Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Jane’s Favorite 3, 2, 1 Dressing

Jane’s Favorite 3, 2, 1 Dressing from page 174

This is a wonderful, basic salad dressing. Use this as a starting point to all kinds of delicious salads. I tried several different variations and they were all fantastic.

The basic 3, 2, 1 dressing is all over the internet. Here is one place I found it. The difference in this one is that it calls for the addition of some lemon juice.

The first one I tried was the exact recipe from the book with plain balsamic vinegar. This is my favorite balsamic.

This was delicious, but I wanted to try different variations. Not one was a disappointment. Most of the time I used them on green salad, but it was also great in a quinoa salad with veggies.

Here are some of the combinations I tried.

Plain balsamic, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, lemon juice

Blood orange balsamic, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, lemon juice

Fig balsamic, spicy brown mustard, honey, lemon juice (this was my favorite)

Pomegranate balsamic, spicy brown mustard, honey, lemon juice

I found that I liked the dressing better with honey instead of maple syrup. It added a more subtle sweetness and a depth of flavor that was lacking with the maple syrup.

The recipe says that it makes 1/3 cup. The lemon I had was very large, so I ended up doubling the rest of the ingredients. When I did that, I got 2/3 cup, so it was pretty much on target.

Instead of whisking, I blended everything in my NutriBullet.

This had a wonderful mouth feel.  You don’t even realize that you are eating dressing made without oil.  You can even use a lot of dressing and not feel guilty.

The lemon made the dressing a little on the tart side for my taste, so I cut it down a little.

NOTES:

• Try adding different fresh herbs. Dill, parsley, basil, oregano, tarragon….these are all wonderful in a salad dressing.
• Try different mustards. Spicy brown, Dijon, yellow…they all work perfectly. Use your favorite.
• Try different flavored balsamic vinegars. Napa Valley Naturals has flavors like blood orange, fig, black cherry…they are all delicious.
• Use lime juice instead of lemon juice.
• Adjust ingredients to your taste.

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Kale Burgers

Kale Burgers from page 227

Now that summer is here, I was looking for a healthy, delicious veggie burger. The ones in the store either had ingredients that I did not want in my food, such as oil or egg, or were dry and tasted like cardboard. There had to be a better alternative. I figured, I would have to make my own.

I tried a few recipes, and I will blog about them at a later date, but I wanted to tell you about my favorite burger so far. Kale burgers. Yes, you heard correctly…kale burgers.

You can find this fabulous recipe here.

I am always looking for ways to add veggies to recipes, and this one has tons of veggies….onion, sweet potato, kale. Put that together with the beans and the oats and you have one healthy burger! The recipe calls for optional mushrooms, which I did not put in. I only had a few shitake mushroom in the fridge and they were earmarked for Savory Smokey Oats.

The burgers came together quickly after I cooked the sweet potato. While the potato was cooking, I prepped and cooked the other veggies. When making a recipe like this, I like to water chop the veggies very fine in my VitaMix.

I used canned pink beans since I didn’t have kidney beans on hand, but they taste very similar, so I don’t think it mattered much. Once everything was cooked, I just threw everything in a big bowl and Chris squished everything together with her hands, leaving some beans whole.

We used this nifty little burger press that we found. The recipe says it makes 6 to 8 burgers. I got 7 nice size burgers.  This press works out really well as we can form the burgers as well as store them in the fridge. I definitely suggest chilling the burgers before cooking. I think this helps them to hold together and keep their shape.

Chris cooked these up in our non-stick frying pan. They took about 5 minutes on each side so the burgers were hot on the inside and browned on the outside.

We didn’t have any hamburger buns on hand, so we used rye bread. I am having trouble finding hamburger buns that fit in with our McDougall way of eating. Please…if you know of a brand that has no oil or animal products, comment below and let me know. My friend told me about some English Muffins that I think were by Food For Life that were healthy, but I haven’t found them yet. If I had those, that’s what I would have used, but the rye bread worked out just fine.

We topped the burgers with our fixings of choice, which were lettuce, pickles and ketchup. I was very surprised that the burger held up and didn’t just squish inside the bread. It was definitely softer than a store bought veggie burger, but it still held together nicely and had a nice mouth feel. I bet the texture would be even better with mushrooms, as they give a meatier feel to burgers and loaves.

Let’s see…prep time. 10 minutes to nuke the sweet potato,10 minutes to chop and cook the onion, garlic and kale (but that was at the same time the sweet potato was cooking), 5 minutes to add the other ingredients,10 minutes to combine and form patties, and 10 minutes cooking time.

Total time from start to finish – about 35 minutes.

NOTES:

• Shred the kale very fine for the best results.
• Frozen kale would work fine.
• The burger had a nice background spiciness to it from the Sriracha. Could use tomato sauce or salsa instead.
• Use an ice cream scoop so you get the same size burger each time.
• Will definitely try adding mushrooms next time.
• Not sure how they would turn out on the grill. Will have to try.

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.