Spinach. How to cook kryptonite, and like it.

Spinach used to be one of the few foods that I would NOT, under any circumstances, eat.  When I was a kid I to throw up when I ate it.  In one famous incident, a spinach lasagne supplied by my Aunt Susan sparked a battle of wills between my parents, the spinach, and myself.  In the end the spinach was eaten, cold, several hours after it had been picked from between the edible pasta layers and the end result was a toilet bowl full of green barf.  I'm not sure who won the battle but I won the war; I was never forced to eat spinach again. (I also pulled this card out from my sleeve in order to avoid eating my mother's long-boiled zucchini--always made from garden zucchini the size of a dachshund which, as we all know, is the prefered stage to harvest the most flavorful and firm specimins.  "It maks me feel like I'm going to throw up", I would say, and that would be the end of that argument.)

But Superman, green foods are packed with nutrients! 

Have you tried it in lasagna?

Well, I made peace with zucchini LONG before I gave spinach a try again.  Raw, like salad leaves, I never had a problem with; but cooked, I steared clear of it at every possible opportunity.  The only time I allowed it to pass my lips was in small quantities in quiches where it couldn't really be avoided (or tasted).

Given that it is apparently sooooo good for you and that it is one of only two green leafy vegetables that I can get my hands on in Denmark, I knew I would have to make peace with my old nemecis. 

Behold, two basic recipes for spinach that not only don't make we want to barf, but that I really look forward to eating:

Spinach and lemon juice and/or with walnuts and/or with lentils or beans
This is one of those recipes that I throw together and is different each time.  It's good every time and the only caviat I will give you is to be careful not to overdo the lemon juice.  Here are the basic guidelines:

1. Defrost frozen spinach in the microwave.
2. Add a little bit of lemon juice to cut the strong taste of spinach and add some fresh flavor (not to mention nutrients).  BTW, it's true what they say about fesh lemon juice being better: better tasting, and better for you.

Theoretically you can stop there.  But why!

3.  Add some caramelized onions (it's nice to have these pre-made on standby in the fridge) and/or some sauteed mushrooms (again, pre-made on standby in the fridge). 

4.  Add some chopped walnuts.  They taste great with the spinach/lemon mixture and give nice texture.  Walnuts are extremely nutritios on their own but eating them together with spinach enables you to absorb certain nutrients from the spinach that would probably otherwise just pass on through.  (I think it's the oil in the walnuts that enables absorption of fat soluble vitamins but don't quote me on that.  It's just a guess.) 

and/or

5. Add pre-cooked lentils or beans--I like white beans best.  This adds tons of nutrients and helps turn a side dish of plain spinach into a main dish.  Most recipes for spinach call for either cream, cheese, and/or eggs because spinach flavor is so well complimented by creamy textures and flavors.  Both lentils and beans add a creaminess that is really nice.

This is one of the most filling and satisfying things I have learned how to make since starting this whole food journey.  Because I have the onions, mushrooms, and either lentils or beans pre-cooked and sitting in the fridge most of the time, this is extremely fast to throw together as either a quick meal or as a lunch to take with me.  It tastes fine cold and re-heats in the microwave like a champ. 

 
Here's my greek yogurt bucket to-go (oh the irony) of de-frosted spinach, squeeze of lemon, puy lentils, and walnuts.  This was a day where I was running low on pre-prepared stuff.  I was going to be gone from the house all day, so still had to prepare something to eat on the go that contained enough of the types of foods that would keep me feeling full and energized for a full day of activity.  It did the trick, and tasted great even without the caramelized onions and mushrooms. 

Italian Flavors Spinach (or, for those of you with a mullet: Pizza Flavored Spinach)

This recipe was inspired by a photo I saw on Pinterest.  I saw the photos and re-pinned it but have not actually ever looked at the recipe. 

Here was the inspiration from Pinterest.  It was called Italian Spinach:

Link to actual recipe here, not that I've looked at it yet. (Uptade, I looked at it.  I think my recipe sounds tastier. Plus, who has dry vermouth laying around?)

Here's what I threw together (this made a huge batch that I could not eat all of, even as a main course for dinner):

4 sundried tomatoes, chopped up
2/3 can of whole tomatoes, gished
200 g frozen spinach, reheated in microwave
2 tablespoons caramelized onions (from my "standby stash")
2 tablespoons sauteed mushrooms (from my "standby stash")
a bit of black pepper ?? (Can't actually remember if I used that or not but it seems like it would be a good idea even if I didn't.)
60 grams of those gigantic white-beans (again, from my "standby stash")  I think these oversized white-beans looked striking in this dish but I am sure that any of the more common, normal sized white-beans would taste just as good.

Those amounts are very aproxamate.  The only one I can remember for sure was that I used four sundried tomatoes.  I am sure the dish will taste just as good with more or less of any of these ingredients.

1. Defrost the spinach in the microwave.

2. Meanwhile, add everything except the beans (and spinach) to a pan and get things bubbling a little.  Since the onions and mushrooms are already pre-cooked you don't have to get anything browned, just warm it through.

3. Add the spinach and beans and mix everything around.  Keep it on the heat just long enough to get the beans warmed through too. 

4. Eat.

This was SOOOOOO amazingly delicious.  Like, WAAAAAAY better than I was even anticipating.  My first mouthfull I was like OMG, this tastes like pizza.  In hindsight, I should have thrown in some garlic too and will probably try that next time.  But serisously, this combo needs no improvement. 

P.S.  I nuked the leftovers the next day and they tasted delicious too.     

 Other spinach recipes I want to try:

Sauteed Portobello Mushrooms and Spinach
Link to recipe here. Main flavors are red wine and fresh basil (besides the spinach and mushrooms of course). Drop the parmesan to make it vegan.

 

Garbanzo Beans/Chickpeas and Spinach
Link to recipe here. This photo confuses me because those are not garbanzo beans and the recipe calls for two chopped up red bell peppers and there are no red bits in there. Whatever, the recipe sounds interesting: cloves and bell peppers appear to be the main additional flavors. I think I would use more spinach than what is pictured; more like a 50/50 ratio.

 

Vegan Lasagna Spinach Bites
Again, haven't even looked at the recipe (which is here), but the idea sounds great.  This would be a pretty dish to serve for guests and, if it re-heats well, nice to have in the freezer for emergency snacking.

Spinach Pesto
Link to recipe here. Pesto usually goes on bread or pasta which I am trying to avoid eating too much of but I am pretty sure it can go on other stuff too (Including the quinoa crust pizzas I made and will feature at a later date.) so at some point this might be nice try out.

There you have it folks, I'm a convert.  And if I can do it, you can do it too.  And by 'do it' I mean eat a big ol' bunch of spinach every day (or kale, or any of the other green leafy vegetables if you have access to those).  It's one of the healthiest foods you can eat, and it also happens to be cheep, and easy to have hangin' around in the freezer.  No excuses, get cookin'!   

Stayin' alive, ah ah ah ahhhhhhhhh! What-the-hell-am-I-going-to-cook-to stay aliiiiii-iiiiii-iiii-iiiive?

Since starting on my vegan/plant based diet/nutritarian diet adventure at the start of August, I have struggled to figure what to eat a lot more than I anticipated. A lot more.  Besides the expected mourning for now forbidden food (soft boiled eggs...pout, pout.  blue cheese...waaaaaaaaah!) I have had to figure out, all over again, how to cook most of my recipes (and say goodbye forever to others); figure out new things to eat; and adjust to eating foods in different quantities.

There was (and still is a little tiny bit) an identity chrisis sort-of-thing that happened when I realized that I wasn't actually that good of a cook.  Like, not only could I no longer figure out anything to make, but I realized that a lot of the things I used to make took basically no skill and I was/am complete rubbísh when it comes to knowing what to do with spices. 

For example, before I could whip up an openface Swedish rye bread sandwich with sliced pears, creamy blue cheese, and lingonberry sauce on top.  Most people, including my former self, would have thought of this creation as pretty healthy and sort of upscale.  Cue the: "Oohhh, Erika, this is soooo good; you're suuuuch a good cook!".  But the truth is that it takes no more skill to make than a  peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wonderbread.  Take away my fancy bread, my blue cheese, and my jam preserves and all I'm servin' is a pear on a plate. Reality check!  

And my one and only spice trick was to use nutmeg on unexpected foods.  This is still a good trick by the way, but I need more than one trick pony now.  I need a whole stable of trick ponies.  (ONLY figuratively of course.  I have tried having an actual stable full of actual ponies that we tried to train to do tricks but we all know how that worked out in the end.)  Did you know that nutmeg tastes really good with cinnamon and also on kale?  Now you have a trick pony too.  It is also on lamb and ground beef but that's sort of irrelevant now, isn't it. 

Anyway, after coming back to Denmark with lots of ideas about what I was *not* going to be eating, and some lists and diagrams of what I should be eating I atempted to construct some "meals".  Poor Johnny ate some seriously dry and underspiced piles of mixed (i.e. random) vegetables those first couple of weeks.  Sweet man that he is, he cleaned up his plate and told me that he loved me anyway but I had to eat that food too and it was not inspiring me to be a vegan for the rest of my life.  Filling yes; Satisfying, no.

Thank god for Pinterest and the more experienced vegans who had so kindly pinned lots and lots of beautifully food-styled vegan recipes for me to peruse and re-pin.  At time of writing I have 656 pins on my "Whole Foods Plant Based Recipes" board and 114 pins on my "Healthy and Healthy-ish Desserts" board.  A lot of those pins are duplicats.  For example, I pinned like 7 recipes for broccoli soup so I could compare recipes and come up with what I thought I would like and for the foods and spices I have access to.  BUT, there are still a lot of good recipes and good inspiration (some of the recipes aren't vegan as written) there that should last for a good long while.  It was a really good way to get started. 

Before I get into the sharing of recipes portion of this, let me lay out the ground rules of how I am trying to eat:  After seeing Forks over Knives and reading The Engine 2 Diet (which relates back to the film), I read the book Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.  After the film I realized I needed to go vegan, but after reading Eat to Live I realized that I needed to do a LOT more than just stop eating animal products.  What Eat to Live recomended totally made sense and I realized that while a bit "extreme" (actually it's not extreme, it's the typical western diet that's extreme) it was totally the way to go.  And I figured that if other people can do it and be happy for continuing to do it, then certainly I could do it and continue to do it too.

First off, the new food pyramid in my life:

 

Vegetables as the foundation!  If you look at the serving recomendations (which are based on a percentage of total caloric intake), the whole grains and white potato group is listed as 20% or less of calories.  Yep, you can eat basically no grains or potatoes at all and be eating properly.  That's a long way from having grains, white and whole, at the base of the pyramid!

Above nuts/seeds/avocados and whole grains/white potatoes should be a dotted line because really, you don't need anything in the top two levels to survive.  But the option is there.  Apparently the benefits of eating less animal protein follows step in step down to about 5-10% of calories and then the data is a bit too sketchy to difinitively say with 100% certainty that 0% is better than 5% but really, go big or go home.  I want to do it all the way and stop relying (read: hoping, praying) that I can still use eggs as a binder in baked goods.  Just bite the bullet and get some new vegan recipes already.  Am I right?

In addition to the food pyramid, Eat to Live gives a a score sheet of sorts for different foods.  One of the main ideas of the book is that Health is a pruduct of what you eat, in particular to how many nutrients you eat compared to how many calories you consume.  Health = Nutrients / Calories.  White bread has very few nutrients and a lot of calories so it gets a very low score.  Kale on the other hand has tons of nutrients but is very low in calories so it gets a very high score.  Here's a brief breakdown:

100 Green Leafy Vegetables: kale, spinach, mustard greens, collard greens, swiss chard, (I would guess nettles go here too)

95 Other Green Vegetables: broccoli, asparagus,cabbage, cok choy, cabbage, green beens, peas, snap peas    

50 (yeah, only 50!) Other Nutrient Dense Vegetables: mushrooms (not actually a vegetable but whatever), eggplant, zucchini, artichokes, onions, garlic, radishes

45 Fruits: blueberries, strawberries, apples, oranges, lemons, banana, etc.

40 Beans and Lentils: Black beans, navy, kidney, pinto, chickpeas, lentils (all types), lima beans, etc.

30 Nuts, Seeds, and Avocados: walnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews,  flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, avocados 

25 Colorful Starchy Vegetables: Sweet potatoes, pumpkin, turnips

20 Whole Grains and White Potatoes: oats; buckwheat; quinoa; brown rice, wild rice, wheat; rhy; whole grain products: bread, pasta, etc; white potatoes

1 Refined oil: olive oil, canola oil, saflower oil etc.

0 Refined Sugars: honey, sucrose (table sugar), maple syrup, agave nectar

This list is only with regard to nutrient / calorie content and does not take into account factors like the effect of the food on blood glucose, the fact that animal protein is pro-cancer, or the form of the fat (i.e. unsaturated versus saturated).  So within the list above there are some foods that are clearly not as healful as others in the same nutrient group.  I italicized the foods that I have access to here in Denmark and that I plan to emphasize incorporating into my diet.  Sadly, it's dificult to get my hands on most of the leafy greens (althogh there is a bit more variety in the autumn) but fortunately spinach (frozen and fresh) are widely available year round and kale is available frozen year round.  At the other end of the spectrum, I have easy access to whole grain pastas and breads but will be making and effort to incorporate some of the healthier whole grains and eat as many of my grains in the form of actual whole grains instead of as ground into flour as possible.        

My new motto is:

 

It's taped to my fridge. 
This is also taped to my fridge:

THIS IS WHAT YOU EAT:
4 pieces of fruit
50 grams (1.8 oz) of nuts (/seeds)
1 cup (cooked) beans (/lentils)
0.5 kg (1 pound) raw vegetables
0.5 kg (1 pound) cooked vegetables

It's not written on my refrigerator (maybe it should be?) that in that kilo of vegetables should be a big ol' plate of spinach or kale and hopefully a serving of cruciferous veg (kale [double duty!], broccoli, brussels sprouts, or cabbage) as well.

Obviously I am welcome to eat more of those things, and I am also welcome to eat colorful starchy veg (like sweet potatoes) and whole grains AS LONG AS I don't eat so much of them that there isn't room for a minimum of what is listed on that little sign.  And since those are the fun things to eat, I don't really need to remember to eat enough of them, so they're not on the list. 

So there you have it, this is what I am trying to base my cooking around from now on.  Lots of green and leafy vegetables, mushrooms, beans and lentils, and (actual) whole grains.  Let's get cooking!