Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Hot (Sweet) Potato!

Hot (Sweet) Potato! from page 242

I have a tendency to buy more than we eat of some things, like sweet potatoes, then I scramble to make something to use them up before they go bad. No one likes to waste food…or money.

This particular day, I had 1 sweet potato, 1 yam, 1 mango. Since I tend to read my cookbooks over and over, I remembered seeing something in The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook that would work. Talk about perfect. This recipe for Hot (Sweet) Potato! had all the ingredients that I wanted to use up and the rest I already had on hand. It was meant to be.

I will admit, I was a bit leery about adding fruit to a hot dish. I normally don’t like fruit in my food. But…I figured, why not. Might as well try it. Nothing to lose, right?

First, I baked the potatoes. With the oven at 350F, the sweet potato took about 45 minutes, the yam took about 70 minutes.

While the potatoes were in the oven, I chopped up the rest of the ingredients. Boy, mangoes are messy to cut to cut up for a dish.

We always have various beans on hand, and one that we always have is black beans. I occasionally make them from dry in my Instant Pot, but when we purchase canned beans, we prefer Goya.

Verdict….not bad. A little messy to eat with the potato just cut in half. It wasn’t bad with the mango, but not my favorite. I would have enjoyed it much better without the mango. Honesty, I think this is just an idea to jump off. You can add any veggies you like to this and it would be good. Broccoli is my favorite and would be great in this dish.

Prep to cut the fruit and veggies was only about 10 minutes (because of that messy mango), but that didn’t add anything to the total time since I did that while the potatoes baked.

Add in 5 minutes to assemble, the total time to bring this together is 45 minutes for the sweet potato and 75 minutes for the yam. But, your time will be determined by the size of your yams.

NOTES:

• Chop up sweet potato first. This will make it easier eat.
• If you bake the potatoes first, this dish comes together in a snap.
• I would rather just eat the mango plain for breakfast or a snack.
• Great additions to this would be broccoli, greens, and different beans.
• Potatoes can be microwaved rather than baked. Would save time.
• I use parsley instead of cilantro.

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Our Hummus

Our Hummus from page 103

Everyone needs a good hummus up their sleeve. The challenge with store-bought hummus is that most of them contain oil and tahini. We have found one (Good Neighbors Simply Zero), but it’s just so easy to pull this together. It tastes better and costs less than store-bought hummus. Plus, you have the added benefit of having hummus that tastes EXACTLY the way you like.

This can be made in the food processor or a blender. I have a Cuisinart 11 cup food processor that made beautiful hummus. I also have a Vitamix, which worked well, also.

Actually, I think the batch done in the Vitamix came out creamier. There was one issue I had, though. It was much harder to get all of the hummus out of the blender. It was much easier to use the food processor. You may have different results, depending on the type of gadgets you have.

Following the recipe as written, we found this hummus to be too garlicky. It could be that I just had some strong garlic. Maybe my cloves were larger than those used to formulate the recipe. Whatever…just need to add and taste, add and taste.

There was also a bit too much of a mustardy taste, but then again, I use Dijon mustard, which is stronger than yellow mustard.

The second time I made this, I adjusted the garlic, mustard and lemon juice until it was perfect for our taste.

Now, that’s not to say that this hummus isn’t perfect as is for certain applications. Kale and Sauerkraut Sandwich?   Perfect.

Smoky Little Devils? I haven’t made these yet, but I think it will be perfect. With the taste of the mustard shining through, I immediately thought of deviled eggs…so, I will just have to make these Smoky Little Devils, don’t you think?

With hummus, you can add different ingredients to give you variety. How about roasted red peppers, jalapeno, sundried tomatoes (not packed in oil!), cumin and chipotle powder, artichokes, roasted garlic, fresh herbs…oh my goodness, you could eat hummus every day for a month and never have a duplicate.

I see a lot of hummus in our future. Yum!

NOTES:

• Can use canned or cooked from dry chickpeas. Both come out fine for me.
• Lovely with half chickpeas and half cannellini beans.
• Use half the garlic to start.
• Added 3 tablespoons of water.
• Added 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.
• Adjusted mustard to 2 teaspoons.

Miscellaneous Recipe Reviews – Individual Vegan Margherita Pizza from VedgedOut.com

The Northeast was scheduled to be hit with a major snowstorm last night, but thankfully, we only got a few inches. Since we were supposed to get a blizzard, everyone was working at home today.

I have really been in the mood for pizza, but eating a plant based diet with no oil, that is not as easy as you might think. At best, I can get a pizza with no cheese. That is not a bad thing…believe me. I can really sink my teeth into a veggie pizza with no cheese.  But sometimes, you just want the full pizza experience.

I’ve been seeing this recipe on one of my McDougall groups and I’ve really been looking forward to trying it. Here’s the thing, though. You can’t be hungry and just decide you want pizza. When you make it from scratch, there’s a little planning involved.

Today was that day! Yay!!!

I used the recipe from Vegded Out.

Recipe has been removed at the insistence of Veged Out.

I made the dough from scratch. 5 minutes to throw the ingredients together, another 5 minutes to knead (the recipe says to knead for 10 minutes, but it only took 5 with my trusty Kitchen Aid stand mixer). 60 minutes resting time to allow the dough to rise and another 5 minutes to cut and roll out the dough. So…that’s 75 minutes for the dough….mostly inactive time.

I had some organic chunky marinara left over, so I used that.

Next is the moxarella cheese. Oh. Em. Gee. Did this put it over the top! This took a total of about 7 minutes to blend up and cook up.

We made our pies with spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts in water. We also sprinkled on a bit of oregano. Yum. We topped all of that with the moxarella and baked for 12 minutes. What came out of the oven was pure magic. The dough was perfect, the cheese was delectable, and the entire pie eating experience was one that calls for repeating…frequently.  This is real food people.

Do yourself a favor and take the time to make this pizza. I promise…you will not be sorry.