Eat Your (Dark Green, Leafy) Vegetables

Since becoming vegetarian/vegan I've been on an neverending journey of culinary discoveries. I'm now eating more interesting, healthy food than ever before. The fresh produce section of a supermarket seriously excites me & don't even get me started on what a farmer's market does to me. There are so many incredibly tasty foodstuffs around!

Obviously, there are veggies I like more than others, the ones that are my current staples are broccoli, green beans, rocket and, more recently, savoy cabbage (lovely crispy-curlyness). With very few exceptions, I seem to at least tolerate most veggies.

Until recently, one of those exceptions was kale. Just seeing it sitting on the shelf amongst the other dark leafy greens scared me. While pak choi is your gentle smilling chinese guy, kale is the godfather & spinach is its bitch. This paranoia of kale goes back a long way, right into my childhood. There's a German dish consisting of shredded kale, salty beef/pork and potatoes, all cooked forever in a stew (Gruenkohl & Pinkel) which was the nightmare of my childhood. The kale in it, cooked to death & unseasoned, smelled & tasted of freshly mown grass, so my main objective whenever it was on the menu was to get as many potatoes and meat as possible and try to avoid the kale.

I would've happily gone on avoiding any contact with kale, but it started cropping up in quite a few otherwise rather tasty sounding recipes. It's also insanely healthy. So, feeling adventurous & slightly reckless, I bought a bag of kale & then got scared again right away & hid it in my part of the fridge (as much as you can hide a giant ass bag of leaves). It sat there mocking me for another day until I plucked up the courage to do something about it. A bit of googling for appropriate recipes ensued & I emerged with what I thought was a rather inoffensive way of preparing it - Kale Chips.

And what can I say - it's absolutely delicious!!! The oven baked kale (sprinkled with 2 tbsp oil and 2 tsp of season-all & baked for 20 minutes at 200 degrees, in case you're wondering) actually tasted just like crispy seaweed, my all-time Chinese buffet favourite. I was absolutely thrilled & almost ate the whole batch (300g) in one go. I'll be making it again tonight, just to make sure the last time wasn't just a lucky coincidence...

Rather pleased with my results, I'm now contemplating tackling other veggies that I'm currently neglecting. I'm pretty sure that fennel & I are never going to be close friends as it just smells wrong, and I'm not a big fan of celery stalks due to their fibery ribs (although I love the smell of celeriac root, it's instant yummyness), but that can probably be fixed as well if I just find the right recipe. I might try my luck with beetroot next, it just looks so nice & the colour is simply amazing, but I'm not quite sure if I like the taste.

OMG, just think of all the possibilities!!

Healthy Eating

 

So I still have those pesky Xmas kilos sitting on my hips. They've been refusing to shift, and while I can loose a kilo or so on a clubbing weekend, it comes back once I start eating again. I also want to make sure that I'm getting all the nutrients that I need, what with being vegan & not particularly keen on catching another cold this winter. 

I've recently been to a (free) health check-up courtesy of the NHS (for people over 40, but they don't take that limit too seriously) & apparently my heart attack risk is about 0.3%. Yes, really. I've got sensationally low cholesterol levels (2.5, 5 is normal) but unfortunately my risk of getting type II diabetes & high blood sugar ain't that low (thanks, mum). I also very much don't approve of being chubbier than I need to be.

This is why I've been doing a little research on healthy eating, with focus on what people who don't eat meat, dairy & eggs should consume, and how much of it.

One might think that vegans have a reasonably healthy diet, but it's really not that hard to be vegan & eat junk food. Only that it's a differnt kind of junk food, as we're obviously not prone to pop into a kebab shop or get a massive artery clogging fry up. But chips, crisps (even some "meat flavoured" ones) & chocolate are vegan (or there's vegan versions of them). Portion sizes can be a problem, too. I've noticed that the amount of food I eat has gone up quite a bit during the winter months & I feel I've lost perspective of what constitutes a "normal" portion somewhat. According to the interwebs, one serving of cooked rice should be one cup. I'm easily eating twice that amount.

An omnivore food pyramid looks approximately like this

while a vegan food pyramid is more like this

Basically, as long as you eat truckloads of veggies & fruit you should be alright. Unfortunately, I'm quite fond of all things carbohydrate, especially in winter. Last summer I found it relatively easy to only eat fruit before noon & a massive salad for lunch, but right now all I want is to dive head first into something (soy) creamy, starchy & decidedly unhealthy. I only get real chocolate cravings when it's that-time-of-month and when that hits there is no way of stopping me from inhaling a bar of chocolate unless someone is prepared to risk their life in doing so (& even then I'd probably get my chocolate fix in the end).

Then there's the exercise drama. I know I should move more, but I very much don't like gyms (well, if I had my own I would be alright) & public pools only wreck my nerves (again, if I had my own private pool I'd be happily swimming along). Basically, I don't like sharing my excercise experience with other people. And unfortunately I'm not much of a runner. Never have been, never will be.

My current solution to that problem is trying to get back into ashtanga yoga again. So far, I've managed to get some form of sun salutation into each evening this week. Yesterday I actually managed to go through the full set of them (5 easy ones, 5 hard ones) before breaking down, today I've done 5 easy ones & 2 hard ones before my arms gave up. The aim is to do the full set AND still be able to move, because in the end they're just the warm up for more stretchy things. I'm also still having visions of me bouncing about on a rebounder...

I know that my body wants to move, it feels happier if I do & I have the sneaking suspicion that I need to move if I want to get belwo that 70kg mark.

Same goes for healthy eating. My soul needs comfort food, but my body really appreciates the healthy stuff.


Now, all we need is body & soul to communicate better & I'd be fine. Yeah, right.