My Plant-Based Family

Feeding My Family a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet, On a Budget

Unprocessed

Making Salsa

by 7 Comments

Yesterday I spent a rather large chunk of time making homemade salsa. Salsa doesn’t really take long to make unless you have two cute little tarzan’s vying for your attention (read driving you insane).

We love salsa in our house and could eat it everyday. My husband can not eat seeds and store bought salsa’s always contain seeds. The only way we have found to get around the seed problem is to make it ourselves. Salsa can be made so many different ways. I’m just providing a template based on general ingredients but you can change it up to suit your taste buds. Additionally, I made a lot of salsa, about 50 ozs (two pasta sauce jars) so my measurements may not work for you but this salsa does freeze well.

Homemade Salsa

Ingredients

  • tomatoes (I used about a dozen roma)
  • onions (I used 1 /2 white onions)
  • peppers (I used 5 jalapeno’s and 3 serrano’s with seeds removed)
  • garlic (I used 5 cloves)
  • lime (I used juice and pulp from 1 lime)
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • cilantro (optional, I love cilantro but was out)

Do

Since I made a big batch I processed each ingredient by it’s self. If you are making a small batch you can just throw it all in your food processor or blender and blend one time. 

  1. Wash veggies well.
  2. Cut tops off of tomatoes and remove seeds if desired. Process until tomatoes reach desired consistency.
  3. Cut and peel onions and put in food processor until desired consistency is met.
  4. Cut stems off of peppers. Remove seeds if applicable be careful because hot pepper can burn your skin. (I recommend wearing latex or rubber gloves for this step. I sometimes even us a plastic sandwich bag on one hand. I know I’m awesome!) Process peppers until very small. Removing the seed will make your salsa very mild.
  5. Peel garlic, add cilantro and lime juice then process.
  6. Combine all ingredients together and add salt. 
  7. Time for a taste test, add any other ingredients or spices. I added 1 tbsp of chili powder for a little extra kick.

Serve

For me, salsa opens up so many meal possibilities. We ate this salsa on pinto and barley tacos. I really wanted to make a rice and black bean bowl too, maybe later. This will be really good on top of leftover baked potatoes for a quick lunch. 

What is your favorite way to make salsa? What is your must have ingredient?

Meal Plan Monday: Back to Basics

by Leave a Comment

I love good food! LOVE IT! I’ve been eating a Plant-Based diet for 6 months and my taste buds are still changing, I’m loving food I never liked before and giving new foods a chance. I like to try something new every week when possible.

This week we are craving a return to simple foods, the foods we are when we first started our journey of healthy eating. Plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables along with whole grains. My Meal Plan this week will not be sexy but it provide nourishment and comfort. The picture above is our fruit and a few of our veggies for the week. We also have 3 bunches of banana’s not pictured along with spinach, 5 lbs of carrots, red bell peppers, celery, kale, beets, sweet and white potatoes. We normally don’t get so many tomatoes but I’ll be making salsa soon!

Meal Plan

Breakfast will be oatmeal, smoothies made with fresh and frozen fruit (and kale and spinach), toast with peanut butter and fruit, and maybe even a bowl of cereal.

Lunches are usually dinner leftovers for us but right now I’m hooked on wraps. I’ve been eating wraps made with spinach, bell peppers, carrots and hummus. So good!

We eat lots of snacks too. I love fresh veggies and hummus! Yes I’m on a big time hummus kick. I just bought more dried chickpeas so hopefully I’ll experiment with more hummus recipes. I love hummus with carrot sticks (and do does my 3 year old) so were go through a lot of carrots, 5 lbs last week! Fresh fruit and smoothies are a good snack too. Last week I let my boys have a lot of crackers so I’ll be reigning this in this week.

Dinner

Monday: Baked Potatoes with broccoli

Tuesday: Beans and barley, this will be my first attempts at cooking pearl barley. We will have additional veggies as well. I’m also planning on making homemade salsa.

Wednesday: Couscous with steamed broccoli and spinach

Thursday: Soup, yay! I’ll use various odds and ends (including any veggies that I forgot to use previously.

Friday: This is usually a date night so I don’t cook a big meal.

On the weekends we eat leftovers. I’ll often pull everything out that we need to eat and we will create a meal out of that. This weekend our big kids are coming to visit for a week! We are very excited to see them! Since they are teenagers I will be doing A LOT more cooking. The eat a typical teenager diet so it will be interesting to see if I can win them over with my Plant-Based cooking. More about that next week.

Is your Meal Plan ready for the week?

 

Breakfast Stir Fry

by 7 Comments

Last weekend I was craving two things, fresh veggies and a breakfast scramble. I used to make breakfast scrambles that included eggs, cheese, milk, and whatever veggies we had on hand. I wasn’t really craving the eggs and dairy part of the scramble but more of the feel and memory of our family enjoying a leisurely breakfast on the weekend. Thankfully we had plenty of fresh veggies, leftovers and some diced potatoes in the freezer. Since there was no “scramble” involved this had to be known as a Breakfast Stir Fry.

Breakfast Stir Fry: A savory, plant-based breakfast that is hearty and delicious.

Breakfast Stir Fry

Ingredients

  • 1/2 chopped onion (I left them pieces big)
  • 1 sliced carrot
  • 1/2 sliced large bell pepper
  • 1 cup diced potatoes, I used frozen but baked potato would work too. If they are not already cooked you’ll need to cook them first.
  • 1/2 cup leftover beans
  • 1 sliced jalapeno
  • Bragg Liquid Aminos (optional)
  • Broccoli

Do

  1. Add onion and carrot to a large, hot skillet (you will want one with a lid), stir regularly.
  2. After the onion and carrot cook for a few minutes add bell peppers, continue to stir regularly. If the food is beginning to stick to the pan add a few tablespoons of water. 
  3. When the carrots are getting crisp tender and the onion translucent add the potatoes, beans and jalapeno. The potatoes will make everything stick!
  4. Once the potatoes and beans are warmed through add the Bragg Liquid Aminos stir one more time then add the spinach and asparagus, do not stir them, put on the lid. You want the spinach and asparagus to sit on top of the other veggies so they get steamed.
  5. Check everything for doneness after 5 minutes.

Breakfast Stir Fry: A savory, plant-based breakfast that is hearty and delicious.

Serve

I served this in warm tortillas, both flour and corn. It was great in both. The corn tortillas added a great flavor to the breakfast. We also add fruit smoothies to help balance this meal. The potatoes really made this stir fry seem like breakfast food instead of dinner. I plan to make this a regular breakfast option at my house (and hopefully get a better picture).

This can be made with whatever you have on hand. The two things that are necessary (in my opinion) are onions and potatoes but feel free to use your favorite veggies.

Breakfast Stir Fry: A savory, plant-based breakfast that is hearty and delicious.

Refried Beans???

by 27 Comments

Refried beans, well not exactly, unfried beans, beans sans grease (lard or extra fat). Let’s just call them unfried beans.

Oil-Free Refried Beans

When my husband and I first got together he did all of the cooking. He taught me how to cook Mexican food and when he would make refried beans he would put a little oil in the pan then add the cooked beans then smash them with a potato masher. Once I started doing all of the cooking I omitted the oil. He didn’t notice unless I would say something. I then got lazier and would just put the cooked beans into my Magic Bullet to save all of the work of mashing them.

Oil-Free Refried Beans

Now that I have a food processor I have a super simple recipe for Refried, er Unfried Beans.

Unfried Beans

Ingredients

  • 2 cups cooked pinto beans (black beans would work too)
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • small amounts of water
  • hot sauce (optional)

Do

  1. Add cooked beans and all of the spices to the food processor and process.
  2. Add small amounts of water until the desired consistency is reached.
  3. Taste and add more seasonings if desired.

Serve

These beans were really good. I’d even say they rival any canned refried beans that are seasoned. They were quick and easy. This was the perfect amount of beans for my husband and my nachos. If you are making bean burritos or just beans to accompany something else make more, this recipe is easy to double or triple.

Did you know that beans and unfried beans freeze well? You can make a big batch then package the whole beans into smaller serving sizes to freeze for later. I like to use a quart size freezer bag because I can lay it flat. I’ve also made large amounts of unfried beans to use when we had company stay with us. They could make nacho’s, burritos, or a host of other things quickly.

Do you cook your beans? You will save a lot of money if you do. Read my post on “Plan for Success” if this is uncharted territory for you, in it, I detail how to cook beans.

Also, check out my Unfried Black Bean recipe!

 

Meal Plan Monday: Be Cheerful

by Leave a Comment

Happy Monday! Did you hear that cheerfulness? I’m choosing to be cheerful. You should decide now if you will be cheerful today too. Soon the days distractions will take all of your attention, perhaps even a few annoyances will pop up, or maybe even something awful. Let’s do our best and choose to be happy and count our blessings. I know it is not always easy, trust me, but I’ll try.

This weekend I cooked a pot of black eyed peas and a pot of chickpea’s. I have a pot of pinto beans that have soaked all night and I’ll start cooking soon. You may be thinking, whoa, that is a lot of beans. You are right! We ate all the leftovers over the weekend and hand almost nothing that could be thrown together without a lot of prep.

My husband LOVES black eyed peas, I have no idea why. I have memories of eating one spoonful a year on New Year’s Day because it was supposed to bring good luck. Maybe I should give them another chance, but not for luck just to see if I can appreciate them now.

Recently I’ve ran across several recipes that call for chickpea’s and I’m hoping to give them a try this week. In our house pinto beans are like a miracle food that can be turned into any number of delicious meals in a hurry. So now I have black eyed peas, chickpeas and pinto beans cooked, how will that fit into the meal plan? 

Meal Plan

Breakfast is pretty predictable at my house. We usually eat toast, oatmeal, breakfast quinoa, and sometimes cereal. I hope to cook a big batch of whole wheat pancakes sometime this week for quick breakfasts and snacks on the go.

Lunch is usually leftovers or sometimes a PB&J. I made homemade cashew butter last week so I may try to use it, unfortunately no one in my house seems to really like it. This week the chickpea’s will make a few lunch appearances for me and black eyed peas for my husband.

Dinner

Monday: Mock “tuna” salad (made with chickpeas)

Tuesday:a Spicy Pinto Bean dish that is yet to be created, or maybe nachos or burritos

Wednesday:Cajun Chickpea Cakes from Everyday Happy Herbivore. I love this cookbook! I hope these will pair well with black eyed peas and steamed spinach.

Thursday: Mega Garden Salad with avocado dressing

Friday: Split Pea Soup

I don’t usually assign side dishes because most of the meal I cook are full of veggies. I do have a quite a bit of produce this week. We will be eating carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, red bell peppers, kale, spinach, asparagus, onions, apples, bananas, oranges, and pears. 

Remember how earlier I mentioned choosing to be cheerful, I’m glad I did. In the last hour and a half I have had a few inconveniences including being spit up on, bitten, changing two poopy diapers, kissed several boo boos, started cooking the beans because my computer was frozen, and other typical things that happen with two adventurous boys. Somedays I would have let them derail my cheerful attitude, but not today. I don’t know that I’ll get through the whole day unscathed but I’ll do my best.

 

Progress Report: Unprocessed Challenge

by Leave a Comment

This week I’ve been only eating unprocessed food. I’ve enjoyed some really good food but I’ve also let a bad attitude get in the way a few times.

I miss my toast. I decided not to eat bread at all, even my sprouted grain bread, because I was eating it way too often. It would find its way into breakfast, lunch, snack and dessert some days.

Eating processed food was really more of a habit than hunger. When I’d give my son a handful of animal crackers I’d normally eat a few too but not this week.

A few things that helped…

  • Having food already cooked and ready to eat.
  • Cutting fresh fruit and veggies for easy snacking.
  • Hummus!
  • Supportive husband and friends, and public accountability.
  • Cooking delicious food so you don’t feel deprived.

So what have I been eating this week…

If you remember on the weekend I cooked black beans and quinoa. I heated them up together in a bowl and added chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cumin, and onion powder. I laid them on a bed of greens, added salsa and mashed up half and avocado. A few squirts of lime juice and it was delicious! It reminded me of a salad from Chipotle. When I mention eating a bean and grain bowl this is what it is like sans greens. I love it with tortilla chips but not this week, roasted corn would be amazing in this.

Yesterday I cooked Minestrone Soup, one of my husbands favorites. I changed teh recipe a bit but we didn’t miss any thing I left out. I competely forgot about the green beans, too bad a have some in the freezer ready to go. I left out the noodles and veggie broth since they are both processed. The soup simmered for hours and tasted great. There was hardly enough left for my husband to take to work. Maybe if I wouldn’t “quality” check so often there would have been more. 😉

Fresh veggies and Jalapeno Hummus! Easy, delicious, unprocessed!

Smoothies! Who doesn’t love smoothies? We have been eating these for our after dinner snack/dessert. My husbands favorite this week was made with frozen bananas, frozen cherries, and a little almond milk. I like frozen banana, a few frozen cherries, a little peanut butter, a little cocoa powder and almond milk. You can make them with whatever you have, for a tropical flavor add frozen mango and/or pineapple.

Earlier this week I ate leftover Enchilada Soup. This time I made it with millet instead of rice. It was tasty.

There are really a lot of options when it comes to eating unprocessed. Some recipes can be slightly adjusted to become unprocessed. A few other things to consider are…

The Best Chili Ever
The Happy Potato
Avocado Chocolate Mousse, if made with date paste it becomes unprocessed
Stir Fry

How have you been doing? Is it difficult for you to stick with it? Do you have any tips or recipes for the rest of us? Leave a comment below and encourage someone else with your journey.

Did you know that My Plant Based Family is on Facebook? To hear more about what’s going on in my kitchen check it out.