highphenolic extra virgin oil.
The danger of using EVOO while on this diet is the amount of fat calories that change how our body processes our fat storage. So for now, no added oils or fats, and no foods that contain added oils or fats. An avocado once in a while, and nuts and seeds occasionally can offer us heart-healthy fats, but keep in mind, that we have pounds and pounds of stored fat to use up first. Eat olives. Remember, when you take the oil from the olive, you remove the fiber, and that changes its health benefits. Think WFPB.
Research can also be misleading. What would you do if you spent years (and thousands of dollars) on research that did not yield the results you wanted?
The largest medical study of 49,000 women over eight years looked at “low-fat” dieting and found that they had the same rates of heart attacks, strokes, and cancers of the breast and colon as those who ate whatever they wanted. Too bad. All those women; all those years, and no desired results. What could they say?
The study pivoted and published their results under “weight loss” and showed these women who ate less fat also weighed less. They couldn’t prove that diet lowered cholesterol or protected heart health. Their diets contained a whopping 29% of fat!
In another study, students ate a fast-food diet that contained 900 calories and 50 grams of fat. Their brachial arteries were measured before and after. A control group was also measured who ate 900 calories but no fat. The result was dramatic - it showed the fat-eaters’ arteries took six hours to bounce back from constriction than the control group.
If a single meal can have such an impact on health, imagine what eating fast food does every day, three times a week, or even once in a while, if you are older and obese.
We don’t need to eat at fast food restaurants to “super-size” our bodies. Eating a diet high in animal fats will do it just as easily. The great news is that we can reduce total blood cholesterol through whole food plant-based nutrition, even if it takes a few years to regain the powerful capacity to resist and reverse heart disease.
Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame took 14 months to lose the weight he gained in thirty days of eating McDonald’s fast food, and for his cholesterol values to return to normal. How did he lose it? A vegan, whole food plant-based diet.
The truth is we are addicted to fat. A diet that allows for a small amount of fat, or a modest amount of animal, dairy, and oil fat still feeds our habit. I will stress this again - if you eat whole foods and plant-based foods, you need never develop heart disease. If you already suffer from symptoms or have heart disease, you will conquer it. You can reverse the damage that has been done, and prevent the progress of the disease.
When we have no added salts, fats, or oils, our bodies can do the repairs needed to unblock the arteries. A person who maintains a cholesterol level under 150/mg/dL will not develop coronary artery disease - even if they have a family history of it, or are obese.
Produce that is in season, and local gives your body the best nutrition possible. Keep it raw, and you will reap the most benefits. Buying pre-sliced, pre-packaged products must contain citric acid or some preservatives. When we chop. slice, or alter fresh fruits and vegetables, and store them in a bag on a grocery shelf, we reduce the vitamins and minerals.
Supermarkets buy produce from across the country that has also been sprayed with gasses that allow it to ripen on the journey but do not offer you the most nutrition or flavor. Organic foods are more expensive, but you are getting more vitamins for the extra coin.
Let’s look at research on organic vs. non-organic carrots. Reviewing several published studies comparing the nutritional value of organically grown and conventionally grown crops, organically-grown carrots contain 12% more iron, 69% more magnesium, and 13% more phosphorus than their non-organic counterparts.
The added benefit of buying organic is that the produce has not been sprayed with toxic chemicals.
Buy your produce fresh, and more often. Storing vegetables for a long time dries them out and they lose more vitamins and minerals.
Processed foods contain salts and a host of other chemicals that are detrimental to your health, such as titanium dioxide, brominated vegetable oil (BVO), potassium bromate, butylated hydroxytoluene, azodicarbonamide, propylparaben, yellow dyes #5 and #6, and red dye #40 (which is the red food coloring used in most snack and dessert foods) all of which are banned in Europe and Japan.
That includes foods we feed our children, such as Fruity Pebbles™, Honey Bunches of Oats™, Skittles™, red Jello™, and Honey Maid™ products. You'll find red dye in meat products such as deli sausages, bacon, and ham. Do you know that red powder left on your fingers after eating Doritos? It is red dye #40 and has been researched as a contributor to ADHD.
Let’s talk about the dreaded MSG for a moment. If you haven’t heard, it is probably in mostly everything in a package - in one form - monosodium glutamate - or another - autolyzed yeast protein, calcium glutamate, glutamate, glutamic acid, hydrolyzed corn, hydrolyzed, protein fortified, ultra-pasteurized, fermented, or enzyme modified, magnesium glutamate, monoammonium glutamate, monopotassium glutamate, sodium caseinate, soy isolate, soy sauce, textured protein, vegetable extract, yeast extract, and yeast food.
Soy sauce, seaweed, and yeast products naturally contain glutamates, a naturally occurring amino acid. That’s what gives them their “umami”. Glutamate is also naturally present in food, either in free form or bound to proteins, and you can buy MSG-free soy sauces and yeast products that add flavor. It is monosodium glutamate that causes allergies, heart palpitations, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, blood pressure spikes, and other health problems. It is made from sodium, sugar, starch, and glutamate.
Nature provides flavor that we can use, without added chemicals. On A Very Strict Diet, we still use these glutamate-containing foods sparingly, as we are working to manage our blood pressure and appetite.
In my opinion, processed foods have so many unhealthy additives that it’s better to just eat whole foods. But what do I use for fat, salt, or sugar? How do I get meals to taste good?
You will be chopping, saucing, steaming, and creating more meals than you had before. It is always a good idea to set aside time every day to work on a menu item. Plan for the next few days, and cook a batch of brown rice, lentils, quinoa, or whole grain. Cooked oatmeal can be made in larger quantities and rewarmed, or eaten cold.
Buy fresh, organic fruit when on sale, and in season, slice and freeze batches for use later in your oatmeal or puree some for salad dressing or sauce. Puree fruits with a little lemon juice, and freeze in small ice cube trays. Use some to add to an oil-free salad dressing, soup, or stew.
The benefits of whole food plant-based eating are so profound that it makes sense to start now - lower your risks of prostate, breast, and other cancers, prevent, even reverse heart disease, prevent and treat diabetes, lose weight, lower cholesterol, and blood pressure, and give more energy.
There are many truths laid out in a Very Strict Diet, including that you will be hungry, angry, frustrated, stubborn, and sick of this diet at some point. I am asking you to try 90-day stretches at a time to see if your blood work, your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your headaches, joint pains, brain fog, and many other symptoms of imbalance reduce or go away. It is worth the challenge. Hopefully, the foods offered in the cookbook section will be filling and yummy and support your health in a way that gives you the nutrition and well-being to keep on going.
In the long run, you have stored an excess of fat that is holding on to some very toxic substances. Yes, our fat is where the toxins from our environment, our pollution, and our food additives are stored, so, when you start to burn that fat, you release the Kraken. (The Kraken is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said that be a beast of destruction.)
It is important to continue with the whole food plant-based diet because the high fiber will move things along nicely, and the higher water content will aid in detoxification.
It’s hard to change, even from what everyone thought was so healthy for me, as a lifelong vegetarian, I still had issues with emotional eating. I was at my highest weight after my son died. I slept most of the time, for months. Those early years were a blur. I do now have a list of things that I can no longer do, from “eating an entire box of Oreos,” to “chomping on 1/2 pound of sliced cheeses with a box of crackers.” It is a much longer list, believe me.
I am invested in my health, though, and while I spent many years doing the wrong things, I did many good things for myself and my family. This is a challenge for me, too. Being vegan is not easy, and you will find that when you an invited to dinners, people may understand vegetarian, and serve cheese or eggs, but vegan means no desserts with eggs or butter, no salads with shredded mozzarella or feta, no potlucks (definitely will have salts, sugars and possibly trans fats) so yes, it is hard. It is Very Strict.
I want to live a long and healthy life with my granddaughter, son, and daughter-in-law. I want to see her every day. She is magical, bright, fun, and sweet, and I don’t want to miss anything that she learns or does. I do not want a feeble, diseased, painful old age. I know I can stay healthy and strong, and this is one major guidebook. I use this cookbook every day.
Do I cheat? Not often. Before writing this book, when I cooked for my family, there was always cheese. I avoided it by making a vegan pizza or lasagne, but there was an occasional parmesan cheese sprinkle on the homemade pasta until I found a recipe for vegan parmesan. I keep a chart on my refrigerator - a three-month calendar - and I highlight the days that I am 100% vegan. There are gaps, here and there, but I can also go 90 days, get my bloodwork done, and see the remarkable results of a diet that lowers my total cholesterol.
I think it is important to identify what weight is good for you, whether you have ever been there or continue to desire it. Find a picture of someone that looks like you, or a photo of how you want to look. And now it’s time to face the music. Overeating and not enough exercise are the most likely suspects. You have been taught to choose foods that are not healthy, or you have lost interest in your health and chosen salty, sugary, high-fat meals and snacks.
Let’s be honest: How many meals have you eaten where you feel low energy afterward? Have you noticed that as you get older, you are weaker, feel more tired, and gain belly fat? Did you know that without regular exercise and strength training, you are losing muscle and replacing it with fat? Can you see that your weight might not change but your body shape does? Do you feel like you eat and it goes “right to your hips, or your middle?”
Metabolism is the way foods are converted to energy.
Metabolic imbalance happens when the body stores fat but does not burn it efficiently. We seem to be better at storing fat than burning it. The symptoms of metabolic imbalances are increasing weight, fatigue, memory loss, brain fog, muscle weakness, and poor exercise endurance.
On the inside, we may not notice that our blood sugars (glucose), triglycerides, and blood pressure are rising to dangerous levels. Even if we get annual blood tests, a Complete Blood Count (CBC) does not really look at the markers that point to pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and early stages of heart disease.
We often charge forward on diets or exercise plans and find that in a few days or weeks, we fall backward into our old eating and resting patterns. Why? The underlying cause has to be addressed in order to get that energy, alertness, mental clarity, and a leaner, more muscled body.
The weight has to come off. The fat stores must be “raided.” That means fasting, calorie restriction, exercise, and Very Strict dieting.
If excess weight is not addressed, in addition to heart disease, chronic kidney disease, insulin-resistant diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease can develop.
Our food patterns are largely developed in childhood, following the habits of our parents and grandparents. And then, we fall into a commercial rut of fast foods, and easily prepared meals, and we listen to newscasts, podcasts, social media, and even documentaries that tell us that eating processed food is better for us, and just as healthymaybe it saves time but it does not save our lives.
There are two ways we create these mysterious underlying conditions - overeating processed foods and overconsuming carbohydrates. These habits create stressful hormonal cascades that promote fat storage instead of fatburning.
Obesity is the end result of a mismatch between energy intake and energy expenditure, such that intake exceeds expenditure, resulting in the net accumulation of energy stores in the body. Over time, If energy intake exceeds energy expenditure by as little as 25 kcal per day, a person becomes obese. What I don’t know about your situation is whether you are overweight or obese due to excess energy intake, or a reduction in energy expenditure.
The biggest price we pay for eating processed foods is eating hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats. These fats clog the liver in the form of cholesterol and triglycerides and make the distribution of energy a problem.
We can learn to eliminate foods that cause inflammation and are high in salts, sugars, and oils/fats, and detoxify the liver.
The liver is the site where glycogen, cholesterol and triglycerides are stored, and if the liver is too fatty, there’s too much of one substance than another. We need glycogen, which comes from carbohydrates, to burn triglycerides.
But when the balance of hormones and enzymes are not present, the liver can’t do its job properly. Think of it as a camp stove - you can’t start a fire with fat, fat and fat. We need fiber, complex slow-burning carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and trace elements found in whole plants.
The easy answer is taking in more calories than you burn, but that does not explain many of the imbalances that develop (these are the underlying causes we must address) like hormonal changes, insulin resistance, poorly functioning thyroid, liver, kidney, heart, and pancreas. Even a condition called PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome) can cause weight gain. Certain medications also cause weight gain.
A Very Strict Diet targets prevention and treatment for metabolic and hormonal syndromes. To qualify as part of this epidemic, we have a new condition called “Syndrome X” that refers to hormonal and physical changes that adults or children can suffer with, and it’s tied to insulin resistance. If you have two of these four symptoms, you may have Syndrome X.
1) obesity - “tried everything, can’t lose weight”
2) blood sugar issues (diabetes)
3) cholesterol problems
4) high blood pressure
For every pound of fat, your body has it has to create an extra mile ……………….of blood vessels this causes the heart to pump blood harder and longer than necessary, throughout your body with every beat.
When the body is deprived of food, the cells that break down and die are the unhealthy ones. This is called autophagy (aw-TOE-fa-gee) and it means the body is literally consuming itself. The body will not use the healthiest cells unless you go too far and truly starve yourself.
Autophagy triggers our stem cells to become more active and regenerative.
So, if you do not add fats to your diet, your body will use the stored fats to keep everything running smoothly. If you do not add salts and sugars to your food, your digestive and cardiovascular systems will get the needed rest, lowering blood pressure and allowing for the autophagy of body fat and cholesterol.
It will remove the fat in your muscles that prevents your pancreas’ ability to properly regulate insulin. Various types of diabetes, including type 1, TD2, and juvenile onset diabetes have been found to be a dysfunction of pancreatic beta cells, in response to a high fat diet.
Whether or not the pancreas is working properly partly determines one’s predisposition to gain or not to gain weight. Clinical research has shown that a dysfunctional pancreas is a key reason many people have difficulty losing weight. A fully functional pancreas produces the right amount of insulin necessary to regulate our blood sugar levelsglycemia.
Your body can have all its energy demands met by the liver — from stored glucose, gluconeogenesis, or ketone production — whether or not you eat any proteins, carbs, or fats at all.
After approximately three days on A Very Strict Diet, your body begins to burn your stored fat cells for energy naturally. This results in your body producing ketonic bodies (ketones) that are a natural appetite suppressant thus preventing cravings after the first few days and providing you with energy. This diet, however, is completely different than the Keto diets that advocate eating high amounts of fat.
You will start losing weight as soon as fat becomes your first source of energy. You will then burn fat while nourishing muscle with the high-quality, highly-absorbable plant-based proteins containing the nine essential amino acids.
Remember, muscle is the engine that burns calories every minute of every day, and by supplying your diet with essential whole food plant-based meals, you ensure that your muscle is not used significantly for energy.
During this time you will also reset your pancreas by giving it a much-needed rest. A properly functioning pancreas is the key to avoiding filling up your fat reserves once you have completed the plan and you return to more normal eating.
Many people have restrictive diets but then they overindulge in high-fat, high-salt, and high-sugar foods. Let’s look at cholesterol - it is a waxy substance that is not found in plants, only animals. We don’t need to eat animal products because our bodies manufacture cholesterol, but when we do, when we consume meat, poultry, fish, dairy products and eggs, our bodies make more cholesterol than needed.
This explains why vegetarians who consume oil, butter, cheese, ice cream, eggs and high-fat, high sugar desserts develop coronary artery disease despite their avoidance of meat.
Let’s recap what we are saying so far: A Very Strict Diet is designed to allow your body to properly dispose of stored fats and waste products, by restricting salt, sugar and fats, and depending on your current health challenges, use some form of calorie restriction, including various types of fasting.
Your blood pressure will return to normal, your cholesterol levels will be healthy, and your weight will come off and stay off. Your blood sugar will normalize. You will not have to worry about heart attack or stroke, diabetes, or chronic diseases of obesity.
It is well known that there are certain foods as well as certain bad eating habits that cause weight gain and there are other foods and eating habits that promote weight loss. A Very Strict Diet plan will guide you and support you in your quest to lose fat safely by helping you understand the difference between “eating a balanced diet” and “eating for weight loss”.
And most importantly, upon reaching the final stage, you will also have learned to use the right combinations of foods within each meal to maintain your weight loss permanently, manage diabetes and heart health.
We’ve already established that eating processed foods are to be avoided, so no animal products for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and no salts, fats or oils. That leaves basic whole grains, like oats, brown rice, quinoa, barley, amaranth, and whole wheats, such as bulgur and farro. It is healthy to add herbs and spices, and vegetables to these dishes without any problems in digestion.
The first lesson to note, you shouldn’t mix some fruits and vegetables together because they are digested differently. When eating fruits, it’s best to eat them before a meal. Any type of melon should be eaten alone.
Fruits have a quicker pace of digestion, and, in fact, many nutritionists say that they are partially digested by the time they reach the stomach. Also, fruits have more sugar content which is something that can hinder the digestive process of vegetables. For the same reason, one shouldn’t mix orange with carrot; they may cause heartburn and excess bile reflux.
What other fruits should not be mixed with vegetables?
For better digestion, another important thing to note is to avoid mixing acidic fruits, such as grapefruits, strawberries and blueberries, or sub-acid fruits such as apples, pomegranates and peaches, with sweet fruits like bananas and raisins.
Acidic fruits are great with vegetables - think squeezing lemon, lime or grapefruit on a salad for extra punch. Add strawberries or blueberries to your salad, too.
Food Has Stress Too
There are several types of stress, and one of them affecting human health is oxidative stress in which reactive oxygen species (ROS) may damage DNA, proteins, and lipids. Antioxidants scavenge ROS and reduce cell proliferation in cancer lines.
Consumption of antioxidants is also suggested for the prevention of cardiocirculatory diseases. Both natural and synthetic antioxidants are commercially available but synthetic antioxidants have an unnatural molecular structure that may turn out to be hazardous.
We have been duped to think that supplement vitamins and minerals can answer the deficiencies in our processed food - remember Cheerios are not whole grains - and the “fortified with vitamins and minerals” is not helpful medicine at all.
Take B (B1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 12) vitamins, for example, which are sprayed on the cereals to give them back the lost natural minerals in whole grains. B vitamins play a critical role in energy and metabolism. When we get B vitamins from food based forms, we get synergist cofactors and essential transporters, which occur in a crystalline structure, allowing the vitamin or mineral to attach to the cells and be absorbed, and transported to the cells, tissues or organs that need the benefit.
Vitamin B1, in synthetic supplements, is created from coal tar derivative resin. It’s a non-living source, and does not have the synergist cofactors or essential transporters (think of the facets on a diamond) If you take it long-term, you have the potential to damage your DNA. What are they spraying on my cereal? I had given that to my baby before I learned that peas are high in B1. What baby doesn’t love peas?
When naturally occurring vitamins and minerals are consumed, these crystals “donate” an electron allowing us to use the beneficial energy. If the vitamin or mineral is synthetic, it does not have these extra facets, and can actually become oxidants rather than antioxidants. We take vitamins such as C, A, E, and Bs thinking we are fighting free radicals when, if they are synthetic, are free radicals.
Rich sources of vegan food-based B vitamins are beans, peas, lentils, sunflower seeds, almonds, chickpeas, tofu, mushrooms, avocado, spinach, brown rice, bananas, potatoes, oats, broccoli, sweet potatoes, dark green leafy vegetables, peanuts, and oranges, to name a few. B12 is something only derived from animal sources, and that is why I say (mostly) vegan, so you can get it in collagen, nutritional yeast, nori (the dark green seaweed used in sushi) and some algae.
However, the long-term effects of veganism can cause B12 deficiencies, which are not great for the heart or the brain, so if you do plan to go for 5-10 years, you may want to have your B12 status checked annually (test your levels of homocysteine, called MMA testing) or take a B12 supplement.
Now suppose you decided you would stay on A Very Strict Diet for “one day at a time.” Will you feel great right away?
Depending on the family, friends and co-workers around you, you may find it is more difficult to start a Very Strict Diet because of all the testimonials, the comparisons, the questions, the nay-sayers, and the doubters.
It’s much easier to stay on a water-only, or fresh juice-only fast for a day when you are home alone. Maybe you can start out with a home-delivery food system, or take the time to learn the recipes you like.
This is when it is important to keep a need-to-know group around for support, and not share anything with anyone else. If you are invited to dinner, check out the menu and if there is nothing for you, suggest somewhere else.
Be strong in your commitment to make healthy choices for every single meal. Many times, you might feel like you need a “meeting” to get through one more day.
Everyone has a testimonial of a successful diet for weight loss, or an unsuccessful one. Keep in mind, this diet is not for weight loss, but for health management and disease prevention, so, maybe they don’t need-to-know your condition.
If you are obese, you might want to say, “I am on this diet to manage my high blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease, or diabetes.” You might want to say that “losing weight is an important part of controlling my health,” so yes, the weight needs to come off.
No matter who you are, you will meet someone close to you that has tried a diet and failed. Dieting is a very difficult process. Even the smartest, strong-willed person can fail or just plain have trouble.
The trick to successful dieting is to adopt healthy eating habits that you will be able to uphold for many years to come. If your family or friends think A Very Strict diet is too extreme, you will find it harder to maintain your new lifestyle for more than a few weeks.
You can always ask for support and share the program materials with them, but they are most likely confident that this is a bad idea, and unhealthy for you.
Their experience of intense dieting may have had numerous health detriments, oftentimes causing far more problems than it solved. Maybe they did not provide their body with enough calories to get through the day. Maybe they became exhausted or dehydrated from undernourishment and excessive exercise.
Believe me, I have spent many family dinners defending my diet with research and telling them, “this diet is not for you. You do not have any of the health risks for which it was designed. This is not a weight loss diet, like the Stillman Water Diet, or Keto. It is designed to reduce blood pressure, lower cholesterol and lose weight in the process.”
Stay motivated. It is impossible to lose weight without being completely dedicated to the task at hand. Do not give up on your goals when you encounter pain or difficulty, or when you cheat. Regard your health challenge (high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity) and not weight loss as your greatest priority.
Give A Very Strict Diet A 90 day trial. Retest your cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure.
There is no need to set any goals for weight loss, keeping in mind, you have already seen your medical lab values, and will retest every 3 months. If you do want to optimize your success, you can use a calorie tracker to keep track of what you are eating and how your weight is changing. I use MyFatSecret. It tells how many calories in fats, protein and carbohydrates, vitamins, if available on a nutrition label, shows a graph of the percentage of your food intake, and even has a support group, if you like. If you like your progress, try to stick with this for another 90 days.
Friends and family are invaluable in helping you to stick to your diet. Without steady support from the people who care about you, you will find it immensely difficult to maintain your new lifestyle. So, if you have nay-sayers in your group, join others.
Check in with me at theclearing@me.comor drsusanpalmieri.com
There are many tests that are not done as routine blood tests, and you may request them from your doctor. You can say, “I’d like to know more about any heart health risks, can you do a ….
I have included a chart that describes the values and what they mean. I also am including my own test scores over a 14 month period. The particle size and number give more information about your risk of heart attack or stroke, than just the total values.
For example, 14 months earlier, my LDL (low density lipoprotein) particle number was greater than 2500, off the charts, and in the danger zone. See the chart at the bottom of page 2.
Fourteen months later, it was 1309, moving me from the red zone, to the borderline orange zone, which is no longer a high risk, but a moderate risk. Less than 1135 is good, and will put me in a low risk green zone.
My LDL-C started out 158, putting me in the orange zone, at moderate risk, and 14 months later, the value was 44, in the green, and actually better than most doctors look for.
Looking at the Large VLDL-P (large-sized Very Low-Density Lipoprotein- Particle) which is a type of lipoprotein that transports cholesterol, triglycerides, and other lipids, or fats, around the body, my starting score was 19.5, way off the high-risk charts.
VLDL is considered "bad" cholesterol because it can contribute to cholesterol buildup in artery walls, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
After 14 months of A Very Strict Diet, my Large VLDL-P value was 6.8, still in the red. The desired value is 1.4 and 2.7.
My total cholesterol started at 266 (high) and went down to 163 (normal) in just 3 months of the diet.
The HDL-C (high density lipoprotein - cholesterol) is the “good” cholesterol because it removes the bad stuff from the bloodstream, muscles and arteries, and returns them to the liver for processing. High levels of HDL may lower the risk of heart disease.
My value was low starting out, but stabilized in 3 months. HDL-C is managed by exercise. The more we get, the harder HDL-C works for us.
The size of the HDL-C particle has meaning : both small and large HDL particles are associated with cardiovascular risk. Looking at my numbers, while they are improving, they still need to be better, and that reflects on how much exercise I get.
Trigylcerides can signal pre-diabetes or diabetes. High triglycerides can also be a sign of: Metabolic syndrome — a condition when high blood pressure, obesity and high blood sugar occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease. In the first three months of A Very Strict Diet, my triglycerides fell by 117 points, a step in the right direction.
There are also other tests that can give you an idea of which direction your Very Strict Diet may be helping:
C-reactive protein : A C-reactive protein (CRP) test measures the level of CRP in a blood sample to check for inflammation in the body. CRP is a protein produced by the liver, and levels increase when the body is inflamed. Inflammation can be a response to injury, infection, or disease, and is the body's way of protecting and healing tissues.
Fibrinogen: Fibrinogen is a protein produced by the liver that helps blood clot and stop bleeding. It's the main structural component of a blood clot, which is made up of fibrin, another protein that helps heal wounds.
However, high levels of fibrinogen in the blood can cause clots to form in blood vessels, which can break loose and travel to the brain, lungs, or heart, potentially causing damage. Fibrinogen levels above 700 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) are associated with a higher risk of blood clots.
Eliminating animal products from your diet will greatly reduce your fibrinogen.
A1 C : An A1C test, also known as a hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) test, measures your average blood sugar levels over the past two to three months. It does this by measuring the percentage of hemoglobin proteins in your blood that are coated with sugar, or glycated. This is a measure to watch out for in pre-diabetes, and diabetes, of which obesity is a symptom.
TMAOs: This test can powerfully predict future risk for heart attack, stroke, and death in people who appear otherwise healthy. TMAO is a compound produced by the liver after intestinal bacteria digest certain nutrients: L-carnitine (found in red meat) and lecithin (found in egg yolks, meats and full-fat dairy products).
LIFE EXTENSION WELLNESS EXPERTS: I have worked with Life Extension wellness experts for the last 40 years. I trust their supplements, because there is scientific evidence that they are effective to manage various symptoms. If you’d like, you can call and speak with a Wellness Expert, or a Senior Wellness Expert (if you have a chronic, life threatening condition.)
They will not tell you to stop taking your medications, but will teach you how to manage your symptoms so that you and your doctor can see, through lab tests, that you can start to reduce the amount you take. I have gone from taking 6 pharmaceuticals to 2, and reduced the amount by half.
This service is FREE. Call 7:30 AM - 12 AM (ET) Mon-Fri | 9 AM - 12 AM (ET) Sat-Sun 1-800-226-2370. You may also contact me for advice or support, Dr. Susan Palmieri. Please email me your concerns. This helps me keep a record of our discussion. theclearing@me.com
Best of Health to you!
Susan Palmieri, Ph.D.
This cookbook is a companion to A Very Strict Diet, a book based on current clinical, medical research that proves a Whole Food Plant-based Diet (WFPB) can reverse heart disease, including atherosclerosis, lower blood pressure (quite quickly, actually) and, offer healthy recovery and reversal for many other chronic conditions of dietary excess.
This diet is not for weight loss, but for life extension and disease prevention. Your excess weight will come off, as a side effect. I have to ask you three questions, as I have asked myself, “What are you doing with all of that excess weight? What are you storing that fat for? You do realize that excess fat you are carrying is life threatening, right?”
This cookbook will teach you how to add yumminess to basic vegan SOS* meals, and is meant to offer you several choices for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time. Choose one or two favorites and eat that every day.
One meal daily can be a huge salad (greens, fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes and grains) you will get an adequate supply of fiber, minerals, vitamins and macros (protein, carbs, and fats) to give you energy and joy, and work to reduce or reverse your chronic health condition.
I suggest another meal be one of your Gladiator Bowl creations. Send me your best combinations for credit in the next update.
You may learn some new skills and new information about why certain foods are great to eat every day, and give you recipes to try with your families and friends to show that eating for life can taste great. Your feedback is welcomed. Please visit drsusanpalmieri.com
* SOS : no sugar, oil or salt.
As you start your vegan SOS journey, you may feel intimidated, using unfamiliar ingredients, that require many steps to complete. Some things are best made ahead. It’s a matter of reading first, learning, planning, and experimenting. Create a menu, or use one of mine.
There are many items in my refrigerator that I use constantly, besides sauces and dressings, I have goodies that can easily be added to anything to add crunch or punch.
I am going to keep this very simple and let you decide if you are going to buy wide-mouthed Ball jars to store excess grains and dried beans, or if you are going to use canned products. Keep in mind that in an effort to stay on a Very Strict Diet, using bottled BBQ sauce for the Jackfruit BBQ Sandwiches, or adding salt to the water as you cook your grains, does take you somewhat off the path.
To reverse heart disease, lower blood pressure, avoid diabetes and other life threatening conditions, we have to lose the stored fat, and lower the bad cholesterol, using whole food plant-based meals.
Don’t be one of those people who says “french fries and ketchup” are two servings of vegetables. Processed vegan food is not a good substitute for whole foods. I have my own goodies prepped and frozen and am proud to say that most of the labels on my food are the ones I put there. In the pantry checklist, I have listed what you’d need if you’re going to make the recipes in this cookbook. In general, when you do a pantry clean-out of all processed foods that have oils, salts, and sugars, please refill it slowly, with whole grain products.
My apologies to many ethnic cuisines, as I tend to like Mediterranean flavors, so please adapt your choices. Replace the seasonings suggested in Naan, and add garam masala, or spice your chickpea crackers with gochujang. I have many spices, and many favorite recipes. In the interest of keeping it simple for beginners, I have included recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.
Here are my suggestions:
Fresh: Lemons, limes and avocados. These can be submerged in water to extend their shelf life, or frozen. Make sure the avocados are ripe before you submerge them, and wash and dry the outer rind first. Then, drop it into a jar. Do not store cut avocados in water. If you freeze them, leave them out for 15 minutes to defrost. They will be a little mushier, but fine for guacamole, or dressing.
Lemons and limes can be frozen, Wash the rind first and let it dry. They can be zested frozen. Leave them out a few minutes before using. You can slice lemons and limes and freeze them individually, then freezer-bag them. They last for months.
Stock up on salad greens, onions, garlic, cucumbers, sweet potatoes and yams, white potatoes, and whatever is fresh and in season at your local market. Fresh fruits and vegetables, in season, and from local farmers, taste so good and have so much more nutrition than food picked before its ripe and driven 2,000 miles to sit for weeks on your store shelves.
I use dates to sweeten foods, olives to add saltiness, and dried figs and cashews in dressings and desserts. Make a batch of Date Paste, Pickled Onions, Pickled Radishes, and Caramelized Onions as soon as you can to be prepared for the new recipes ahead.
Frozen: Whatever fruits and berries are in season, wash and slice and freeze in a single layer, then store in a plastic bag or container. I slice and freeze bananas, pineapple and pitted cherries. I always have a few lemons and limes in the freezer. You can zest them from frozen, and juice them after letting them thaw a bit.
I freeze small batches of peaches, berries, jalapeños, and the greens from scallions. I freeze one cup servings of many meals, jalapeños, extra jackfruit taco filling, veggie ground meat, lentil stew, the scraps from the veggies that I have chopped - all go into my homemade veggie broth. I keep a bag in the freezer, and when it’s filled, it’s time to make soup stock.
Stock can also be frozen in ice cube trays, then once solid, transferred to a freezer bag. There are many options to have pre-prepped ingredients, in your freezer.
Chop fresh parsley, cilantro, dill, and basil (separately) add place in ice cube trays. Fill with water and freeze. When frozen, transfer to freezer bag - don’t forget to label what’s inside. It’s easy to grate frozen ginger root; just take what you need and put it back in the freezer.
You can also freeze dollops of tomato paste or that small bit of sauce.
Of course, you will want to freeze small portions of your meals, to have something for those busy days.
I have a few vegan “fast foods” that I have in my freezer for times when guests drop in at dinnertime. I love Beyond Steak™Plant-based Seared Tips with Barilla™ Protein Plus pasta - low in sodium, low in calories, high in protein. I use JUST EGG™ small omelette patties (made from mung beans) when I need an egg replacer.
I use Beyond Beef™ plant-based “ground beef” to make my “neatballs” I may have an occasional Gardein™ burger, if I find a good sale, but my freezer is starting to fill up with freshly frozen fruits, veggies, herbs, and leftovers.
I wish you the best plant-based journey, and hope you enjoy discovering new flavors and recipes!
Dried beans will save you money, but not time, unless you have an Insta-Pot™.
You may use canned beans. Buy your favorites, as rice and beans are a perfect protein, a fast meal, and can be seasoned one hundred different ways. They can be combined with a variety of roasted veggies, and an unlimited, international array of spices and sauces. In this book, I use canned and dried garbanzo, cannellini, black, pinto, brown and red lentils. Always buy USDA Certified Organic, as non-organic beans are sprayed with glyphosate; see, “Spray What, Now?” on page 12.
For whole grains and seeds, I have brown rice, barley, quinoa, flax and chia seeds. I keep a few packages of Barilla Protein Plus™ pasta, made with wheat, chickpea, lentil, and pea. I have several jars of Rao’s™ Tomato and Basil marinara, made without sugar or salt, and is delicious as a pasta or pizza sauce, or addition to stews and soups.
I use Bob’s Red Mill™ organic oatmeal, and whole meal oat groats, which I mill in a coffee grinder and use as oat flour. I use spelt, whole wheat flour, and chickpea flour when making breads, pizza and crackers.
This, by itself, will be a good start to transform your processed pantry into a Whole Food Plant-based Pantry. You have to start small, and then add more exotic ingredients as you go.
I have several types of flour : chickpea, almond, tapioca, whole wheat, and oatmeal. Start with one new type and practice the recipes, substituting half the amount of whole wheat flour to your regular flour. Whole grains need longer time to rise, so be prepared to let your dough double in bulk.
Using flatbreads instead of sandwich bread gives you a chance to still have a sandwich, but gives you more whole grain, and therefore less inflammation, less dietary sugar, and less bloating. Think naan, roti, flatbread, fry bread, tortillas, or crackers.
I have several cans of pineapple in my pantry. I like to dehydrate pineapple rings and make a sweet fruity snack. I use monkfruit sweetener (looks like sugar, only sweeter) and liquid stevia. I rarely use agave syrup, but it has a lower GI number than honey, maple syrup or sugar.
I have several cans of coconut milk, and jackfruit. If I find Amy’s™ soups on sale, I’ll grab a lentil vegetable soup, or butternut squash soup.
Be aware that there are many vegan junk foods - highly processed foods that might be mostly saturated fatsvegan cheeses and many tofu “dips and spreads,” are made with a base of palm kernel oil, coconut oil, safflower oil, and may be very high in sodium. Remember, your daily sodium intake should be under 2,000 mg, and one can of vegan soup might have that much.
My son recently asked, “is it better to eat highly processed vegan food or grass-fed beef?” Great question. If you are healthy, the choice to have occasional grass-fed beef is good, as it has 5 times more omega-3 oils than regular beef, and is cleaner, with less, or no antibiotics, growth hormones and other toxins. But for us, who have heart disease or who are actively working to prevent and reverse it, that question is more like asking, “Is it better to kill yourself with a gun, or by hanging?”
For us, it’s time for a change to eating clean, whole food plant-based meals for as long as it takes to get back to vital health. Happy shopping!
Fresh: Frozen:
• lemons, lime and avocado bananas, blueberries, fruit in season
• pitted dates peas, edamame
• salad greens, onions, garlic, cucumbers
• carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower
• sweet potatoes, yams, white, red and yellow potatoes
• greens, all your favorites
• vegetables in season
• dates, figs, raw cashews
• olives, Spanish green, and Greek kalamata
• fruits and berries in season
• bananas and plantains
• pineapple, watermelon
• jalapeños
• scallions and chives
• fresh parsley, basil, thyme, cilantro, ginger
• fresh herbs from your garden
• tofu, from the refrigerated produce section
Dry Goods:
• jackfruit
• garbanzo beans
• brown rice
• quinoa
• lentils, red and brown
• beans, black, pinto, cannellini, kidney, black-eyed peas, turtle, soybeans, edamame
• organic oats
• chia
• cashews, raw, unsalted
• walnuts, raw, unsalted
• peanut butter powder
• organic cacao powder (not cocoa)
• whole spelt flour, whole wheat flour, chickpea flour
• silken tofu, in vacuum packs
• dried figs
Spices: Herbs:
• onion and garlic powder Italian mix, everything bagel mix
• nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves
• turmeric, ginger
• pepper, black and red, paprika, or Aleppo pepper flakes
• sesame seeds, white and black
• monkfruit sweetener, agave syrup
For your kitchen to be successful, you will need some basic equipment. You can find a small (mini-prep) food processor at rummage sales, or online, and work in small batches. I am still experimenting with an air fryer, but it’s easy to make everything oil-free, in the oven. I have a 10-cup food processor that can also mix doughs, and has a slicer attachment. It is important to also have a blender. For this, I have two types: a small BlendJet™ and a VitaMix™. I use the small blender for sauces and dressings, but for hummus, I use the food processor.
The general rule is: use a blender if your final product is something you can drink, such as a soup, smoothie, drizzle or dip. In addition to pureeing, a food processor can slice, grate, shred, dice and more. As a general rule, use a food processor if the outcome will be eaten with a fork or spoon.
At some point, it is so much more economical to buy a pound of dried beans that can make 16 servings, instead of 16 cans of the same product. But cooking bean for hours is no fun. I have included a Best-Way-To-Cook-Beans section, in case, but you may want to start looking for a used (or new) InstaPot™ or crock pot. It’s so much easier to make stews and soups and even hot-process canning with an InstaPot™. You can make large batches of rice or grains, and soups much easier than spending hours watching a big saucepan on the stove.
Different dried beans cook at different times, so here is a basic chart:
Dry Bean Cooking Time
Black beans, turtle beans
Black-eyed Peas
Garbanzo/Chickpea
Kidney and Cannellini
White, Great Northern, Navy
Pinto Beans
Lentils, red, yellow
Lentils, brown, green, black
Soybeans
1 to 1 and 1/2 hours
1 hour
1 1/2 hours
1 1/2 hours
1 to 1 and 1/2 hours
1 1/2 hours to 2 hours
15 minutes
30 minutes
5-6 hours
Step One: Sift through the beans and discard any stones, or weird-looking beans. Set aside the quantity you want to cook and soak it in a deep pot of filtered water, overnight, or for at least 4 hours. The beans will swell more than double, so leave head room.
Step Two: Drain the soaking watering and replace it with the amount of water required on the package for the quantity you want to cook. Usually, you would add 3 times the height of beans in the pot. Do not add salt. Add chopped celery, carrots, onion, garlic, bay leaves, and any spices you love (I use red pepper flakes). Simmer, uncovered, until the beans are tender.
Step Three: Drain extra liquid, and remove vegetables, if you want. Allow beans to cool, and then portion them in containers - I set aside several one cup servings - and refrigerate or freeze them (make sure to label your container.)
Different grains cook at different times, and your stove and equipment also make a difference. Taste your grains after 30 minutes. If they need more time, keep the lid on and wait. If they are done and there is still cooking water, drain it, fluff it, spice it, and serve.
Whole grains do not have the hull or bran removed, and they need more soaking and cooking time. One cup of whole grain, or hulled barley will need to be soaked overnight in 3 cups of water.
Here is a basic chart:
Grain or Seed Cooking Time
2 c. Brown Rice, short grain, w/ 3.5 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 35-45 minutes, taste for tenderness
2 c. Brown Rice, long grain, w/ 4 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 60 minutes, taste at 50 minutes
1 c. Amaranth, w/ 1.5 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 20-25 minutes, taste at 20 minutes
1 c. quinoa, rinsed w/ 1.5 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 15-20 minutes, taste at 15 minutes
1 c. whole grain barley, w/ 3 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 60 minutes, taste for tenderness
1 c. wild rice, w/ 3 c. water or stock, herbs as desired 45-50 minutes, taste for tenderness
Why not cook beans and grains together that share cooking times? Long grain brown rice and black-eyed peas? Quinoa and red or yellow lentils?
The combination of beans and grain creates a complete protein. Beans alone and grains alone each lack certain essential amino acids. If eaten together, however, each contributes what the other is missing to form a complete protein.
Tofu is made from soybeans, which, we are told, contain phytoestrogens. We are told that we should not eat soybean products to avoid getting more estrogen, but this is not true.
Tofu contains isoflavones, which act like estrogen. A common misconception about soy foods is that they promote breast cancer growth due to the phytoestrogens. However, there are two different types of estrogen receptors in the body—alpha and beta receptors. Soy phytoestrogens bind to and activate beta receptors, which have an antiestrogenic effect, inhibiting the growth-promoting effects of actual estrogen. This is something we’ve known for more than 10 years. So, where did this outdated notion that soy could increase breast cancer risk come from?
A study on mice. It turns out, though, that we are not actually mice. Watch the video "Is Soy Healthy for Breast Cancer Survivors?" at http://bit.ly/2pEBUAe to learn more.
Tofu is an excellent source of protein and minerals. Other soy products that are useful on A Very Strict Diet would be soy milk, and tempeh. I do like soy milk to make soy “cheese” but I am not an expert in using tempeh (yet.)
There are two types of tofu sold in supermarkets. One is sold in small vacuum sealed packages, and usually marked as silken, firm, and extra firm. These do not have to be refrigerated. The other tofu is sold in a refrigerated section, sometimes in the produce shelf. It is packed in water, and you can see the texture is grayer and are spongy. This needs to stay in your refrigerator.
The first type is used in sauces, dressings and desserts, as it blends up smoothly and its texture is wonderful. Like flour, tofu has no flavor on its own, and absorbs the flavors of its companions.
The second type of tofu is best used cubed or sliced, marinated for top flavors, and processed in a way that allows it to hold its shape.
Step One - The Long Way: For the type of tofu in the water-packed, refrigerated variety, it yields a chewy, meaty texture if you slice it or cube it, freeze it in a single layer in the freezer, thaw it out, oh yes, there’s more, and then press out the water.
After this process, you can layer the cubes or slices in a flat dish and add marinade. You can also sprinkle it with herbs and spices, but a juicy marinade will give you deep flavor. Let this sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours - up to 8. Stir it around every now and then to make sure it coats evenly. The recipe section will give you ideas.
Step One - The Short(er) Way: Slice or cube the tofu, drain it, and wrap it in a clean dish towel and put some weight on it to press out the water. A flat dish with several cans of beans should do it. Let this drain for 30-60 minutes. Mix your marinade, and plate the cubes or slices in the marinade, in one layer. Let this sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours - up to 8. Stir it around every now and then to make sure it coats evenly.
Step Two - To Bake: Take the tofu out of the marinade (reserve this liquid) and arrange the tofu on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 450. Flip each piece over, and bake for another 5 minutes. The edges might look a little browner than the rest. This is good.
Check out the recipe section for tofu summer rolls, adding cubes to vegetable stock and hot sauce for soup.
Step One: For the type of tofu in the vacuum-packed, shelf stable variety, you just open the package, drain the water, and add to your blender with other ingredients to give you protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals. The recipe section has a few basic dressings, sauces and desserts using this tofu.
Extra firm silken tofu blended with cacao, date paste, vanilla, a plant milk makes a pudding that you could eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner and still lose weight. You have a high protein, high fiber, low calorie, yummy meal. One small vacuum-package has 180 calories, so you could eat the entire 4 servings and not suffer with high cholesterol, added fat, salt or sugar. Looks like Nutella™? Hmmm, maybe blending macadamia nuts with espresso powder and….
Scientists looked a little deeper at the living quarters and lifestyles of the Paleolithic people. Yes, in the 50’s they found lots of animal bones, and thought that the Paleo diet was based on animal protein. However, more recently, looking at plant fossils, which are more delicate and harder to preserve for 10,000 years, scientists agree that the Paleo diet was 80% plant-based. Of course, it was whole food plant-based, so technically, the Paleo diet would be ideal for us now. A Very Strict Diet, in its original form.
We have also learned from examining the lifestyles of the Roman gladiators, that they were called, “hordearii” which meant “beans and barley eater.” Their diet also included fresh and dried fruits. This proves to any modern athlete that there is power in plants, allowing you to achieve award-winning performances, as a vegan. This is a reminder to watch, “Game Changers.”
So, we call these recipes, “Gladiator Bowls.”
Start with 1-2 cups of cooked barley or rice. Add 4-6 cups of greens - your favorite chopped or shredded - raw or cooked - 1 cup of steamed vegetable - served warm or cold - a cup of beans, a handful of your favorite pickled veggie - onion, radish, or mixed veggie - and top with your favorite sauce or dressing.
You can add a handful of sprouts, thinly sliced carrot, onion, Brussels sprouts, olives. At least one meal a day should be a salad or gladiator bowl. Make a huge one to share, or make a small one for yourself.
Sliced, finely chopped apple, walnuts, edamame, leftover sliced baked tofu, cabbage slaw, blueberries, pomegranate arils, and freshly chopped herbs all go well. Top with nuts and seeds. You are the artist here.
Most people think that if you are vegan, all you eat are salads. Well, it is important to eat as much salad as possible, so make it a goal to either have a salad every night before dinner, or having a huge salad at least 4 times a week, as your main meal.
The trick is to dress it with yummy, sticky, salty, sweet sauce or dressing, and adding many, crunchy, different textures.
Having a complex, varied, colorful, raw fruit and vegetable salad will give you the fiber you need to clean you out, fill you up and give you the powerful nutrition you may have been missing.
Our scientists show that if you have a small soup, a small salad, and then your meal, you will be stuffed full, and filled with easily digestible, protein-packed meals.
Start with your favorite salad greens, keeping in mind that iceberg lettuce is mostly water, and that the greener or redder the leaf, the more nutrition it provides. Spinach is a superfood, with 5 grams of protein per cup. Dark green leafy greens have loads of calcium, and minerals. Chop your favorite veggies and fruits, and dress with your choice of oil-free, sugar-free dressings. Skinny Girl™ has a dressing that is oil free, and sugar-free, available at many supermarkets, or make one from our recipes.
These recipes are for items that are used in many other recipes. Make a few of these while you are reading.
These recipes are for items that are used in many other recipes. Make a few of these while you are reading. This sauce is good on pasta; I recommend Barilla Protein Plus ™ - they have noodles of every shape, including spaghetti and linguine. It is made from golden wheat and protein from lentils, garbanzos, and peas, with 17g of protein per 3.5oz serving. In second place, is Banza™ made from garbanzos, pea starch. tapioca, and xanthin gum.
The sauce is good over your favorite steamed or roasted vegetables.
1 c. potatoes, peeled and diced ¼ c. carrots, diced ¼ c. onions, diced 1 c. broth (from cooking veggies)
½ c. raw cashews, soaked*, or white beans
1 T. lemon juice
1 pinch paprika
4 T. nutritional yeast
½ t. garlic powder
1 pinch cayenne
Step One: In a medium pot, bring 3 cups water to a boil. Add potatoes, carrots, and onion and cook until they are tender, about 15 minutes. Check that the carrots and potatoes are fork tender.
Step Two: Reserve the cooking broth as you drain the veggies. Place all ingredients in a blender, with 1 cup of broth. Blend until smooth. Pour over your favorite pasta, or veggies. Enjoy!
* soak the cashews for 4 hours, or set in boiling water for 15 minutes to soften before adding them to the blender. Use white beans in place of cashews, if desired.
Roasted garlic becomes very sweet as well as spicy. It is great as a spread on top of bread, in place of butter. Stir it into any savory dish in place of garlic powder.
Start with 5 large garlic cloves. Pull off the extra outer layers and add those to your freezer bag of veggie scraps (you’ll want to make vegetable stock.) Slice ¼” off the top and wrap each bulb in foil. Roast in a 400 degree oven until the cloves look golden and smell delicious, about 40 minutes.
Once cooled, squeeze the soft garlic out of each bulb to use. Refrigerate the rest in a glass jar.
Easy, quick, and crunchy - a yummy addition to salads and sandwiches - or just as a side dish. Vegetables that are great for quick pickling are beets, jalapeños, green beans, sugar snap peas, onions (red, yellow, and white), cauliflower, carrots, okra, cabbage, tomatoes, radishes, and zucchini.
Step One: Sterilize glass canning jars (or repurposed glass jars) and their covers, with hot water and soap. Depending on the number of jars you are canning, you will heat to boiling 1:1 cups of water to white or apple cider vinegar. Start with one cup of each. You can always boil more as needed.
Step Two: Place optional flavorings you like: crushed cloves of garlic, whole peppercorns, or fresh dill to the bottom of glass jar, and pack the veggies inside, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Fill the jar with boiling water/vinegar. Cover, and set aside for one hour. They will be somewhat pickled after one hour. Refrigerate product for three weeks.
You may also want to prepare this pickling spice, on p.101, in advance.
Once pickled, I transferred the veggies from the larger jars to 32-ounce Ball jars, to share with friends and family.
Caramelized onions will elevate any dish to scrumptious - from plain naan breads to topping your tacos.
4 large white cooking onions (any kind you like)
½ c. vegetable stock or water (to prevent onions from sticking)
2 T. balsamic vinegar (for deglazing the pan)
Step One: Slice onions into uniform pieces, not too thin, but not too thick.
Step Two: In a large non-stick frying pan, add the onions and cook at medium heat. Stir every ten minutes, and stir the browning bits back into the onion to evenly cook. The onions will sweat their water. Don’t stir too often, or they will not brown.
Add vegetable stock to onions to keep them from sticking, but not too much that they swim in liquid. Stir every ten minutes.
Once onions start to brown, lower the heat to prevent burning, and keep stirring in the brown bits and watching for sticking. This entire process may take up to 20 minutes.
Step Three: When the onions are nicely browned, deglaze the pan with balsamic vinegar, mixing all of the browned bits to the onion mixture. Enjoy!
Whole foods are a great source of nutrition, high fiber and protein. This is a great crunchy snack and side. Crumble some into your Gladiator bowls.
½ c. each of raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower, raw sliced almonds or cashews, ¼ c. each of hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds
2 T. nutritional yeast
2 T. Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
1 t. onion powder
1 c. boiling water
1 T. finely chopped fresh rosemary
(I like an herb-y cracker, so if I don’t have fresh rosemary, I use a tablespoon of my Italian spice blend, see p. XX.)
Step One: Preheat oven to 300. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and let rest for 10 minutes. The chia and flax will thicken.
Step Two: Spoon onto a parchment lined 10” x 15 “ baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Place another parchment lined baking tray over the seeds and flip over. Peel the other parchment away (these can be reused) and carefully slice then crackers into bars, or squares. Just score them; don’t worry about getting through completely. Bake for another 30 minutes, or until crispy.
Step Three: Remove from oven and let them cool, unless you like a crispier cracker - turn off the oven and leave the tray in to dry out some more. Check in 10 minutes for doneness.
Since you are now intermittently fasting, not eating from 7 pm to at least 9am, you may be hungrier for lunch-type foods, or leftovers, than the traditional morning breakfast foods. So, choose what you crave. Shown are the sheet pancakes, which are great to bring to a brunch, or for a holiday share.
This recipe saved me from puzzling over what to bring to a large family Easter brunch. I am grateful to my teachers, Jill Keb and Kathy Taylor at Plant Life Journey for the recipe. I added a few twists and turns.
Wet:
2¼ c. plant milk ⅓ cup unsweetened applesauce (one snack pack)
3 T. apple cider vinegar 3 T. agave syrup
1 ½ t. vanilla
Dry:
3 ⅓
c. oat flour (process 3 ½ cups rolled oats into flour)
3 T. baking powder
Optional: 5 teaspoons pumpkin spice OR 3 teaspoons cinnamon with 1 teaspoon nutmeg and ½ teaspoon clove. Add stevia or monkfruit for a sweeter batter.
Toppings: Sliced berries, apples, crushed nuts, vegan chocolate chips.
Try using PB powder mixed with microwaved blueberries (for a PB and J-type jammy mixture.) Place a small dollop on the batter and create a swirl with a toothpick. See the above photo for inspiration.
Step One: Mix wet and dry ingredients, by hand, and do not over mix. The baking powder will create little bubbles in the batter. Spread on a parchment lined baking sheet and design your toppings - all berries? a few squares of many different toppings? You’re the artist.
Step Two: Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes. Instead of pancake syrups, or maple syrups, create one of these heartsmart additional toppers:
Pumpkin Sauce: 1 15 ounce can of pumpkin puree, 1 T. pumpkin pie spice (or, 3 teaspoons cinnamon with 1 teaspoon nutmeg and ½ teaspoon clove,) ½ cup agave.
Combine all ingredients and stir well, Heat, gently, so the flavors can marry, and the color darkens slightly. Add ½ - 1 cup water to thin it out, and add more spices if you’d like. Spoon syrup over pancakes.
Berry Compote: 2 cups of berries (mixed berries are great) 3 tablespoons agave syrup, 1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice. Bring to a simmer on stovetop, mushing to berries, and allowing them to thicken. Remove from heat, and pour over your serving of pancakes.
I’ll tell you, I’m not a super fan of cold oatmeal, but so many people like to grab ’n go in the morning, and, because you can make a week’s worth, in advance. Make it inside of a Ball or Mason jar (with measurement lines on the side). This way you can measure, mix, chill, carry and eat the overnight oats all in one convenient container.
Use plain old fashioned rolled oats, not quick oats. Quick oats will get too soggy when soaked with milk. The ideal ratio is usually 1:1. Do not use steel cut oats because they won’t soften enough to eat just with milk unfortunately.
Warm it up if you prefer warm oats in the morning. Although overnight oatmeal is typically served cold, you can definitely eat them warm. Just place them in the microwave for one minute and be sure to use a microwave-safe jar.
Make a bunch for the week. Because overnight oats typically stay good in the fridge for up to 5 days, try making a batch on Sunday and having it on hand in the fridge for the whole week. Be careful if you’re adding fruit beforehand because they will typically not remain fresh for more than a couple days. Keep the jars sealed until use.
Chill for at least 4 hours. While two hours might do in a pinch, a longer soak will give the flavors time to meld together better, making for a more delicious breakfast.
Temperature matters. Cold milk will take longer to soak into the oats than room-temperature milk. If you’re short on time, consider using milk that’s closer to room temperature.
1 cup rolled oats
1 c. plant milk 1 t. cinnamon (optional)
Add-ins:
chia, PB powder *, fresh, sliced fruit, chopped nuts, hemp seeds, splash agave syrup, shredded coconut, chopped nuts, lemon, or orange zest.
* Not peanut butter
Step One: In a glass jar, add 1 cup each of rolled oats, plant milk, and optional cinnamon. Stop to mix. If you are adding chia, add this next, and stir it in to mix. Store in PB powder, if using. You may use a splash of agave syrup, and then add your fresh fruit and top toppings. Fresh, blueberries, strawberries, sliced bananas are added to the top so they don’t get mushy.
Blueberries and lemon zest are good combo. Microwave it for a burst of berry flavor!
Oats can be made in advance and reheated. This creates resistant starch and is much easier to digest and offers probiotics for the gut. Adding nuts and seeds and fresh fruits allow for added fiber, bulk, dietary fats, and flavor.
½ c. rolled oats
½ banana, sliced
1 T. flax seed
1-2 T. walnuts
½ c. fresh blueberries
2 T. hemp seeds
1 T. chia seeds
1-2 T. plant milk
Optional: sliced apple, cinnamon, raspberries, strawberries. If using frozen fruit, add them to the pan while cooking.
Step One: Place the oats in a saucepan, add 1 cup water and simmer for 5 minutes. Cook to desired consistency. Serve with plant milk, fruit, seeds, nuts and top with cinnamon, if desired.
Refrigerate any extra oatmeal. Mix with a little plant milk to snack on, hot or cold.
Aquafaba is the name for the liquid that comes in a can of chickpeas. When drained, it can be used as a substitute for egg whites in baked goods, or as a thickener to sauces or soups. Aquafaba can be whipped into stiff peaks and used as a topping, similar to merengue, and baked like Pavlova. I am not an experienced baker, but I have included an aquafaba merengue recipe in this cookbook, if you’d like to try.
I have used aquafaba in a small blender, and seen how it whips into a white, frothy mixture which I have used in smoothies, and chia pudding. You can sweeten it with monkfruit, and a few blueberries, and not notice any bean-y taste. Aquafaba can be frozen in ice cube trays in the freezer, and transferred to a freezer bag. You will always have this on hand if you refrigerate or freeze it. Three tablespoons of aquafaba equal one egg.
1 can chickpeas, drained (reserve the aquafaba liquid) 1 lemon
½ c. mashed ripe banana
½ c. pitted dates, or 5 T. date paste
¼ c. unsweetened plant milk
1 T. vanilla extract
½ c. fresh strawberries
½ c. fresh blueberries
2 T. chia seeds
1 ½ t. baking powder
2 c. whole wheat or spelt flour
½ c. aquafaba
Step One: Preheat the oven to 400. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with silicone liners. Drain the chickpeas, but reserve ½ cup aquafaba. Refrigerate or freeze the rest.
Step Two: Zest the lemon, and then juice it. Combine the banana, dates, aquafaba, lemon zest and juice, plant milk and vanilla in a blender. Set aside.
Step Three: Combine the flour, chia, and baking powder in a bowl and mix well. Fold in the berries. Batter may be lumpy.
Step Four: Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full. Bake for 15-18 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out dry.
Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing from silicone liners. Enjoy!
Avocados have many health benefits but are high in fat, so share this recipe with someone, once a week. Avocados contain lutein, an antioxidant that can help reduce the risk of macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. They are high in fiber, which can help with weight loss, and lower blood sugar. Fiber also helps with digestion by adding bulk to stool, which can prevent constipation and indigestion.
Avocados contain healthy fats, fiber, potassium, and antioxidants that can help reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering LDL cholesterol and blood pressure. The monounsaturated fats in avocados can help you feel full for longer, which can help with weight management.
Avocados contain vitamin K, which can help prevent osteoporosis and slow bone loss.
1 avocado, sliced
1 T. cracked pepper ¼ cup micro greens or sprouts 1 tomato, thinly sliced
1 T. flax seeds
1-2 slices sourdough bread, toasted
Step One: Toast the bread. Slice the tomato and lay it on top; slice the avocado and fan it out over the bread. Sprinkle with flax seed, micro greens and a pick of cracked pepper. Enjoy!
Amaranth, like quinoa, is a pseudocereal, not a grass or grain, and as such, needs to be soaked and rinsed before cooking. It has “anti-nutrients” that need to be soaked to soften the outer hull, and then rinsed to release the soapy resins that make it indigestible.
It’s worth the extra work, because both quinoa and amaranth are complete proteins, contain omega-3 dietary fats, and all of the essential amino acids required to build strong muscle and bones. Both are gluten - free. Make this the night before serving. It is such a protein-rich, fiber-filled, nutrient packed meal than you may want to replace your regular breakfast cereals. This will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days, and is easily reheated.
4 c. amaranth
3 T. date paste
1 t. freshly ground cardamom
1 lime, zested
½ c. red currants
1 T. apple cider vinegar
3 c. coconut milk
2 t. vanilla extract
½ c. chia seeds
1 c. almonds, toasted
½ c. blueberries
1 c. plant milk (optional)
Step One: In a large bowl, cover the amaranth with filtered water and apple cider vinegar. Set aside to soak for 6-8 hours.
Step Two: Strain and rinse it, then transfer to a saucepan. Add 3.5 cups filtered water, bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer gently, undisturbed, for 20 minutes. When the water is absorbed, let the amaranth cool, until it looks like a thick porridge. Let it sit, again, for another 5 minutes. Remove the lid, and stir.
Step Three: While the amaranth is cooking, combine the coconut milk, date paste, cardamom, and vanilla. Either blend to distribute the date paste, or simmer it until the paste is integrated. Whisk in the chia seeds. Let this sit for 5 minutes, so the chia can plump up. Stir every few minutes to mix chia in the sauce.
Step Four: Add the cooked amaranth to the sauce, and top with lime zest. Mix well to combine. Fold in the toasted almonds. Top with blueberries and red currants, with a few sprinkles of almonds, and a drizzle of agave if it needs a sweet kick. Pour in plant milk if desired. Enjoy!
I list this as a breakfast and lunch or snack food because it is so nutritious and versatile. I add blueberries to almost everything, as you may notice, for a reason. Blueberries are so high in antioxidants and are anti-viral in nature. I suggest you eat blueberries every day. This parfait can also be made in several batches, and stored in glass jars in the fridge for up to 5 days. Longer than that, it may still be good, but the water will separate and it won’t be as pretty.
You can layer it up, like a parfait, with toasted granola, not-fat vegan yogurt (I used chocolate coconut yogurt for the photo) or layers of fruits and nuts/seeds.
Chia is a complete protein, containing all of the essential amino acids needed to build healthy cells. Besides being high in protein, fiber, it has omega-3 fats, antioxidants and polyphenols, all superfood nutrients that protect your cells from aging and disease, and keep you stocked with calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium.
Two tablespoons a day, tossed into a salad, eaten as a pudding, used as an egg replacer in baking, all give you the feeling of fullness, and help you lose weight.
For this basic pudding, you can add fruits, seeds, nuts, oats, and whatever yummy, healthy bits you have in your pantry.
2 T. chia seeds ½ c. plant milk
1 t. monkfruit sweetener, or stevia fruits, nuts, and seeds for topping
Step One: I like to blitz my chia seeds with fruit to make a sweeter smoothie-like consistency, and then add the toppings before serving, to keep them crunchy. Store in a glass jar, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours - 5 days.
This makes a great late night snack, as it is filling, easy to digest and low in calories. Enjoy!
Calorie pre-loading is a concept that started in American restaurants, drinking a glass of vegetable juice, having a cup of soup or small salad, an entree’, and a dessert. In other countries, the idea is to have more than one course to satisfy your palate - each one being a small plate. Whether you are a home cook or a fancy chef, it is important to utilize these concepts to get a variety of whole plant foods on every plate.
These dishes can be served as the main dish, served with a salad, a vegetable side dish of your choice, and a sweet treat. Enjoy!
This pizza crust takes a few steps to make and bake, but it can easily be baked and topped with your favorite goodies, and then refrigerated or frozen. You can reheat the frozen crust (without toppings) then, add your favorites, and bake for 15-18 minutes at 425. If you make the crust and add your toppings, and then freeze it, you can use a toaster oven or microwave, but if you want crispy crust, reheat it at 350 for 8-12 minutes.
I’ve used red, black and white quinoa (and mixed) for this crust and they all work beautifully. The black quinoa crust is shown below. After soaking, the quinoa will expand to 1 ½ cups.
3/4 c. quinoa, soaked overnight ¼ cup water ½ t. baking powder 1 T. Italian herbs
Step One: Rinse quinoa until water is no longer soapy-looking and runs clear. Add to blender with water, baking powder and herbs, keeping in mind that this batter will be thick, and may need to be thinned slightly with more water. Add water sparingly.
Step Two: Pour batter into a parchment lined 9” springform pan, or a baking sheet. I sprinkled chopped sun-dried tomatoes on top, but do not recommend this, because they almost burned. I would add them to the blender - so the crust has the saltiness of them, but not the char. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes.
Step Three: Flip the crust onto a baking sheet, and bake the other side for another 10 minutes. Top with your favorite veggies and shredded vegan mozzarella or Miyoko’s Liquid Mozzarella™. Bake for an additional 15 minutes. Broil the top for 2 minutes to toast the top.
½ c. quinoa, rinsed, and soaked ½ c. red lentils, rinsed and soaked 2 c. water, divided
Optional: 1 tablespoon Italian herb seasoning, or garlic/onion powder, mixed in the batter.
Step One: Rinse the quinoa until water runs clear. Soak with the lentils in a small bowl of 1 ½ cups water for 1-4 hours, or longer.
Step Two: Add grains to a blender with ½ cup of water. Add herbs if desired. Blend until you have a thin batter.
Step Three: In a non-stick frying pan, fry the batter into rounds.
These rounds make great, soft sandwich wraps. They fold easily, like tortillas. Smear some of your favorite sauce or dressing, add a grilled portobello, sliced onion, spinach leaves, and a drizzle of balsamic for a fast and tasty sandwich.
1 cup ground brown lentils
8 cups vegetable stock
4 T. nutritional yeast
1 T. lemon thyme
¼ cup freshly chopped parsley
1 T. ground cumin
Finishing: Top with Tzatziki Dressing, see p. 93.
Step One:
2 T. minced garlic
2 cups minced onion
1 fresh lemon, zested and juiced
2 T. Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
2 T. ground allspice
1 t. ground black pepper
In a large saucepan, measure out 8 cups vegetable broth, and add all of the ingredients except the flour. Zest the lemon, but reserve it until the end of cooking. Juice the lemon and add it to the broth.
On high heat, get the stock boiling. Whisk in the flour and stir until completely integrated. Lower the heat to medium, but keep it bubbling. If you have ever made polenta - this is similar. The paste will thicken, and the stock will bubble. Be careful of getting splattered.
Cover the pan to reduce the stock to a paste, stirring often. This may take 60 minutes. Watch your heat. Keep it bubbling, but do not burn it. Turn it down to low if you can keep it bubbling, then turn it back up to get it reduced. Cover or uncover the stock as it thickens to a paste. You want to keep it reducing, on medium heat, but watch those bubbles. It’s a little bit like working with hot lava. the hot mixture the pate’ as it cools
As you watch the stock, taste the delicious mixture you are creating. The flavors intensify as it reduces, but in various stages, it makes a great soup, and when you think you are done, can be eaten as a satisfying dip. But, you are not done. This is a long process, and is worth the lesson in culinary patience and creativity.
When the stock has reduced to a paste (and this is when polenta-experience comes in handy) turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Does a “crust” for on the top? Stir it back in. Stir in the lemon zest. Get ready for …
Step Two:
Pour the paste into a parchment paper lined 13” X 9” x 1” sheet pan. Smooth it out to the edges, and let it cool. Refrigerate for 4 hours. If you do not use all of it for your next Step, you can slice and stack it in a container, with parchment paper between slices. It will stay refrigerated for a week, but it will not last this long. It’s so yummy.
Step Three:
Slice the pate’ into 4” x 2” strips and place them in a non-stick frying pan. Grill each side until it is crispy. Warm your naan breads in a microwave to soften, fill them with sauce, cool leaves of lettuce, crisp pickled radishes and onions (or chopped pickles). Add the grilled pate’ and top with tzatziki if desired. Sprinkle the top with dill. Enjoy!
Note: If you do not have allspice, you can substitute 1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. clove powder and 1/2 t. nutmeg. These taste great with freshly made naan, see the recipe on page 75.
the finished gyro
Naan is a flatbread that is great for holding your veggie sandwich fillings. It can be spiced or herbed in any way you like - make it Italian, Indian, Mexican, Asian or any of your favorite spice blends. Before frying, top them with freshly chopped cilantro or parsley, according to these directions.
Using chopped onion or garlic is not advised, because its will burn, but you can season the dough with onion or garlic powder. You’ll need a heavy frying pan with a lid; a cast iron is best.
⅔ cup lukewarm water (100-110ºF) to proof the yeast
2 t. organic cane sugar (the yeast will consume it)
1 ½ t. active dry yeast
2 cups whole wheat flour (or spelt)
½ t. garlic powder (optional, or, onion powder)
1 T. avocado oil (to oil your hands, and bowl)
4 T. finely chopped cilantro (or parsley)
¼ t. baking powder
2 T. herbs or spices of your choice (try everything bagel, Italian, Indian, Mexican, Asian…)
Step One: In a medium bowl, combine the lukewarm water and sugar and stir until dissolved. Add the yeast and whisk for about 15 seconds until well incorporated. Rest for 15 minutes to activate the yeast – it will turn a bit foamy and frothy. Meanwhile, sift the flour, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.
Step Two: Add the yeast mixture, and the herbs or spices of your choice. Stir to combine with a fork. When the dough is shaggy and you can no longer stir it with a fork, transfer it to a clean work surface and oil your hands well.
Start kneading the dough with your hands, oiling your hands several times as you go. The dough will be very sticky and stick to the surface and your hands during the first few minutes, but as you continue kneading, it will stop sticking and become soft, elastic, and pliable. The kneading process should take 4 to 6 minutes.
Rest the dough. Oil a large bowl, add the dough ball to the bowl, and coat it with a bit of oil on all sides. Cover the dough with a clean dish towel. Rest in a warm, draft-free place for 90 minutes (up to 4 hours), until the dough rises and at least doubles.
Step Three: Once the dough has doubled, lightly punch it down to release the air. Briefly knead the dough with your hands into a ball until smooth and tacky (it shouldn't stick to your hands).
Using a pastry cutter, divide the dough into 8 equal portions. Use your hands to roll the dough into 8 balls. Transfer the balls to a sheet of parchment paper and spread them apart to prevent sticking. Cover with a dish towel and rest for 10 minutes to “proof” the dough.
Step Four: Preheat a heavy frying pan, covered, over medium-high heat until it's nearly smoking, at least 5 minutes. Test it with a drop of water. It should sizzle and evaporate. Put a small bowl of water next to your work space.
Step Five: Using a rolling pin, roll each piece of dough into an oval shape, about 8 inches long long and 5 inches wide at its widest point. Roll the naan as thinly as you can. Roll forward, then lift the rolling pin. Roll downward; lift the pin. Do not roll back and forth.
Add the cilantro to the dough and press it in with one pass of the rolling pin. Dampen your hands and gently lift the dough and flip it over on the prep surface. Pat a small amount of water all over the back side of the dough (this will help the naan stick to the pan).
Step Six: Cook the naan. Dampen your hands again and pick up the naan and carefully place it in the hot skillet, watered side facing down. Once you see bubbles all over and the edges start to dry out (45 to 60 seconds, depending on heat level), flip the naan. Now cover the skillet with the lid and cook for 30 to 40 seconds. This steams the bread nicely and makes it flaky. When it’s done, parts of the dough should look almost raw and doughy, with some parts charred.
Enjoy!
1 ½ c. chopped fresh mushrooms
1 c. onion, minced
1 c. red pepper, minced
4 ½ t. salt-free taco seasoning
1 T. lemon juice
1 ½ c. guacamole or salsa
2 c. sliced onion, reserve 2T. for topping
1 garlic clove
1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed
2 T. tomato paste
2 c. cauliflower, riced
10 5-inch corn tortillas
¼ c. + water for cooking
2 c. vegan parmesan
Step One: Preheat air fryer to 320 for 8 minutes. Make the filling: Cook mushroom, onion, pepper, and garlic in ¼ cup of water over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add water, a tablespoon at a times needed, to prevent sticking. Stir in beans, tomato paste, and taco seasoning. Cook 5 minutes. Stop in cauliflower and lemon juice. Remove from heat. Taste, and adjust seasonings. More garlic? More onion? More spice?
Step Two: Warm tortillas for a few seconds in microwave, slightly to soften. Wrap them in a towel to keep them warm. If you don’t warm them, they will not stay closed, and make a mess of your efforts. Spoon tablespoons of filling, horizontally, in center of tortilla. Roll up the tortilla, tucking in the filling, fasten with a toothpick, if needed.
Step Three: Transfer taquitos in a single layer in your car fryer basket, lined with parchment or silicone basket liner. Air fry 5-7 minutes, or until tortillas are as crisp as you like, slightly browned around the edges. Remove toothpicks and serve with guacamole. Optional: Top with shredded lettuce and vegan parmesan.
2½ cups fresh or frozen (thawed) green peas ¼ cup packed fresh basil
1 T. nutritional yeast
1 T. lemon juice
1 T. nut butter (almond, sunflower) 2 cloves garlic, minced pinch red pepper flakes
1-2 T. water
Sandwich Filling:
1-2 tomatoes, sliced, 4-6 lettuce leaves, 8 slices Ezekiel Bread, dijon mustard to taste.
Step One:
If using fresh peas, cook them in boiling water for about 3 minutes or until they turn bright green, then quickly transfer them to a bowl of ice water to cool. Set aside for 5 minutes. If using frozen peas, be sure to thaw them.
Drain the peas, transfer them to a food processor, and add basil, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, sunflower seed butter, garlic, salt, red pepper flakes, and 1 tablespoon water. Process until mixture is well combined but not completely smooth—you want to maintain some texture. Add more water if needed to achieve desired consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. Transfer the spread to a glass bowl.
Thanks to Forks Over Knives for the recipe !
Toast the whole grain bread (2 slices per sandwich). To make each sandwich, spread one toast slice with Dijon mustard and the other slice with ¼ cup of Green Pea Spread. Layer sliced tomatoes and crisp romaine lettuce between the toast slices.
1 head cauliflower
1 onion
16 oz. portobello mushrooms
1 T. Aleppo pepper or smoked paprika
2 t. garlic powder
1 t. oregano
1.5 cups walnuts
2 medium carrots,
3 cloves garlic
2 T. Italian seasoning
2 t. sage
1 t. lemon thyme
2 t. cumin
3 T. tomato paste
This recipe is for a mixture of plant-based “meats” that when combined resemble ground meat. It can be used in tacos, spiced up to become a “sloppy joe”, a simple veggie side dish, or as a base for Veggie Patties or Breakfast Sausages. Make a big batch and try freezing a few patties.
This recipe calls for portobello mushrooms. I would not substitute other kinds, unless you have access to wild mushrooms. The portobello has such a meaty taste that white mushrooms cannot match. If you cannot eat mushrooms, use 16 oz. of jackfruit. If you do not eat walnuts, you can omit them, but add another 8 oz. mushrooms.
Step One: In a food processor, coarsely chop cauliflower into a “rice.” Set aside in a large sauce pan (3 or 4 quart) and process the carrots and garlic. Add to the sauce pan. Process the mushrooms. Leave them more coarsely chopped than the other veggies, as they will cook down. You may have to process them in batches. Add them to the pot.
Coarsely chop the walnuts and mix with the tomato paste. Set aside to add last.
Step Two: Cook all veggies on MEDIUM heat until water starts releasing. After 5 minutes, turn the heat to HIGH. Continue to cook the mix until most of the water has reduced. Add the herbs and spices. Cook on HIGH for another 5 minutes, until all the water has been reduced. Tuen off the heat, and add the walnut/tomato paste mixture.
Mix thoroughly. This mixtures stays well in the fridge for 3-5 days, and can be used to make the next two recipes, “Veggie Patties” and “Veggie Sausage” Enjoy!
Use 2 CUPS Veggie Ground Meat as a base and add to it:
3 T. coconut aminos, or Bragg’s Amino’s
¼ t. ground nutmeg
2 T. ground fennel
½ t. red pepper flakes
½ t. black pepper
2 cups psyllium husk POWDER (if you have the seed, then mill it into a powder)
2 T. arrowroot powder
2 T. chickpea flour
½ t. garlic powder
Step One: Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Form into patties. Bake on parchment 20 minutes at 350. Enjoy!
Use 3 CUPS Veggie Ground Meat as a base and add to it:
2 T. ground flax
1 t. allspice *
1 t. thyme
¼ t. cayenne
¼ t. ground ginger
1 t. onion powder
½ t. curry powder (optional)
2 ½ cups fine almond flour (mill it if it’s coarse)
2/3 cup arrowroot powder
4 T. ground flax
½ cup plus 2 T. water
¼ t. turmeric
Step One: Combine flax and water and set aside. Combine the flour with the spices and herbs. Add the flax and spoon into the mixture. Mix everything together with the 3 cups Veggie Ground Meat until thoroughly integrated. Use your hands to form ½ cup of mixture into a ball. Set aside on a parchment lined baking sheet. When you have filled your tray, lay a parchment on top, and flatten each ball into a sausage patty.
Step Two: Tidy up the patties with a fork, evening out the sides to better form a circle. Cover and place in the freezer for 20 minutes.
Step Three: Poke the tops with a fork 4-5 times. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until the crust is lightly golden. Enjoy!
* Note: If you do not have allspice, you can substitute ½ t. cinnamon, ½ t. clove powder and ½ t. nutmeg.
One you have made the Veggie Ground, you can add this to your homemade veggie stock (or low sodium vegetable stock) and simmer it on low heat to marry the flavors, for at least 30 minutes. Add any diced or sliced veggies you have to use, and cook them in the stock. You might want to add a small pasta, like acini di pepe, or orzo. Try making tiny “neatballs” and call it “Italian Wedding Soup.”
Adding soup before a meal fills you up, and allows you to consume less calories. It’s also a great way to share traditions.
My granddaughter loves this soup. It’s the Best Soup Ever. She ate 3 bowls, before eating a tiny salad, and a small jackfruit taco.
Often, vegans are invited to picnics or family outings, and we need to bring a dish. This is one of my go-to’s.
2 cans black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, rinsed and drained
½ cup diced tomatoes
½ cup finely chopped jalapeños, seeded
½ cup finely chopped red bell pepper
¼ cup finely diced red onion
2 T. lime juice
½ t. cracked black pepper
½ c. minced cilantro
Step One: Add all ingredients except avocado to a bowl and mix well. Chill for an hour.
Step Two: Taste. Add more lime juice, pepper, if needed. Add onion or garlic powder if you need more spice.
Keep in mind, our goal is to be healthy and use ingredients that offer high fiber, loads of nutrients, protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates. Using USDA Certified Organic beans will save you the trouble of eating glyphosate - a toxic spray used on non-organic beans, produce and grains.
Many people say they don’t like hummus because it gives them indigestion. That’s because most beans have an insoluble covering, meant to protect it from insects. These need to be removed. Yes, you’ll take the jackets off each canned bean, or cooked bean, before you process it.
Saving the water drained from a can is also a useful cooking ingredient, called aquafaba. It is added to the blender when making hummus, making the hummus very smooth. It is also used as an egg replacer in baking, or as a merengue topping.
You can also experiment with using other beans (chickpeas and garbanzo beans are the same bean) cannellini, black beans, and white kidney beans all have a light flavor that responds well to your choice of salsa.
Start with one can of chickpeas, drained (reserve aquafaba) and remove skins. Discard skins. In a food processor, add beans, 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, 1/4 cup of tahini, 1 smashed clove of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of herbs (your choice) cumin, 2-3 tablespoons of aquafaba as needed, dash of paprika or sumac. Blend until smooth, adding aquafaba a little at a time until desired consistency.
This is also your chance to add ingredients that you like - more garlic - chopped olives - roasted red pepper - basilspices - all in your hands. Add them in the blender, or chop them and add as a topping.
Packed with nutrition, beets have antioxidants that fight cell damage, reduce inflammation, and offer protection against heart disease. Health benefits of beets include more stamina during exercise, heart disease and stroke prevention, and lower blood pressure.
1 can chickpeas, rinsed, reserve water (aquafaba)* ½ c. black beans, drained and rinsed
1 c. cooked beets, diced
½ t. cumin
2 limes, zested and juiced
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1 T. tahini
1/4 T. paprika
1 c. cilantro, leaves and stems
1 c. cucumber, diced
Step One: In a blender, combine all ingredients except cilantro, and half of the lime juice. Blend until smooth.
Step Two: Add cilantro and pulse until combined. Add remaining lime juice. Taste for seasoning; add more garlic, paprika or cumin as desired.
Step Three: Spread on a warm tortilla, naan, or under a jackfruit taco. Top with diced cucumber, sprouts.
* Note: the water from chickpeas is called aquafaba, and is used in several recipes. Use half the aquafaba in Step One when blending. If the hummus is as smooth as you ‘d like, refrigerate the rest of the aquafaba for another use (or freeze.) If you like thinner hummus, use more aquafaba.
Any leftover bits of veggies can be minced and added as more layers of crunchy topping. Got corn? Pickled onion? Thinly sliced radish?
These are tricky to roll, but once you get the hang of it, it will be an easy addition to your snacks or appetizers. There are a few great dipping sauces, Thai Peanut, p. 98, and Sticky Mickey, p.99, would be traditionally served. Use whatever raw vegetables you have and make sure to cut them in matchsticks.
Sliced tofu is great, and so are cooled ramen or rice noodles. To be elegant, you can place fresh edible flowers in the first layer, and your veggies on top.
1 package rice paper wrapper, 12” assorted veggies and leftovers warm water
Step One: On a flat dinner plate, add warm water enough to dip the rice paper wrappers for 10-15 seconds, until they get bendy but not melted. It’s tricky at first, but you’ll get it. Place on a dry plate.
Step Two: Fill it, and get ready to roll. Fold each side towards the middle, and then, starting at the bottom, roll it up to the top. The texture of the wet wrap will keep it closed.
Step Three: Keep rolling until you run out of filling. Save with dipping sauce.
Bagged mixed greens are a nightmare of potentially diseased greens. There is no way to determine which greens came from areas that have been polluted by CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) waste disposal. CAFOs store untreated animal waste for up to six months in gigantic anaerobic waste storage structures or pits. As a part of the routine disposal process, stored animal waste is sprayed to farm fields. This waste gets into the water supply, polluting nearby farms that may even be organic farms. The E.coli bacteria from this waste has been detected in Romaine lettuce from the Salinas and Yuma Valleys. Check the label on the bag - it will tell you from what farms the greens are from.
Mixed salad greens, even organic, can contain different varieties found all over. Different microorganisms can contaminate those leafy greens inside packaged salads, including pathogenic E. coli, Norovirus, Salmonella, Listeria, and Cyclospora. But the most common microorganism identified in these unfortunate scenarios is E. coli O157:H, which can potentially cause life-threatening diseases. This pathogen is only found in animal intestinal waste. It’s time to hydroponically grow-your-own, buy from local farmer’s markets, or buy from hydroponically grown lettuce growers.
Look for large heads of lettuce in plastic clamshells with the roots attached. This is a clean product. Rinse them, wrap in paper towel or clean dishtowel and replace in a plastic bag/container. This will prolong the life for a week or more. Look for a label or an indication that the greens were grown in a greenhouse or hydroponically. Ask your produce manager from where these salad greens are sourced.
6 cups salad greens (a hand-picked mixture of clean greens) chopped ½ cup pitted kalamata olives 1 cup celery, chopped 2 cups carrots, sliced 1 cup cucumber, sliced 1 green apple, diced
Italian Dressing:
1 cup lemon juice 1 cup parsley, chopped ¼ cup raw cashews 5 garlic cloves Combine in a blender until smooth.
This unusual, yet delicious, fruit is difficult to process whole. I spent an entire day slicing and dicing one, saving the fruits, and packing the meat. I had enough to feed an army. Fortunately, now, you can buy jackfruit already seasoned for easy barbecue sandwiches, or spiced for tacos. But if you’d like to take a home cook’s approach, and omit salt and oil, buy canned, plain jackfruit.
This recipe uses two 20 oz. cans for 8 tacos. Use flour or corn tortillas, or make 8 small Naan, p. 75. Make them about the size of your hand.
2 cups jackfruit
1 ½ t. smoked paprika
1 ½ t. onion powder
1 ½ t. chili powder
1 ½ cup salsa (your favorite heat level)
8 small Naan
Toppings: shredded red cabbage, caramelized onions, pickled radishes, shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, diced avocado. Add your favorite salsa to the meat as it simmers to give it just the right kick.
Step One: Rinse well, and soak in water for an hour. Drain, and squeeze out as much water as possible from the meat. Lay the meat in a clean dishtowel and squeeze out more water. The meat should be moist, but resemble the consistency of shredded pork.
Separate the chunks into shreds. Add your herbs and spices. Mix well.
Step Two: Simmer, on low heat, all ingredients in a saucepan for 15 minutes. Let sit to marinade. Jackfruit has very little taste, and will take on the seasonings you provide. This mixture can be made ahead, as the longer it marinates, the tastier it is.
Serve as you would taco meat, and top it with your favorites.
Once you get familiar with jackfruit, you will see it is a great filling. Change the marinade - for a great stacked sandwich. Just remember to simmer the jackfruit in the seasonings and sauces, and let it sit to marinade before serving. Use marinara with jackfruit as a topping for flatbread!
2 cups jackfruit
½ t. smoked paprika
1 ½ t. onion powder
2 t. chili powder 1 cup chopped onion
1 cup unsweetened organic ketchup ½ cup date paste
Slaw:
1 Fuji apple, cut into matchsticks 2 T. curly parsley, chopped
3/4 cup red cabbage, shredded 1 cup baby kale, chopped
½ cup shredded carrots
2 t. Dijon mustard
2 T. apple cider vinegar
2 T. lemon juice
Step One: Simmer all ingredients and season with extra pepper or cayenne, if you like it hot. Let it marinate - the longer the better (overnight, that’s best!) You can rewarm it before serving.
Step Two: Assemble all ingredients for the slaw.
Layer apple/cabbage slaw, BBQ jackfruit, tomato, sliced onion and lettuce. Serve in homemade Naan, or your favorite sandwich bun.
1 large head of cauliflower, sliced into steaks
1 t. pepper, 1 t. paprika
1 7 oz. jar roasted red peppers in brine
1 14 oz. can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
½ c. blanched almonds
2 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ c. chopped parsley
½ t. Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
1 T. red wine vinegar
1 t. lemon juice
2 T. Bragg’s Amino Acids
Step One: Preheat the oven to 425 F. Slice cauliflower into ½-inch wide steaks.
Trim the stems to about 1 inch. Arrange on a foillined sheet tray. Brush each with Bragg’s, and sprinkle with pepper and paprika. Repeat on the other side.
Step Two: Roast for 20-25 minutes, flipping halfway through. Steaks should be fork tender and slightly browned.
Step Three: Make the Romesco by combining red pepper, diced tomato, blanched almonds, garlic, paprika, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice in a food processor. Pulse until almost smooth.
Step Four: To serve, spread Romesco on a plate and top with cauliflower steaks.
Optional: This recipe can be used with broccoli steaks.
This is a great snack, meal-by-itself, or side dish. Try this dish for an Indian flavored meal, or try the milder version.
1 c. finely diced onion
½ c. finely diced cilantro
1 t. chili powder
1 T. lemon juice
¼ t. garlic powder
1 medium cauliflower florets
1 T. minced fresh ginger
1 t. turmeric
1 t. garam masala
¼ t. ground black pepper
1 ½ c. chickpea flour
1 ¼ c. water
Step One: Preheat oven to 375; line a sheet pan with parchment.
Step Two: Combine all ingredients (except cauliflower) to a mixing bowl, and hand mix well. Dip florets in the mix and coat evenly. Place on parchment, leaving room between each floret.
Step Three: Bake 30 minutes; turn and bake another 30 minutes, or until fritters are at the crispness you like. Serve with your favorite dipping sauce - tzatziki, mole’, lemon tahini, sticky mickey….
I use some pre-made vegan foods, one of my go-to’s is Beyond Beef™ ground beef. I make neatballs, and if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t ground beef.
1 pound Beyond Beef™ plant-based ground beef
1 ½ T. breadcrumbs
1 T. flax seeds
¾ t. chopped garlic
1 T. finely chopped onion
1 t. chopped fresh basil
2 ½ T. vegan parmesan
1 T. Italian Spice Blend
Step One: Line a 10 x 12” baking sheet with parchment. Preheat oven to 400.
Step Two: Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix with your hands. Let sit for a few minutes to allow flax seeds to absorb moisture. Spoon a heaping tablespoon in your hand, and roll it into a neatball. Continue with the rest. You should have 15-18.
Step Three: Bake for 15 minutes, turn the balls over, and bake another 5 minutes. Add them to your marinara and let them simmer in the sauce before serving with your favorite pasta. Or, use them as filling for a Naan bread, and have a sandwich!
This recipe calls for butter lettuce to use as a wrap for your leftovers. Chose your favorite sauces and dressings, and mix your leftovers together. I recommend the Red Grape Salsa, with leftover potato salad, sliced apple, walnuts, or sliced tofu. Serve it up, already stuffed and watch them disappear.
This is a great appetizer, or starter for any lunch or dinner, and is a fast way to grab a quick snack.
Sauces and dressings need several elements to work: fat, acid, and spice. You can use silken tofu as your fat base, additional soaked cashews or almonds, lemon juice or vinegar as your acid, nutritional yeast instead of salt, and any spices and herbs that you like.
Do you like a mild or hot dressing? Use paprika, dried red peppers, chili powder, cayenne, or any type of dried peppers that send your taste buds singing. Adding garlic powder adds heat and punch. Mustard and Sriracha give a kick.
Add lemon peel, orange peel, fruit puree, and vanilla for a sweet sauce. Cinnamon and nutmeg offer a sweetness, too, but are more warming than citrus and fruit. Minced sun-dried tomato and diced or dried onion add a Mediterranean flavor. Forgive me my lack of knowledge of Asian spices, or Middle Eastern spices, but use what you have in your kitchen.
Step One: 1 block vacuum-packed extra firm tofu, 1 cup cashews (soaked for at least 6 hours, or soaked in boiling water for 15 minutes), 2 T. lemon juice or 2 T. vinegar, 2 T. nutritional yeast, 2-4 T. plant milk (to thin the dressing to desired consistency), and your favorite spices and herbs. Enjoy the experiment !
1 cup soaked cashews, ⅓ cup water, ½ cup cucumber (diced), 2 garlic cloves, 1 T. lemon juice, 1T dill.
Step One: Soak the cashews for at least 3 hours. When softened, blend with the water, lemon juice, and garlic, until smooth. Finely dice the cucumber, and mix in. Top with dill.
For the gyro sandwich, it is nice to have the crunch of cucumber. For salads or other sandwiches, you can blend the cucumbers in with the rest of the ingredients, but leave the dill as a topping. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
1 package silken tofu, 1 T. apple cider vinegar, 1 pitted date, 1-2 cloves garlic, ½ t. smoked paprika, 1 t. onion powder, ½ c. plant milk.
Step One: Blend all ingredients until the thickness you need - thinner for salads, and thicker for sauces. Use plant milk to get the right consistency. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
3 T. unsweetened plant-based yogurt, 1 T. tahini, ½ cup fresh cilantro, 1 clove garlic, juice of one lemon, 1/4 c. water.
Step One: Throw all ingredients in a blender, including cilantro stalks and all leaves. Blitz until the desired consistency. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
Note: Add ½ avocado, and 2 T. hemp seeds for a creamier dressing.
3 dried chipotle chiles
2 dried ancho chiles
5 tomatillos, cut into one inch strips
2 tomatoes, cut in half
2 dried guajillo chilis
2 c. low sodium vegetable broth
2 corn tortillas, cut into one inch strips
1 onion, thinly sliced
½ head garlic, peeled and sliced ⅓ c. chopped peanuts
¼ c. raisins
1 T. dried thyme
5 whole cloves
1 c. unsweetened plant milk
5 T. date paste
2 T. cumin seeds
6 whole allspice berries
3 cinnamon sticks
5 T.+ cacao
Step One: Prep the chilies by taking off the stems and seeds. Toast chipotle, guajillo, and ancho chiles in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until warm and aromatic, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a blender.
Step Two: Heat 2 cups broth in a saucepan until it begins to simmer, about 5 minutes. Pour broth into the blender.
Step Three: Toast tortilla strips in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer to the blender with broth and chiles. Allow chiles and tortillas to soak, fully submerged in broth until softened, about 10 minutes. Blend until smooth.
Step Four: Cook tomatillos and tomatoes in a dry skillet on medium-high heat until soft and blackened, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Place tomatoes in the blender with the chile puree.
Step Five: In a saucepan, stir in onion, garlic, peanuts, raisins, cumin seeds, thyme, allspice berries, cloves, and cinnamon sticks; cook and stir until onions are soft and golden, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove the cinnamon sticks and other whole spices; add onion mixture to the blender with the chile-tomato mixture and blend until smooth.
Step Six: Pour chile puree into a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in 1 cup unsweetened plant milk, cacao and date paste. Bring mixture to a simmer; stir until mixture is melted and sauce is thickened and slightly reduced, 10 to 15 minutes. Taste. Add more cacao, date paste, or spices as required by your taste buds. Enjoy, served over tofu, rice and beans, and baked or steamed vegetables!
1 cup soaked unsalted cashews, 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar, 2 tablespoons date paste, 1 tablespoon yellow mustard, 2 tablespoons water, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, ½ teaspoon onion powder.
Step One: Soak cashews for 4 hours, drain water. * Place soaked cashews in a blender along with the rest of the ingredients. Blend until smooth. Taste. Add more mustard, apple cider vinegar to get the level of spice you like. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
1 vac-pac extra firm silken tofu
2 T. lemon juice 2 t. Dijon mustard
½ t. onion powder ½ t. garlic powder
2 T. date paste ½ t. monkfruit powder
Step One: Combine all ingredients in a blender. Chill before serving. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
3 T. balsamic vinegar
2 T. Dijon mustard
1 T. monkfruit sweetener
½ c. unsweetened applesauce
Step One: Combine all ingredients in a small blender. Blitz and serve!
This dressing is great on baked potatoes or corn on the cob, grilled vegetables, or added to a bowl of barley or rice. ½ cup tahini, ½ cup warm water, ¼ cup lemon juice, ¼ c. rice vinegar, 2 tablespoon agave syrup.
Step One: Combine all ingredients in a small blender. Blitz and serve!
Use Yum Yum as a dipping sauce for veggies, on top of cauliflower “steaks”, drizzle it on salads and noodles, or use it as a marinade for tofu.
1 ¼ cups tofu mayo, ¼ cup water, 1 teaspoon tomato paste, 1 teaspoon monkfruit, or more to taste, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, ¼ teaspoon paprika, 1 pinch cayenne pepper (optional).
Step One: Add vegan mayonnaise, tomato paste, rice vinegar, smoked paprika, garlic powder, white granulated sugar, melted vegan butter and water to a mixing bowl. Whisk together until smooth and well mixed.
Step Two: Taste and add more tomato paste, and cayenne. Try a dollop of sriracha, if you like spicy. Let it chill in the fridge for at least an hour for flavors to blend.
This sauce is a must for dipping Summer Rolls, on tofu, or in rice and veggie bowls. We substitute peanut butter powder for peanut butter to cut down on fats.
½ cup water, ½ cup peanut butter, 2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger, 2 tablespoons low-sodium tamari, or Bragg’s liquid aminos, 2 tablespoons agave syrup, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons lime juice, ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes.
In a small blender, mix all ingredients until desired consistency is reached. Add more water if needed. You can use peanut butter powder as a substitute for peanut butter, increase the rice vinegar to 2 tablespoons.
This sauce is great for marinating and drizzling over tofu steaks. It’s a sweet, sticky sauce for any grilled veggie or rice bowl.
½ cup Bragg’s Liquid Amino, ¼ cup agave syrup, 3 tablespoons tomato paste, 1 tablespoon fresh minced ginger, , ¼ cup toasted sesame seed.
Step One: In a non-stick frying pan, toast the sesame seeds on medium heat for under a minute, watching for browning. Combine all ingredients, and blend until smooth. The sesame seeds thicken the sauce. Enjoy!
1/3 c. white miso paste, ½ t. finely grated orange zest, ¼ c. fresh orange juice, 2 T. finely grated peeled ginger 2 T. unseasoned rice vinegar, ¼ c. chopped fresh cilantro, ¼ c. chopped fresh mint, ¼ c. chopped fresh Thai or regular basil, 1 T. toasted white sesame seeds, 1/4 c. water (if needed).
Step One: Slice a one-inch chunk from a fresh ginger root. Grate it, peel and all; set aside. On a warmed frying pan, toast the sesame seeds on medium-low heat until they are slightly brown. You will notice a toasty smell, time to take it off the heat. Set aside.
Step Two:
Whisk miso paste, orange zest, orange juice, ginger, rice vinegar, and sesame seeds in another large bowl until smooth. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
Note: use as a marinade for sliced extra-firm tofu (from the produce department, not vacuum packs) Cover and chill for 2 hours (or more) turning every hour. Optional: Use lemon or lime instead of orange
As a salad dressing, thin mixture with a little water if necessary. Add to your salad greens, raw veggies, and top with freshly chopped herbs (parsley, basil, cilantro, chives, scallions.…whatever you have on hand.)
1 block vacuum-packed extra firm tofu, 1 cup cashews (soaked for at least 6 hours, or soaked in boiling water for 15 minutes), 2 T. lemon zest, 2 T. lemon juice, 2 T. yellow or brown mustard, 2 T. nutritional yeast, 2-4 T. plant milk (to thin the dressing to desired consistency).
Step One: Blend all ingredients together until the thickness you need - thinner for salads, thicker for sauces. Use plant milk to get the right consistency. This will last up to one week in the fridge.
Note: This makes a great dip for cauliflower nuggets, or as a salad dressing. You can also marinade tofu slices in this sauce - refrigerate it for 4 hours - overnight. Top with chopped chives or finely sliced spring onions.
1 7 oz. jar roasted red peppers in brine
1 14 oz. can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
½ c. blanched almonds
2 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ c. chopped parsley
½ t. Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
1 T. red wine vinegar
1 t. lemon juice
2 T. Bragg’s Amino Acids
Step One: Make the Romesco by combining red pepper, diced tomato, blanched almonds, garlic, paprika, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice in a food processor. Pulse until almost smooth.
Serve over (or under) a plate of roasted veggies, cauliflower or broccoli steaks, or as a spread on naan.
PICO DE GALLO
2 cups diced fresh tomatoes (3 to 4 small tomatoes), ¾ cup diced white onion, ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, ¼ cup fresh lime juice, 2 garlic cloves, minced, 1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed and diced
Step One: In a medium bowl, stir together the tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, jalapeño, and salt. Season to taste. Chill until ready to use.
PEACH SALSA
2 peaches, cubed, 1 cup diced fresh tomatoes, ½ cup diced white onion, ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, ¼ cup diced red pepper, ½ -1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed and diced, ¼ t. ground black pepper, to taste.
Step One: In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. Season to taste. Chill until ready to use.
MANGO SALSA
1 mango cubed, ½ cucumber, diced, ½ red bell pepper, diced, ½ cup diced Vidalia onion, ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, 2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar, ¼ cup diced red pepper, ¼ t. ground black pepper, to taste.
Step One: In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. Season to taste. Chill until ready to use.
RED GRAPE SALSA
½ cup finely chopped radishes, ½ cup quartered cherry tomatoes, ½ cup quartered red grapes, ½ cup thinly sliced green onions, ¼ cup parsley, minced, 2 tablespoons lime juice, cracked pepper to taste.
Step One: In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. Season to taste. Chill until ready to use.
WATERMELON SALSA
2 cups diced watermelon, 1 cup quartered cherry tomatoes, ½ cup diced Vidalia onion, ¼ cup parsley, minced, 2 tablespoons lime juice, cracked pepper to taste.
Step One: In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. Season to taste. Chill until ready to use.
SALSA VERDE
1 ½ pounds tomatillos (about 12 medium), husked and rinsed, 1 to 2 medium jalapeños, stemmed (omit for mild salsa) ½ cup chopped white onion, ¼ cup packed fresh cilantro 2 tablespoons to start - up to ¼ cup lime juice
Step One: Broil tomatillos and jalapeño until they are blackened in spots, about 5 minutes. Flip, and broil other side, 5 minutes, until tomatillos are splotchy and blistered.
Step Two: Put all ingredients in food processor, pulsing until everything, scraping the sides to combine. It can be as chunky or smooth as you’d like. Taste. Add more lime juice as needed. Chill salsa. It will thicken as it cools.
It takes a minute to get your pantry in order for vegan SOS cooking, but most spice blends have salt and/or sugar, and many times, dairy milk powder. Save your glass spice jars (toss the plastic ones, the essential oils in your spices and herbs will linger and spoil.) You can buy glass spice jars, too.
As I’ve said before, I’m not an expert on flavors from all countries, and so my choices are limited to mostly Mediterranean. It will take a few tries to get your spice blends exactly to your liking… I use way more spices and herbs now than I did before, when I used salt. I have learned to add extra garlic or onion powder, and am still experimenting with flavors from Asia and the Middle East.
To be a successful vegan SOS dieter, you want to have great flavors. Don’t just take away the salt shaker and eat plain, raw foods (although that is an excellent choice) when you can add warming, cooling, bitter, sweet, and savory tastes to your every plate.
1/2 t. each of garlic powder, dried red onion, ginger, paprika, turmeric, coriander seed, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, green peppercorns, mustard seed.
Step One: Toast the peppercorns, mustard seed, fennel seed, and coriander seed on low heat in a dry pan. When you smell the spices, you are done. Set aside. Combine with rest of the spices. Stir well and when cooled, store in a glass spice jar. Label it : “Tofu Seasoning.”
Step Two: In a blender, combine with silken firm tofu until the desired level of flavor is reached. Marinade water-packaged, sliced tofu and refrigerate for a day, turning slices over to evenly season.
There are two types of tofu sold in packages at your supermarkets. One is sold in a vacuum pack and does not refrigeration, and one is sold, refrigerated, in a water-packed tub. The water- packaged tofu is best used by draining the water, slicing them into cubes or half inch slices, laid on a parchment and frozen.
Then, defrosted, these slices need to be squeezed of their water, best done by using a tofu press, or two tea towels placed above and below to catch the water. The more water that is pressed out, the better it will soak up the marinade.
Silken and firm tofu sold in vacuum packs are good for making smoothies, sauces, salad dressings, and in desserts.
2 T. black peppercorns 2 T. mustard seed
2 T. coriander seed 2 T. dill seed
2 T. allspice berries 1 t. crushed red pepper flakes 10-12 dried bay leaves, crushed
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar. Add 2 T. for each 32 oz. jar.
2 T. poppy seeds
1 T. black sesame seeds
1.5 T. dried minced garlic
1 T. white sesame seeds
1.5 T. dried minced onion
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
Besides being added to soups and stews, mole is often used as a sauce for enchiladas. Mole can also be used in burritos and tacos along with jackfruit or just as a saucy addition to vegetables, rice or beans. If you’d like to make a mole sauce, see the recipe on page XX.
4 T. ground cumin
2 T. cinnamon
4 T. cacao powder
2-3 T. ancho, chipotle, or red chili powder
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
Chili powder has a combination of spices, and the addition of cayenne pepper goes you the varieties you’ll see labelled as, “Mild,” “Medium,” or “Hot.” You decide how hot you like it, but start with a ½ teaspoon if you like it medium or hot.
2 T. paprika
1 ½ t. cumin
¾ t. onion powder
2 t. oregano
1 ½ t. garlic powder
½ t. cayenne pepper, or to taste
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
I use this blend when I bake breads or pizza crusts. I always throw in at least a tablespoon of this mix in sauces and dressings. I add red chili flakes, because I like the warmth it brings to a dish.
2 T. dried basil
2 T. dried parsley
1 T. red chili flakes
2 t. oregano
1 T. dried lemon thyme
1 T. garlic powder
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
I buy only organic lemons, and carefully wash the rind, then, I freeze them whole, so I have fresh zest and juice, whenever I need it. For this seasoning, you use the dried peel. Then, grind it into a powder. Use in sauces and dressings. When using lemons for juice, save the peels, and let them dry out. An easy addition to your cup of tea.
Step One: Peel lemons and slice rind into small pieces. Allow to fully dry. Grind into a powder when dried. Store in a glass jar.
When zesting any fruit, make sure you only take the top rind, and not the white pith. While the pith is full of vitamins and bioflavonoids, it can be bitter. Popular lemon pepper brands do not even use lemon, but citric acid. This will give you a real taste of fruit. If you’d like, make it extra garlic-y, or add some lemon thyme.
Add it to roasted vegetables, sauces or dressings for extra flavor.
4 whole lemons
2 t. garlic powder
2 T. black pepper, freshly ground
1 t. onion powder
Step One: Preheat oven to lowest setting, under 200, if your oven will do it. Spread zest on a clean parchment paper and bake for one hour. Check it. It should be dried. If not, bake another hour. Hard to say for how long, as your oven is different than mine.
Step Two: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
A family favorite for flavoring soups.
1 ½ c. nutritional yeast
2 ½ T. Italian Seasoning
½ t. garlic powder
1 T. onion powder
½ t. dried parsley
1 T. onion powder
2 ½ t. celery seed ½ t. turmeric
½ t. dried sage ½ t. marjoram
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
Add this to rice or grain bowls, or to baking, especially winter squash, and pumpkins. Experienced cooks add more or less clove and nutmeg (up to 1 T.) for their own liking.
1 T. ground cinnamon ½ t. ground cloves
½ t. ground nutmeg
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass jar.
The spices included in the mix are rich in antioxidants, and contain minerals such as copper, iron, and manganese. It makes an excellent dry rub or marinade for tofu, a yummy addition to soups, and great on Gladiator Bowls. Authentic 5 spice uses sand ginger, Sichuan peppercorns, and Chinese cassia cinnamon. You can substitute what ground cinnamon, ginger and peppercorns you have for starters. As you use and replace your fresh spices, you might want to switch to a more authentic variety.
1 T. cinnamon, 2 T. fennel seeds, 1 T. peppercorns, 1 t. cloves, 4 star anise, 1 T. ginger powder.
Step One: Mix all ingredients together and toast them gently, in a dry pan. Transfer to a grinder, and mix into a fine powder. Store in a glass jar.
3/4 c. raw cashews
3 T. nutritional yeast
½ t. garlic powder
Step One:
½ c. hemp seeds
½ t. onion powder
Pulse cashews in a food processor until a fine meal is achieved. Be careful not to overblend. In a small bowl, add the rest of the spices, and hand mix. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for several weeks.
Dates are a great source of selenium, magnesium, calcium, potassium and copper, as well as phytonutrients, and high fiber. They are sweet, and used to replace sugar, honey and syrups in most dishes. When we eat the whole food, the fiber allows us to digest it in a longer term, and not spike insulin. Dates make a nice late-night snack, as they are filling, and just 5 small dates have 100 calories.
Dates stimulate the immune system, reduce inflammation, prevent DNA damage, and improve hormone regulation.
Dates help your body produce melatonin, which in turn helps your sleep quality, so just one date, two hours before bed, is a good snack. Dates are also high in fiber, which takes time to digest and can keep you feeling full throughout the night. This recipe gives you a little more, crunch and flavor. Serve these on your ‘vegan charcuterie’ board, or after dinner.
20 pitted Medjool dates (fat) 4 c. water or, 30 pitted Neglet dates (smaller)
Step One: Bring 4 cups of water to a simmer and remove pot from stove. Place pitted dates in water, and cover. Let dates sit 10 minutes to soften. Drain, but reserve the water.
Step Two: Place dates and 1 cup of sweetened water in a high speed blender and blend until smooth. Add more water if you like a thinner consistency. Use the remaining reserved water in a smoothie. Store in a glass container in the fridge for up to 3 months.
Avocados are high in omega-3 monounsaturated fats, which, in moderation, are allowed on A Very Strict Diet. They reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and living with obesity and improve cognitive function and digestive health. They contain B vitamins, C, E, K, magnesium, potassium, and beta carotene. They are also very low in sugar, but add a sweetness and creaminess to ripe bananas, and make this dessert super yummy.
2 ripe avocados
2 ripe bananas
2 T. cacao date paste (to taste)
2 t. vanilla extract splash plant milk
Optional: cinnamon sprinkle on top, blueberries, blackberries, sprig of mint, crushed walnuts.
Step One: Add all ingredients to a blender, adding plant milk to get a good smooth texture. Taste. I like a very chocolate-y taste, so I add a bit more cacao. If your bananas are black-ripe, they will be sweet enough, but if you’d like, add a bit of date paste to sweeten. You will have to stop and scrape the sides to get everything integrated. Spoon into serving cups and refrigerate. Serve cold. Enjoy!
This recipe can be used with or without a crust. You can also substitute lemons to make the curd, or maybe navel oranges (which are very sweet).
Crust:
2 c. unsalted nuts (you can choose your favorites, or mix them - cashew-walnut-pecan)
2 c. pitted dates ¼ c. rolled oats splash plant milk, if needed
Filling:
1 tub vacuum-packed silken tofu
1 c. fresh lime juice zest 2 limes splash plant milk if needed
Figs are nutritious and have many potential health benefits. Figs can lower triglycerides and remove cholesterol from the body, which may improve your heart health. They are a prebiotic that can help maintain a healthy gut microbiome and relieve stomach aches. They also contain vitamin B6, which can help with digestion and cholesterol levels.
Dried figs contain fiber, calcium, manganese, copper, and potassium, which can help remove toxins from the body and improve skin. The soluble fiber in figs can help you feel full and curb your appetite.
Figs contain antioxidants like phenols and flavonoids, which make figs a SUPERFOOD.
This recipe tastes like the original sweetened fig filling. You can make a strawberry or cherry filling, if you prefer.
Filling:
1 ¼ cup dried figs
1 cup water
1 cup orange puree’ (blended peeled orange) or orange juice
Dough:
1 ¼ cup almond flour
1 t. vanilla extract
1 cup oat flour * ½ cup date paste **
2 t. baking powder ¼ cup + 2 T. nut butter
Step One: Combine fillings in a sauce pan and simmer for 30-40 minuets until mixture is thick. Cool completely, then, process until smooth.
Step Two: Prepare dough by combining dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients (date paste, vanilla and nut butter.) Mix well, then, combine with dry mix until a dough forms. Place dough on parchment, cover with another parchment and roll dough to create a rectangle (10” x 15” x 1/8” - 1/4” thick.) Cut this rectangle down the middle to create two rectangles, approximately 5” X 15”. Add filling down the center of the dough. Using the underlying parchment, lift the dough and bring each side together. Then, gently lift the cookie so the seam is under the roll. Use a sharp knife and cut the cookies into even sizes, approximately 2”. Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet, Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Store them in a covered container in the fridge. They’ll taste better the next day! Enjoy!
* Note: You can make your own oat flour from rolled oats. One cup of oats makes 3/4 cup flour, so adjust accordingly.
** Note: Date paste has less sugar than date syrup, maple syrup or agave. It still has all the fiber of whole dates, and is a nutritious sweetener. To make your own, see page XX.
Filling:
1 ¼ cup dried figs
16 oz. strawberries *
1 t. vanilla extract
½ cup water
Step One: Combine fillings in a sauce pan and simmer for 30-40 minuets until mixture is thick. Cool completely, then, process until smooth.
Step Two: Prepare dough by combining dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients (date paste, vanilla and nut butter.) Mix well, then, combine with dry mix until a dough forms. Place dough on parchment, cover with another parchment and roll dough to create a rectangle (10” x 15” x 1/8” - 1/4” thick.) Cut this rectangle down the middle to create two rectangles, approximately 5” X 15”. Add filling down the center of the dough. Using the underlying parchment, lift the dough and bring each side together. Then, gently lift the cookie so the seam is under the roll. Use a sharp knife and cut the cookies into even sizes, approximately 2”. Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet, Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Store them in a covered container in the fridge. They’ll taste better the next day! Enjoy!
* Note: You can substitute 16 oz. thawed cherries, or fresh cherries. Or, hmmm. Maybe, blueberry.
Cacao beans grow in pods, and are dried and cracked open to deliver beautiful seeds which are dried and ground into cacao nibs. They are then ground into a powder and sold in their 100% natural state.
Natural cacao has flavonoids, plant-based substances that have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. These can improve brain blood flow, oxygen levels and nerve function. Most of us are familiar with Nestle or Hershey chocolate powder, or cocoa. These companies take natural cacao and add sugar, fats and sometimes milk powder.
Processing the cacao destroys many of the benefits, sacrificed for a sweeter product. In our recipes, we use natural cacao, add dates for sweetener, and get the best nutrition possible from this delicious whole food.
The addition of quinoa in this batter will increase the protein, and satisfy your chocolate craving.
2 very ripe bananas
½ cup cooked quinoa *
2 T. cacao powder
4 Medjool dates, or 4 T. date paste
1 splash vanilla
1 T. white miso
1 ½ t. baking powder
Step One: Blend all the ingredients in a high speed blender or food processor until smooth. On a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet, spoon out 2 large cookies. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes - watch the edges for crisping. Add ½ c. raisins for more sweetness. You may want to sprinkle cinnamon in the batter as well. Let cool before serving.
* Note: many people say they don’t like quinoa because it gives them stomach cramps. There is a protective coating on each seed, that is nature’s way to get insects not to eat it, so it must be soaked, and rinsed. When you rinse quinoa, you will see the water looks soapy. Keep rinsing it until it is clear. Now, you have unlocked a very nutritious seed that is a perfect protein, containing all nine essential amino acids. If using red or black quinoa, soak it first to soften the seed and release the saponins.
Cacao contains antioxidants like phenols and flavonoids, which make them a SUPERFOOD.
Filling:
6 black-ripe plantains
½ c. cacao
1 tub silken tofu
2 T. date paste
1 c. PB powder* 1/4 c. plant milk
Crust:
1 c. oatmeal
3 T. cacao
5 T. date paste
½ t. vanilla splash plant milk 3/4 c. garbanzo beans
Step One: Place tofu in the bender. with date paste, cacao, PB powder and plant milk. Blend until smooth.
Step Two: Microwave the plantains (unpeeled) in a microwave for 12 minutes. They should be mushy. Have found that different sizes need more or less time. Peel, carefully, slice into chunks, and add to blender. Blend all the ingredients in a high speed blender or food processor until smooth.
Step Three: In a food processor, blend oatmeal, 6 fat dates or 5 T. date paste, garbanzo, cacao, vanilla, and a splash of plant milk. Process mixture. It should hold together when pinched into a ball. If too crumbly, add another splash of plant milk. Line a pie plate with the crust. It should press in and form an even crust.
Step Four: Spoon filling into crust. Refrigerate at least one hour before serving. You can also serve the filling as a pudding. Refrigerate it in serving cups and sprinkle with chopped walnuts? Pomegranate seeds? Crushed pistachios? Enjoy!
* Note: PB powder has had the fat removed and holds all the yummy peanut-butter-y flavor. This recipe adds 24 grams of protein to the recipe, the tofu adds 7 grams, and the garbanzo adds 8 grams of protein. Do NOT substitute nut butter. Just leave the PB powder out and add more dates if it’s too chocolate-y for you.
Each recipe calls for 12 pitted softened Medjool dates. These are fatter than Deglet Noors, but also much sweeter and caramel-y sticky. If your dates are not soft, wrap them in a paper towel spritzed with water, and microwave for 15 seconds. Check them for softness.
Step One: Cut a slit in each side of date. Make sure the pit and the stem cap are removed. Gently open dates for stuffing.
Step Two: In a small bowl, mix ingredients and spoon into the date.
Nut-butter Pomegranate Stuffed Dates
¼ c. no-salt no-sugar-added nut butter, chunky or smooth
¼ c. pomegranate arils
Chutney-Walnut Stuffed Dates
¼ c. purchased mango chutney
¼ c. toasted, chopped walnuts
Zesty Almond Stuffed Dates
⅓ c. toasted, chopped almonds
2 T. lime juice to coat
1 ½ t. chili-lime seasoning, for topping
Pecan Orange Stuffed Dates
⅓ c. toasted, chopped pecans
1 t. orange zest
¼ t. Aleppo pepper, for topping
Berry Pistachio Stuffed Dates
¼ c. finely chopped pistachios
24 whole fresh blackberries or large red raspberries
Step One: Cut a slit in each side of date. Make sure the pit and the stem cap are removed. Gently open dates for stuffing.
Step Two: In a small bowl, dip whole berry in pistachio and stuff the date. Top with remaining pistachio crumbs.
What other goodies can you try to fill each date? Keep low sugar, no-sugar, no salt items in mind, because the date is your fruit sugar.
A little cacao powder? Blueberries and lemon zest? Leftover sweet potato-jalapeño filling from my Sweet Pepper Poppers recipe?
Dates are so nutritious and high in minerals, fiber and flavonoids, which makes dates a SUPERFOOD.
6 T. aquafaba (liquid from a can of chickpeas)
¼ t. cream of tartar
½ c. mink fruit sweetener
½ t. vanilla extract
Step One: Place the aquafaba and cream of tartar into the bowl of your stand mixer. Start at slow speed and whip until foamy. Gradually increase speed until white and glossy and stiff peaks start to form. Add the monkfruit in slowly while whipping at fast speed. Add in the vanilla. Keep whipping until glossy stiff peaks form.
Step Two: Preheat your oven to 250°F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Pipe the meringue mix into cookie shapes onto the parchment lined tray. Alternatively you can spoon it out. Bake for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, switch off the oven but DON'T OPEN IT. Leave the oven off, but don't open it for one hour. Time it.
Step Three: Remove them from the oven. They should be airy crispy perfection! If the weather is at all hot or humid, put them in an airtight container and store them in the fridge.
Thanks, Freepik, for the photo.
17 pitted Medjool dates
1 t. cinnamon
1 c. raw cashews
1 ½ T. ginger powder, or, 1” grated ginger
2 T. baobab powder + 1 T. to roll the balls
Step One: Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until nuts and dates have formed a sticky ball - about one minute. Roll mixture into 1 inch thick balls and roll them in baobab powder. Store in fridge for up to two weeks.
Baobab powder is a wonderfully citrus-y sweet fruit. Because baobab is a natural source of nutrients, the body can absorb them more easily than from manufactured supplements. It’s a worthy addition to your pantry - in smoothies, as a mix to any baked goods, or as a replacement for powdered sugar in a topping.
Oats can be cooked into a savory dish, for breakfast, lunch, or anytime. Steel cut oats are a good source of iron and plant protein, and they have a dense, chewy texture and nutty flavor. Because they're minimally processed and the least processed version of oat groats, they're considered one of the healthiest grains you can eat.
2 T. minced onion
2 T. minced potato (or zucchini)
1 c. sliced mushroom (for topping)
½ c. steel-cut oats
2 T. minced carrot
½ c. minced mushroom
1 T. balsamic vinegar
2 c. water
½ T. soy sauce Pinch black pepper to taste
Step One: In a non-stick pot, add the minced mushroom and cook for a couple of minutes until it releases water. Add the rest of the vegetables. Cook to soften, for a couple of minutes. stirring to prevent sticking and to integrate the browned bits. Splash in the balsamic to deglaze the pan.
Step Two: Add the oats, and bring the mixture to a boil, about 5 minutes. Then, reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook for 25 to 30 more minutes. Make sure to stir every 5 minutes or so from burning the bottom.
Step Three: Once the oatmeal is completely cooked, turn off the heat and add the soy sauce. Mix until everything is well incorporated. Season with pepper.
Step Four: Cook the reserved sliced mushrooms in a splash of soy sauce, water and balsamic vinegar, until browned. Serve the oatmeal with the mushrooms on top.
Plantains have many potential health benefits.
Plantains contain resistant starch, which acts as a prebiotic to help healthy bacteria grow in the colon, and fiber, which improves bowel function. Plantains contain potassium, which helps maintain fluids that control heart rate and blood pressure, and are a huge source of fiber, which can lower cholesterol.
Plantains contain vitamins A and C, as well as flavonoids and phenols, which are antioxidants that can help regulate immune function and control inflammation. Resistant starch in plantains doesn't spike blood sugar, which can be important for people with type 2 diabetes.
When ripened to black, they are a source of sweetness in puddings and combined with their high fiber and nutrients, pack a powerful punch to your meal plan. Not quite as sweet as bananas, they still contribute to a great base for your no-fat, no-salt, no-sugar diet. Plantains can be boiled, fried, mashed or even roasted just like potatoes. They are not eaten raw.
They also pair well with your favorite herbs and spices, so I have included one sauce that you can use on vegetables, like baked asparagus, or as a topping for veggie spiraled pasta, or regular rice noodles.
1 cooked plantain
½ c. low-fat coconut milk
1 red pepper chopped
½ c. nutritional yeast
1 t. paprika, or cayenne
1 green onion, diced
½ t. garlic powder
4 c. spiraled zucchini, carrots, or Banza* pasta
Step One: Microwave the plantain in its peel, poking a few holes in it, for 6 minutes, or until squishy. Spiralize veggies, or cook pasta, as you continue making the cream sauce.
Step Two: Place cooked plantain in blender with all ingredients (except noodles, of course.) Blend until creamy. Use as topping for asparagus, or veggies, or as a topping for noodles. Enjoy! 117
Cashews are highly beneficial for lowering blood pressure, preventing heart attacks, preventing gall stones, reducing the frequency of migraines, providing energy boosts, strengthening bones, and promoting healthy skin and hair.
Cashews have a lower fat content than most nuts (cashews are technically not a nut, but a fruit) and contain a high amount of oleic acid, which is a heart healthy monounsaturated fat that is great for the cardiovascular system.
1/3
c. raw cashews
2 c. unsweetened plant milk
3-4 pitted dates
¼ t. ground nutmeg
¼ t. turmeric (for color)
1 t. vanilla extract
1 t. ground cinnamon
¼ t. ground cloves
¼ t. ground cardamom
Step One: Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until very smooth and frothy, about 3 minutes. Divide between serving glasses and sprinkle cinnamon on top. Serve immediately. Healthy Holidays!
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