Red Cabbage & Cranberry Salad

"No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.  Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office."  George Bernard Shaw

  OK.  I'm back from the holidays and my diet of appetizers washed down by mint fudge.  Time to concentrate on a few energy packed foods.

This is a recipe I found and changed to add a more healthy oil and eliminate the sugar.  And then, being the curious person that I am, I decided to explore the nutritional difference between red and green cabbage.  Big WOW!

While both red and green cabbage contain Vitamin A, a cup of green cabbage supplies 3 percent of your daily value while red cabbage supplies 19 percent.  For vitamin C it's a difference of 47 percent versus 84 percent, with red cabbage, once again, coming out on top.

And bonus!  Red cabbage contains anthocyanins.  Are you as excited as I am?  You will be once you learn that anthocyanins are known for their cancer fighting and memory improvement abilities.  Green cabbage does not contain anthocyanins.  And, super bonus, anthocyanins may contribute to healthy WEIGHT LOSS by helping your body release hormones that metabolize fat and suppress your appetite.  OK.  I know it's dirty pool to put WEIGHT LOSS in capital letters, or upper case as us moderns say, but we're all going to make that New Year's resolution to get into those clothes that have been taking up half of our closet space for the last five years.  Really.

But on to the recipe that will give you one more tasty way to get some of this terrific veggie into your eating plan, she said, carefully avoiding that awful word, diet.

Ingredients:
  2 T olive oil
  1 T apple cider vinegar
  Speck of stevia powder
  dash of salt
  pepper to taste

Whisk all together in a bowl and set aside.

  red cabbage, 1/2 small head finely chopped, or as fine as you need it to be
  1/2 cup dried cranberries
  1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

Distructions:
Mix the veggies with the dressing.  Let sit overnight.  Yes, this is one of those recipes where the flavors really need time to get to know each other.  And once they do, they'll be ready to get to know you too.  Happy eating!

Loveya
The Mom

Coconut Curry Veggies

"The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk."  Dustin Hoffman

This recipe was the result of an experiment with coconut butter and a restaurant dinner that I enjoyed.  The restaurant dinner was coconut curry veggies with noodles which I wanted to try and duplicate.  Perusing such recipes online I noted that most of them contained coconut milk.  I am the proud owner of a jar of coconut butter, which is simply ground up coconut.  Not wanting to purchase coconut milk when I already had a coconut product in the house I decided to experiment.

I figured that I could melt the coconut butter, add a thickener along with spices and liquid, and have the sauce for my dish.  Well, Sparky, it worked!

Ingredients:
  Carrots, peeled and chopped
  Onion, peeled and chopped
  Celery, sliced
  Mushrooms, any kind, I used baby bella 
  Peppers, red or green cut into strips
  Broccoli, steamed and added just before serving

Distructions:
  Saute the veggies in a bit of olive oil.  Cover and let steam on low heat to the desired dente while you whip up the sauce.

Sauce:
  2 T coconut butter
  1 T cornstarch
  1 T curry powder
  1 T grated, fresh ginger
  1 1/2 cups water or veggie broth
  Dash of salt

Distructions:
  Melt the coconut butter, add the cornstarch, curry powder and grated ginger.  Ginger powder will also work.  Stir in the liquid and cook until a creamy consistency.  Adjust seasonings, including the coconut butter, curry powder, and ginger.  Play around with this until it's just right for you.  I added a bit more coconut butter to get more coconut taste into the sauce.  You could also whip up the coconut butter in water or broth in your blender.  This gives you a white liquid with a wonderful coconut flavor.

Finally, add the sauce to the veggies, top with steamed broccoli, and serve with rice.

DID YOU NOTICE?  I didn't give any measurements for the veggies.  Well, that means you can use as many or few as you'd like.  You could also include sweet potatoes or regular potatoes if you'd like.  Don't you just love choices!

CONFESSION:  I was in the middle of enjoying this dish with my son, who was visiting, when I realized we had consumed almost the entire dish and I hadn't taken a picture for this blog.  I gingerly shoved what was left on my plate to one side, spooned on a bit of rice, and snapped away.  I really need to get a bit more organized!

Loveya
The Mom

Sweet Onion Crackers

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others."  Groucho Marx, star of Animal Crackers

So that's as close as I could get with a quote that had to do with crackers.  And I do have a vegan cracker recipe.  It's not a crisp cracker, because I left out oodles of oil in order to make it lower in fat content.  Pretty logical for early morning!

This recipe is for a dehydrator but I'm betting it could also be baked in an oven at a low setting.  I'll have to research that possibility.

Ingredients:
  1 large sweet onion, Vidalia is great
  1 cup ground, raw sunflower seeds
  1 cup ground golden flax seeds
  3T olive oil
  1/4 cup Bragg liquid amino
  Splash of Agave nectar - optional


Distructions:
 Process the onion in a food processor with the S blade until very fine or whip it up in a blender.  I use my Vita Mix and whip it until it's mushy.

Pour the onion into a bowl and add the other ingredients.  Mix to blend well.  Spread the batter onto a teflex sheet about 1/4 inch thick for a more bread-like product and thinner for a cracker-like product.  Dehydrate at 105 degrees for about 5 hours.  Flip over the teflex sheet and remove the teflex from the crackers.  Dry an additional 4 hours or until the crackers are as dry as you'd like them to be. 

Variations:
The crackers in the picture that are to the front left are more orange because I added some salsa to make them a southwestern cracker.  Crackers to the right rear are a darker green because I added pesto.  The dish in the middle holds a variation of my Mock Tuna Salad (Sept. 14).  For use with the crackers I dressed the Mock Tuna Salad ingredients with a light vinaigrette instead of hummus.  Either would work well, including plain hummus.  I love choices.

Special thanks to my cat, Merle, who let me use his little yellow dish for the picture!

Loveya
The Mom