It is so good for you, full of fibre and beta-carotene, but it seems sooo uninteresting.
The taste is nice but you can’t just toss it in everything and hope for the best, can you?
Well, the answer is that you almost can!
I was searching for new ideas on how to use it. And hopefully in a kid-friendly too, and stumbled on this pot of gold: None less than 30 ways to sneak the green little leaf in your food.
All the way from Avocado,Kiwi, Spinach smoothie, to spinach, lentil, ragout.
Just be aware that the recipes are vegetarian and not vegan (most are though) so be sure to use a vegan alternative to cheese and pasta among other things, or just get inspired to use it in the dishes you already make, like I did.
Cool as a Cucumber – this drink is great for hot afternoons and evening. Cucumbers is a great source of Vitamin B and are 95% water, keeping the body hydrated while helping the body eliminate toxins. Cucumbers have most of the vitamins the body needs in a single day.
Cucumbers are a good source of potassium. Drinking cucumber water helps your body get more potassium, potentially helping to lower your blood pressure.
Cucumbers are high in vitamin K. In fact, one cup of sliced cucumbers has about 19 percent of the recommended daily value. Your body needs vitamin K to help form proteins that are needed to make healthy bones and tissues as well as to help your blood clot properly. What better way to get this vitamin than through refreshing cucumber water?
We have just had a week with loads of rain showers and today the sun was shining & it means that the forest is full of mushroom and berries. So we packed the backpack with coffee and smorgas! – we are from Scandinavia – after all 🙂 Put on our hiking gear and off we went as merry dwarfs to the forest.
On our way to the forest we did see wild strawberries and blueberries, tasted just a few, we wanted to go further away from the road before starting to have a feast in wild berries.
In the forest we were not disappointed; wild strawberries in abundance and loads of blueberries – we had to walk another hour’s time before we saw the first mushrooms “chanterelles” and picked two big handful each, enough for two generous servings of Chanterelles Stew.
We always use the same recipe, the season is fairly short, so we just make our favorite. The original recipe calls for butter and full fat cream but it is easy to replace with vegan ingredients as we have done for years by now. We serve with rye bread again we are from Scandinavia, so a natural choice. You can use the bread of your preference, only thing is don’t use a sour bread with a too sourish taste, it ruins the mild taste of the musrooms.
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Photo credit: the top photo “Chanterelle Cantharellus cibarius“. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Photo within recipe by Susanne Flø
I didn’t turn to a vegan diet cold turkey. I turned to a vegan diet out of necessity. I was vegetarian for many years. Yet I suffered from severe heartburn and reflux. It was BAD. At times, I felt like I was having a heart attack, and the pain was so unbearable that I thought I was going to die! Yes, it was as bad as that. Medication didn’t help. So I decided to eat alkaline food only. To my surprise, I was able to cure the heartburn and reflux by switching to a 100% plant based diet. I also started to sleep better. Last but not least, I was able to do proper hikes again. I happily transitioned to a vegan diet.
Because of all the pain and nausea, it was an easy choice for me. I started to focus on my health only. Because I felt so sick, I was happy enough if I managed to cook vegan and alkaline food for myself.
I know transitioning to a vegan diet is not easy for many people – yes, including myself. So, I made this list of 10 tips for a healthy transition to a vegan diet for you. I know these tips helped me, and I hope you find them useful, too. Enjoy.
When you empty your kitchen of unhealthy food choices, it’s easer to focus on healthy eating choices. Go through all your cupboards and fridge and get rid of everything that’s processed or not 100% plant based.
Foods in unopned packages can be donated to your local street kitchen. Everything else goes in the garbage bin.
2. Stock up your kitchen
Time to go shopping: buy lots of fresh fruits and vegetables – this is a given. Here are items I always keep stocked in my cupboard:
Beans – any will do, like lentils and chickpeas – I prefer dried over canned.
Grains – I look for non-gluten types like quinoa and rice
Tofu
Nuts and seeds (flaxseed is #1 in my book)
Miso (fermented beans)
Vegetable stock (not necessary)
Nutritional yeast (not necessary)
Spices
Herbs, whatever is in season
3. Baby steps
Start slowly. My suggestion is that you add foods to your diet and not remove any, to begin with. Start by eating a salad before lunch for a week, then expand to a salad before lunch and before dinner for seven days. When you eat a salad before your meal, you will, without thinking about it, eat less. In the following week, eat 50 percent less junky food per meal. Into the third week, keep cutting down until you eliminate 75 percent of the junk. Finally, by the end of a month’s time, remove everything that’s not plant based.
4. Eat what you like
If you don’t like kale now, then you will not like kale when you transion to a vegan diet. Eat the fruits and veggies you like. And try new varieties to find new favorites.
5. Cut down on processed foods
Processed foods are bad for us, because they make us addicted to fat, sugar and salt. If you buy a lot of prepared meals, start cooking for yourself. Prepping your own lunch is easy, and you can find many videos online for creating easy vegan lunches. A few videos are added at the end of this post.
Drop the softdrinks. It’s time to drink water when you are thirsty and not drink sugar. A beer or wine occationally – vegan of course – and with a meal is a nice treat, if you drink. You can find out if your favorites are vegan here.
6. Know your food.
Most of the commercial vegan products on the market such as fake burgers, meatballs, and cheese are processed foods and not healthy. Think saturated fat and excessive amino acids: these foods are often packed with highly refined oils, flours, sugars, and salts. Therefore, it’s better to indulge in these foods only once in a while. The good thing is, our bodies get addicted to what we eat most of. Be prepared! Your body will soon prefer fresh foods to processed. It’s pretty aweome when your body craves healthy vegan diet options, not junk.
7. Make you meals easy and fun.
Unless your hobby is cooking or you are a chef, I recommend you find easy and fast recipes. It’s easy to make your meals more exciting and fun, through online videos, posts, and vegan communities. I like to find vegan cookbooks to pore through.
8. Give up dairy
Now is the time to give up dairy, if you’re serious about a vegan diet. There are growing varieties of plant milks on the market. There are also vegan cheeses and dressings. During the transition period it can be good to buy those, but I do not recommended continuing to consume a lot as they are also processed. I have added a homemade cheese recipe at the end of this post.
9. Breakfast
I did a smoothie diet challenge, and now all the greens goodness is a part of my morning routine. Overnight oats is a great thing to eat, in the summer fresh fruit and bread. Quinoa bowls is another fun thing to try. If you are stuck on bread or muffins still, try making your own plant-based quick breads or muffins tht are easy to freeze and take out a serving at time as you need it.
10. Go easy on yourself.
You ate something non-vegan? don’t beat yourself up, just go back to your vegan diet immediately. Nothing bad happened, you are human. After my reflux was healed and I could eat “normal” again, I planned cheat meals, at the beginning once a week. Now I barely cheat more than once a month, if that. Remeber you are on a journey, not a race, but do remember to get some kind of exercise regularly.
Here’s an easy cheesy recipe for you:
Vegan cashew cheese
1 cup of soaked cashew nuts
2 teaspoon lemon juice
60 ml / 3-4 Tblsp. water
salt & pepper to taste
Pulse everything but the water – add the water little by little as needed.
Before we start the list, there’s a few things I would like to make clear:
We need about 1000 mg of calcium per day for healthy and strong bones, everyone does, not only vegans. As we age we need more: An intake of a minimum of 1200 mg of calcium is recommended for women over 51 years and for men over 70 years.
There is a trap; if you do not know of it, you might be eating loads of calcium but it will *not* be absorbed in your body, here goes: Oxalic acid, which is found in spinach, rhubarb, chard, and beet greens binds with the calcium in those foods and reduces its absorption. These foods should not be considered good sources of calcium. Calcium in other green vegetables is well absorbed. Dietary fiber has little effect on calcium absorption though.
Protein’s effect on calcium needs and bones remains uncertain.
To maintain strong and healthy bones it is recommended you do regular weight-bearing exercise such as walking. You will also need to keep an eye on your sodium intake because it increases the amount of calcium lost in urine (about 20 mg of calcium are lost with each gram of sodium in the diet) and higher dietary sodium is associated with lower bone density.
How much sodium do we need? Well, the answer is “we do not know exactly.” Look at these figures:
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): 2300 mg.
American Heart Association (AHA): 1500 mg.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND): 1500 to 2300 mg.
American Diabetes Association (ADA): 1500 to 2300 mg.
So… there is definitely a consensus among these organizations that we should aim for less than 1500 mg of sodium per day, and definitely not more than 2300 mg.
1500 mg of sodium equals about 3/4 teaspoons or 3.75 grams of salt per day, while 2300 mg equals about one teaspoon and 6 grams of salt per day.
And you will need Vitamin D together with calcium for best absorption; the best source is the sun and you get that with a nice walk.
Without further ado let’s go to the list: (1 cup = 2.3 dl.)
If not, now is the time, because your condom could be made from lambskin and contain petrochemicals, parabens, casein, milk powder and spermicides.
Not Vegan or ethical.
But there is a Vegan alternative out there: Glyde. Its the only certified ethical and Vegan condom brand, crafted from plant-based ingredients, and never tested on animals
Eco-friendly, Sustainable and Fair Trade
GLYDE is the first condom company built upon eco-friendly, ethical and sustainable principles. We source our non-GMO natural rubber latex from a Fair Trade, owner operated grower where workers are not only paid a living wage, they are shareholders in the operation. Because ‘sustainability’ and ‘carbon footprint’ are not just catchy buzzwords, but practices key to protecting the environment, our rubber is indigenous to the region and grown within local proximity of our Malaysian manufacturing facility. Our packaging is made with 100% recycled materials, soy and vegetable inks.
And they have this promise to be sensational on their site:
Sheer Sensation
Our exclusive natural latex formula and patented technology makes GLYDE responsibly thin to maximize sensation for both partners, without compromising strength and reliability. The best word to describe the texture of GLYDE condoms is “silky,” which makes practicing safer sex sensational for both partners.
A vegan passport might just smooth out and enrich your travel experience. Traveling, seeing the world, getting to know foreigners, and eating all sorts of exciting, delicious foods seems so exciting… but it’s not always easy being a vegan, trying to explain what not to put in your food. The answer to the problem is right here.
What’s a vegan passport?
A “Vegan Passport” that explains in detail, to your waiter or chef, what you want to eat and what you will avoid.
There are two ways to do it. Either way, it covers over 95 percent of the world’s population with its 74 languages. I love this new era of instant information! I did plenty of shoestring travel throughout Asia when I was younger, and I often ate things I had no idea what they were or what was in them. I’m not too sure how well I would have fared as a vegan back then. But in the five years that I’ve now committed to a vegan lifestyle, the internet has grown in vegan information, too.
Vegan passport to easy travel
Below are a couple of choices to help you:
1. You can buy the travelers guide online: The Vegan Passport cost is in paperback and also has a mobile app for easy reference.
2. If you are more into do-it-yourself or not traveling that much, you can print travelers cards you can fold and have in your wallet. Go to vegan cards – there are over 100 languages, so you can choose to print the language(s) you need.
It’s a true blessing to have this kind of support with you when you are sitting in a local restaurant in a foreign land and you don’t know the language that well.
As always when you are abroad and wish to find a vegan restaurant or cafe use Happy Cow’s list – it’s far the best I’ve seen and I use it every time I travel.
Holiday time is approaching and we will be jumping on planes, trains, buses or ferries to go to our holiday destination.
As vegans we cannot always rely on getting vegan foods. So we will have to get creative because often time we get a simple salad served, which is not bad but not filling either.
Our flight left early in the morning, so for breakfast I made us peanut butter and banana sandwiches on sprouted bread, which we had at the airport after getting through security. I also made big zip lock bags of delicious spiced roasted garlic chick peas for the plane ride, and granola for when we would be site seeing and walking around. On the plane, we munched on our chick peas while reading our books and it was enough to satisfy our hunger pains while up in the air. The recipe below is what I made for our trip.
Most restaurants in the airport are accommodating. Ask the server to omit an ingredient or to make a different variation of something.
Some airline menus will offer a salad option, simply have it with no or very little dressing.
Print out a list ahead of time of vegan restaurants, health food stores, and grocery stores from Happy Cow (and you can download their app too).
Stores located inside airports will have convenient snacks in a pinch, but remember to read those ingredients. Things like trail mixes can contain lots of sugars and oils.
Tapas are appetizers, or snacks, in Spanish cuisine. They come in a wide variety, and may be cold or hot. It is fairly easy to make vegan versions. Here’s a fine recipe, which is even cheesy. Tapas don’t get much better than that. Well, maybe they are even better when they are vegan and raw – and you can store them in your fridge for a few days.
I love Italian vegan sausages, and they are great to take on picnics. I pack and take them along with other lunch goodies on hikes in the forests where I like to roam with my hubby. But I cannot buy vegan sausages in Finland where I live at the moment. So, I did a search and found a great website: http://www.theppk.com
I will make them from the recipe below, and post an update on how they panned out.
1/2 cup cooked white beans (great northern or navy), rinsed and drained
1 cup vegetable broth
1 tablespoon olive oil *or* 1 tablespoon tomato paste (tomato paste is a great fat replacement)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon granulated garlic *or* 2 cloves fresh garlic, finely grated
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed, crushed *or* 1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Several dashes fresh black pepper
Before mixing your ingredients, get the steaming apparatus ready, bringing water to a full boil. The rest of the recipe comes together very quickly.
Have ready 4 square sheets of tin foil. In a large bowl, mash the beans until no whole ones are left. Throw all the other ingredients together in the order listed and mix with a fork. Divide dough into 4 even parts (an easy way to do this: split the dough in half and then into quarters). Place one part of dough into tin foil and mold into about a 5 inch log. Wrap dough in tin foil, like a tootsie roll. Don’t worry too much about shaping it, it will snap into shape while it’s steaming because this recipe is awesome.
Place wrapped sausages in steamer and steam for 40 minutes. That’s it! You can unwrap and enjoy immediately or refrigerate until ready to use.
Vegan aphrodisiacs and recipes with these colorful, stimulating ingredients can enhance any mood. One belief is that aphrodisiacs evoke or stimulate sexual desire. Yet, there’s no scientific evidence. Experts say that aphrodisiacs can work in two ways. There are those that create sexual desire by working on the mind, and there are those that create desire by affecting parts of the body. This post covers the latter. A common belief is that these eight vegan foods are aphrodisiacs. At the end of this post, I have added a dinner suggestion. Enjoy!
Almonds
This nut is one of the earliest cultivated foods and regarded as a symbol of fertility throughout history. In fact, the tradition of having almonds at a wedding began during Roman times. Guests would throw the nuts at newlyweds. It is also thought that the smell of almonds incites passion in women.
Asparagus
Touted as an aphrodisiac as early as the 17th century, asparagus boosts potassium and folic acid. The latter to boost histamine production, a necessary component in reaching orgasm for both sexes. Bridegrooms in the 19th century France were served three courses of asparagus at their prenuptial dinner.
Avocados
Avocados boast the famous feminine shape and are high in omega-3 fatty acids and potassium, as well as vitamin B6, which increases male hormone production. They are so effective, in fact, that Spanish priests used to forbid their parishioners from eating them.
Bananas
Regarded as a symbol of fertility by Hindus. The banana has a sensual shape and is chock full of potassium and B vitamins, both needed to produce sex hormones. Additionally, bananas contain the male libido-enhancing bromelain enzyme.
Basil
This member of the mint family helps promote circulation, which stimulates sex drive. In Moldavian folklore, a man will fall in love with a woman if he accepts a sprig of basil from her.
Chocolate
Chocolate is a staple Valentine’s Day gift for a reason. The food is full of compounds including anandamide, a psychoactive feel-good chemical. And phenylethylamine, a chemical that releases dopamine in the pleasure centers of the brain, and produces feelings of excitement and happiness. Cacao also contains tryptophan, which is essential for the brain to release serotonin, a “happiness” chemical.
Figs
Believed to have been in the Garden of Eden, figs were also Cleopatra’s favorite fruit. The ancient Greeks associated them with love and fertility. Figs are a great source of flavonoids and antioxidants, and some believe that figs can increase sexual stamina.
Garlic
This member of the onion family contains allicin, an ingredient that increases blood flow. Both in Hinduism and Jainism beliefs, garlic can increase desire, also good for warming the body. It is well known, that this little bulb creates some strong breath when eaten. Steer clear on a first date.
Vegan aphrodisiacs in recipes
Try out all these (in the) mood-boosters in one fell swoop with these tasty dishes.
