The Veggie Queen's DVD

Why did I buy Jill's DVD, when I already know how to use a pressure cooker?

I wanted to learn more about the science behind how pressure cooking works, and I wanted to see how she taught, so I could better teach in the future.

I do not have a scientific mind, I do things more intuitively....it's more of a common sense sort of thing. Sometimes I need the scientific parts of things explained over and over to me until I get it. Also, I wanted to hear her expert opinion on everything from brands of PC's to techniques and methods, and how she cooks and uses the PC daily.

I wanted to know more about cooking just vegetables in the PC, without obliterating them!

Jill is a vegetarian, and her cooking and recipes have a vegetarian point of view, but she doesn't preach vegetarianism. One of the most valueable time saving things about cooking with a pressure cooker is cooking you own beans and grains, but I had never considered cooking vegetable only meals in the PC.

I learned about the things I just mentioned, and more! I learned how to use the PC to cook some things in a matter of minutes! Minutes! Stocks, soups, cereals, and grains I do regularly, and I usually cook beans with some sort of meat, but I forgot about things like polenta, risottos, and fruit! I've been hooked on homemade applesauce. cooked in less than 10 freakin' minutes, with the freshest, in season, organic apples....and cheap! And although tofu and potatoes are not foods I care for, it's always good to know about these choices.

I rarely use exact recipes anymore, and I haven't tried any of Jill's 14 recipes "exactly", included in her instructional DVD, instead I was inspired by her recipes, and I have once again had my cooking life changed. For instance, she shares her breakfast cereal recipe, and yummy as I'm sure it is, I don't need all the "goodies" she puts in it, instead I make it very basic and add (or don't add) the things I like (or have in my pantry or fridge) in relation to my nutritional or caloric needs. I'm in love with this hot breakfast cereal, and even though I was already familiar with this brand, I had never before been inspired to use it. (I'll be writing a blog post on just this cereal, and how to make a dessert with it!)

Recipes are a starting point. You can follow them exactly, and then before you know it you're tweaking them here and there and making things you own. The important things are that you start, and you practice.

In the next few weeks I'll be posting my "tips" for making the pressure cooker a regular part of your cooking life, and my first tip is to buy Jill's DVD and watch it...twice! (I did!)

http://theveggiequeen.com/products.html

Change Your Cooking Life

I am passionate about pressure cooking! I often say that learning how to use a pressure cooker has changed my cooking life. I am a huge advocate of this type of cooking because it allows you to prepare healthy, fresh, tasty, fast, home cooked foods, after a little bit of practice, easily! And the key word here is "practice"



I don't have time this morning to write everything I want to about my adventures in pressure cooking, but I want to dedicate these next few weeks writing about this method of cooking. So I encourage anyone who's reading this to get a pressure cooker and come along and join me!



I'm recommending that purchase your pressure cooker (cookers!) from Jill Nussinow's website http://theveggiequeen.com/index.html. AND her DVD! Even though I already know how to use a pressure cooker I purchased her DVD and later when I have more time I'll write about what I learned. Jill sells and uses Fagor PC's, it is the brand I have been working with this past year, and I just ordered 2 more PC's from her website. I support small business owners, that's why I urge you to support Jill's hard work, efforts and passion (same as me) for teaching and promoting, not only pressure cooking, but a lifestyle that is based on healthy home cooked foods, I will always be happy to promote her products. Also by purchasing from her, she will always be available via email for any questions you might have....you can't get that at a department store, or discount online store. (besides, Jill also says that the pressure cooker changed her cooking life!)

More to come, but in the mean time, buy a pressure cooker, or if you already have one, dust it off, clean it up and get ready to cook!



PS I just made a big pot of smokey, beefy, chipotle chili w/black beans, this morning in about 1/2 hour! And yesterday before double yoga classes (starting @8:00am), in addition to making some brown/purple rice (in 15 min with my own chicken stock, made in the PC), I made 3 qts of homemade applesauce in less than 1/2 hour using only one ingredient....fresh, in season, local, sweet, ripe apples! Boy was it nice to come home to warm homemade applesauce.

Am I seeing double?

Could it be? Not one, but two pressure cookers! LOL!

Here's one of my new pressure cookers, the 8qt (beef shanks are cooking inside, and making beef stock). In addition to my 6qt, I just ordered a 4qt & 8qt Combi set...woo hoo, that make three!

more to come.....

Tracy's All Day Food

4-7:00am coffee/cream 100 cal.

small apple 60 cal. (on the way to 7:15am Bikram yoga)

10:00am romaine/celery salad w/egg dressing, brown rice 300 cal.

12 noon 4 olives @whole foods 20 cal.

1:00pm

grass fed beef burger 3oz., 1 pastured egg, 1 egg white, long beans, 5 baby

tomatoes, 1 sprouted rye bread 150+90+20+90=350

See's Candy chocolate sucker 70 cal.

2:00pm total so far 900

3:00pm, before 4:30 Bikram yoga w/Mark

100 cal. 8 grain cereal+1tsp sugar 20 cal.=120 cal.

6:45 pm seaweed salad w/grapefruit dressing, i'm guessing 140 cal. at the most, so.... total 260

+ 900 = 1160 total

Residual Heat

I like my greens to stay....well, green! I only recently (last year) started cooking collard greens. One of the reasons why I didn't try them sooner was because every recipe I read, it seemed, suggested cooking "greens" for 45 minutes and longer....seems like alot of time and work when you consider spinach takes seconds, chard, minutes, kale a few more minutes! But one day at the farmers market I saw these huge beatiful dark green bundles of flat leaves....what were they? Collard greens! And only one buck for all that? I had to buy them.

To my surprise they didn't take that long to cook (I consider them cooked when they're soft enough to eat, lol), and what I liked about them, different than kale and chard was that they are chewy, the same, but because the leaf is flat I like to cut them in strips.....I like how it, kind of, looks like green pasta strips. So I started adding them to my base veg soups.

Because they took longer to cook than, my favorite at the time, kale, I would add the strips of collards at the same time as the stock, and cook for the final 10-15 min, where the kale went in after the final simmer, cooking in the residual heat of the soup.

Residual heat. What is it? Residual heat is the retained temperature of the food at the final stage of cooking, before it starts to cool down. Residual heat is a softer heat because it's temperature will be decreasing or staying the same, if you cover the pot, not increasing, and it's a method used commonly to "poach" more tender types of food without overcooking, like fish and chicken breast. I think I explained that right, lol. Many vegetables only need a few minutes to cook, and after that they become overcooked. Some veggies turn to mush if cooked too long, or at too high of a heat, and the texture just isn't that pleasant, but you know greens are over cooked when they turn brown....still tasty and nutritious, just not pretty. So, instead actually cooking some veggies, by the time the heat gets to high, it's too late they're overcooked, you can simply throw them in after you turn off the heat, to cook in the residual heat, still in the pot/pan/dish.

Since collards wouldn't normally cook in residual heat, for the simple fact that "normal" residual heat, the kind that is leftover from a boil, isn't hot enough, or won't stay hot long enough to cook this heartier green. But the pressure cooker cooks at a temperature much higher than a boil, so when you take the lid off, after the pressure comes down, either naturally, or manually released, often times the contents are still rapidly boiling. At this time you can add ingredients that can cook with residual heat, and if you put the lid back on (and re-lock, do not turn heat back on!) the temperature in the pot will stay very hot. This is how I cooked collards in my beef stew.

I've got to get to 9:15 yoga class, but I'll post the recipe and directions to my Beef Stew with Mushrooms, Barley, Wild Rice and Collards later this afternoon.

An Excerpt From My Personal Journal...

total 1545 cal.

So close....I really want to keep eating just because it feels good, no other reason. But maybe it will feel good to stop before it feels bad, cause it will. It'll feel bad fast!

It's 7:00pm and I'll watch a little tv, go to bed, get up early and make some beef, mushroom , barley and rice in the PC, maybe do something crazy like another double yoga....7:15 and 9:15. I've got KB's tomorrow afternoon with Mark, maybe I shouldn't do double yoga, but if I could eat more I'd do it in a second.

All Day Shopping

I wanted to go food shopping all day. I was hoping to run to whole foods for some bulk items before yoga, when I wasn't hungry, but I was running late and knew going after yoga I would be hungry, and wet, yuck.

In my mind I know I have some beef stock that I need to use, the sooner the better, and I love playing with my pressure cooker so much that I wanted to duplicate a mushroom, barley, red rice stew I made the other day. I love it when I make something that Mark really likes! But I had plenty of food that needed tending to and I didn't need to go to the store...really....but I thought about it all day....

I threw some brown rice in the PC for my dinner salad and I had to roast that stinkin' chicken (now that it's done I'm happy to have chicken meat already cooked and roasted bones for more stock...I don't need lol). I made some quinoa salad early in the day that I thought tasted really yummy (baby greens quinoa, baby tomatoes, chinese long beans, green onions yellow bell, dressed with oil and red vinegar and feta cheese mixed in) I wish I could eat it....well I can, but I won't eat a normal amount, that I know, which is the point.

I did have the energy to whip up a batch of yellow squash soup, but i'm still undecided about the last of the tomatoes. I still have lots of celery, I guess that white bean and celery soup will just have to wait, oh, and geez, two freakin' heads of purple cauliflower, good Lord, I have so much food, how could I think about wanting more?

I wish I had the time to write the blog post about my double yoga with my sweetie, but that'll wait until morning. yoga @ 7:15 and a new kb client @9:15, after I'll shower, make myself look decent, and then after eating I'll go shopping...yea!

The 100 Calorie Salad and 2 cups of Soup

Smaller portions is the name of the game . No salad that has more veggies than 100 calories of dressing can accomodate, and no more than 2 cups of soup per serving, no matter how low the calories are! Deal with it girlfriend.

I've changed my diet in the past couple of weeks, and even more this last week. I've gone from 140lbs., 3 weeks ago (since getting back from the Sept. RKC) to 132.0. I'll be including more details soon and taking a picture of my "All Day Food". Of course the changes in my training have been specific to becoming smaller and lighter.

What did you do this morning?

This is what I did this morning.

Kitchen Journal Thurdsay AM

4:00-4:15am
Put on water to boil and put black beans in for quick soak.(1 hour soak)

Had coffee with Mark

4:30
Cooked red quinoa in stock for salad, let cool.
Beef shanks, and grass fed ground beef out of the fridge, seasoned w/S&P. (1lb. ground beef formed into 4 patties for grilling)
Sliced tomatoes in half, lengthwise, and put 2 trays of tomatoes in 350 degree oven to roast for 2 hours.
Made 8 grain cereal in pressure cooker (15 min. total time).

5:00
Portioned out cooked cereal.
Washed pressure cooker started black beans (15 min total time). Cooled, then portioned.
Finished quinoa salad. Baby greens, heirloom tomatoes, yellow bell, black and green olives, red wine vinegar and oil, I'll add feta cheese later when I go to the store and get some!

5:30
Browned beef shanks, added 8 c. water, carrot, celery , onion, pressure cook 35 min. When this is done (currently cooking now!) I'll seperate the meat and strain the liquid for stock. Later today I'll make beef and veggie soup or stew w/noodles.
Grilled beef patties.

6:30
turned off roasted tomatoes, but I leave them in the oven for another hour.

I've been cooking alot of the same things this past week, but I'm also trying to deplete some of the stuff in my freezer. As much as I want to hoard the frozen squash soup, summer is over and squash soup needs to make room for heartier fare. Lots of tomato soup still.... here are some of the different ways I've been eating it.....

Tomato Soup w/Poached fish

I love fish or prawns in my tomato soup, and because seafood cooks so fast all you have to do is heat tomato soup to a boil, turn off heat, add fish, and cover, the hot soup will poach the fish. The bigger and thicker the piece, the longer it needs to poach. Prawns are cooked when they turn pink, snapper poaches in under 5 min., while a thick piece of halibut could take 10 min.

My version of Tomato Soup Vera Cruz is I'll make the soup with jalapeno and red bell (in the starting saute with onion carrot ans celery), poach my fish (snapper is traditional Vera Cruz), and then add sliced spanish olives (I get the ones from whole foods that are brined with red chile)

Tomato soup w/Prawns and Roasted Corn is pretty self explanatory, Poach prawns in soup add roasted corn. Tomatoes, prawns and corn are naturally sweet.

Tomato soup w/ Barley, one of my favs. I cook barley in the pressure cooker at least twice a week, so it's ready to add to whichever soup I want. Sometimes I add ground beef to this, Small meatballs would be fun, but I haven't taken the time to that, I just dice up meatloaf or a hamburger pattie!

Tomato and Carrot Soup, of course you can add a ton of diced carrots to this soup in the initial saute w/onions, and then put it all through the food mill at once. But I had some carrot soup in the freezer, so I heated them seperately (tomato and carrot soups) poured them in the same bowl for a pretty 1/2 red, & 1/2 orange soup. The two flavors were delicious together.

Tomato Soup w/Black Beans and Collard Greens. Blanche the collard greens in the soup, using the same technique as poaching fish, but at least 15 min for collards, chard 5 min. spinach 1-2 min, add cooked beans (any kind).

As you can see the combinations are endless.....

It's 7:15am and the timer for my beef shanks/stock/stew, just went off. I've used my pressure cooker 3 times already this morning, time to order another one!

My mother and sister "dropped by" the other day, and I wished I had some sort of snack I could've made for them, so next time I won't get caught with nothing to serve unexpeted guests, yesterday I made 2 roasted tomato spreads, black bean, and white bean, to keep in my freezer.

1 c. cooked beans (I used my pressure cooker, you can use canned beans however), 1 c. roasted tomatoes...I roast mine w/1-2 tbl. olive oil, S&P, and red pepper flakes (one tray = about 1 c. The tomatoes cook down as they roast.), 1/2c. stock. First in the food processor goes the tomatoes, then the beans, then thin it with stock until the desired consistency. Taste for S&P. If calories are not a concern you can thin it with olive oil (remember I used oil in when I roasted the tomatoes). You can add any herbs or even pine nuts and/or cheese (parm, feta, goat etc.)...and I can't believe I forgot garlic....how could I ever forget the garlic?

I would serve this with sliced baguette, crackers, or even veg sticks!

Pasture Fed Chicken, and the final tomato cook off!

Yes, I'm lucky to live in California with all of the super incredible year round produce, but I can't seem to get truly organic, pasture fed, meats easily. So when I stopped at a farmers market I don't ususally shop at, in Saratoga, I was thrilled to run into Paul Hain, of Hain Ranch Organics (Tres Pinos, CA), he did not have to explain, or "sell me" on his chickens...I knew what he was offering! I will write a blogpost soon in more detail about the differences between what you might think "organic free range" means, and what it really means!

This week I'm doing a side by side taste test of one of Hain Ranches pastured chickens, with an organic chicken from Whole Foods (I think the brand is Rosie). I don't really care about the taste differences, and I wonder if my taste palate can even discern, but I'm curious anyway! More exciting to me than the whole chickens, are the chicken feet! I hope to stock up on enough pastured chicken parts in my freezer to last the winter for stock making.


Well, Saturday I picked up 20lbs of heirloom tomatoes, and 20 pounds of San Marzano tomatoes....good Lord! I'll roast the heirlooms, because the different colors are so pretty and some of the large San Marzanos will be roasted and turned into pesto or spread, the others peeled, diced and into the freezer for the winter. The small ones will make the last batch of fresh tomato soup....

Next year, I'll take the time to learn to can, but I'm not going to stress about it this year. There's plenty of other seasonal veggies to eat, I'm not exactly starving, lol!

The Blender Diet

I often pose this question, when talking to someone about what kinds of foods they currently eat in their daily diet...."Would you put all of your days food, from breakfast to dinner, in a blender, blend it all up, and pour it down a kitchen sink that had no garbage disposal?" Most times that question creates the image of the point I'm trying to make.

First off, if you don't eat alot of fresh foods,(vegetables) all of your days food might break a blender! The sludge you're whipping up would clog a kitchen sink, what's it doing once you force it down your esophagus, do you wonder why you're constipated? And then what would it taste like?

Personally, most days I could say that I wouldn't have a problem taking my whole days food, blending it all toghether and eating it. It would be a loose consistency and because most every one of my meals is veggie based, it would probably taste like a green veggie smoothie, lol! (not as sweet...unless I happened to have a cookie binge that day, LOL!)

Now a whole days food is an dramatic example, so what about just one meal? How many of each of the meals you eat in a day could you blend together and still eat? What about the meals you feed your kids? If you're not eating enough fresh vegetables, are your kids?

I once had a young mother brag to me about how her kids had never had, what I consider "instant food", she defined instant food as "fast food" like Mc Donald's, in fact she went on and on about how she had taught her kids that Mc Donald's was poison! I then asked her if her kids had ever had a hot dog! She admitted they had, and she had to admit often! What's the difference?

Just some thoughts.

"Live" Trail Mix

Since trying to maintain an overly calorie restrictive diet, I've come up with all kinds of ways to satisfy my wanting to eat, while keeping calories low, that's one of the reasons I always base my snacks and meals around veggies first (I'm even now exploring dessert recipes that include vegetables!). Two of my favorite foods are raisins (I put them in everything), and peanuts, or peanut butter.....peanut butter is the food of Gods! One of my favorite, favorite snacks is to eat carrot and celery sticks with PNB and raisins, I didn't have any PNB, but I had a small amount of peanuts (I purposely only buy small amounts of "trigger" foods, like PNB, yogurt is another...if I have a quart of yogurt, I'll eat a quart of yougurt, lol).

I took my carrot and celery, diced them very small, and chopped the peanuts and raisins so as I ate it by the handful I could get a little taste of everything all at once! I call this "live" trail mix!

1-2 carrot, diced small (I used a orange and yellow carrot in this pc)

1-2 celery stalk, diced small

1 oz raisins (organic)

1 oz peanuts (unsalted raw, organic)

pinch of salt (of course, lol)

This made about 1 cup of live trail mix for about 200 calories. Another live trail mix idea

Waldorf trail mix

celery

apple

dried cranberry

walnuts

Any dried fruit and nut or seed (pumkins seeds would be good!) can be combined with celery, carrot, and/or broccoli stems. This can be a way of adding more fresh, raw, veggies into your diet.

Saute? Or Not to Saute?

I think my soups are fabulous, in fact I could live on my soups, but what makes them so good? Is it the homemade chicken stocks? Is it the organic vegetables, or does the method of cooking deserve the credit? If my last few batches of celery soup are any clue, then the credit goes to the cooking method!

I have always made my soups in a large saute pan, 6qt.(pictured right) because it has a large bottom surface, and short sides, to best brown/saute/carmelize the onion, and any other base veggies I might be using....celery, carrot, peppers, etc.(if I use a soup pot, then it is one with a large bottom surface to accomodate this step), and although I use my pressure cooker for making stock, I don't use it for veggie soups, but definitely for any soups that have meat, beans, or grains (rice). One of the differences between using a crockpot and a pressure cooker is that you cannot use a crockpot to brown, or sear, meat or veggies....you can in a pressure cooker, a very important step, as I'll continue to explain....

I made three batches of celery soup this week, one made using my traditional method of browning onion and celery first, adding the garlic in the last minute of browning, then adding my stock, deglaze (pictured left), taste for seasoning (salt), cooking until veggies are soft, and then the final puree.....yummy! And the next batches using my pressure cooker, to which I simply put in my stock, added diced onion, and celery, maybe garlic (I don't remember), brought it up to pressure for 5 minutes or so, let the pressure come down naturally, then pureed it. Big difference! The first pressure cooked soup was watery, which I expected, but stringy too, it tasted like stringy celery water. In the next I added a small diced carrot, and less water....problem almost solved....the carrot is a must in my opinion for weight and it adds a small amount of sweetness (keep in mind it will change the color, unless you use a yellow or white carrot), but the soup lacked the depth of flavor of the sauteed version, and the only differences in ingredients was 1 tbl. olive oil.

Sauteeing does a couple of things, besides soften the veggies, it starts to carmelize them, and condense the flavors. Carmelizing is when the natural sugars cook and turn brown bringing out the sweetness, that's what happens when you make toast for instance, you're actually carmelizing the bread. The other thing that happens as you saute, is the heat of cooking condenses the veggies flavor even more as it causes the water in the veggies to evaporate, kind of like the difference between a grape and a raisin. More natural sugars and more condensed flavor equals yummy! (Same with roasting vegetables)


Trying to save the 100 calories of 1 tbl olive oil just wasn't worth it, but soup made in a pressure cooker has it's place. In the first PC'ed batch I ended up pureeing some chipotle black beans with the watery celery soup, therefore adding more weight to the soup and a totally new flavor....I ate it! Most anything can be saved in the kitchen! Is it cooked? Is it edible? Does it taste good? In that order!




(Pic #1, making squash soup in my favorite soup pan, adding garlic in the last minute of sauteeing, #2 deglazing the pan with chicken stock, #3 adding the squash...you can see, in this pic, how little stock I use. This batch made 2 qts.)

The Truth and Two Blogs

Writing blog posts for LMPP (Living My Physical Potential) is much easier, because I have to keep a training log, and if I tape a video, it's only one video...easy to download, and I'm not picky about how I look necessarily, because it's the training that's important, not whether you brushed your hair that morning, lol! LMPP is also directed to anyone interested in straight forward kettlebell routines as well as my general training and health philosophy.

But good Lord it's hard to keep 2 blogs going, lol! This one especially, because I like to include pictures and instruction alot of times, and I'm really picky about my pictures! Well, as picky as I can be since I have no knowledge or background in photography. I may take 30-50 pictures of the same bowl of soup to get an image I think looks, somewhat, like something anyone would want to duplicate, or be inspired enough to try something similar. Also, I'm not a "computer" person! Thank God I had a typing class in high school, otherwise my hands might of never touched a keyboard in my life! Blah, blah, blah, but here's the truth.......

This blog, Food and Thought is much more personal....or at least I want it to be. So let me share something with you. I have experienced more depression about my weight, and I have cried more since the beginning of this year than my entire life combined, especially since Springtime (I'm overexaggerating, of course...I have a tendency to be dramatic, lol). The amount of time it's taken me to truly recover from my surgery was unexpected, as well as having some personal family upset. The stress created from these situations has also created a challenge maintaining the bodyweight I say I want to be, which creates more stress.

Since my surgery in Dec. and the forced time off of training I had only seen my pre-surgery weight a couple of times, but more instances of compulsive, and binge eating during the Spring months, caused me to gain about 5lbs. I started to train harder, thinking I could "train" it off, instead it increased muscle, therefore increasing my weight another couple of pounds. The only reason why I didn't gain more weight (in my opinion) was I was always able to follow a high calorie day (binge) with a fasting, or very low calorie day.....and I never missed a workout! Even if that meant burping up cookies during a 104 degree yoga class, lol! During this time of binge and compulsive eating, I was never fearful of gaining all of my weight back.....never. I will never be fat again, that I know. But I did question what kind of example could I be if I couldn't lose a measley 5-10 lbs. Many times I asked myself the question, "Why am I having this experience? What am I supposed to learn from this?"

Finally, for whatever reason the bingeing subsided early summer, but with our busy travel schedule, I would diet between trips, get my weight under control, and then be triggered like crazy by the absence of my routine and gain as much as 4-5lbs in one weekend! (The last trip to the Sept RKC I left weighing 134-135, I came back to the scale on Monday @140!) It would take at least 2 weeks for me to recover and bring my weight back down after each trip, or event that took us away from home.

No matter how strict I dieted the scale wouldn't budge, even increasing after a 900 calorie day! I'm not used to that! It had never been a problem for me to lose weight during the week, eating big portions of lovely, healthy, natural foods, and allowing myself to have a cheat day, while maintaining 129-132lbs. Now it was different. Is it my age? Is it that I'm still just eating too much food? Is it the cortisol levels in my body created by stress? Has my body become so sensitive to some foods that I'm gaining weight on squash soup?

Without going on, and on, and on in this blog post, I will write about more specific experiences related to these past few months in the next few weeks. But the reason why it's been so hard for me to write on this blog is because I was ashamed of what I saw as failure. Failure to "walk the walk" because I couldn't get my bodyweight where I said I wanted it to be. Ashamed that I gained weight, ashamed that I've seen 140 on the scale, and wanting to hide. Feeling like I'm under a spotlight being judged like any other former fat girl people expect to gain the weight back....didn't we all wait for Oprah to gain her weight back? And others like Kirstie Alley, Carni Wilson, Star Jones to gain weight back?

Some of the things I learned, and what I'll write about are;

Stress and bodyweight
Calorie counting, and the types of calories you eat
Weighing yourself everday
Junk miles
Overeating "clean" foods
Moving forward towards health and gaining forward motmentum
Can you let go without giving up?
Compassion, being you own harshest critic
Loving where you are, because it's a great place to be!

The biggest lesson? It's much easier to give advice, than to take it, LOL!

Life is good, be gentle with yourself.