What's in the Fridge?

If you're confused about the term "plant-based," you're not alone.

It means a diet of mostly, or ALL fruits and vegetables. You don't have to be a vegan to call yourself plant-based. You could be a flexitarian, pescatarian, or vegetarian and still identify with the term "plant-based."
Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about a big problem on these diets.
While I identify myself now as a flexitarian (eating mostly plants but small amounts of meat), I did go vegan for a month.
While I felt consciously aware and good about myself, I had very low energy.
I felt light for sure because I lost weight, but I also felt light-headed. Which is not such a great thing when you're driving the Malibu canyons delivering food.
At the time I was a personal chef for a family and cooking lots of amazing vegan foods like vegetable sushi with brown rice, coconut curry, and teriyaki tofu. I was eating it too.
But, as I felt great, mostly, I didn…

Vegan Pumpkin Spice Bread

I was thrilled with this bread and so were my non-vegan friends! I took the little mini-loaves on a fall road trip and there well lots of mmms, music to a baker's ears. I hope you experience the same when you decide to make this!

It's relatively low fat, and you can make it even lower fat if you like. To make it lower fat substitute more or all of the oil for apple sauce. I was lucky enough to have some fresh pumpkin lying around that I had roasted. I peeled away the skin and pureèd it with an immersion blender and it was simple as ever. I even used a Jack-o-lantern, or big 'ol carving pumpkin, the ones you find in the pumpkin patches, and the results were great. The ideal pumpkin to use, though, is a medium sized sugar pumpkin. Because the Jack-o-lantern pumpkin was roasted, the flavor was able to concentrate and some of the excess water was able to evaporate. If you don't have the time or energy to roast your own pumpkin, buy a can of pumpkin puree with no additives…

Coconut-Flax Pancakes (Gluten-free)

As promised in the previous post, I would share this recipe for gluten-free pancakes. Hands down, this is the best gluten-free recipe I found thus far. It does take a few more ingredients than usual (my introduction to coconut flour), but it is well worth it. Also, the health benefits of coconuts are great, good carbs, dietary fiber, source of protein.

Coconuts are even making their way into celebrity status these days. Friends of mine got hooked on the new coconut water craze, from the samples they tried at marathon food expos. They are a great source of hydration and electrolytes for runners. I also came across "The Coconut Diet" book in Barnes and Nobles, which I have never heard of. They claim after one week of switching from vegetable oil to cooking with unrefined, virgin coconut oil, you will feel a new sense of vitality. Coconut is proven to reverse the effects of dementia and Alzheimer's disease because of the good fatty acids they contain, so they may be on to so…

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