It looks like a Purple
People Eater to me

Before I start, I just want to say THANKS to everyone who sent kind words yesterday. I didn’t write the post to get people to blow sunshine up my ass, but you did create a warm glow inside. So thank you.

By request, I’m finally writing about cooking again. A little birdie told me she’d like to read about eggplant in between all the horrible news stories of the world.

So. Yeah.

I cooked with eggplant for like, the second time in my life.

The last time was probably when I was in high school and I must not have been impressed because it’s taken me 20 years to try it again.

But I started considering it when I was researching lowering one’s cholesterol and saw it listed in my Encyclopedia of Healing Foods along with beets, etc. as foods that could help.

And I’m really not ready to take on beets.

So eggplant it was. Even though, apparently, the recommendation is based on a study where rabbits lowered their cholesterol with eggplant juice. I’m cute and furry like a rabbit, right? It could work on me too.

According to this nutritional website 1 cup of eggplant has 2.5 grams of dietary fiber (10% DV). It’s also got some other vitamins, like 4% of your B6 and 3% of your Folate. But it’s also got 10% of your sodium!!!

Who’d have thunk?

So in the name of fiber and lower cholesterol, I went with another recipe out of my favorite cookbook, Thug Kitchen.

Have you purchased one yet? You need to.

I made Grilled Eggplant with Soba Noodles.

The soba noodles were also an area of apprehension. They are noodles made of buckwheat. Again, the last time I experienced buckwheat in anything was 20 years ago when my mother ordered buckwheat pancakes at a restaurant and they tasted like they’d been cooked in the smokestack of a train.

So… not tasty.

Here’s how the cooking went down this time.

Eggplant- didn’t last long enough on my kitchen counter so I had to buy another one. Future self, just buy it the day you are going to cook it and don’t end up with a mushy wrinkly purple blob on your hands.

It got marinated and then grilled. And I had super fun brushing more marinade on it while it cooked.

Soba noodles- totally looks like worms. And then you put sesame oil on it and then it looks like slimy worms. BUT. Totally tasty. No train smokestacks here.

For as brown and icky as they look, they are surprisingly lacking in fiber according to my online nutritional data site. They do rock the protein category though (6 grams for 1 cup).

So you mix your leftover marinade and eggplant and wormy noodles together along with a bunch of fresh basil. And you get some really oily, really tasty noodles. Once again, fresh herbs totally make the dish. You eat it at room temp or cold so it’s actually pretty refreshing on these hot summer days.

If I make this again, I’m going to have to lay off some of the oil. I felt like I had to wash my face after slurping up these bad boys.

Try it friends! Marinate and grill up some eggplant. Any other ways you like to cook with eggplant?

It’s still a weird one to me.

Shiny happy people holding hands

Everyone around, love them, love them

First, I’ve gotta take a second and thank everyone for the tremendous response to my post yesterday. People reached out to me to share their own stories, even a couple of people I’ve never met before. And it was truly touching. And a reminder that we never know what a stranger is dealing with–so be kind. So thank you for sharing, for your words of encouragement, and for letting so many people, including me, know that we are not alone. We may not all be shiny, happy people, but it made me so happy to know others heard me and let me hear them. That we virtually held hands.

And I get to follow that up with a discussion on cauliflower.

It seems the only way I am motivated to cook lately is if I tie it to some kind of “event”. Like my Vegan Valentine’s. Well this past Sunday it was for the Oscars. Yes, I am one of those people that the Academy Awards are my version of the Super Bowl. So yummy food should be involved. I thought I’d take it as an opportunity to try out some new vegan recipes, and I invited friends to torture get feedback from.

Here’s what was on the menu, all from Thug Kitchen Party Grub (I know, I’m addicted):

-Landlocked Ceviche- basically cauliflower instead of fish

-Stuffed Mushrooms- stuffed with quinoa and herbs

-Deviled Chickpea Bites- basically hummus on cucumber and baguette

-Black Bean and Corn Salad

-Meatball Subs- except the balls are made of beans

-Peanut Butter Millet Buckeyes- not new, but totally worth repeating

So, I go crazy, cook madly for a day, and then don’t want to cook again the rest of the week. Not very balanced, is it?

But since it was for the Oscars, here are the awards we decided to give the food.

Crowd Favorite: The dessert, duh. Chocolate is involved, need I say more?

Best Dressed: Black Bean and Corn Salad. Just look at those colors!

Most Disappointing to the Cook: My husband made the mushrooms and he just couldn’t get over the lack of cheese that he normally stuffs mushrooms with.

Most Original: Landlocked Ceviche. Because, really, when do you ever eat cauliflower? Thank god there was a lot of lime juice. I think the trick is to let it marinate a long, long time. But it’s still got that weird cauliflower toughness.

Most Poop-like: Not in taste. Just looks. You work with beans, you end up with a lot of gooey brown things. Like the Deviled Chickpea Bites.

And the bean balls for the sub that I just couldn’t get to stay in the shape of a ball. They looked like flattened turds.

And as a side note, right before I served this poop-tastic meal, we had our own little kiddo poop-splosion. Nothing like cleaning up poop right before you eat a bunch of beans that look like poop. Kinda circle-of-life-esque isn’t it?

But overall, the food was pretty good. I’ve been eating leftovers all week and I’ve decided the Landlocked Ceviche would actually be a great snack to have on hand. It’s cauliflower, so it’s low calorie–you just have to control your chip consumption with it. But what else does this veggie have going for it?

Cauliflower, do you have any redeeming qualities, besides that you are bland and can pretend to be both mashed potatoes and fish?

Which is creepy.

It truly is a weird veggie–all tough and white. I mean, veggies aren’t white. When I bought it, my son sat there in the cart, poking the cauliflower, very concerned it didn’t move. Like over and over in the store, “Why doesn’t it move mommy?”

And in response to me saying I wasn’t sure I was satisfied with my dish, my friend said, “Yeah cauliflower is tough.” And I didn’t know if she meant texture wise or tough to make it taste good. Because I’m going to go ahead and declare both as true.

I had just assumed that cauliflower, being white and all, must be devoid of any real nutritional value. It must just be carbs.

But here is what my nutrition book shows:

½ cup raw, chopped cauliflower

• 13 calories
• 1g protein
• 3g carbs
• 1g fiber

So yeah, carbs. But a bit of protein and fiber.

This website shows the % of vitamins and minerals. What stood out to me:

For one cup of raw cauliflower:

• 77% of your vitamin C
• 20% of your vitamin K
• 14% of your folate
• 9% of your potassium

So cauliflower, as weird, tough, and bland as you are, you have some stuff going for you.

At least enough to keep torturing you into ceviche or mashed potatoes. Or whatever else…

So you know how everyone talks about eating kale, the all-powerful super food?

According to Michael Murray in The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, “Kale and collards are essentially the same vegetable, only kale has leaves with curly edges and is less tolerant to heat.” (p.209)

Hipsters, soul-food enthusiasts… unite.

I just cooked with collards for the first time. And they tasted alright. But…

Girl you’re in the kitchen
Sweating up a storm

Now let me clarify. This song was not previously part of my music library.

But holy crap it’s so amazingly terrible.

And let me further clarify that there was NOTHING sexy about what was going on in my kitchen. Case in point:

Vegan Valentine’s was a success. My family and I ate plant-based meals all day. And we lived. Here is what I learned, in no particular order.

1. Vegan food can be yummy food. For Vegan Valentine’s I made: oatmeal (I had to start easy, ok?), a green smoothie, Ginger-Sesame Tofu, Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad, Creamy Black Bean and Cilantro Dip, Fire-Roasted Salsa, Roasted Chickpea and Broccoli Burritos, and Crispy Millet and Peanut Butter Buckeyes. The dessert was obviously the best part. But it was all good. The family ate it. Even the kiddo. I think I had a hard time judging it just because I had been the one to cook it–I was kinda numb to the flavors by the end of it all.

2. Cooking is exhausting. Now this is mainly my own fault. I chose to cook six new recipes (a couple were just dips… but still). Recipes that required fresh ingredients and therefore lots of peeling and cutting (I hate you cilantro). It takes a while. I just wanted to pass out by 8:00. For the future, it’s ok to start simple, stupid.

3. If you aren’t flavoring your food with meat and grease, you are flavoring it with onions and garlic and other spices. And that shit will stay with you. Like all night and into the morning. We both woke up with the worst morning breath EVER.

4. Take shortcuts. Why the fuck did I take the time to make my own salsa on top of everything else? I don’t know. Maybe because my BFF makes such a damn fine homemade one (mine was not as good). But with everything I was trying to cook, this would have been one to cut. Same thing for the carrots. Why did I cut my own matchstick carrots? They were more nicely sized than the store-bought variety. But damn. Save yourself some time.

5. Cholesterol FREE! I tracked my meals in My Fitness Pal just to see how I did–what nutrients I ended up short on and how many calories I ate. And I momentarily freaked out when I saw that I ate ZERO cholesterol. No animal products, no cholesterol (duh). But I DO know that the body needs cholesterol. A quick Google led to this website. Apparently cholesterol is so important, your body will just make it out of whatever you eat. Yay!

But…

6. The article also made the argument that it’s CARBS, NOT MEAT, that is sending our LDL through the roof. Remember, I wrote about how bad meat is? Well now this woman is saying it’s sugar triggering your insulin, which tells your body to grow, which means make new cells, which means make more cholesterol float around in your blood. (Cells need cholesterol to hold them together.) This just made me wanna say FUCK IT and eat whatever I damn well please. But as my BFF pointed out when I told her about this project: “If you research enough, you’ll find out you can’t eat anything. So just eat in moderation.”

7. I am the messiest cook. Ever. Did you see the sink picture above? That’s not from a week of me being lazy. That is one day of us eating at home (though not V-day). I somehow used just about every dish in the house when I cooked. Is it bad planning? I don’t know. But the dishwasher was running nonstop this past Sunday.

And this is how I utilize the counter. 

Gross. I know. But I’m cooking here. I don’t have time to clean as I go.

8. You can overeat, no matter what you eat. According to My Fitness Pal, I still ate over 2,000 calories this day. I’m going to primarily blame the rice noodles. And the chips I used to eat my black bean dip. Neither of these are nutritionally helpful. I was going with the rice noodle thing to get some carbs, but I got plenty of carbs anyway. And in the end, I am still just programmed to overeat. For dinner I could have probably been fine with one taco, but when do you eat just ONE taco? We’re Americans. We don’t do that sort of thing.

9. I got 84% of my calcium without ANY dairy. Which blew my mind. I had no idea plants had so much. Now, it’s not enough (it’s not 100%), but it was way more than I predicted. I grew up with my mother, the rabid, avid milk drinker. She has been freaking out any time I tell her I’m researching a vegan diet. She sees my bones crumbling before her eyes. Like, when I was 7 years old and I broke some tiny bone in my foot jumping into a pool (and yes, there was water in it). Her universe got destroyed–how could I, her milk-drinking daughter, break a bone?!? So I wanted to show her it might be possible to not live and breathe milk. I call her to tell her my astounding news–that I got 84% of my calcium without a drop of milk, and what does she say? “It sounds like you’re 16% short.” Which is true, but I think just illustrates how scary this is to her. We grow up with these preconceived notions about nutrition, and it’s just hard to change. But so far, she might be KINDA right. Based on my day, I probably need some dairy to get my full calcium requirement.

10. And finally, Thug Kitchen is definitely one of my favorite cookbooks. Thanks for the delicious recipes (all of the foods listed at the top except the oatmeal and the smoothie)! If you haven’t seen it, check it out. They curse while they cook. Like, “You know what an enchilada looks like, so handle that shit.” I find it comforting, like I’m cooking with a friend. Ok, none of my friends curse that much. So try it, and it’ll be like you are cooking with me. I curse like a sailor.

Come see me tomorrow when I either write about the super painful deep tissue massage I got, or the super painful kick-boxing workout I tried. Hmm… which of THOSE do I want to relive?