Recipies, For the Interested

A blog with an embarassing name is a place I go when I have ingredients I'm not sure how to use.  The author is the same woman who wrote "Feeding the Whole Family", a cookbook I love because all the recipies have mods for babies and toddlers.

I came across Lair's work while reading my pinko commie parenting magazine (which I read mainly for the recipies and the surprisingly helpful tips), in an article where she shared her frustration at nutritional advice that gives you a long list of eat-and-do-not-eat foods, but gives you no guidance to go about planning a satisfying meal from the "eats".

Lair's solution was to offer two frameworks, one for a well-balanced vegetarian meal and one for a well-balanced animal-protien meal.  (One of the things I appreciate about Lair, a vegetarian, is that she is very undogmatic about protien sources.  In her cookbook she admits that she believes some people are born vegetarian and some people are born carnivorous, and that it's probably useless to try to convert either.)

A well-balanced vegetarian meal goes in this order:

1. A whole grain
2. A legume or soy food
3. A vegetable (green)
4. Another vegetable (any)
5. What Lair calls a "digestive" - something raw, fermented, cultured, pickled, or bitter.

Incidentally as a carnivor, I have mae some of Lair's vegetarian recipies and I found them very satisfying, with the right amount of chewyness to feel like I'd had a main course.  An example of a meal incorporating the above ideas would be black bean chili with brown rice, tomatoes, and either a topping of lettuce and salsa or a salad on the side.  (See how easy it is to get two vegetables?  You could also put kale or spinach in the chili if you really don't want to wash any other dishes.)  The salsa is your digestive.

A well-balanced animal protien meal includes:

1. Fish, eggs, chicken, pork, or beef (probably in that order)
2. Whole grain or starchy vegetable
3. Vegetable (green)
4. Vegetable (any)
5. Digestive - something raw, fermented, cultured, pickled, or bitter.

An example of a meal utilizing the above would be meatloaf, potatoes, spinach salad with mandarin oranges or dried cranberries.  (Starchy vegetable is used, Lair explains, when the meat is heavy enough that a grain would be unpleasant with it-- i.e., steak and brown rice.  A nice piece of fish with brown rice salad, on the other hand, might be lovely.)

(Raw: raw vegetables or nuts.  Fermented: like sauerkraut.  Cultured: like yogurt.  Pickled: well, like pickles.  Bitter: like a vinegrette.  You need these things regularly to have a healthy gut.)

Lair uses a lot of whole grain salads in her cookbook, including one lovely quinoa salad with a lemon-garlic dressing that I adore but that I can't eat too much, because quinoa increases breast milk production (for me, noticably).  I should just make it with brown rice instead... then the Husband couldn't keep saying it looks like birdseed.

One thing I appreciate about her recipies is the idea that grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes are the centerpieces, with meat, dairy, sea vegetables, and nuts and seeds as flavorings or components of the meal.  This is a really easy way to cut calories without losing enjoyment of the food--not to meniton that it's cheaper to build a meal around a pot of beans with a few bits of meat for flavoring than it is to build a meal around a pot roast.  (Much as I love pot roast.  Yum.  And there's even a recipie for pot roast in the "Feeding the Whole Family" cookbook... it just calls for about six kinds of veggies to be roasted alongside the meat!)

Without a doubt one of our favorite recipies is the sweet yam corn muffins, which I make as cornbread.  They are not on the website, sadly; what you do is you add a whole can of yams/sweet potatoes/leftover orange squash to your cornbread recipie in place of some of the liquid (and some of the sweetener) and mix the whole thing in the food processor.  Then you bake it like normal cornbread.  This is so moist you don't even get crumbs when you cut it.

I suppose I'm trying to be encouraging-- eating healthy isn't all lentils and edamame, when you do it right.  Spices are your friend!

Cheers,

Breanna